Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

‘Yes. Grabbed from an internet cafe over on Singel. The Cafe Sprong on 12 April. Ask the barista there. Three men came in and they pretended to be with the police. They pulled guns on everyone and ordered us to be still. Then they took me with them, they beat me up and they took me with them to that shop.’

‘Why would they kidnap you?’

‘I believe because they wanted my computer skills.’

‘You’re a hacker?’

‘I am the opposite.’ He injected dignity into his half-lie. ‘Check my work in grad school, speak with my adviser.’

‘We have.’

‘Then you know my thesis subject is computer security. No one knows system weaknesses better than a security expert. I specialize in RFID chip programming – you know, the chips that are placed on products to stop counterfeiting and to facilitate tracking.’ He paused. ‘May I have some water?’

Van Biezen gave him a glass with a straw sticking out of it. The water tasted like heaven to Jack. ‘Check the date. I’m sure there was a police report filed. The barista was mad.’

‘I will. And how did all these three men end up dead?’

Jack kept his gaze steady on Van Biezen. The cop had misunderstood; he thought the three dead men – Nic and the twins – were his kidnappers. Jack nearly wept with relief. If he mentioned that a team of three CIA agents, hunting one of their own named Sam Capra, had kidnapped him right now it would be unwise; he preferred to approach the CIA on his own terms.

Because he had already decided that the CIA was going to help him get out of this mess. He swallowed and continued: ‘Other men came in and shot them. I don’t know why. Except… ’

‘Well?’

‘They had crates of cigarettes. I assume they were smuggling them. If the cigarettes were stolen, then they might have wanted me to reprogram the RFID chips in the crates so they could not be tracked.’

Van Biezen said, ‘They weren’t stolen cigarettes. They were counterfeit brands.’

‘Then I guess they wanted me for some other reason.’

Van Biezen did not look impressed. He said, ‘So, when we check your phone records, we’re not going to find any calls to Nic ten Boom or the Pauder twins. They were strangers to you.’

‘Yes. Strangers to me.’ He had been careful to use only the prepaid phones given directly to him by Nic; his own phone and email records were clean.

‘I’m going to check your story. I hope for your sake it holds true.’

‘It will.’

‘So why did you not speak for so long?’

Jack said nothing. He put on his Mona Lisa smile and stared back at the detective. He’d returned to his Quiet Game.

Van Biezen left and Jack leaned back against the pillows. He considered. The CIA had killed Nic and the other men in the warehouse and left him to die. Or maybe they’d thought he was already dead. He had no idea. But… he’d been here a while. He had his own hospital room. They’d brought him here, covered, and he was under police protection.

Were the police hiding him?

They must be. Which meant maybe Nine Suns and the CIA weren’t looking for him. That was buying him time, very precious time he couldn’t waste lying in a hospital bed.

He needed that notebook.

He was not going to ask the police for help or for protection. The only protection was the notebook full of Nine Suns’ secrets and Nic had hidden it somewhere. He had to get out and he had to find it. The men who had taken him from the internet cafe would want it. The CIA, who had been hunting this group. Nine Suns must be special, international, if the CIA had an interest. They paid money for information. They protected informants. He could see his only course of action perfectly clear. He could find Nic’s notebook and sell it to August, and then could go into hiding for ever. He could not trust the police. He knew Nic had broken into the police department’s servers; even if the police hid him, Nine Suns could find him. He needed the most powerful ally he could muster. It would have to be the CIA.

Jack Ming studied the white purity of the ceiling of his hospital room. All he had to do now was to get the hell out of this hospital and find the red notebook.

The door opened. A nurse stepped inside. She was tall and black-skinned and had a strong face that wore a frown. He blinked. He wasn’t dreaming.

She closed the door and turned to him. His eyes widened in shock. A nurse’s uniform?

‘Well,’ Ricki said. She came close to the bed, leaned down to his ear. ‘You’ve been a lot of trouble to find.’

Jack decided to keep his ongoing silence, although he could not believe she stood before him.

‘Do you know how worried I’ve been? I could kill you for not letting me know you’re okay.’

Jack made a noise.

‘I’ve had to hack into you don’t want to know how many databases, looking for you.’ Ricki was originally from Senegal, in West Africa, and her accent, fueled by anger, chopped the words into shards. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

He shook his head, pointed to the surgical scar on his throat. She can’t know what I’ve been doing, he thought, I can’t put her in danger.

‘Are you kidding me? I go through hell to find your hidden ass and you aren’t going to talk to me?’

His heart felt like it would burst. He let his lips form the beginning of a word: I am so glad you’re here, please get me out of this. But then he stopped. Ricki had known Nic, slightly. He couldn’t connect her to Novem Soles. He had to keep her away from these lunatics.

So he shook his head: no.

Then she fell onto him, crying softly, putting a kiss in his hair. Not on his lips. They’d broken up weeks ago. She held him and he thought he might cry, he might let out all the emotion penned up inside him out, like a long-echoing wail.

She sat next to the bed.

He pointed at her nurse’s uniform and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. ‘I had to wait for the night shift, and if I get caught I’m arrested. I had to sneak down here and talk my way past the guard because he hadn’t seen me.’

The door opened, the guard peering in. Ricki had his wrist, as though taking his pulse. Jack gave the guard a nod. The guard shut the door.

‘The police have been hiding you.’ Ricki leaned close in her whisper.

Hiding him. And yet she’d found him. He loved how smart she was. He wanted to take her hand but they’d broken up, he reminded himself. She kept hold of his wrist.

‘Ming’ – and it shamed him she didn’t know his real first name – ‘what have you gotten involved in?’

He shook his head, pointed at the surgical scar.

‘You don’t fool me. You can talk. God knows most days you never shut up.’

He closed his eyes.

‘Don’t protect me,’ Ricki said. ‘Let me help you.’

The police officer outside opened the door and Ricki’s voice shifted into a louder tone. ‘So, everything looks okay. Sorry to have woken you.’ She stood, nodded smartly. She glanced at the police officer.

And she walked out without a backward glance.

Let me help you. No one, though, could help him. Unless he found Nic’s red notebook.

Upper West Side, Manhattan

It’s not easy getting two bodies of heavy-set men out of an apartment. We had to assume the apartment was tied to Bell, and right now we didn’t want people looking for him or linking him to two dead guys. We didn’t want his name in the papers.

I called Bertrand to help. He showed up an hour later. With a moving van and crates. He brought Mila a moving van uniform and a cap that seemed to cover most of her face. He raised one eyebrow at the bodies, muttered something in his Haitian-accented French and got to work. The bodies were loaded and gone within fifteen minutes. He took Bell, too, now uncuffed from that corpse, shot up with a load of tranquilizer, and put into a crate.