The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

  I step up onto a cool stretch of stone patio. Half-empty drinks line the table—red wine, empty Maccabee beer bottles, an ice-melted Scotch. The party appears to be over. Perhaps bad news has been received?

  I try the door. Unlocked. The den is full of heavy leather couches. The scent of pepperoni pizza hangs kitchen-thick, the sting of marijuana touches my nose. I have only smelled it once, back at a party in Chiinu when I was in school getting my teaching license.

  I go down the hallway, gun at the ready.

  I go past a darkened doorway and then I feel the cool of a barrel pressing into my hair.

  I freeze.

  “Drop the gun,” a voice says. In Russian.

  I obey. I hear him pick it up and remove the clip.

  His gun guides me back out into the center of the hallway and a man steps in front of me. Physically big, red-haired, with heavy lips and baggy eyes. “I have her,” he calls in English. From the room down the hallway comes the man with the blond mohawk. It’s not spiky, it’s shaved down. He is as big as the Russian; you think he would have found a bigger bodyguard. His face is unremarkable, his eyes a stone gray. He’s dressed in a nice shirt, untucked, and jeans.

  “Who else is with you?” he asks me in English.

  “No one. Just me.”

  “If you are lying to me my friend will shoot off your ear.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Look at me, garbage.”

  I look at him and he looks at me, scowling, then smiling. “You come with me.” He takes the gun from the Russian and jabs it in my hair and pushes me along. “You, you go check the grounds. See if she’s really stupid enough to come here alone. Call the office, tell them she’s here.” I hear the Russian huffing away, he’s a mouth-breather.

  At the end of the hallway is a slightly open door and in the dim light I see the edge of a bed.

  On the bed, a pale, thin arm. My mouth dries. I used to see that arm, hanging from the tumble of sheets on the bed on the other side of the room.

  I push open the door with my fingertips.

  Nelly lies on the bed, sleepy, blinking like a child roused from dreams.

  I forget myself for a moment and step forward.

  Zviman shoves me against the bed. I twist, trying to escape, and then a fist slams into my face. Once, twice, then a kick sledgehammers into my chest. His mouth is a curl of rage.

  Nelly tries to sit up on the bed.

  “You. Who are you?” Zviman asks me.

  “Her sister.”

  “This bitch is why you shot up my place?” His accent is heavy. He must have gotten news of the shooting at the Lucky Strike, sent his partygoers home. I wonder how he knows so soon. And then the thought occurs to me: anyone openly running a brothel owns himself some cops.

  “Yes. Don’t call her bitch,” I say.

  He laughs. “I apologize, bitch! I didn’t know I hurt your feelings, bitch! Thanks for shooting my customers and releasing my whores, bitch!” He laughs again. Aiming the gun not at me but now at Nelly.

  Nelly cowers, the gun lodged against her temple.

  “The police will be here. I shot up your property. They’ll want to talk to you.”

  “No, they won’t. There’s nothing on paper to tie me to the Lucky Strike. Nothing at all.” He shrugs. “I own the right people on the police force, anyway. All you’ve created is a mess that will take me about five minutes to clean up. But, bitch, you got guts.”

  I grit my teeth against the pain from the punches and kicks he gave me.

  “Now. Who sent you?” he asks. Like we’re going to have a real conversation.

  “No one. I came on my own.”

  “Don’t lie to me. You work for who? Baran? Markov? The Nigerians?”

  “I’m not lying. I’m her sister. Look at our faces, you can tell.”

  He laughs, stops, stares hard at me. “Tell me who hired you or you die.”

  He just cannot believe I am here out of love. It tells me everything I need to know about how to kill him.

  “Did you hear me? You die.”

  “Tu mori,” I say back. He blinks at me.

  I manage to stand. Grimacing, against the pain. “I am her sister and I came for her.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “No one. I just decided you and your people needed to die.” It is so simple, Sam, this decision. You know it and I know it.

  He laughs at me.

