Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

Now I sat alone on a park bench waiting to murder someone.

My orders were explicit. When the Nine Suns contact – I knew it was probably Zviman but I wasn’t going to admit to him I knew who he was – walked away from Jack Ming, I would intercept and kill Ming. I didn’t believe for a second that Ming’s bank account would go unhacked; Nine Suns wasn’t going to give him ten million dollars.

The day was grayish, clouds grappling with sun for a momentary dominance. I sat, with my sunglasses and my book. I checked my watch. Time. On the under side of the bench I groped and my fingers found tape. I pulled the tape free. In my hand was an earpiece. I thumbed it into place.

‘Hello, Sam,’ the voice slipped into my ear.

I said nothing.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘No. I just have nothing to say to you.’ I put my gaze back to my book.

‘I have taken precautions. If I do not call in to a number and give a correct passcode, your son dies. Don’t decide you can kill both Ming and me, or take me hostage for your son.’

‘I can follow orders.’

‘I played with your son the other day,’ Zviman said.

My blood went cold.

‘He’s very responsive for a child. I don’t know a lot about babies, but your little lad looks you in the eye. I enjoyed getting to hold him.’

Wordless rage.

‘I know you’ll do a first-rate job. Then you’ll get to see your son. I hope I don’t cry. Family reunions make me tearful.’

I saw a man move from the walkway to a dense copse of black locust trees, a good thirty feet off the path. He stood in their shade, and produced a smartphone from his pocket. The blond mohawk was a trimmed, ghostly strip of hair. I knew his face from Mila’s description. It was Zviman. He didn’t walk funny, though. I didn’t look at him but I felt quite sure he looked at me. I kept scanning the approaches.

Then I saw Jack Ming. Dressed in jeans, and a Giants windbreaker, and a Giants baseball cap.

He was holding the red notebook in his left hand, and had his right hand in his pocket.

The stiletto I had hidden in my cast felt heavy. The handle of the blade I’d cut down to conceal it rubbed against my wrist. Bertrand has an interesting collection of knives at The Last Minute.

‘Here he comes,’ I said.

‘I see him,’ Zviman said. ‘Look at him, he thinks he’s tough. I wonder how he thinks he got tough sitting at a keyboard all day.’ The hatred in his voice was thick.

I glanced around. Two people, binoculars up, looking the opposite way, focused on their birding. A couple and a single man heading toward Bow Bridge. A young woman, iPodded, lost in her music rather than birdsong and park noise.

Ming had his back to me.

Jack Ming stopped and glanced around. Then he looked right at Zviman. And he walked to the tree.

I waited.

The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan

Courtesy of Zviman’s earpiece I could hear the conversation.

‘Hello, Jack.’

‘Let’s set the conditions. If I don’t come back from this meeting, a friend calls the police and gives them your description. He already took your photo with a telescopic lens.’ Jack’s voice was steady. ‘I think you’d have to shave off that Velcro strip on your head and wear a wig to make it out of the city.’

‘Jack, please don’t insult me.’ Zviman’s voice was kind. ‘I’m a businessman. I’m here to make a trade. We both end up happy.’ He shrugged. ‘Look, I’m not unmindful you wrote the code that let us steal the secrets. I respect that what you’re getting could be considered a fair cut.’

‘Move the money.’

Zviman held up his smartphone so Jack could see its screen. He keyed in the account transfer code and kept the phone raised so Jack could see the blue progress bar fill as the dollars and cents jumped from an account in the Caymans into a Swiss account. Silence between them.

‘Done. Check it for yourself if you like,’ Zviman said.

At the word done I stood. Jack Ming still had his back to me. I moved forward, silently across the grass, weaving in between the trees, my hand on the hidden stiletto handle in the cast.

Jack brought a cell phone up from under the red notebook. He kept his right hand in his pocket. No one watching would like that. He’d apparently preset the phone’s browser to his bank account and he hit a refresh button.

I kept approaching, keeping the center of his shoulders as my axis of approach. I moved quickly and quietly across the damp grass.

‘The page isn’t loading,’ Jack said, a tinge of nervous frustration in his voice.

‘The internet. So unreliable.’

He thumbed a button again. ‘Still locked up. I’m not giving you the notebook until the money’s in my balance.’

Zviman smiled with infinite patience. ‘That’s fair.’

I was twenty seconds away.

‘You’re trying to cheat me,’ Jack said. And he pulled the gun from the pocket of the windbreaker.

I was still ten feet behind him but now running at full force, no attempt at stealth. Jack jabbed the gun toward Zviman, as though counting on his target’s own flesh to muffle the sound of the shot. Zviman jumped back, wrenching Jack’s arm up, and by then I slammed my cast into the side of Jack’s neck. He staggered and I yanked him backward, away from Zviman, and he tried to aim the gun at me. I folded his elbow back toward him and he made a little mewling protest as the gun’s barrel touched his stomach. He bent and I got a hand on the trigger and the shot wasn’t as loud as it could have been. I moved the gun to the chest and pulled the trigger again and he fell to his side, two small, bright blossoms of blood on his shirt. He gave a hard, wet cough of red and then he lay still among the trees.

I pulled him back against the trunk of the tree and zipped up the Giants windbreaker to cover the blood. ‘Make it look like he’s sitting. He won’t draw attention that way.’

Zviman moved away from me, staring at Jack. ‘The stiletto. Drop it.’

‘What?’ I was trying to raise and settle Jack’s head so it didn’t loll and I couldn’t get the angle right.

‘You didn’t need the knife. But you’re not getting armed into a car with me.’

I dropped the stiletto to the ground, kicked it behind the tree.

‘Hey, hey!’ A tall black man, with a birding book and binoculars, had wandered closer to us, directing his shout to a bird in a distant tree, but he seemed absorbed in his lenses. Which were aimed in the sky above our head. He could notice Jack, or us, at any moment and I heard Zviman suck in a hiss of breath.

‘Go. Walk. Now. Before he sees the blood.’ I used my sleeve to wipe Jack’s mouth blood away.

Zviman knelt, picked up Jack’s phone – and the red notebook. It was one of those classic leather-covered ones, with an elastic band to keep it closed. It was smaller than I thought it would be. He started hurrying away from the body, flipping the pages.

‘Don’t run,’ I said to him. ‘Keep walking normally.’

He glanced back. The tall black man still studied the sky, then glanced at his birding book, then at the treetops again.

Zviman and I continued our steady walk.

‘Where are the children?’ I asked.

‘Wait, we’re not clear yet.’

We cut across Bow Bridge, silent with each other, and headed down to the 72nd Street Transverse that sliced through the park. Zviman hurried to the street and raised his arm for a cab. Well-dressed guy, moneyed – a cab stopped within thirty seconds, releasing a pair of tourists clutching Beatles memorabilia who looked like they intended to go pay tribute to John Lennon over at Strawberry Fields. New York luck. We both got inside.

Zviman gave the cabbie the address of a parking garage a dozen blocks away. He raised a finger toward his lips, like I was stupid enough to speak in front of a witness. He flipped through the pages of the notebook, shaking his head. ‘Little bastard,’ he said more than once. ‘Little, rotten bastard.’