The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

  Earlier that day they’d sent a new police inspector; as if a variety of interrogators would suddenly get Jack to speak. “The doctor says that you should be able to talk,” the police inspector said. His name was Van Biezen and he sat at Jack’s bedside and he watched Jack Ming watching him. He held a notebook in his lap and Jack could see the words on the paper: Jin Ming. Graduate student in computer science at Technical University of Delft. Found shot near bodies of known criminals, including hacker Nic ten Boom. Refuses to speak. No medical reason for not talking.

  The writing on the inspector’s notebook looked as exact as a computer font. The precision scared him. This was a man like his own father, a man who was going to ferret out truths.

  Jack stared at the policeman.

  “I understand the wound in your throat was fortunately rather shallow. Your vocal cords are not damaged, Mr. Jin.”

  Jack didn’t speak.

  “We need to know your connection to the dead men in the machinists’ shop. Nic ten Boom and the Pauder twins.”

  Jack stayed quiet.

  “I know you’ve been told ten Boom is a known computer con artist. Did you know he was also a suspected internet pornographer?” Van Biezen let the next two words detonate, a soft bomb in the quiet hum of the room. “Child pornographer.”

  Bile inched into the back of Jack’s throat. This was new. He hadn’t known that about Nic. It was a most unpleasant surprise. He closed his eyes and he tried not to shiver. When he opened them Van Biezen still sat across from him.

  “He specialized in creating custom videos. You want a certain kind of child doing a certain act? He could deliver.”

  Jack gritted his teeth. Closed his eyes. No, no, no. He had intended on complete silence but now a sickened moan rose in his throat, like a bubble loosened in a bottle. The first real noise he’d made in weeks.

  “Our informants say Nic ten Boom had a rather global clientele. What can you tell me about them?”

  Jack wished he could die, snap his fingers, stop his heart. Every time this gets worse, he thought. I think it cannot get worse, and it does. It does. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “The Pauder twins are known freelance enforcers for a variety of criminal enterprises. Now, Mr. Jin, how does a nice graduate student in computer science get caught in a shootout with such bad people?”

  Jack said nothing.

  “I think your silence is to keep yourself from lying about who and what you are,” Van Biezen said. “I think it’s been tolerated far too long. You won’t even write a note on a pad. But you are going to talk to me.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow.

  Van Biezen opened a file. “Let’s see what’s true today, shall we? You are Jin Ming, and you are a Chinese citizen, born in Hong Kong. You speak perfect English, according to your classmates at Delft. That’s all we know. I’m waiting for you to explain to me how you ended up in a bullet-ridden shop, full of counterfeit cigarettes and dead criminals.”

  Jack had imagined how to answer this during his enforced silence. His false identity—backed by a computer record in the university’s database, and inside a distant Beijing database of all students abroad—had held up. He could survive this and vanish again. So he spoke his first words in weeks. “I was kidnapped.” The words sounded scratchy, like sandpaper grating against wood.

  Van Biezen raised an eyebrow at the unexpected sound of Jack’s voice. “He speaks. Very good.” He cleared his own throat. “Kidnapped.”

  “Yes. Grabbed from an internet café over on Singel. The Café Sprong on 12 April. Ask the barista there. Three men came in and they pretended to be with the police. They pulled guns on everyone and ordered us to be still. Then they took me with them, they beat me up, and they took me with them to that shop.”

  “Why would they kidnap you?”

  “I believe because they wanted my computer skills.”

  “You’re a hacker?”

  “I am the opposite.” He injected dignity into his half-lie. “Check my work in grad school, speak with my adviser.”

  “We have.”

  “Then you know my thesis subject is computer security. No one knows system weaknesses better than a security expert. I specialize in RFID chip programming—you know, the chips that are placed on products to stop counterfeiting and to facilitate tracking.” He paused. “May I have some water?”

  Van Biezen gave him a glass with a straw sticking out of it. The water tasted like heaven to Jack. “Check the date. I’m sure there was a police report filed. The barista was mad.”