  Nelly opens her eyes and they slowly focus on my face. Softly Nelly murmurs: “Mila?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m dreaming. I don’t dream anymore.” Nelly’s voice sounds like it lives at the bottom of a well.

  “No dream. I’m here.”

  “Big sister’s going to work with you, Nelly, won’t that be nice? I’m gonna sell you as a pair.” And I can tell that this Zviman, he thinks he’s won. He thinks he’s won.

  I don’t allow myself the smile.

  He pushes the gun under my chin. He frisks me along the leather jeans, the tight turtleneck, the leather jacket. He lets his hands linger where he likes. He finds the guard’s knife in my boot and tosses it to the floor. He takes the collapsible baton from my pocket.

  “This is Natan’s.”

  “He loaned it to me,” I say. He tosses it in the corner.

  “You are a stupid little girl, Mila. Look at me.”

  I don’t, not at first, frozen, and he puts the gun right over my shoulder, aimed at Nelly. “I’ll kill your sister if you fight me.”

  So I look at him, waiting, and he punches me in the face. Once, twice. He kicks me in the stomach. Then he backhands me. I land on his expensive coffee table in the corner of the bedroom, scattering the sports magazines. I tumble into the space between chair and table. He seizes my hair, he hits me again. I stagger and he kicks me in the ribs.

  I fall.

  “You stupid Moldovan cow. You think you sweep in here and you ruin my business? What do I care that you shoot up a whorehouse? I have three dozen of them around the world. You can’t even bloody my lip, bitch.”

  I wanted to say, I killed Vadim. I killed your people in Bucharest. I set your prisoners free. But I don’t, because I want him to treat me as he does every other woman.

  He keeps the gun in my face as he kneels over me. I knew this could happen, I knew it, and I stamp down the terror that rises in me like fire. He unzips my leather pants and orders me to wriggle out of them or he’ll kill Nelly. I obey him and the fear is hot and heavy in my throat.

  “Get out of the jacket. The shirt. Naked, now, bitch.”

  Shaking, I obey him. The tile floor is cold against my back.

  “Don’t, Yaakov,” Nelly murmurs. “Please don’t hurt my sister.”

  He leans over and he slaps her hard. “I’ll do what I like and you keep quiet or she’s dead.”

  Nelly snuffles, mouths at me, I’m sorry.

  Yaakov Zviman kicks out of his pants. He is a big man, at least 6 feet 2, meaty armed, legs thick from old work, a hard, flat stomach. On the lower part of his arm I see a weird tattoo: a sunburst in the heart of a stylized number nine.

  He slips off his shorts.

  I force myself not to close my eyes. I lie still.

  He pushes the gun against my throat, surveys my body with a hunger uglier than lust. “You look better than your sister, whore. Do you know how much you’ll fetch in Dubai? Less because I might cut out your tongue. But still. A sister act.”

  He puts one hand on my throat, the other down at his naked groin. He positions himself and slides into me—and screams, an incoherent shattering shriek of pure agony.

  This is my revenge.

  I did the unthinkable: I clutched his hips, twisting, and his scream rose beyond human hearing.

  He writhed, trying to pull out of me and away from me and then froze, realizing that the horrific pain was only getting worse.

  He dropped the gun, cringing like a kicked dog, trying to curl into a protective ball.

 
I shoved him free of me and he howled like a wounded beast. I felt blood—his—on my thighs. Hanging on to his penis, covering most of it, clutching at it, was a piece of rubber, blood now soaking its edges.

  I slam a kick into his torn groin and he folds, sobbing, shattered by pain. I grab the gun and level it at him. My hand is steady.

  I hear running footsteps. The Russian bodyguard, tearing down the hall toward me, drawing his gun. I have an advantage because the hallway narrows his options, but the advantage will be gone in six seconds and I aim and fire, like I’m aiming at the painted figures on burlap in the dusty air of the old winery. A triangle, like Ivan taught me. I hurt everywhere but my hand stays steady as a wooden beam.

  The Russian crashes to the floor. He doesn’t move or groan or keep living.

