Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

Mom, come home, he thought. He tried her home phone again. No answer. She could be traveling for work, which could mean she was anywhere from South America to Hong Kong to Canada. She could be screening her calls. He could try and hack into her laptop; she wasn’t very security conscious. But that felt like rifling through her clothing drawers, or love letters from her teenage years. You didn’t hack your mom.

He waited, watching the warm, intermittent rain streak the glass, his heart pounding. She might spit in his face. She might scream for the police. She might call him his father’s murderer again and he wasn’t sure he could take that pain.

Fagin’s Nest, Chelsea, New York City

Fagin poured himself coffee. He didn’t offer me any.

‘Sandra Ming is former State Department. Now she consults. Very well connected in both business and government. She sits on boards of directors for two Fortune 1000 companies. American-born but related to a prominent Hong Kong family. The husband’s name was Russell Ming. Real-estate developer, he died about the time that Jack vanished. Owned properties around New York and New Jersey. Heart attack about the time Jack lit out.’

For a moment Fagin’s eyes went merry.

‘Heart attack over his son’s crimes?’ I asked.

‘The rumor mill suggested,’ Fagin said.

‘That’s a hard cross for a kid to bear,’ I said.

Fagin made a noise. He’d seen as many damaged kids as a social worker. ‘Life is full of hard crosses. If I could have recruited him I could have shielded him. The Oliver Twists have never, ever been caught.’

‘Connected to government and business,’ I said, repeating Fagin’s own words. Could his mother shield him, or help him reach the CIA without me finding him? I had one choice: I had to go to the mother’s house. I glanced up at Fagin.

‘Would Jack contact hackers here in town? Did he know any of your Twists?’

‘Not if he wants to keep his head low. If there’s a price on him, I might be tempted to collect it.’

‘At least you’re consistent, Fagin.’

‘And what a joy that makes me.’

‘But you, you’re not likely to turn him into the police. You don’t like talking to the police, Fagin.’

‘In my defense, they don’t much like talking to me, either.’

‘Where does Mrs Ming live?’

Fagin consulted a computer database. I looked at the photo of his mother we’d loaded into a browser: it showed an elegant woman touching her chin in that weird author-photo pose. She was pretty, but in a cold, cubic way.

He gave me Mrs Ming’s address.

‘Thank you.’

‘That’s it? Thank you?’

‘You’re not going to tell anyone that I’m here, Fagin.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Because I will tell the people who are looking for Jack Ming that you might know where he is. And if I do that, they will order me to force information from you, and then to kill you.’

‘You should find a better class of person for your associates,’ Fagin said. ‘And, really, you needn’t turn into a bully.’

‘Tell me, hacker man,’ I said. ‘Have you ever heard of a hacker in Las Vegas named Leonie?’

‘Leonie, growl, I like kitty-kat-style names,’ Fagin said.

‘Just answer.’

‘No. But you know, online, we don’t use our real names.’ He widened his eyes. ‘Shocking, I know.’

‘She’s a relocator for people who want to vanish. She deals with hackers around the world to get information or to help her create new identities.’

‘She’s not a hacker, then, she’s an information broker. Hires hackers to do a bit of a job for her, then uses someone else. That way you never know exactly what it is she’s working on or who it is she’s working for.’

‘You know anything about her?’ I showed him the picture of her I’d taken on my phone when she slept.

‘You bored her into a sense of complacency to get this picture, right?’

‘Have you seen her before?’

‘No. But isn’t she the pretty one?’

‘You ever hear of a woman named Anna Tremaine?’

He considered, and shook his head.

‘How about Novem Soles?’

‘Sounds like a Catholic retreat.’

‘It means Nine Suns in Latin. You ever hear of a group with that name?’

‘No.’

I got up. ‘Thanks for what you could give me, Fagin.’

‘I can give you one more thing. Good luck, Sam, on finding your kid.’

I must have let my surprise show.

‘What, I can’t wish you luck?’

‘Just keep your mouth shut, Fagin, about me being here.’

‘I don’t stand between kids and their parents, man. By the time the kids come to me the parents have already shoved them away.’

Fagin watched Sam leave. Then he reached for a phone. Sam Capra could make all the threats he wanted, but he did not pay the bills.

Fagin reported the discussion, and then he hung up to go see if the Oliver Twists were done laying their electronic mousetraps inside Moscow’s power grid.

Midtown Manhattan, New York City

An hour later Jack saw her.

His mother came along the sidewalk, walking in her stiff, formal way, wearing a light blue raincoat. Her hair was impeccably styled and more gray streaked it than he remembered. She held bags from a local artisan grocery, and the plastic bulged with her purchases. He crossed the street, cutting toward her.

Please don’t turn away, he thought. Please don’t.

He stood and he waited for her to come to him. ‘Hi, Mom.’

She stopped and glanced up from the sheltering curve of the umbrella and seemed to study him as though he were a picture she’d found in a drawer, and couldn’t place when and where it had been taken. Every moment of her silence was an agony. He wanted the concrete beneath his feet to open like a chasm and swallow him. Drops of rain curtained off her tilted umbrella. ‘Jack. Hello.’ She just didn’t seem… surprised.

He reached for the bag of groceries. ‘Those look heavy.’ He could see in the bag rice and chicken, but also Oreos, apples, jalapeno potato chips. Weird, she still bought his favorites.

She allowed him to take them. ‘Yes, they are. Thank you.’

‘Could we talk for a minute?’

‘For just a minute?’ she asked and now he heard the slight edge of pain in her voice.

‘Not for long. I know you’re busy, Mom.’ It had been the litany of his youth: not now, Jack, I’m busy. Yes, darling, I’ll look at your painting in a minute, Mama’s busy. I can help you with your math later, Jack, right now I’m busy. And finally: what do the police want to talk to you about, I’ve got a meeting with the Ambassador. He remembered announcing once, when he was nine, that he was Ambassador of Kidonia, the nation of kids, and she’d laughed and hugged him and not realized he was begging for her attention. He was proud of himself for keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

‘Actually, I’m not, and I’m very pleased to see you.’ She reached over and gave him an awkward hug. The last hug he’d gotten from her was when he graduated early from NYU, two years ago. Before the FBI showed up at the doorstep, looking for him. He resisted the urge to embrace her, to seize her hard in a hug from which she couldn’t easily escape.

She put a hand on the side of his face. He tried not to close his eyes in relief. ‘What happened to you? Your neck, that’s a surgical scar.’

‘I was in an accident.’ They shot me Mom, I got shot. Your son got shot. But he couldn’t say this, even the thought of the words rising in his throat made him sick.

‘What accident?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it matters, Jack. Why didn’t you call me? Where have you been?’