Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘It’s all right.’

‘I can’t believe he agreed to meet us.’ She sounded stunned.

‘Oh, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s completely a trap. He’s going to tell August that’s where we will be. He knows we’re after him, and so is August. This ties up both sides as pursuers. Maybe if someone inside Nine Suns tries to warn us it’s a trap, Jack will tell August that information will ID who the mole is. Everyone who’s chasing him tangles and then Jack’s running and gone.’

‘But he needs money.’

‘The one thing we know about Nine Suns is that it’s global. So he didn’t sell the information to the Americans. He can sell it to the British, the French, the Chinese. Someone will pay. And then Jack hides, and our kids are gone.’ I leaned back. ‘The only trump I had was his mother.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He might really want justice for his mom. That might make him take a risk.’

‘But you said he wasn’t close to his mom.’

‘She’s still his mom. Don’t you think one day Taylor would do anything to save you?’

Leonie swallowed. ‘I would hope.’

‘Mrs Ming died and he’s going to feel responsible. He wants to set a trap for us; we have to set one for him. One where we can grab him and get the notebook and then draw in Anna.’

‘Kill him and take the notebook. Why is this so hard?’

‘They will not just hand us back our kids, Leonie. That notebook is our leverage. We have to have it to guarantee a safe exchange for the children.’

‘I do not like this.’

We were at an impasse.

‘I’ve told you what I’m doing. Either you want to help me or you don’t. If you think you can track Jack and kill him, then, please, by all means.’

The silence grew uncomfortable. ‘Fine,’ she finally said. ‘We’ll do it your way. Not that you’re leaving me much choice.’

‘I told you we will get our kids back.’

She nodded. ‘I’d like to eat.’

‘I’ll have food sent up. There’s a menu over there. Order whatever you like.’

Leonie got up. She stretched hands above her head. She studied the menu. ‘High end bar fare. A calamari panini? Mini caviar sliders? Yuck.’

‘Bertrand likes to experiment. I can recommend the Kobe beef burger and the fish and chips.’

She put the menu down. ‘I hope they’re feeding our babies okay.’

‘Leonie, hold it together.’

‘I am. I have been.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I’ll go downstairs and order us some food. What would you like?’

‘You order for us both, I like everything on the menu. Perks of being the owner.’ I tried to give her a reassuring smile. I supposed she might take her revenge on me by bringing back that questionable calamari panini.

She went downstairs. And I wondered what was her limit, would she break under the pressure, would she decide that my way was the wrong way?

What would she do to save her child?

Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan

Ricardo Braun held three different cell phones; what he was not holding was his temper. ‘Go find out who we’re dealing with beyond Capra,’ he said to August, ‘while I do my damnedest to help you keep your job.’ His normally cordial, calm voice trembled with barely contained anger.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘You should be,’ he snapped. ‘Do as I told you and when you’ve got some information, come see me. I have to be on the phone with the gods in Langley, explaining how our inability to secure our informant caused a gunfight in the streets of Brooklyn and ended up on the national news.’

August tried to swallow and couldn’t. He turned. ‘August. There’s a shoot-on-sight order on Capra. You should know. No one is expecting you to shoot your friend. But he attacked you and two other officers and nearly killed Ming. We’re not chit-chatting with him again. He’s going down, dead or alive. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

August went back to the conference room next to his office, where the team, restless and angry, waited.

August still commanded the Novem Soles task force. So he put all remaining six agents in the Manhattan Special Projects office on the search for Ming and Capra. Agents headed for the Ming apartment; the Ming Properties building; and one for The Last Minute, where he had an unproductive talk with Bertrand. Another agent monitored all incoming traffic on the emergency rooms in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Just as Jack Ming tapped the cameras of a toy store and a traffic light, Special Projects had a bird’s-eye into the emergency room entrances, feeding off security cameras. Monitoring software scanned flight reservations and train ticket purchases.

The shoot order meant August knew he had to find Sam before any of the other agents in Special Projects did.

Okay, first figure out who these women were – the dead and the living. The redhead with the gun who was intent on grabbing Ming’s gear. Who was she? Who were the dead pair in the building? Special Projects was not exactly equipped to work a crime scene; they had possession of the building (thanks to Beth Marley, who cancelled the security service after being assured her family would be protected) and the bodies; a forensic team, and backup agents who were willing to overlook the fact that the CIA is not supposed to operate on American soil, were flying from Langley to work the scene.

But he couldn’t wait on them. If Sam was the pawn of Novem Soles, so, perhaps, was the redhead. As for the two dead women, if they’d been there to kill Sam, then the women must be an enemy of Novem Soles. Drones for a third player. The thought deeply unsettled him.

August got pizza and a big soda and he sat down in front of a secured workstation at the back of the New York office. His jaw ached from where Sam had hit him but pizza was all that sounded good to his empty stomach. He kept his phone’s earbud in place so he could get updates from the field teams scouring the city for Ming and Sam.

The Company owned, along with the National Security Agency, the most advanced photo recognition software available. He used a software program to assemble a face matching that of the woman he’d seen. Reddish hair, hazel eyes, a small nose, high cheekbones, a constellation of freckles. Her ears stuck out slightly; it made her look younger. He closed his eyes repeatedly, pictured her, tried to cement the memory in his head. Her chin was a bit pointed. Throat narrow. He guessed her height at close to 5 feet 5, weight maybe 110 pounds. When he finished the composite he considered: where to look?

He loaded the reconstructed face into a search database for CIA personnel. He got back eighty-nine matches. He scanned through the faces. None were the woman.

He loaded the face into a search database for known British intelligence agents. Sam had spent most of his career working out of London. A dozen matches. None were exact.

He accessed a database of retired CIA personnel. Again, a scattering of matches but not his woman.

Special Projects, whose purview was where criminality intersected with national security, had its own set of databases. He accessed them.

He pulled up a list of known computer hackers. Ming was a hacker and the redhead coming back to grab his knapsack seemed odd. While the number of female hackers was growing, it was still a male-dominated field. If she’d been arrested in the United States or by a Western ally for hacking, her smiling face should be in this database.

It wasn’t.

He got up, began to pace the floor. He ate the pizza, chewing on the discs of pepperoni until his jaw hurt, settling the hunger in his stomach. He studied her face. He changed the hair, made it longer. He put glasses on her.