  Zviman sobs, in hysterics, and clutches at his torn genitals. He huddles against a wall. “Get it off me, how do I get it off me!” he screams.

  “Nelly,” I say calmly, “is anyone else here?”

  Nelly stares at the wreck of Zviman. “No.”

  “Go get your clothes. Then go wait downstairs.” I’m using big-sister voice now, no argument. “You don’t need to see what happens next.”

  Nelly stares at the blood-smeared floor, at Zviman, curled into a ball. “How did you?”

  “Just do as I say. Here. Take this.” I hand her Zviman’s gun. She stares at it and nods. She hurries down the stairs.

  I stand above Zviman. Sweat pours around the blond strip of hair.

  “Look at me, garbage,” I say, using his own words. I quickly get dressed.

  I wait for him to look up into my face. “It’s an inverted rubber, lined with little serrated metal razors. They dig into the flesh and they don’t let go. I got the idea from reading about deterrents to rape in Africa. Some women in South Africa make these to scare off attackers, or to mark them forever. You find the most interesting things on the web, you know.”

  He gasps, sobs. He apparently is done with calling me names.

  “Now, garbage. You want the razors out of you, yes?”

  He makes a mewling noise.

  “I can remove it without further harm. Where’s your laptop?”

  Zviman gags and points down the hall.

  Prodding him with the baton, I force him to crawl down the hall and sit up into a chair. Blood and bile cover him.

  “Disobey me, and I’ll twist the knife, so to speak,” I say.

  “Whatever you want. Please… please…” He can hardly speak the words.

  “I want your bank accounts,” I say.

  “What? Why?” The agony whittles his voice to little more than a whisper.

  “Restitution. Give me access to the accounts or I’ll twist the device and no doctor will be able to save it. Do we understand each other?”

  He nods, disbelief and fury and agony all contorting his face.

  I open a web browser and he murmurs the web address for a major Cayman Islands bank. He spits out his login and password and I type them.

  He has several accounts. I open balances on each. One holds seven million American dollars. In another, nine hundred thousand. In another, two million. The accounts in the bank total close to fifteen million U.S. dollars.

  “That’s all I’ve got, the rest of the money goes back into the business. Please get it off me. Get it off me!”

  “Don’t be such a crybaby.” It’s what I used to say to the children who whined, a million years ago, when I was a teacher. I push him out of the chair and do an e-transfer of funds into my own Cayman account, set up last week. I learned how to do it on the web. The Caymans are eager for business. I have set up instructions for that money, once deposited, to be instantly wired into a second account in Switzerland.

  He will never find that money.

  But I turn off the laptop, quickly strip out the hard drive, put it into my pocket.

  “You’re just a thief,” Zviman screams. “Take it off me!”

  “No. The women you’ve abused, they get this money. It can’t make up for what you did to them but at least you won’t have it.” Then I lean close and spit in his eye.

  He cringes, rage and agony alternating on his face. “You said you’d remove this…”

  “So I did. Well, I’m not a doctor. The only way I know to get it off… is to yank.” I reach for him.

  “No! No!” he screams, wriggling away.

  “Fine, leave it on, it’s a nice accessory. I’m sure the doctor will have to talk to the police, what with you being an assault victim.”

  “My people will kill you for this.” He points at the tattoo of the sun inside the nine; blood dots the colors. “They will kill you for this, they will kill you a thousand times, bitch. You’re stealing their money, too.”

  “I’m not sure you will still have people, if you can’t pay them.”

  I wish I had a camera for the shock on his face. He realizes without his money, he has no power. No empire. Nothing. I’ve burned him to the ground, Sam, and I am going to dance in the ashes. I even know which dance I will do.

  “Let’s do the twist.” I reach for the device. He screams again and lurches away. Blood leaks out of the contraption.

  “No power. No hope. Knowing you’ve lost everything.” My voice is a steel whisper. “That’s how my sister and those women felt. Now that’s you.”

  He makes a broken sound.

