by Jeff Abbott
Howell’s voice was stone. “Let’s talk about it, Sam. Come tell me what you know and we’ll find her.”
I looked at him, in his pressed, perfect suit and his steel-rimmed glasses and his stage actor’s voice. I hated him. “I’m going to find her myself. She’s alive. She lost the baby.” I didn’t want him asking about my child.
“Just come down, Sam.”
They were going to shoot me; that was my last invitation. “How did you know where I was?”
He nearly laughed. “Our informant in the Ling organization wasn’t happy you robbed their shipment. She called us. We tracked the truck with a GPS device the Lings keep hidden inside the cab. I can guess how you found out about the Lings. August went for a long walk the other night, didn’t he?” He shook his head. “You should be ashamed, ruining your friend’s career. Get down from the window, Sam, or I’ll shoot you in the back.”
I considered my options. Get shot or throw myself through the window or surrender. None were good. He would not let me escape from him again. I’d be bound and tied and kept with a pistol to my temple and not given a mockery of a life in Brooklyn. I’d be back in that prison that wasn’t supposed to exist, the plaything of Howell’s Special Projects group inside the Company.
I got down from the window. I staggered and I put my hands in the air. And the three of them closed in on me, with fists and guns.
76
THEY CUFFED MY WRISTS, they shackled my ankles, and they dragged me to their van. They shoved me inside; Howell sat across from me. He briefly examined my injuries; his fingers probed my head, my back, my shoulder.
“Well, Sam, you’re a mess.” Then he told his two puppies to start processing the scene. The van door slammed closed. We were alone.
“I need a doctor,” I said. I enjoy stating the obvious.
“You’ll get one if you cooperate. How did you know August was in Holland?”
“I saw him when I stopped a guy from shooting him at that machinists’ shop,” I said. “I stopped those psycho twins from shooting you, too. And you’re welcome.” I could smell my own blood sticking to the clothes on my back, my arm. My injuries were untreated; I’d been Tasered and then tranquilized. My limbs felt heavy and awful and disconnected from bone and tissue.
“August got sent home because he was hurt. I’m glad. I think he would have affected my judgment regarding you. He is actually your friend, useless as that position is to him.”
“I can explain all this. Sort of.”
“Listening.”
I took a painful breath. “I’ve been undercover. Kind of.”
“Governments and police agencies give cover. You pretending you’re someone else is just breaking the law, Sam. Sort of, kind of.”
“Please, I want to talk to Langley. This guy, Edward, that took Lucy—he’s moving illicit weapons of some sort.”
“Is that who shot at us as we arrived?”
“Yes. I don’t know. Was it a truck?”
“We didn’t see a truck leave. A man in an Audi shot at us as we arrived.”
“Audi. That’s him. Please, take me seriously. Call the ports.” But Edward wouldn’t use Rotterdam. Not with this heat. He’d move the weapons out of France, or Belgium, or Spain. “Here, I can tell you what was in the Ling shipment. You can stop it. Call Langley, get authorization. I’ll talk to them—”
“Maybe Langley doesn’t want to talk to you, Sam. Maybe Langley just wants you to go away and stop being a giant pain in the ass.”
I swallowed. “What I said about Lucy is true. Please. She was here—”
He raised a hand. “I’m going to offer you a deal, Sam. I want you to consider it carefully, because right now your life is in my hands in a way it never was before. I don’t like your answers, I put a bullet in your brain and we’re done. I have permission to do whatever I need to do to you.”
“The Company won’t let you execute me. They want to know what I know. They want the connections I’ve made here. They want information and I have it.”
“The Company doesn’t know that I have you yet, Sam. Right now, you and I get to write our own history. You were found in a building full of dead bodies.”
“The woman, and one of the men—they have tattoos like the guy in Brooklyn who tried to kill me. Novem Soles. You asked me about it, well, here they are.”
He stared at me, ran a finger along his chin. “And you killed them all?”
“No! Edward killed them because he didn’t need them anymore.”
Howell folded his arms and he looked at me with a glare I had not seen on his face since I had been his prisoner in Poland. “I think you’re the sole survivor, Sam, but I think these people were your colleagues. I think they helped you blow up the London office and I think they helped you escape me in New York. The guy in Brooklyn could have brought you your money and papers to escape, and you killed him to keep him quiet.”
“He tried to kill me. These people sent him to kill me.” And then I wondered: Edward or Lucy? It had to be Edward who’d dispatched the assassin. Lucy had let me live twice.
“And where’s the lovely Mrs. Capra?”
“She Tasered me and she left. Look at my chest. I’ve got the Taser rash.”
He opened my shirt and inspected the needle marks.
“So she works with these people. Goodness, after all those months you kept insisting on her innocence.” His tone was mocking.
“I’m a good husband,” I said. “You don’t assume your wife is a traitor or a criminal. I saw her taken by Edward. She saved my life. Twice.”
“I think you were both working with this group, gang, whatever. I think she turned, and then she turned you. I tend to go for the simplest explanation.”
“That’s because you’re simple,” I said. “Life isn’t. This isn’t. I don’t understand why Lucy’s done what she’s done.”
