Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

‘You and I have nothing in common,’ I said, ‘except Nine Suns has destroyed our families. That is my wife. They took her and they made her into a person I never knew and then they put a bullet in her brain. Now they have my son. He is only a few months old. I have never seen him in person, never held him.’ I pulled the photo from my wallet and I handed it to Jack. He looked at it wordlessly.

Then he gave it back to me.

‘Your mother was killed by a stray bullet when I fought the guy who kidnapped her. If I could have saved her I would have… ’

‘Only to get her to help you find me.’

‘No. Did I kill the men from the CIA who were supposed to protect you? I knocked them out of the fight but I didn’t kill them. Did I shoot down anyone who got in my way while I was chasing you?’

‘And, what, you want a good citizen medal?’

‘I held your mother’s hand while she died, Jack. She asked me to help you. I had to lie to her then and say I would help you. I don’t want it to be a lie.’

Jack closed the browser window; Lucy vanished. ‘Why would you risk your baby’s life to protect me?’

‘Because I no longer believe they’re just going to hand me my child. I know too much, I’m too big a threat to them. They have to be destroyed and you’re the guy who can bring them down.’

‘The notebook doesn’t contain the names and addresses of Nine Suns. It gave me one phone number for one of them, the person who set up this extortion network. It mostly just names people that they’re using.’

‘People they’ve spied on using your software.’

‘Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could turn that around on them?’

Jack said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do to them what they did to these people. Spy on them, using your code.’

Jack Ming got up from the desk. I followed him into the living room. He picked up the cleaver off the floor, and I tensed. But he went into the kitchen and he set it on the granite counter top.

‘And who gets the information? You?’

‘When I get my son back, I’m done. If I don’t, then I send them to hell, however long it takes.’ I crossed my arms. ‘I know you must think August Holdwine is a screw-up, but he’s not. You can trust him. And he’s being moved back to Langley, out of the group that was supposed to protect you. They’ve been dirtied. But he’s clean.’

Jack Ming blinked at me, and I didn’t blame him not trusting me. So cards on the table, so to speak.

‘I know you called Ricki Diagne in Amsterdam. Maybe for help, maybe because she’s someone special to you. If you don’t trust the CIA, there is another group of people who could hide you. Think of them as the flip side of Nine Suns. My friend Mila works for them and I think they could hide you and Ricki, too, if you want, just about anywhere in the world. Especially if you could help them spy on Nine Suns.’

‘Your friends are the Round Table.’

‘Yes. Are they in the notebook?’

‘There’s reference to them.’

That made me uneasy. It could mean someone inside the Round Table had been compromised, maybe into giving up secrets.

He shook his head. ‘Round Table. Nine Suns. Who the hell comes up with these names?’

‘Every group needs a mythology. The Round Table was full of knights who wanted to do good. Nine Suns is from an old Chinese legend about the near destruction of the world. The names say a lot about each side.’ I tried again: ‘Can I please see the notebook?’

‘No. You can’t. I think you can understand that I need to keep a trump card to myself.’

The urge to ransack the apartment and find it was strong, but he needed to trust me, so I nodded.

The cell phone in my pocket rang. I answered it.

Leonie. ‘Sam, Nine Suns just called on the iPhone Anna gave you. They want to talk to you and they want to know where you are.’

‘All right, I’m on my way back.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I needed some air.’

‘Sorry you couldn’t get that here with me.’ Just a dash of bitter.

‘I’m on my way.’ I turned off the phone. ‘They’re calling me with instructions on your meeting, I suspect. So I can ambush you.’

Jack’s throat worked. ‘So. How do we do this?’

‘You’re in?’

‘You made your point. Plus, what if I say no? You kill me then, right. You have no choice.’

‘I always have a choice. So do you.’

‘I want them taken down. I can’t do it alone, I know that.’

‘Will you trust August?’

I could tell it wasn’t an easy decision. But after thirty seconds Jack said: ‘All right.’

‘Fine. Sit down. Here’s what we do.’

The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan

‘You’re going to kill Jack Ming.’ The man’s voice was slightly accented. Israeli. I felt sure this was Zviman, the man who’d nearly killed Mila, who she had emasculated and enraged, the man responsible for the horror that Mila’s sister endured, the man ultimately responsible for Nelly’s death. ‘At Central Park, in the Ramble. It’s heavily wooded, not one of the busiest sections. This afternoon, a bit before three.’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘He and I are going to meet north of Bow Bridge. It will be crowded. He won’t be willing to step into any more private areas of the park. So he has to go down without drawing attention.’

‘You’re not from here, are you? I can’t kill a guy by Bow Bridge and not have it go noticed. Look, you’ve drawn him to the park. You get whatever you’re buying from him and then he’s my problem.’

‘I’m not funneling him money. He’s dead before then and then I get what he’s carrying.’

Which meant he would want to see the notebook.

‘Kill him quietly. Break his neck or use a knife,’ the man I believed to be Zviman said. ‘Don’t think for a second you can skimp on the job.’

‘I don’t ever think for a second,’ I said.

I clicked off the phone. Leonie lay on the bed.

‘Did he tell you what to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re working a scam. Don’t bother to lie.’

‘Yes.’

‘All right,’ she said, and I could hear the tone of surrender in her voice. ‘What do you want me to do?’

The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan

A guy with a broken arm in a fiberglass cast just doesn’t look threatening. Ted Bundy and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs used arm casts as camouflage to lure in women to help them so they could commit abduction. Then they turned the casts into weapons. Of course, they didn’t actually have broken arms. I did.

It’s hard enough to kill someone when you’ve got two good hands. I was only going to get one chance.

I sat on a bench north of the beautiful iron-built Bow Bridge, a book in hand, a Yankees cap pulled low over my head. Waiting. I was on the edge of the Ramble, a dense, wooded area planted by hand well over a century ago, now mature woodland, with a maze of walkways cut through its growth. I saw at least four different passersby with binoculars and field guides: this was a prime birding spot. I also saw teenagers who looked like they might savor a bit of privacy. But this stretch of park, at least this afternoon, wasn’t quite as busy as the Zoo or the playgrounds or the Mall. Now and then a family milled by, joggers jogged, a pair of lovers leaned into each other, walking hand in hand. I still don’t like to see couples. Nothing against them. I’m all for love and commitment. It just reminds me of what I thought I had, and never truly did, with Lucy. I thought we would grow old together. I thought we would be grandparents together, Daniel bringing us his own children to spoil and love. We should have had years to spend in parks, tossing crumbs, hearing the lull of the breeze in the trees, watching the sunlight shift its mosaic on the grass.