  I stand. “You probably want to get to a hospital. You’ll need to get the barbs loose from the flesh. It’s going to take multiple surgeries. I’m not going to kill you. You alive and hurting and ruined is infinitely more interesting to me.” My voice is taunting now. I’d hurt him, I’d hurt him so badly. Every day would be a pain. Just like mine had been since Vadim walked into my classroom with his horrible images.

  Gunfire. A scream downstairs. Nelly.

  I rush toward the sounds, Nelly screaming my name and then a slicing boom of gun-thunder.

  An awful silence, not even Zviman calling. Then he shrieks, “I’m upstairs, help me, help me, grab this bitch! She’s stealing my money!”

  I run halfway down the stairs and in the den I see a man, thick-necked, cheap-suited, holding an assault rifle, hurrying toward Nelly… who lies in a crimson spread on the imported Italian tile, holding the gun I gave her.

  The thick neck looks up at me. He fires and the stairs erupt around me and I flee.

  “She doesn’t have a gun,” Zviman screams, “shoot her.”

  The thick neck thinks he has all the advantage now. So he charges into the hall. I’m in a doorway, the telescoping baton firm in my hand, and I slash it down at the gun. The baton cracks his wrist but he keeps a grip on the rifle. I whip the baton across his face, breaking his nose. He staggers back.

  I drop the baton and grab the gun. We struggle for it. But I have not had fingers and wrists whipped five seconds earlier.

  I work a finger on the trigger and slam the hot barrel into his chest, kicking him against the wall.

  The gun shreds him. Loudly, redly, and before he’s dropping dead I’m running down the staircase.

  I kneel by my sister.

  Gone. Gone. I took my eyes off her for only a few minutes and—

  I failed her. If I’d hadn’t bothered with stealing his money, ruining his business, exacting my revenge, if we just got out…

  Slowly, I don’t know how much time passes, but I walk back upstairs.

  Zviman is gone. A heavy smear of blood mars the wall and sill of one window. He’s gone out onto the roof. I go to the window and the roof and the street and the yard are all empty. I pick up my knife and put it back in my boot.

  I find Mercedes car keys in Zviman’s abandoned pants and I gather my sister in my arms and I drive the Mercedes from the house, the empty grand home built on human suffering.

  Nelly. I failed you. Tu mori.

  Lesson learned, Sam: saving matters more than destroying.

  70

  Sydney, Australia

  Sydney is a
nice city. It has an endlessly beautiful harbor and excellent restaurants and the Australians are an astonishingly friendly nation. I go for long walks along the Rocks, the ancient—by Sydney standards—stretch of bay line where the convict ships dropped both anchor and prisoners, a miserable human cargo.

  I am a miserable human cargo.

  The breeze off the harbor is a near constant presence and I feel, standing still but leaning into the wind, as if I am running.

  I am free, yet I am a prisoner.

  I stop on my morning walk and across the stretch of water I watch tourists snap photos of the iconic Opera House. In a moment I have to go back to the house. Aunt and Uncle grow concerned if I am gone too long. Neither has good English and I slowly teach them. They are learning by watching Aussie soap operas, which are even juicier than their Romanian counterparts. I do not want to risk hiring an instructor. People talk. And I know there is the possibility that Zviman, with his diced-sliced penis, is looking for me and my family.

  A well-dressed man, a bit younger than me, stands a meter away. He has dark, moussed hair, a quiet, composed face, gray slacks, a bright orange shirt that looks expensive. Not a businessman type, not exactly. More like a young man who wants to be an actor. He has a wry smile on his face.

  “A cool million,” he says, as if speaking to the wind. His accent is British, educated.

  I think he must be on a hands-free phone, or he is trying to impress me by randomly announcing a large sum of money. He looks like any of the men who approach me on the nights when I wander to the nicer bars to escape the prattle of Aunt and Uncle.

  So I pay no attention to him.

  “A cool million’s the price on your head. It’s a rather hefty incentive to find you. Usually such fees are reserved for heads of state, or particularly annoying warlords in backwater lands.”