by Jeff Abbott
‘Hello,’ I said. I made Daniel’s hand wave. ‘Hello, Mila. I went surfing with no board.’
‘Please,’ Mila said. ‘Do not treat that beautiful child like a puppet.’ She got up and tapped his nose playfully with her finger. She frowned. ‘He is like a greasy pig.’
‘Sunscreen.’
‘Did you dip him in it?’
‘I don’t want him to get sunburned.’
‘Amazed you could maintain a grip.’
‘Do you want to hold him?’
‘Linen,’ she said, pointing to her blouse. ‘I don’t want to risk a massive oil stain.’ But she waved her greasy finger at the yawning Daniel and smiled a grin that seemed too bright for the Mila I knew. ‘Hello, pui or, ’ she chimed. I had learned this meant ‘little birdie’. Daniel gurgled back. He seemed a bit uncertain about Mila.
‘I think you’re a bit ambivalent about babies,’ I said, settling him into a chair and wiping his hands clean. An ocean explorer deserved a snack. I opened a bottle of organic pureed pears. I sat down and spooned the fruity mush into his mouth. Daniel gobbled.
‘Humans are much more interesting when they reach school age. Then I like them much better.’ She glanced at me. ‘Maybe by then I will retire and be a teacher again. Just for Daniel. Perhaps I will open an exclusive language school.’ She made a face. ‘I hear they are hiring.’
‘Uh oh.’
‘Ricardo Braun is now a big hero. I heard that he broke up a criminal ring here that was spying on American citizens and government and companies. He killed the two ringleaders: an Israeli man, a French woman.’
‘Of course he’s a, and I quote, “hero”.’
‘Wounded in the line of duty. Retired with honors. No farewell cocktail party, though. Went back to Florida. Living very quietly.’
‘So giving August the notebook was the right thing to do. That picture of Braun with two of the Suns sunk his comeback.’
‘The lovely red notebook can’t hurt us.’ Mila shrugged. ‘I tore out the pages of interest to me.’
‘The ones about the Round Table?’
‘Very few. But there are some useful people in the missing pages of the little red notebook. I say give them a chance to redeem themselves helping us rather than being blackmailed by Nine Suns.’
I shook my head.
‘On a voluntary basis,’ she said, with a cough.
‘The CIA has more resources than we do to bring down Nine Suns.’
‘And they will bring down at least a few of them that they can tie to the blackmail ring. The CIA will identify some of their plans. But, Sam, Nine Suns, they will not go away. Some fall, they will be replaced. Your friend Braun created too good and useful a template. They have made too much money, accrued too much power. They won’t give it up.’
‘I keep wondering if I should have killed him.’
‘You must not talk about killing people in front of pui or,’ she said. ‘It is bad for child development. You need boundaries.’
‘So Braun’s not running Special Projects.’
‘No.’
‘Who is?’
‘One of the few big secrets I do not know.’
‘You really don’t know?’ I hoped August got the job. He’d brought in Jack Ming, after all.
‘I really don’t know, don’t care. You. You are my problem.’
‘How so?’ I knew what was coming.
‘We gave you many bars to run.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Bars to serve as a cover for you, so you could do jobs for us.’
‘Ah.’
‘I don’t believe you are going into fights with pui or strapped to your back.’
‘No.’
‘So. May I have the bars back?’ She was asking so politely. ‘No.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Well, the Round Table still needs the bars run, right? And any other employees such as yourself need to avail themselves of the bars as safe houses, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘So let me run the bars. I’ll make sure they turn a tidy profit.’
‘And that will be enough for you.’
‘For now.’
Mila drew her knees up to her chin. ‘And what about what that old asshole said about your brother’s death?’
‘I have Daniel. I’m not interested in the revenge game.’
‘May I be honest?’
‘You’re still my boss.’
‘I forgot momentarily. Right now you are captivated by this greasy child. You will want to be a good and present father. But you will get restless, bored.’
‘Never of him.’
Mila nodded. ‘You will get bored of not knowing.’
‘The truth?’ Nine Suns had a plan for me, according to Zviman. One cultivated over the years. I still didn’t know what that plan was. Did I want to?
‘No, you will want to know what these jerks are doing,’ Mila said. ‘You and Jack Ming destroyed their main source of information. Now. Extortion does not have a long life anyway. But they will replace Zviman in their constellation of assholes, and they will find new mischief. New ways to earn profits or grab power. Or there will be some other jerk to fight because no one else knows that he is a threat, or no one else will dare to fight him.’
‘Not my problem,’ I said carefully, ‘until it is.’
‘Ah. My glimmer of hope. Therefore you may keep the bars. For now. Run them at massive profit or I will bring Barney DVDs for Danny boy.’
‘Leonie calls him Dat.’
Mila made a face. ‘For a woman who invents names she has horrible taste.’ She jerked her head toward the sliding glass door. ‘She left when I came here.’
‘Your charm is contagious.’
‘Why is she still here?’
‘For Daniel.’
‘How convenient his nanny is a master forger. No doubt she can teach him to copy your signature on excuses for his teachers.’