  “I will. And how did all these three men end up dead?”

  Jack kept his gaze steady on Van Biezen. The cop had misunderstood; he thought the three dead men—Nic and the twins—were his kidnappers. Jack nearly wept with relief. If he mentioned that a team of three CIA agents, hunting one of their own named Sam Capra, had kidnapped him right now it would be unwise; he preferred to approach the CIA on his own terms. One of his kidnappers was called August—he would find him.

  Because he had already decided that the CIA was going to help him get out of this mess. He swallowed and continued: “Other men came in and shot them. I don’t know why. Except…”

  “Well?”

  “They had crates of cigarettes. I assume they were smuggling them. If the cigarettes were stolen, then they might have wanted me to reprogram the RFID chips in the crates so they could not be tracked.”

  Van Biezen said, “They weren’t stolen cigarettes. They were counterfeit brands.”

  “Then I guess they wanted me for some other reason.”

  Van Biezen did not look impressed. He said, “So, when we check your phone records, we’re not going to find any calls to Nic ten Boom or the Pauder twins. They were strangers to you.”

  “Yes. Strangers to me.” He had been careful to use only the prepaid phones given directly to him by Nic; his own phone and email records were clean.

  “I’m going to check your story. I hope for your sake it holds true.”

  “It will.”

  “So why did you not speak for so long?”

  Jack said nothing. He put on his Mona Lisa smile and stared back at the detective. He’d returned to his Quiet Game.

  Van Biezen left and Jack leaned back against the pillows. He considered. The CIA had killed Nic and the other men in the warehouse and left him to die. Or maybe they’d thought he was already dead. Which meant maybe Nine Suns and the CIA weren’t looking for him. He had no idea. But… he’d been here a while. He had his own hospital room. They’d brought him here, covered, and he was under police protection.

  Were the police hiding him?

  They must be. That was buying him time, very precious time he couldn’t waste lying in a hospital bed.

  He needed that notebook.

  He was not going to ask the police for help or for protection. The only protection was the notebook full of Nine Suns’ secrets and Nic had hidden it somewhere. He had to get out and he had to find it. The men who had taken him from the internet café would want it. The CIA, who had been hunting this group. Nine Suns must be special, international, if the CIA had an interest. They paid money for information. They protected informants. He could see his only course of action perfectly clearly. He could find Nic’s notebook and sell it to August, and then could go into hiding forever. He could not trust the police. He knew Nic had broken into the police department’s servers; even if the police hid him, Nine Suns could find him. He needed the most powerful ally he could muster. It would have to be the CIA.

  Jack Ming studied the white purity of the ceiling of his hospital room. All he had to do now was to get the hell out of this hospital and find the red notebook.

  The door opened. A nurse stepped inside. She was tall and black-skinned and had a strong face that wore a frown. He blinked. He wasn’t dreaming.

  She closed the door and turned to him. His eyes widened in shock. A nurse’s uniform?

  “Well,” Ricki said. She came close to the bed, leaned
down to his ear. “You’ve been a lot of trouble to find.”

  Jack decided to keep his ongoing silence, although he could not believe she stood before him.

  “Do you know how worried I’ve been? I could kill you for not letting me know you’re okay.”

  Jack made a noise.

  “I’ve had to hack into you don’t want to know how many databases, looking for you.” Ricki was originally from Senegal, in West Africa, and her accent, fueled by anger, chopped the words into shards. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  He shook his head, pointed to the surgical scar on his throat. She can’t know what I’ve been doing, he thought, I can’t put her in danger.

  “Are you kidding me? I go through hell to find your hidden ass and you aren’t going to talk to me?”

  His heart felt like it would burst. He let his lips form the beginning of a word: I am so glad you’re here, please get me out of this. But then he stopped. Ricki had known Nic, slightly. He couldn’t connect her to Novem Soles. He had to keep her away from these lunatics.

  So he shook his head: no.

  Then she fell onto him, crying softly, putting a kiss in his hair. Not on his lips. They’d broken up weeks ago. She held him and he thought he might cry, he might let all the emotion penned up inside him out, like a long-echoing wail.

