Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

‘There’s nothing to know.’

‘Sam, let’s not insult each other.’

Fine, I thought. I’d play. ‘You followed us today. Mila, too.’

‘Yes.’

I had had an early dinner in a favorite old haunt of mine; that must have been where August’s watchers had picked me up. Then Mila and I had met in Central Park, then gone to the apartment address Bell gave us. She hadn’t been here at The Last Minute in weeks. And she’d left with Bertrand. And with her cap and sunglasses and moving van uniform the followers must not have spotted her leaving, else they would have followed her, not me.

‘Why?’

‘I want to know who she is.’

‘Stop following her and ask her.’

‘I’m not going to kidnap her off the street.’

‘Because the CIA isn’t supposed to operate on American soil. And yet here you are, tailing people. I guess I should be grateful you haven’t set the FBI on me.’

August took an appreciative sip of the martini.

‘I don’t need to kidnap her when I think you’ll tell me what I want to know.’

I slid the olives off the stick with my mouth and dropped the toothpick next to my glass. ‘Mouth full,’ I said. ‘Can’t talk.’

‘You’ve really picked your side, haven’t you, Sam? You’ve picked this Mila.’

‘I can rely on her.’

‘I told you we would help you find your kid.’

‘I told you I would handle it myself.’

‘Because you think you still have enemies in the Special Projects branch.’

‘Yes. Who would use my kid against me.’

‘You’re paranoid.’

‘You get to be after you get framed for treason, August.’

He took another sip of his drink. ‘You’re trying to find the woman who took Daniel.’

‘No luck yet.’

‘I’m betting you’re close.’

‘August. Go home. Let me get my kid back.’

‘Have you made progress? Can we help you?’

‘I trust you. But if you tracked my kid and there’s another traitor inside the Company working for Novem Soles, then, well, maybe my kid is dead. Right now they don’t know what I’m doing and I have to keep it that way. I get him back, that’s all I care about. I’m not in the revenge business.’

‘We don’t even know what Novem Soles is,’ he said. ‘Some of the thinkers at the CIA are arguing that Novem Soles actually stands for “nothing special”. They could just have been a few guys who decided to make some cash committing corporate espionage and smuggling weapons. They got a gang of low-level thugs to tattoo themselves and talk like they were part of a big deal and maybe it’s all just a grand illusion.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think they’re big.’

‘I think you’re right. My hope is that Mila could tell me exactly what and who they are.’

‘If she knew that they’d all be dead.’

‘I’m glad Mila and I are on the same page, then. What were the two of you doing today up on the Upper West Side?’

‘Meals on Wheels.’

August tapped a finger against the base of the martini glass. ‘Look, I want Daniel back for you. More than anything, Sam. But you can’t grab him back and just let these people roll on.’

‘I am going to do what’s best for my kid and me.’ I gestured toward his martini. ‘I want out, August. I want a normal life again. They took it from me and I’m going to get it back.’

‘And, what, run a bar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sam. You did us, and the nation, a good turn here in New York.’

‘You sound like an award plaque.’

He ignored my sarcasm. ‘I won’t ever forget it. But I’ve had to argue, repeatedly, not to pull you back in. I’ve protected you because we’re friends. I did it because I know you want it this way. But Novem Soles is much, much bigger than you. I’m running a task force in Special Projects on finding information about this network, what they want, who they are.’ He turned the martini glass. ‘They’re something new. Different. I would expect a terrorist group to try to do a mass assassination. But not a criminal group. What’s the profit in it for them? Who are they? Why are they doing what they’re doing? It makes no obvious sense.’

‘Good luck.’

‘So. Let me help you. We’ll find them together.’

I let the piano music wash over me for a moment. ‘A few weeks ago I saw a redacted document from a Company file. It claimed that I could be controlled through my son. Inside the Company, August, on your side of the fence. I’m not exactly looking for help.’

He said, ‘Where did you get this document?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Well, I’ve certainly never seen it, Sam, and documents can be forged.’

‘This wasn’t. Because it’s true. I can be controlled through my son. Which is why I and I alone am going to get him back.’

‘You’re not alone. There is Mila. There’s no record of her in any government database we can find. Her name is Mila, right?’

‘So the only reason you are following me is to find her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is now or where she lives. I’m sorry. Would you like another martini before you go?’

‘No, thank you. I saw her, I think, in the internet cafe in Amsterdam, when we grabbed that Chinese hacker that was tied to Novem Soles. I showed her picture to some people in Europe who provide us with information now and then, at a cost.’

‘Well, if I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t say if you saw her or not.’ I risked a smile.

The scene was vivid in my head. I’d tried to infiltrate a criminal ring in Amsterdam, and the Chinese hacker was some poor college kid they’d used to research my forged Canadian identity and had gotten caught by August. The hacker had died in a shootout later that day where most of the ring died as well, and I’d barely escaped with my own life. Mila had been watching me from the same internet cafe across the canal.

‘You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ August said. ‘She does not have a nice reputation.’

I said nothing.

‘There’s a price on her head. Did you know that?’ August delivered this with the kind tone of a friend breaking bad news. ‘A cool million dollars for your Mila, preferably alive.’

The words hung in the air. I distantly heard the trill of piano jazz, the clink of the crystal, a drunken bray of laughter from a guy who’d had a pint too many.

‘I mean, you can have someone killed rather cheaply these days – under ten thousand. There’s been a price deflation on hits, what with the economic downturns. But a million on her head, Sam.’ August gave out an amused whistle. ‘That’s trouble. Some very bad people are looking for her to collect that payday. I wonder what she did that’s worth a million dollars.’

Maybe he already knew. He had been my one true friend in the CIA, and until he proved otherwise I had to consider him a friend. One of the waitresses passed. I pointed at August’s martini and raised two fingers. August’s brain needed picking.

‘We could protect her, Sam. In exchange we’ll find out who has the contract on her and we’ll make it go away.’

Once again I said nothing. I couldn’t negotiate on Mila’s behalf. Someone must truly, truly hate her. It did not surprise me.

‘Makes you wonder who she’s pissed off.’

‘Who put out the hit?’

‘We picked it up on chatter online.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘You’re not helping me.’

‘Sam. She can tell us what we need to know. Clearly she’s connected to movers and shakers. She armed you, she financed you, she got you into the Netherlands and into the UK and into the United States with no trace of entry. She helped you get inside a major criminal ring that was planning the biggest assassination plot in American history.’ He shook his head. ‘We want to know who she works for and what she knows about Novem Soles, Sam. Give her to me.’