Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

‘You’re probably thinking, Sam, that you’re surprised we struck you a deal.’

‘Very.’ I wasn’t thinking he wanted to let me out alive. Now I was going to have to fight my way out, I felt sure, and I didn’t know how I was going to do that while holding a baby. The obvious answer was Leonie. Have her run to safety with the kids, if at all possible, and leave me to deal with Zviman.

‘I don’t think the CIA will be offering you a job again,’ Zviman said. ‘Now that you killed their prize asset. Of course, they didn’t see you kill him, but you’ll be the prime suspect. Unless you could convince them that you weren’t trying to kill him but protect him from a danger within the CIA.’

‘I should update my resume,’ I said. ‘And I’m not that good an actor to pull off that lie.’

‘In fact, with Jack Ming dead, they’ll be hunting for you. If you gave them someone else as Ming’s killer, well, you might be in the clear with them. Nice for you, that would be, for you and your son.’ His voice was like a knife.

‘Why are you so concerned about what happens to me?’

‘We made a deal and I intend to stick to it. What, you think I’m going to kill you?’

‘I think you’re going to try.’

‘That would undo all that’s been done.’

‘Done?’

‘To make you who you are, Sam,’ Zviman said. ‘You’ve been a long-term project for us. You could still be of value to us. We’ve watched you for years now. We’ve been interested in you for a long time.’

I stared at him. He didn’t look at me. He almost smiled as he drove. How could I have been a long-term project for a bunch of criminals? ‘That… that doesn’t even make sense,’ I said.

‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘We think long term. You’ve been thinking in terms of hours, days, weeks: how do I find my wife, how do I get my son back? Small problems. We think in terms of years. You have gone from being a problem for us to becoming useful to us. We were willing to sacrifice your usefulness because you could kill Ming for us, and he was a tremendous threat. But no one can prove that you killed him. You could still serve a purpose.’

I had a sudden, weird sense that I was a piece on a chess board, not the king, and some giant hand had flicked me around the squares. ‘I have no interest in being useful to you. I want nothing to do with you. I am getting my child and then we are done.’

‘I never had the pleasure of meeting your wife,’ he said. ‘But I think we all felt her loss.’

This is to make you snap, I thought. He wants to worm under your skin, get you off your game. Nothing but lies and distraction. ‘I’m not discussing my wife with you.’

‘You’re ready to quit the battlefield.’

I stared straight ahead.

‘You said, more than once, I think, when the Company kept you in their private prison and you slept on stone floors, and that the world believed that you were guilty, that all you wanted was your old life back.’

‘My old life is gone.’

‘No it’s not. Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Now be quiet. We’ll have plenty to say when we get where we’re going.’

Along Highway 87 North

Leonie had wedged the cell phone in the calf-high boot she wore. She kept her eyes ahead, occasionally glancing out the window, trying not to appear as though she were listening to the awkward conversation.

To Ray Brewster she texted: north on 87, past Kingston 5 min ago.

She turned off the phone and she slid it into her boot.

The two men in the front seat, locked in their discussion, locked into their anger and mistrust, did not notice.

Braun drove aggressively and fast, and closed the distance between himself and Zviman’s car to ten miles. He glanced at the text message.

He was entirely sure of their destination. All stories, he thought, come back to their beginning, all circles must close.

Zviman opened his phone, as he had done every thirty minutes for the past two hours. He pressed a number. When Anna answered he said, ‘Pericles. Yes, all is well.’ He clicked shut the phone.

My fist slammed against him hard, then I grabbed his head and pounded it against the steering wheel.

Leonie screamed, ‘What are you doing, what are you doing?’

The BMW veered across its lanes, narrowly missing a semi that laid on its horn like a stuttering war cry. It is very hard to fight a man one-handed.

‘I know where we’re going,’ I yelled at her. ‘He can be our hostage to get the kids.’

Then she understood. Leonie snaked her arm around Zviman’s throat and levered back. He gagged and spat, arching in the seat. I hit the brake with my foot and levered up the parking brake. The BMW howled and bucked but we stopped. I took my good hand and pounded five blows into his sorry face. It felt good. He finally sagged, beaten, out.

‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ Leonie said. Panic jagged her voice.

‘Listen to me. I know where we’re going now. The company that was a front for the sisters, for the house in New Jersey. I looked them up. They owned another retreat off this highway, about five more miles up. That’s where we’re going. And now we can trade the kids for him.’

‘What if you’re wrong?’ Leonie said. ‘Oh, God. What if you’re wrong?’

I hauled the unconscious Zviman into the back seat. ‘Drive,’ I told Leonie. I accessed the Associated Languages School website. ‘North about four miles, then turn onto Mountain Bridge Road.’

‘If we drive up into a bunch of execs learning Spanish, I’m going to kill you, Sam.’ Her voice was a ragged, broken shock.

‘I’ll kill myself,’ I said.

Associated Languages School, near the Catskill Forest Preserve, New York

The building was a long, low affair, hidden in the dense growth of red cedars and sugar maples, with a curving gravel driveway before it. It looked like a grand mansion, one perhaps left over from the Catskills’ Borscht Belt days, a shrunken resort. A toy, ignored and misplaced in the heavy forest. The windows were boarded. The grass around the building needed cutting. Abandoned, like the house in New Jersey. Or, if not abandoned, then not in use to help tourists conjugate their French verbs or contract out to business employees who needed to master Spanish or Farsi in between shuffleboard and trout fishing.

‘What do we do?’ Leonie said as she pulled up to the shuttered house.

‘We trade him for the kids and we get the hell out of here.’

‘Sam… ’

‘We did what they wanted but we’re done playing by their rules,’ I said.

‘What about what he said… about you being some kind of project… ?’

‘Ignore him,’ I said.

No one emerged onto the porch.

I opened the car door, got out. Put both hands on Zviman’s head, one along the jaw, the other on the throat. ‘Honk the horn.’

Leonie hammered twice on the horn. It sliced through the hush of the woods.

A moment later the door opened. Anna Tremaine stepped out onto the porch. She wore a cream-colored T-shirt and green cargo pants. She was pale and did not look quite so confident as she had a million years ago in Las Vegas.

She held a gun in her hand.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘We’re here to pick up our kids.’ My voice rose. I didn’t sound quite human.

‘So I see.’

‘Who else is inside, Anna?’

There were no other cars parked in the lot. She just stared at me.

I held Zviman up. ‘Answer me, or I break his neck.’

‘Let him go.’ Now she raised the gun. Toward Leonie.

‘No.’

‘I’ll shoot her.’

‘And I’ll snap his neck. Answer me. Who’s inside.’