  She sat next to the bed.

  He pointed at her nurse’s uniform and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. “I had to wait for the night shift, and if I get caught I’m arrested. I had to sneak down here and talk my way past the guard because he hadn’t seen me.”

  The door opened, the guard peering in. Ricki had his wrist, as though taking his pulse. Jack gave the guard a nod. The guard shut the door.

  “The police have been hiding you.” Ricki leaned close in her whisper.

  Hiding him. And yet she’d found him. He loved how smart she was. He wanted to take her hand but they’d broken up, he reminded himself. She kept hold of his wrist.

  “Ming”—and it shamed him she didn’t know his real first name—“what have you gotten involved in?”

  He shook his head, pointed at the surgical scar.

  “You don’t fool me. You can talk. God knows most days you never shut up.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Don’t protect me,” Ricki said. “Let me help you.”

  The police officer outside opened the door and Ricki’s voice shifted into a louder tone. “So, everything looks okay. Sorry to have woken you.” She stood, nodded smartly. She glanced at the police officer.

  And she walked out without a backward glance.

  Let me help you. No one, though, could help him. Unless he found Nic’s red notebook.

  4

  Upper West Side, Manhattan

  IT’S NOT EASY GETTING TWO BODIES of heavy-set men out of an apartment. We had to assume the apartment was tied to Bell, and right now we didn’t want people looking for him or linking him to two dead guys. We didn’t want his name in the papers.

  I called Bertrand to help. He showed up an hour later. With a moving van and crates. He brought Mila a moving van uniform and a cap that seemed to cover most of her face. He raised one eyebrow at the bodies, muttered something in his Haitian-accented French, and got to work. The bodies were loaded and gone within fifteen minutes. He took Bell, too, now uncuffed from that corpse, shot up with a load of tranquilizer, and put into a crate.

  “You’re not taking him back to the bar?” I asked.

  “You want me to carry an unconscious man past customers?” Mila always seems to assume I’m brain dead. “I’ll stash Bell where he can’t be a problem and have a little chat with him. A man with a family to consider, he wants to keep a nice life, he will work with us. You go arrange travel to Las Vegas.”

  I waited until they left. I watched the street to see if they were followed. The CIA had left me alone since I’d declined to return to the embrace of their employ, although I thought it likely that they might be checking in on me. I didn’t see a sign that anyone was following Mila and the truck.

  I walked out onto the street. I glanced at the faces of those near me and committed them to memory. It was eight blocks to Columbus Circle. The early evening breeze felt good against my face. The night was oddly full of music. From the buildings I passed I heard the soft tones of a Mahler symphony, the spice of Cuban salsa, a thunderous beat that drowned out hip-hop lyrics. Music was something people living a normal life got to enjoy.

  When your child is missing, you live in a limbo. A purgatory without clocks. A room without windows, without doors, pitched into black, and all you can do is fumble along in the darkness and hope you find the knob to the door, or the sash of the window. That is hope. That you can throw an exit open, let light flood back into your prison, and standing there will be your child, safe and sound.

  I had no intention of staying in limbo.

  I spotted the first tail boarding the subway one car down from me. A sixtyish woman, hair styled short, dark glasses, delicate blue earrings. She’d been standing on the corner down from Mr. Bell’s building when I walked out. Looking away from me. I’d walked at a good pace and she’d kept up.

  I stayed on the train. So did she.

  I got off at the next stop, which was Seventh Avenue. So did she and a moderate-sized crowd of people. I slowed, forcing her to get ahead of me. I had to figure she had at least one partner, someone who would stay with me if she peeled off, someone I hadn’t seen when I exited the building.

  The woman, pushed slightly ahead of me by the crowd, climbed the stairs to street level and she had to choose. She went left with brisk, heel-clicking purpose. I headed right. I didn’t look back to see if she’d turned to follow me.

