The Last Minute

by Jeff Abbott

  August rubbed at his chin. “Every traitor we’ve arrested since Lucy, they claimed they were blackmailed into doing this. We didn’t believe them.”

  “Either your systems have been compromised, or someone else has turned bad.”

  “Hell.” August is not a big cusser.

  “August, you’re not the traitor, are you?”

  “No.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Well,” I said, “I had to ask.”

  August tapped his foot against the concrete. “Those women you killed, what do you know about them?”

  “They were accused murderers, a sister act, who got a fresh start and new names. A man named Ray Brewster hid them and used them as hit women for hire. The guy I killed in New Jersey, who kidnapped Jack Ming’s mom, I think he might have worked for Brewster as well.”

  “Someone who gives murderers and psychopaths fresh IDs and a job as hired muscle.”

  “Do you know Ray Brewster?”

  “No.” August shook his head. “Do you know the name Lindsay Partridge?”

  “No.”

  “She’s your red-haired sidekick.”

  I waited.

  “Ex-forger and counterfeiter, CIA informant, we paid her off well, then two years ago she vanished.”

  “She gives people new identities now. Novem Soles has her kid, too.”

  “Part of her file is locked. I can’t open it, even with a Special Projects access. What’s her secret?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Who are these bastards?”

  “One of them is a sex slaver named Yaakov Zviman. He seems to have moved into extortion as his mainstay, but he’s the one who put the million dollars on Mila’s head. I think he’s a power in the organization. You ever hear of him?”

  “No.”

  “I think that whatever information Jack Ming has relates to whatever Zviman’s doing now for Nine Suns. Maybe it’s the list of people that they control. We get that, we cut off a major source of information for them. The kind of programs Ming wrote would give Nine Suns power over people who could help them profit.”

  August ran a hand through his blond hair. “Have you heard of Associated Languages School?”

  “Yeah. The owners of the property where Mrs. Ming was taken. Old abandoned house in Morris County.”

  August stood and began to pace by the cases of beer. “This fine language school also employs one of the dead women.”

  “Meggie or Lizzie Pearson? Those were their real names. Lizzie struck me as a person who would not work well with others.”

  “So they’re Nine Suns?”

  “Since they were trying to capture me, and I was Nine Suns’ errand boy, I think not. I believe they are working for someone else who wants to collect the money on Mila. They talked about putting me in a cage and extracting information from me. Apparently kidnapping and interrogation were their specialties.”

  “So we have Nine Suns after Jack Ming, and then a third party, and we don’t know how and even if they’re connected?”

  “We do not.”

  “I would love to have access to Special Projects files to see what we have on the women, but I’m supposed to go back to Langley next week and I’ll be given a janitorial job. Or maybe fry cook in the cafeteria.”

  “That’s honest work.”

  “Nothing wrong with it,” August said. “My career is gone, Sam.”

  I considered. “Was your boss eager to get rid of you?”

  “Not particularly. But today was a massive screw-up. A head had to roll and it wasn’t going to be his although he could survive the bullet. He could survive anything.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s retired officially, just brought back inside a couple of months ago to stiffen our backs and straighten our spines. Very old school, very much concerned about the honor of the Company, protecting its reputation. His name is Braun. Did you ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “He retired before our time and came back after… after you left Special Projects.”

  “If you came back to him with new information would he listen?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is there anyone inside who would help you?”

  August sat back down on the cases of Heineken. He looked more tired and frazzled than I’d ever seen him. “Maybe Griffith.”

  “Yeah, I kicked him kind of hard and I winged the other guy in the leg. Is he okay?”

  “Yes. And you tried to murder Ming in front of him.” He shook his head. “Why am I talking to you, Sam? We’re done. We have to be done. I have to rebuild my career. I’m nothing without the Company, and, yes, I know that’s pathetic, you don’t have to tell me. I hope you find your kid, more than anything, I hope that. But I don’t see how I can help you.”

  “I can give you Jack Ming.”

  “What?”

  “I can give you Jack Ming.”

  August stood up from the beer cases, then he sat back down. “But you’re going to kill him.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “And then I’m going to give him to you.”

  73

  The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan

  MILA WATCHED THE MAN SITTING at the corner table on the security camera. She had never seen him before. He ordered a small appetizer of tapas, slowly finished his pint of lager.

  “Do you know this man?” she asked Leonie.

  Leonie leaned over and studied the face on the camera. “No. I haven’t seen him before.”

  Mila had stepped back from the monitor and watched Leonie: the lay of her gaze, the set of her shoulders, the curve of her mouth. “I guess Sam was wrong, then.”

  They watched the man in the corner get up and leave money for his tab and walk out.

  “I don’t think Sam is wrong about much,” Leonie said.

  “So what is your plan?” Mila said. “You and Sam get to save your babies and live an exciting, on-the-run version of The Brady Bunch?”

  “I’m quite sure I’ll never see Sam again when this is done. Does that make you happy?”

  “Sam is only a friend. I am his boss. That is all.”

  “Then I guess you’ll never know what you’re missing. That parkour running does hone a body. And he’s been alone for so long, poor thing.”

