Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘Sam might cut your throat to save his kid. Get the meeting. But be very careful.’ Braun fixed him with a look. ‘Langley says this informant asked for you. That means he must know you’re running the task force. This could be a meeting just to kill you, or grab you to see what you know.’

‘You’ve made me eager to get back to work.’ August stood. ‘Can I ask you something? It came up in talking with Sam.’

‘Yes?’

‘This Mila woman.’ He slid the picture over to Braun. ‘She was with Sam again last night. We lost her.’

Braun studied the picture. ‘I told you before, I don’t recognize her. I was out of the field for several years, though.’

‘We picked up some chatter. There is, and has been for the past three years, a million-dollar bounty on her head.’

‘I’ve never heard of a bounty that high funded by a crime ring. How on earth has she survived three years?’

‘Very good or very lucky.’

‘Maybe no one’s gotten close to finding her.’ Braun studied the photo again. ‘She looks like an elf. Seriously, put pointed ears on her and she’d be the perfect Santa Claus line monitor at Christmas. This big a bounty, and no one even knows who she is? Incredible. Where was this chatter?’

‘It’s come up on a few discussion forums – usually of extremists looking for funding.’

‘Who posted the bounty?’

‘It leads to a Gmail account that’s never been accessed. Or, I should say, has only been accessed by a non-traceable computer.’

‘Are the details in your report?’

‘Yes, I’ll write it up for you tonight.’

Braun handed him back the photo. ‘Make it happen, August. Get us this informant. Get us this woman.’

Or, August thought sourly, get another job.

The internet cafe was near the NYU campus. He walked there an hour after August left; he did not wish to use a CIA-owned computer. He also wanted to finish the exquisite pot of coffee he’d made. Ricardo Braun went inside and ordered a decaf with little hope that it would match his palate’s demands and sat at an internet terminal situated far from any other patrons. He opened an email account he had established six years before and that he only checked very infrequently. It was a hidey hole for him on the web, and he remembered a message he’d seen two years ago. There were only a couple of dozen messages in the account, all old, but kept squirreled away for when they could be useful. Requests for information. Offers of payment. CIA pensions were not what they should be, and, although he’d had family money, Braun felt that more cash was never to be turned down. As long as his small, creative side jobs did not hurt the country he loved, he saw nothing wrong with it. He was simply careful to clean it through investments; the CIA did watch the incomes of its former agents.

The message had held a picture of the woman called Mila. He’d seen her face then for the first time. That fine, elfin face.

He checked the photo stashed in the email address. It might well be the same woman. The cut of her hair was different but the bones were the same in her cheeks, the turn of the mouth, the sharp, haunted eyes. Mila. The photo of her was one with a gun in her hand, wearing a leather jacket and leather pants, glancing about a room. The sort of photo that looked like it had been lifted from a private security camera.

He reread the message. Text to 45899 to get details on job. High dollar. He wondered if the job was still open. He texted, on a phone that the CIA did not know that he owned.

He got an autoresponse, directing him to a private website, providing him with a password.

Braun jumped to the site. Its URL was a wild mix of numbers and letters, not the kind of site that someone would ever accidentally stumble upon. He entered the password.

The site opened. It showed more pictures of Mila, shot from the same camera. And the text, in five different languages: $1 MILLION US FOR THIS BITCH. I WANT HER ALIVE. Braun stared. This was the gold standard of hit contracts. A million dollars was usually a sum reserved for leaders of state, heads of organizations. Braun himself had spent CIA dollars to kill a Rwandan warlord for Special Projects for a hundred thousand. A drug kingpin in Ecuador for twice that amount. Braun had his own address book he could call upon when regular CIA personnel were not an option.

Who was this woman and who had the deep pockets to off her? He glanced at the last update: a month ago, a single message. Contract is still open. An email address, another blind one.

He sent an email: Is contract still open? I have a lead on an associate of hers but I need to know I’m dealing with someone who can guarantee payment.

He closed the email account, the website. He erased the browser history. He left the internet cafe and went and ate lunch, standing up in a narrow student-geared pizza joint, chewing on a thick slice, drinking a Coke.

A million dollars. The terms of the reward preferred that she be alive. That complicated things.

Braun ate his lonely pizza, then walked home and sat in his leather chair, and thought about Novem Soles, and Mila, and how he could collect that million dollars.

Las Vegas

It’s not everyday that you a) inspect a new business you own, and b) make plans to meet a kidnapper there. Happy partiers filled The Canyon Bar, escaping the tourist-swollen casino hotspots, searching for revelry and the next place you wanted to be seen.

I was planning how to capture a woman who’d stolen my child.

The Canyon was not a tourist trap bar like so much of the Vegas nightlife scene. I’d noticed in the first hour there this evening that the servers and bartenders were extremely capable; attentive, engaging, focused. Of course, when I’d come around and introduced myself to the staff they might all have switched to best behavior, but you can’t hide sloppiness in the running of a first-class drinking establishment.

I’d seen one server gently talk an indecisive customer out of ordering a chocolate martini and into a handcrafted Old-Fashioned: a real drink for a real person. The decor was high-dollar: carefully sculpted beams of wood undulated along the curving walls, the tables were of polished granite, the chairs covered with faux rare animal hides. The Canyon was a destination bar for those too cool for the Strip or who wanted a break from the casino nights and the nerve-numbing rattle of slots, dice, and chips. The crowd was youngish, a mix of more daring visitors and well-heeled locals. There was a dance floor, small, and the DJ was mashing classic Massive Attack with the latest hip-hop star’s word play and drum beat.

I watched all this from the security cameras mounted in my office on the second floor of the bar.

I scanned the crowd. I knew Anna’s face, from the security photo and the passport photo we’d acquired: tall, dark hair, a beauty mark near the curve of her mouth. But those were elements easily changed. I didn’t see anyone who fit her description in the crowded club.

But I did see a face I knew, apparently a recent arrival. There she was, Mila, sitting at a back table, her hair dyed auburn now (or wearing a good wig), flirting with some thick-shouldered guy who wore a well-tailored gray pinstripe suit. His face was familiar, and that worried me until I recognized him – a guy who once played tight end for the New York Giants. Dude probably thought he was about to get Vegas-lucky. Mila wowed him a champagne-fueled smile, although the wine in her flute appeared to be untouched. His was empty. He refilled and guzzled his twice while I watched. I guessed she was conducting her own surveillance, observing every face that came and left the bar. She had to be careful, now that the Company had resumed its interest in me.