Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

We got out of the cab, he paid. We took an elevator up to the ninth floor and I followed him to a black BMW sedan.

‘Where is my son?’

‘I will take you to him, right now.’

‘Anna told us the children would be left at a church and we could collect them. I don’t know where the hell you are taking me.’

‘I am taking you to your son, Mr Capra, and you can either get in the car or not. Your choice.’

I got into the BMW. He wheeled back toward the park, driving with confidence and not a little verve. He held on tight to the red notebook.

At the south-east edge of the park, he pulled up to the curb. Leonie stood waiting on the sidewalk. So far no distant cry of siren or ambulance.

She saw me in the passenger seat and she got into the back seat.

‘Is he dead?’ she asked.

‘He’s dead. Practically killed himself,’ Zviman said. He glanced back at Leonie, gave her a nakedly appraising look. I wanted to say: isn’t that wasted on you? But I kept my mouth shut.

He pulled away from the curb, punched a button on his phone.

‘Cleopatra.’ I guessed it was his code to say all was well. ‘Ming is dead, I have the notebook, and I’m bringing the happy parents to the nursery. Get the kids ready.’ He clicked off the phone. ‘And then I call again in thirty minutes, with a different passcode, to let her know that you haven’t tried to hijack the car. If she gets the least bit suspicious that you’ve betrayed me en route, the kids will suffer. Guaranteed. Sit back and enjoy the ride.’

Behind me, Leonie made a noise in her throat. Zviman smiled at her in the rear view mirror.

‘All right, Mr Capra, Ms Jones, let’s go get your children.’

‘Don’t move,’ the tall black man said. ‘They could drive back by to see what’s going on.’

Jack Ming left his eyes half open. ‘He bought it,’ he mumbled through closed mouth.

‘It helped that you pulled and died by your own weapon. I think it worked, yes. He wants you dead and sometimes the eye sees mostly what it wants to see. My name is Bertrand. I’m a friend of Sam’s. We’re going to get you to safety.’

Jack stayed still. Through his half-mast eyes he could see a woman standing behind Bertrand, holding a video camera. ‘When it looks like you’re shooting a YouTube video, no one thinks you were actually shot,’ Bertrand reminded him. The woman was a small pixie-faced type, very pretty, with big sunglasses shoved up to her dark hair.

Ten, twenty minutes passed. A couple of people strolling by gave them curious glances, but the presence of the woman shooting video answered unasked questions. ‘Okay, get up,’ Bertrand said. ‘We walk. Quickly.’

The woman murmured to Bertrand, he couldn’t quite hear what, but her accent sounded Russian or something.

Bertrand said, ‘Good luck and be careful.’

He and Bertrand headed one way, the woman the other.

And if they’re watching us right now, if this wasn’t enough, Sam is a dead man, Jack thought, and I’ve given them back what they wanted most, and my mother died for nothing.

Bertrand hurried him through the park; they went in the opposite direction of Zviman and Sam, toward Belvedere Castle and the 79th Street Transverse.

‘Wait,’ Bertrand said. ‘Wait.’ Jack thought his heart would explode, suddenly scared that their ruse had been discovered.

A Ford sedan pulled up next to them. At the wheel, August of the CIA.

And in the back seat, impossibly, Ricki.

‘We thought it best to get her to safety,’ Bertrand said, ‘but I didn’t want you distracted by knowing she was close. Sorry. We have a private jet… ’

Jack hardly heard him. He was in the back seat, embracing Ricki, who kept covering his face with kisses. Safe. She was safe.

The car pulled away. Bertrand gave a quick wave and vanished back into the park.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said to August.

‘Thank Sam and his friends,’ August said.

He thought of that crazy Sam Capra, and his baby, and Jack’s heart felt heavy.

‘Jack, we’re going to get you and Ricki to Langley. You’ll be safe there. And I understand you made a paper copy of the notebook… ’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you can’t have it. Not yet.’

The car stopped. August turned. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Sam promised to give you me, August,’ Jack said. ‘Not the notebook. He needs the original notebook to get his son back. If he makes it back with his son, you get the notebook. If he doesn’t get his son back, then the copy I have is his, to do with what he wants.’

August stared.

‘Think of it,’ Jack said, ‘as the map of Sam’s revenge.’

Parking garage near Central Park

Mila put the camera in a bag in the back of the van. She pulled off the dark wig she’d worn under a stylish hat, shook her sweaty hair free and pushed the black sunglasses back on her head.

Now. Sam had forgotten for a moment that he worked for her; he had forbidden her to come after them. Ridiculous. He could not go off with a man as evil as Zviman and expect to have an exchange go smoothly. And she did not trust Leonie. And although Sam had been clever enough to slough off her tracking chip the other night, Leonie was not. The chip went into the pocket of the light jacket Leonie wore, that Mila had lent her from the apartment over The Last Minute.

From the back of the van – the same one she and Bertrand had used to move out the corpses of the bodyguards, what felt like a thousand days before when she and Sam had pretended to be baby buyers – she pulled out a GPS device. A slight red gleam showed her Leonie’s position. She could follow, unseen, at a distance.

She heard the footsteps behind her as she shut the door. She turned and the Taser needles hit her. Shocking her. Then a tall, spare man stepped forward and closed a damp cloth over her face.

The man who sat at The Last Minute, the man Sam thought suspicious.

‘You’re my million-dollar baby, Mila,’ he said to her, before the darkness closed in.

Braun handcuffed Mila, all with the van doors closed. He heard the laughter of children, a family walking past the van as he worked. He made sure she was secure: he had no intention of underestimating her. He relieved her of the knife in her boot and the gun at the small of her back. He bound her feet with rope.

He examined the GPS reader. Clever. Either Lindsay or Capra were tagged, and Mila was going to follow them.

He could see that they were now off Manhattan, heading north into Westchester County. A cold tingle touched his spine. No. Surely not. Surely Zviman was not taking them there.

He took the keys from her pocket. He opened up his phone. He sent a text message to the email address where the reward had been posted. I have your Mila and I want to collect the million. Caught her trying to help your friends in the car. May I make your day and bring her to you?

On Highway 87 North

We headed north and east, leaving the city well behind, cutting up past Irvington, heading on 87 North. I wondered where we were headed. Peekskill? Albany? The Catskills? A silence filled the car because Zviman said, ‘No talking.’ Zviman put on the satellite radio and tuned it to the alternative classics of the eighties. He even sang, very softly, under his breath, barely audible. The Cars, Elvis Costello, and, God help us, Katrina and the Waves.

I did not trust this man in a good mood.

No one spoke for an hour at least, and, as we passed Newburgh I couldn’t contain myself further. ‘Where are our kids?’ I said.

‘At a safe place,’ Zviman said. ‘I’ll take you there and then you may have this car to go where you please. Considering you killed a man in the park I wouldn’t return to New York for a while. I’m sure Ms Jones would like to get home to Las Vegas.’ He sounded so calm, so reasonable. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.