  I didn’t hurry. I wanted to see if she would backtrack. I also wanted to see who was sticking close to me. I turned into a small convenience store and I browsed. I bought a bottle of red wine, a couple of apples, and a wedge of Cheddar cheese. I took my time, waiting to see what fly would stick in the honey. Seven other shoppers in the narrow aisles. I glanced at their faces, their profiles, without them noticing. One was familiar. He’d been on the subway with me. Late twenties, a bit older than me, dark hair, wearing a Yankees cap and a dark T-shirt and a light jacket although it’d been a warm day. Jackets change your appearance to the casual eye, and they’re easy to ditch. So are hats.

  I paid for my purchases and I headed back toward the subway station. I didn’t look back but in the rearview of a parked car I saw the Yankees cap coming behind me. I ducked into a clothing store at the next corner.

  At a distance he followed and in one of the mounted security mirrors I saw him enter the store. I grabbed a brightly colored shirt that would have embarrassed a peacock off one of the racks and I asked the clerk where the changing room was. He nodded toward the back and told me I couldn’t take my grocery bag in with me, like I’d planned to shoplift some ugly plaid. I gave it to him to keep under the counter and I went into the changing area. Four saloon-style doors, a tailor’s stand with a triptych of mirrors. I went inside one of the changing rooms and I waited.

  If he’d seen me come with just one shirt he might wait. He might still think I hadn’t spotted him; at no point had I looked at him directly.

  So I decided to really, really consider the merits of this kaleidoscope of a shirt.

  Five minutes. Ten. The clerk hadn’t come back to check on me yet. Then I heard him. I knew it was him because he gently pushed open one saloon door. Then another. If he was just looking for a place to try on clothes he would have stopped with the first one.

  If I was wrong I would apologize.

  He pushed on the unfastened door to my cubicle and I seized his hand. I levered him forward hard, slammed him in the wall. I smashed his face against the wall and he ooofed. You got to love an oof. Then I cracked his head again.

  I wrenched his arm hard against his shoulder blades. Checked the left ear. Empty. Right ear. Oh, there it was, like a tiny beige fleck of wax
. The earphones get smaller every year. I reached down, flicked off the lead for his mike under his shirt.

  “Who sent you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Special Projects?” That was the secret CIA branch I worked for; they have trouble saying goodbye.

  He didn’t answer. He tried to lever back and free his arm. I kept my grip above his wrist, on the cloth of his shirt.

  I don’t believe in giving multiple chances to cooperate. I battered the juncture of neck and shoulder, twice, and he folded. I took the mike, the earplug, and put them on, switched them to live. I searched his pockets. There was a wallet that I left alone, but a telescope, palm-sized. I took it. I put the unconscious shadow up on the small seat in the changing room. He was breathing just fine.

  “Gato, respond.” He was being called. I knew the voice. So I answered in Special Projects code.

  “He did a four-nine.” I’d heard him speak in the grocery, the barest tinge of a Boston accent, when the cashier asked if he had coupons. So I copied it. It only had to be good enough and I’m a decent mimic. Four-nine meant the subject had cut me loose in a crowd.

  “Lucky, respond.” Now the speaker was calling the other agent; I figured this was the older woman from the subway. I looked around for her as I tossed the shirt I hadn’t tried on back to the clerk and scooped up my bag of groceries. I hurried back onto the street.

  “I don’t have visual confirmation,” she said. “He did not return to the subway station.” She had hung close to the subway to pick me up if I doubled back.

  “Return to base,” the voice said. “We’ll see if we can pick him on the traffic cameras.”

  Yes, please, return to base. I waited. I had nothing more to contribute to class discussion as Gato, so I stayed quiet. If the unconscious man was found an alarm might be raised. And I had to hope that they were the only two on me. Normally a team of four would have been used. Either I didn’t matter or resources were thinner than usual. I didn’t care about the reason. This stopped now.

  I melded into the constant stream of pedestrians on Seventh and cast my gaze down the street with my palm curved around the telescope, as though shading my eyes. I caught the woman walking away from me, back the way we’d come. She pushed back her hair and in the telescope I could see her blue earrings I’d noticed before. I followed at a distance.