  “Alone I am sure you are not. For long. Ever.” Mila seemed to stumble over her English.

  “Your jealousy translates clearly.”

  “Do not confuse jealousy with concern for a friend.”

  “I don’t think I’m confusing anything, sweetie.”

  Mila gave a thin smile. “Do you know what I like about Sam? He is clueless. He does not know he is attractive. He does not think about it and if you told him he is handsome he thinks you are just being nice. He is down on himself right now because he blames himself for Daniel being in danger. He loved Lucy very much and he doesn’t trust his instincts now about women. He does not know he is a really good guy. So it is easy to take advantage of him right now.”

  Leonie was silent for ten long seconds. “He’s not a fool and I’m not taking advantage of him.”

  “I am sorry for what you are suffering. Your child being taken. I would not be myself.”

  The sympathy seemed to take Leonie aback. “I understand you want to help us, Mila. Thank you. I’m not exactly myself at the moment and maybe we’d get along fine under other circumstances. But Sam and I have to do what we’re told and you will forgive me if the involvement of others makes me nervous.”

  Mila’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She gave Leonie a searching glance and then she answered her phone. She listened. “This is a private call, sorry, do you mind?”

  Leonie got up from the monitor. “I need a cigarette anyway.” She retrieved her pack from the desk. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Leonie walked downstairs. The bar was full, people milling about drinking, the music stopped. She stepped into the warm damp of the humid evening. The man who’d sat in the corner of the bar now s
tood on the corner of the street. Watching her.

  Did Mila have a camera on the front of the bar? She assumed there must be one. These people—whatever Mila and Sam were—were as organized as Nine Suns. She made a show of her cigarette pack being empty, shrugged in annoyance, and then she turned and walked in the opposite direction from the man.

  She turned left at the light and walked down to the next corner. She stopped inside a store and bought a fresh pack of cigarettes. Then she stepped outside and fished one out and made a show of patting her pocket.

  The man she knew as Ray Brewster stepped forward, offered her a light.

  She glanced behind her, scared to see if Mila was following her.

  He said: “You look well, Lindsay. I’d like to say I’ve missed you but I don’t care to start a chat with a lie. Not when we need each other.”

  “Why are you here?” She managed to keep her voice steady.

  “Two reasons.”

  She waited.

  “First. When you and your boyfriend kill Jack Ming, I want whatever evidence Ming has on the Nine Suns.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “You make it possible.”

  “I can’t steal it; I need it to ransom my child.”

  “Then you are going to tell me where the exchange happens with Nine Suns. I want to know.”

  “Why do you want it?” She drew hard on the cigarette. “Have you switched sides?”

  “No, sweetheart. I have just the one side, the nation’s, as always.”

  “I can’t.”

  “No, Lindsay, you will.”

  She looked down the sidewalk again. No sign of Mila.

  “And the other reason?”

  “Have you seen a woman named Mila? She’s connected to Capra.”

  “Why?”

  “I want her.”

  Leonie drew on her cigarette. One problem I can make go away, she thought. Two words—she’s upstairs—and Mila would cease to be trouble. She knew Ray Brewster well enough. That smarmy bitch would be as good as taken or dead as soon as she stepped outside The Last Minute.

  But she knew she didn’t want to be that person. She didn’t want to be a traitor to Sam, no matter the acid dislike she felt for Mila. It gave her a momentary pleasure to deny him. “I don’t know any Mila.”

  “Any woman who Capra works with? She’s Moldovan, so she’d speak with an eastern European accent. She’s petite, pretty, vicious.”

  “No. He’s not brought his friends around me. I have to go now.”

  “This is my phone number.” He recited a number and she repeated it back to him. “You get me that evidence and you give me Mila if she shows up, you and your child, if you get Taylor back, will be safe. From every threat.”

  Her skin went cold. “You know about Taylor?”

  “Did you think you could hide from me? Really? That’s awfully self-confident.”

  “Why did you leave me alone, then, the last two years?”

  “I didn’t need you, Lindsay. Now I do. And if you don’t do what I say, exactly, then I will make Taylor go away, and Leonie Jones will never see her child again.”

  She wished she could stub the lit cigarette into his eye. “And the line to blackmail me forms here. You’re such an asshole. Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “After what you did? No, sweetheart. I wanted you to feel nice and happy and secure until I could take it away from you. Nine Suns just beat me to the punch.”

  She blew smoke into his face.

  “You still forging? Identities, passports? Caring relationships?” He laughed. “Really, the last is what you’re best at faking.”

  “That’s a compliment from the biggest fraud of all.”

  “You can’t wound me. You already cut out my heart, Lindsay, and now I’ve got the knife at yours.”

  She smoked in silence.

  He tipped her chin toward him. “What they know, I know. You really should give up smoking, sweetheart. When this is all done, you’ll be the last one standing, alongside me. And then you can go take your fake self and live your fake life.”

  He turned and he walked away from her.

  She finished her cigarette. Horrible habit. She’d stopped now, twice before, and the thought brought her to tears. Get a grip, she told herself. She went back into the store, bought some chocolate M&M’s, and walked back to the bar.