‘She’s not his nanny.’
‘Well. She is not his mother, she is not your wife, what is she? Aside from a champion liar?’
‘We’re deciding.’
Mila watched the pear ooze past Daniel’s lips. ‘I noticed there were three bedrooms here. All used.’
‘You can count.’
‘Sam. She has no claim on your child. Her adoption was both illegal and immoral. Don’t reward her. Don’t let… this woman into your life.’
I glanced up at her. ‘Do you think I want to send someone who loves Daniel, who would have died for him, to jail?’
‘No. You can’t expose yourself that way, either, to police questions as to where you were when Daniel was born.’
True.
‘It’s done,’ I said, ‘and it’s my business, not yours, and… ’
‘And I will let it go,’ Mila said quietly.
I decided to change the subject. ‘Did your CIA source have anything new on Jack Ming?’
‘Yes. He and his girlfriend have new names, new city, new jobs. They have a brand new start.’
New start. Didn’t everyone deserve one?
I left Mila considering whether a towel would protect her from Daniel’s oily embrace and walked along the sand. Leonie stood at the water’s edge. The ocean surged then retreated around her feet. Tides. Where one world ends, another begins. I had loved when my parents, in their globetrotting do-gooderness, were assigned to coastal areas. Beginnings and endings, on the sand, the water erasing and renewing, all at once. She stood in a yellow sundress, a big floppy hat.
‘You saw Mila arrived,’ she said as I joined her.
‘Yes. We had a nice chat.’
‘She still hates me.’
‘She hates most people. Except Daniel.’
‘Her one redeeming feature.’
‘I’m keeping the bars,’ I said.
‘Oh. So. I guess Daniel will be traveling with you.’
‘I’m not sure I’d wish my vagabond childhood on him.’
She looked out at the boats skidding across the sea, then back at me. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I travel and then I have a home. Where Daniel is. Where I will need help.’
‘Are you offering me a job?’ Her voice sounded cold.
‘A job, no. You’re the only mother he’s known, Leonie. I cannot take him from you, I can’t take you from him.’
Her lips narrowed. ‘If you are going to do that someday, Sam, do it now. Now is easier.’
‘No. I know you love him.’
‘And my legal standing with Daniel?’ she asked in the barest whisper, a question she almost couldn’t risk.
‘None, right now. This is a test drive, Leonie. We’ll see.’ I did not feel the need to say that if she ran with Daniel, she couldn’t run far. Not with me and Mila and friends looking for her.
She scratched at her lip, considering.
We were silent for several moments, watching the water wipe the sandy slate clean.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I accept.’
‘I might be at home a lot, I might have to travel. I plan on staying well clear of trouble.’
‘Man plans, God laughs.’ She crossed her arms. ‘You know I didn’t sleep with you because… I did it because I wanted you.’
‘I know. I wanted you, too.’
‘But.’
‘But. We were both in an extreme mental state. It’s too soon for me, after Lucy. I’m sorry.’
She steepled her fingers before her face and studied me. ‘And the future?’
‘I don’t know. I won’t promise something I can’t keep. I’ve had enough of that in my life.’
‘All right. So what city? Las Vegas or New York?’
‘Do you want to go back to art school?’
She looked genuinely surprised. ‘I… I hadn’t considered that as a possibility.’
‘Well. If you want, pick a good one. I’ll pay for it. Or I’ll get you a studio, if you don’t want to go back to school. I would rather you be back at art than forgery.’
Delight played across her face. Art school and Daniel: that was heaven. ‘You don’t have any preference for a city?’
I shrugged. ‘My folks live in New Orleans, but I don’t really talk to them. I think, with Daniel, now maybe I should mend that fence. I can’t teach him the value of family if I’m too distant from my own.’
‘Yes, show up with your new son and your non-girlfriend who’s not a nanny and takes care of the kid. They would love that, I’m sure. Where else?’
I bit my lip. The wanderer gets to choose a home. ‘I like Austin. I like Savannah. I like Boston and Nashville. I like London and Paris and Dublin.’
‘I like all those choices,’ she said.
‘Then you decide.’ And I meant it. I didn’t care where we lived. I was getting a new start. So was she, so was Daniel. So, even, was Mila. Wind, lift me, take me, then settle me down. I’d lived so much of my life planned out and I was ready for a jolt of spontaneity.
‘Okay. I’ll decide,’ Leonie said, and we walked back to the cottage.
But in the end, Daniel chose, that night. Leonie had written down a bunch of cities on slips of paper, tossed them into a rainbow knit hat she’d bought down on the beach. She couldn’t decide and had thought she’d have me draw a city from the hat.
Daniel, holding onto the coffee table, pulled himself standing. He knocked over the hat and shook it and to his delight the scraps of paper spilled loose.
He grabbed one and tried to stick it in his mouth. I pulled it from his little fist and uncurled the damp strip. Held it up for Leonie to see. She laughed and said, ‘Sold.’
‘Good choice, Daniel,’ I said. He offered up a hand and I gave him a gentle high-five.
He plopped on his butt and began to fuss and then he reached up for the comfort of my arms.
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