“Where’s your baby?”
I looked at my knees. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want him to know she’d offered me my child for silence. A silence I’d already broken. So I looked up and said, “Lucy lost the baby.”
He studied my face for a long time. “Where is Lucy? Where will she go?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find her and I’m going to find out the truth,” I said.
“Uh, no, you’re not,” Howell said. I swear bureaucrats have a smug voice they save for moments like this, ones they can savor.
“Yes, I am. Look, Howell, if I was guilty and I was caught, I’d be cutting a deal. I don’t want your deal. I’m not going to confess to anything I haven’t done. Put away your knives and your waterboards because I will never confess to what I haven’t done. Ever. All I care about is finding Lucy.”
“Convince me, Sam. Tell me the whole story of what’s happened since New York and maybe I can help you find her. Who got you off the boat? Who’s been funding you and supplying you?”
“I can’t.”
“You helped a man escape who fired on me and my men.”
“I didn’t shoot at you. I killed men firing on your agents. They used to give medals for that.”
He grabbed my shirt and slammed my head against the van’s wall. It hurt. My body felt wracked with pain. “I want the whole truth, Sam. Everything.”
“Why don’t you believe me? Why? Why?” I screamed into his face. “Why don’t you even try to believe me?” Spittle from my mouth sprayed his face. He leaned back.
I fought for calm. Pain wracked my body. I’d been beaten, shot, and the implacable doubt on Howell’s face made me blind with rage. He just stared at me.
“Why aren’t we at a Company safe house?” I asked. “Why aren’t you recording what I’m saying, in front of witnesses? Where are the Dutch intelligence agents? None of this is protocol.”
“Pot, meet kettle,” he said. “Sam, you have no place to lecture me on right and wrong. The whole Company is going to know soon enough that you are a traitor.”
The word was like a lash against my skin. “I
’m not a traitor.”
“You want me to believe you? Then tell me everything.”
I blew out a long hiss of air. I had to give him more to get to a position of strength. “This Edward used the Centraal Station bombing to kill the Money Czar we were investigating in London. A supposed financier for criminal networks, the biggest ones that connect back into government. I don’t understand why Edward killed this man, but he did,” I said. “He’s smuggling contraband, bad stuff, into the States and he needed that shipment I stole as camouflage for whatever he’s shipping. It could be a bomb, it could be plague, it could be people. I don’t know. I could have found out if you hadn’t interfered.”
“Let’s say you’re telling me the truth and that you are innocent. How did you find these people, Sam? How did you learn about them? How do you know any of these details? Who helped you find this Edward who got you into Holland?”
It was the wrong question. Realization bolted into my bones. “Don’t you care about what his operation is?”
“I don’t believe a word you say until you tell me who has been helping you.”
“Where is your curiosity about Edward’s shipment?”
“First things first.” He pushed a photo at me. Me and Mila, at the train station in Rotterdam. Then another one, at the train station in Amsterdam. “Who is this woman?”
I pretended to frown at the photo. “Someone who rode on the train with me. I don’t know her.”
“You do. We questioned a conductor on the train. You traveled together. You sat together and talked.”
“Oh, her. Yes. Lovely face but horrible breath. I offered her an Altoid. That was the extent of our interaction.”
“Bull. Where have you been staying in Amsterdam?”
“In hostels. Cheap, paying cash. I’m young enough to look like a wandering grad student.”
“Which hostels?”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I have just told you that the guy who bombed the London office is smuggling seriously dangerous goods into America, and you want to know what hostel I stayed at?”
“If he can smuggle this stuff in, it’s because you provided him with the camouflage,” Howell said. “What I’ve caught you doing is helping this guy.”
I heard a noise outside, like a man falling against the side of the van and sliding to the pavement. A yell.
Howell whipped out a pistol, aimed it at my head.
“I’m tied up,” I said. “I’m not the threat.”
He moved the gun away from me and I hammered my foot hard into his jaw. I hope I broke it because I was really tired of hearing him talk. Shutting up for a long while would do Howell a world of good. He slammed against the side of the van and I launched myself toward him, my hands useless and bound behind me but I didn’t care. I wasn’t rational. I just wanted him to shut up and listen to me. I wanted his silent belief.
I hit him hard with my head, pounded my skull upward to catch him under the jaw. He gurgled and a freshet of blood oozed from his mouth. I rocked my head into his and he went down. I lost my balance and collapsed on top of him.
The van door opened and I expected to see one of his puppies there.
Mila.
“Finally,” I said.
She sliced my plastic restraints off and I helped her put the two Company guys into the van; both were unconscious but not seriously injured. She slammed the van doors shut, locked them, tossed the keys into the field behind the brewery. We got into her car and she gunned it toward Amsterdam. The day was going to be a cloudy, gray one; it matched my mood.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are welcome.” She sounded weary.
“How did you find me?”
“Your friend Piet.”
“Piet is not my friend.”
“Piet came to the Rode Prins. He was panicked. He thought he could trade information for sanctuary, for whoever you worked for.”
“And Piet talked.”
“Piet talked.” Now her voice was cool iron.
“Is Piet still talking?”
“Piet is done talking.”