  Mila was off the phone and on the computer. “Where did you go?”

  “I was out of smokes.” She held up the candy from the store. “And I thought I’d make a peace offering. Isn’t chocolate the universal language?”

  “Yes,” Mila said, “I believe it is.”

  74

  Manhattan

  THE WATCHER STOOD surveying the Manhattan skyline. He had spent the past twenty hours trying to suck every bit of information he could out of the extortion network. Before Jack Ming shut it down.

  If they were unable to kill Ming and retrieve his evidence he wanted to sell to the CIA, then the Watcher was going to lose his entire power base among the Nine, and he would have to rebuild. It would be all right. He had rebuilt before after Mila stole most of his money. He’d fought and scrabbled his way back. But to lose the information feeds that had given him gold from Wall Street firms, from the White House, from Congress, from the British Parliament, from a good percentage of the Fortune 500, that would be devastating. The fearsome crime rings of the twentieth century—the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Colombian drug lords, the Mexican cartels—had never had their own spies, their own conduits to the highest powers in the land. This information had been oxygen to the blood of Nine Suns, knowledge that let them smuggle with impunity, keep the police at bay in a dozen countries, sell secrets to government and competitors and in turn own those buyers by virtue of their crimes. The extortion network that Jack Ming’s software made possible had netted them tens of millions of dollars’ worth of information in a matter of months.

  And the Watcher needed to find something to replace that power base, and he had an idea.

  His phone rang, and he answered.

  “This is Jack Ming,” the voice said.

  “My favorite person,” the Watcher replied.

  “I want to make a deal with you.”

  “With me? I doubt that.”

  “No, I do. You wanted the notebook, I’ll give you the notebook. I’ll sell it to you.”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “I can’t sell it to anyone else. Here’s what we do. You deposit ten million in an account I provide. When I have the money, I will call you and tell you where to find the notebook.”

  “How can I trust you?”

  “Conduct a poll. I’m pretty sure I’ll be seen as more trustworthy than you. Look, this is the deal, if you don’t want it…”

  “Why would you deal with us when we tried to kill you? Not to be overly blunt.”

  “I will keep a few choice pages for insurance. If anything happens to me, they come to immediate light.”

  “You could blackmail me again.”

  “You could kill me again.”

  “That’s true. I thought you preferred to deal with the authorities.”

  “They lost my trust.”

  “Trust, so fleeting. All right, Jack. Where would you like to meet?”

  Jack hesitated. “We’ll do it all by phone.”

  “Are you going to fax me the notebook, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “Then we will have to meet.”

  “And have your bitch Sam Capra show up and throw me off a building? No thanks.”

  “Aren’t you a smart lad?”

  “And aren’t you a right bastard, using his baby? Seriously.”

  “Had a chat with him, did you?”

  “I figure out things on my own, asshole. The notebook tells me a lot.”

  “Oh, Jack,” the Watcher said. “I look at you and I realize I mishandled the entire situation. I shouldn’t have tried to get rid of you. I should have offer
ed you a job. You’re a smart, smart kid.”

  “I’m smart enough to know I’ve got your golden goose here. I get my money, you get your notebook, and then we walk away.”

  “You could have copied it.”

  “And if anything happens to me, maybe a nice copy of it will show up in the CIA’s mailbox, along with a letter of explanation. You’ll never know until it’s too late. So. You leave me alone and you have nothing to worry about.”

  “So where shall we meet?”

  “In Central Park. In the Ramble, north of the Bow Bridge. Tomorrow at three. When I’ve confirmed the money is safe in my account then I’ll give you the notebook.”

  “A lot of faith for me.”

  “You want your notebook, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do, Jack. Give me the bank account.”

  Jack gave him the account for a Swiss bank. The Watcher wrote it on the palm of his hand.

  “If you’re one minute late, or I don’t like the look of anything there, I’m gone and I’ll just drive by Langley and toss the notebook on their front porch.” He hung up.

  The Watcher clicked off his phone. Most interesting, that. Unexpected. Either Jack Ming had decided to bait a trap with himself or he’d decided that his need for money so he could vanish trumped all.

  So. Should he have Sam Capra there to kill him? If Capra knew that someone from Nine Suns was meeting Jack Ming, he might try to seize him as a hostage to guarantee his son’s release. But he wouldn’t take the risk. That was the beauty of owning a child this way. The parent would never be able to cut the strings.

  Jack Ming clicked off the phone. He sat on the edge of his bed back in his mother’s apartment. It was the last place, he thought, that anyone would look for him. His mother was dead and his father was gone, and now he was truly alone in the world.

  He walked to his mother’s room. It was so spare, so absent of her, to be the place where she spent so much time. He had wept for his father for days, for weeks, but he could summon nothing for his mother except a promise: I’m sorry I got you killed. I’m going to kill them for you, Mom.

  It would be so unexpected, he thought. Hackers hid in the shadows. They did not face threats in person; they lurked, they moved the intangible data, they did not cause bloodshed. Well, he was done with hacking. Tomorrow he would either die or he would kill. He didn’t much care if he never saw a computer again. He had an identity and he could get a new one, Ricki could help him again, she had the contacts.