Jeff Abbott: The Last Minute

The front door clanged. Mila walked in, dragging a bloodied ax. Always a good sign.

‘You okay?’ I called down to her.

‘Yes. Is Daniel here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Safe?’

‘Yes.’

She looked up the stairs at Braun and pointed. ‘This man is crazy. He thinks he is my father. I assure you my mother had much better taste.’

‘He invented Nine Suns. And the Round Table.’

‘Both?’

‘Both.’

Mila stared at him. For one second, ax in hand, she started to step up the stairs. Then she stopped. ‘You should have picked a side.’ She dropped the ax. She picked up a bloodied, slightly mangled notebook that he had dropped when I shot him.

I could hear the hiss of Braun’s breath. He wanted it. Whatever Jack Ming had found, it had to contain threads that led back to the CIA. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cared; he’d not chased after his Frankenstein monster before. Nine Suns wanted Ming dead because they didn’t want to be exposed; Braun wanted Ming dead because he didn’t want the CIA exposed.

So drag his ass out into the light.

‘Good luck, Braun. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to let you sit and bleed on those stairs, in the place where you had so many clever ideas that have come back and bit you in the ass, and I’m leaving. If I ever see you again… ’

‘Sam. You said you wanted your old life back. It’s been your mantra, from what I understand. I am offering you your old life. All you have to do to get back into the CIA is help me clean up this mess. You get what you want and so do I.’

‘I’m not giving the CIA my friends in the Round Table. I’m not giving you Mila. And I’m not helping you.’

‘Your old life,’ he said again. ‘Yours. They will give you no peace. All I’m offering you is your only chance to regain what you lost. Your child, your career.’

‘My wife?’

Braun swallowed. ‘I can give you back what can be given. What sort of life will you have with your son now? Do you think Nine Suns will give you peace? My offer is the only one that makes sense for you.’

‘All you are offering me is a chance to be you. Which is less than nothing.’

‘This is a very good offer I am making!’

‘… if I ever see you again, or you come near Mila, or Leonie, or my son, I will kill you. If you ever try to harm August, I will kill you.’ I almost mentioned Jack Ming but perhaps better if he thought Jack Ming was dead. ‘If I think you’re thinking about me, I will kill you. Go retire. Just… go away.’

‘I’m not lying. About your brother. Lucy always said that was why you joined, to get your revenge… ’

‘And that’s why you’d lie,’ I said. ‘Think about it. You’re bragging you founded the group that killed my brother? I really would shut up now.’

I turned and went back down the hallway. I found Leonie and Daniel hiding in a closet.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘We’re all leaving. Together.’

She clutched Daniel close. She had held him for several minutes, and her closeness calmed him. He looked up at me. Blinked, disinterested. Then looked at me again, one little fist raised toward me.

I took him from Leonie; I did not ask. She did not fight me. He was hers in a way but he was mine. I tucked his little head under my arm, like I’d seen the fathers on television do, and I could smell his warm milky breath. The soft weight of him. The miracle of him.

He raised his little fist again, and I kissed it.

The Bahamas

Daniel was afraid of the water.

I held him close to me. I found it hard to let him go at times, it was almost as if I needed to drink in his touch. He had grown used to me, in the past several weeks, and I liked to tell myself that my absence in the first months of his life was not impossible to overcome. That being apart from me for so long at his life’s beginning wouldn’t scar him. I read obsessively about the topic of parental separation on Google. It didn’t matter what the experts said.

I would make it right.

We walked in the surge of the tide and he stared down at the waves eddying around my calves. I timed it carefully with the surf and after a healthy wave passed I dipped his feet in the cool. He giggled. As the next wave surged forward I hoisted him high out of its path and he loved being raised toward the sky. We played the game, him laughing, until I miscued and the top of a foaming wave crept up past his swimsuit to splash his chest. Then he howled in dismay. Daniel, I had learned, liked his comforts.

Leonie had taken good care of him.

With my fussy boy fussing, I walked back up to the beach cottage. I thought Leonie would be inside, fixing lunch, but instead Mila sat at the table.

‘Hello,’ I said. I made Daniel’s hand wave. ‘Hello, Mila. I went surfing with no board.’

‘Please,’ Mila said. ‘Do not treat that beautiful child like a puppet.’ She got up and tapped his nose playfully with her finger. She frowned. ‘He is like a greasy pig.’

‘Sunscreen.’

‘Did you dip him in it?’

‘I don’t want him to get sunburned.’

‘Amazed you could maintain a grip.’

‘Do you want to hold him?’

‘Linen,’ she said, pointing to her blouse. ‘I don’t want to risk a massive oil stain.’ But she waved her greasy finger at the yawning Daniel and smiled a grin that seemed too bright for the Mila I knew. ‘Hello, pui or, ’ she chimed. I had learned this meant ‘little birdie’. Daniel gurgled back. He seemed a bit uncertain about Mila.

‘I think you’re a bit ambivalent about babies,’ I said, settling him into a chair and wiping his hands clean. An ocean explorer deserved a snack. I opened a bottle of organic pureed pears. I sat down and spooned the fruity mush into his mouth. Daniel gobbled.

‘Humans are much more interesting when they reach school age. Then I like them much better.’ She glanced at me. ‘Maybe by then I will retire and be a teacher again. Just for Daniel. Perhaps I will open an exclusive language school.’ She made a face. ‘I hear they are hiring.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘Ricardo Braun is now a big hero. I heard that he broke up a criminal ring here that was spying on American citizens and government and companies. He killed the two ringleaders: an Israeli man, a French woman.’

‘Of course he’s a, and I quote, “hero”.’

‘Wounded in the line of duty. Retired with honors. No farewell cocktail party, though. Went back to Florida. Living very quietly.’

‘So giving August the notebook was the right thing to do. That picture of Braun with two of the Suns sunk his comeback.’

‘The lovely red notebook can’t hurt us.’ Mila shrugged. ‘I tore out the pages of interest to me.’

‘The ones about the Round Table?’

‘Very few. But there are some useful people in the missing pages of the little red notebook. I say give them a chance to redeem themselves helping us rather than being blackmailed by Nine Suns.’

I shook my head.

‘On a voluntary basis,’ she said, with a cough.

‘The CIA has more resources than we do to bring down Nine Suns.’

‘And they will bring down at least a few of them that they can tie to the blackmail ring. The CIA will identify some of their plans. But, Sam, Nine Suns, they will not go away. Some fall, they will be replaced. Your friend Braun created too good and useful a template. They have made too much money, accrued too much power. They won’t give it up.’

‘I keep wondering if I should have killed him.’

‘You must not talk about killing people in front of pui or,’ she said. ‘It is bad for child development. You need boundaries.’

‘So Braun’s not running Special Projects.’