“What did you do to him?”
“Such concern for the rapist and the slaver.”
“My concern is not for him. My concern is for you.”
I put my hand on hers. She shrugged it off. “Don’t worry your bloodied and beaten head about me, Sam. I’m fine. Never felt better.”
“You killed him.”
“He needed killing.” She raised an eyebrow. “Did you find this Edward? Did you find Yasmin?”
“I found my wife.”
77
MILA’S RESOURCES INCLUDED A DOCTOR; I woke up in the bed in the apartment above the Rode Prins with an old man poking at me. He was bald and frowning and his breath smelled like hard-boiled eggs.
“You’re a wreck, young man,” he said to me.
“Yes.” In more ways than one, I thought, but I’d sooner die than admit that.
“I stitched and bandaged your head. And cleaned out your shoulder. The muscle will be sore, you should rest it. The back injury required several stitches, like a furrow it was. So drink fluids. Rest. I leave you some pain pills. Do not abuse them.” He turned to Mila and said, “I know you are no Nightingale, woman. Make sure he rests.” He extended a finger but did not wag it.
Mila nodded. The doctor packed a bag and scooted an array of medical equipment back into the storage room. I watched him. Rather I stared off into space and thought about what I was going to do now.
“Are you hungry?” Mila asked. “Henrik made potato soup, it’s very good.”
“I’m mostly thirsty.”
She brought me cold water, and I drank it greedily. I felt like a bus had hit me then backed over my body several times just to ensure a high level of misery. I drank more water and then yes, I was hungry, and I ate a huge bowl of the potato soup, dotted with Gruyère cheese and with bits of ham.
Mila watched me eat and said nothing. But she was Mila, and she waited until my spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. “I am sorry, Sam.” She said it like the words tasted funny in her mouth.
“I know you are.”
“Can you tell me all that happened?”
I explained. Mila listened in silence. When I was done she said, “So your Lucy is a traitor.”
“She is,” I said. The canal outside was very quiet. I listened to my own stupid heart still beating. Okay. She was a traitor. To me, to her country. Okay. I had to deal. I’d heard the words for months, from Howell and even from August, and I hadn’t believed them. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. No fool like a fool in love.
I don’t mind calling myself a fool. We’ve all been fools at some curve in our lives. But I had been so sure that I knew her.
Why didn’t she kill you?
I thought, even weak in bed, that I could go downstairs and rip the beer taps from the bar, smash every window, knock down the brown walls. My rage felt like strength enough. Even with the pain in my body and my head.
Why didn’t she kill you?
That was the question that defied both brain and heart. She could have put a bullet in my head. And why hadn’t she let me die in the bombing in London? No way that she loved me. That entire life had been a cheap fiction, sold with great competence and warm smiles and teasing kisses and long, shuddering nights, joined at hip and heart.
“Why did she leave you alive?” Mila said, as though she could see my thoughts hovering about my head.
“There has to be a reason,” I said.
“Your child?”
“She has hidden him somewhere. If I keep quiet to the Company that she’s alive, she’ll call me and tell me where he is.” I kept my voice steady.
“Sam. My employers and I, we can help you… perhaps to find your child.”
“She’ll never call. My son is her shield. We’re not done. She and Edward took Yasmin. I am going to find her.”
“Where?”
“I am going to call
the Company and alert them, and alert Customs. Maybe they’ll find Edward’s shipment; they have the resources. Howell didn’t believe me. Someone will. Maybe August Holdwine.”
“Try, if you like, but this Edward is no fool. He’ll disable the GPS trackers. There will be entirely new manifests for those cigarettes; there will be no way to trace them. Their crates will be labeled as an entirely different product now. Customs won’t shut down Rotterdam on what they’ll consider a prank call. And if the Company believes you to be a traitor, they’ll think your warning is simply a lie or a diversion. Your friend will be trumped.”
She was right. “Howell was a lot more interested in who’d helped me than my phantom shipment. He’s after a group called Novem Soles. I think he thinks you’re it.”
“Did you speak of me?”
“No. Never.”
She stood. “I didn’t think you would. I am glad I don’t have to kill you.”
“Well, I’m glad too, Mila.”
“Rest now like the doctor said.”
I closed my eyes. I kept thinking, in all the spin of information that I now had, that I was missing some vital element—a fact or an insight worming its way through my brain that could provide an answer. It all went back to London. The bombing to protect the man that Edward himself later murdered. Somehow, that was key. Work I’d done in London was worth all this grief to Edward and his people.
“I will. For a bit. But we’re going to London.”
“Why London?”
“I want to see Zaid. He put us on this job and ever since he’s been avoiding us, and he knows more than he’s ever been willing to share. He gave Edward weapons to smuggle. Now that the shipment has reached Edward, maybe Zaid is supposed to get Yasmin back. So we go to Zaid’s unannounced. Surprise him.”
“I will have to see.”
“Your bosses won’t approve? Is Zaid one of your bosses?”
She walked over to the table, set the glass on it. “No. But he is connected to them.”
“Who am I working for, Mila?”
“Me.”
“I think I’ve fought hard enough for you to deserve an answer. I could have given you to the Company. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
