Authors: Jeff Abbott
I told her what I knew.
‘And you dispatched them?’
‘They won’t be troubling us any more.’
Anna was silent. ‘This isn’t our doing. At all. It’s your problem. Put Leonie on the line.’
I gave the phone to Leonie. ‘Anna. Is Taylor all right? Can I listen … Listen to … ’ Her voice broke. I don’t know if she
listened to her child or to Anna but she said all right and she handed me back the phone.
‘Yes?’
‘The next time we talk and you tell me that Jack Ming isn’t dead, your child will suffer.’
The phone clicked off.
Leonie helped me shower in the apartment’s small bathroom. The blood and sand rinsed from me. I sported cuts and bruises and
a nice slice across my chest, blood caked on my belly. She washed my hair for me in silence, soaping out the grains of sand.
She helped me dry off and I found boxers to put on for the doctor’s arrival.
I didn’t tell her Anna’s threat against Daniel. The idea would unnerve her, and we had to keep our focus. I was horrified
enough for the both of us.
She closed the door behind her. My arm was a dull ache. My whole body was a dull ache. But if I was hurt, then so was Ming
and he couldn’t run as far, or as fast. We might have clipped each other’s wings.
I drank the rest of Leonie’s Guinness. It felt good to be alive. I wanted to keep the kids alive. The past two days made me
very tired of death. I could hear the hustle of Manhattan traffic outside the windows. I closed my eyes and I only opened
them again when the door opened.
Bertrand stood there. He wore a tailored, subtly pinstriped suit on his tall frame, gray, with a sky-blue tie. He muttered
something in French when he saw me, which I couldn’t quite hear. He shook his head as he closed the door. I raised my arm,
which screamed in protest.
‘The doctor will arrive soon, Sam.’
‘We could be in trouble. Where is Mila?’
He shrugged. ‘There was a man here. Asking for you.’
‘Blond?’ I thought it might be August.
‘No, dark-haired. He asked how often you came by the bar. I said about once a week, and you had been here yesterday. He wanted
to know where you lived. I told him I didn’t know that, all I had for you was a phone number. I gave him a fake one. I don’t
think it occurred to him that you have an apartment here.’
August would send someone, the bar might be under surveillance. Or it might not be. They cared about finding Jack
Ming more than they cared about me. Special Projects did not have an inexhaustible supply of resources. Eight people in the
New York office. If they needed more feet on the ground they’d have to call Langley.
I told Bertrand what happened. He took away the martini glasses and the pint glass and brought me ibuprofen. I swallowed four.
‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘you aren’t going to find this Jack Ming again.’
‘We have his computer. Leonie is going through the files.’
‘Alone? You trust her?’
‘I have to.’
A knock on the door. The doctor. There are all sorts of medical professionals who are willing to practice on the side to not
require you make a trip to an emergency room. Usually they’re doctors or nurses who have been bankrupted by a lawsuit or they
have a prescription med monkey on their backs. This doctor was a woman, fiftyish, and seemed delightfully sober. She had a
backpack on and blue jeans and inside the backpack was an army field medical kit.
‘Doctor Smith,’ Bertrand said.
‘Smith,’ I said, ‘I hope I can remember.’
‘Doctor I’m Not Going to Say Your Real Name doesn’t quite trip off the tongue,’ Bertrand said.
The doctor said nothing to me except ‘tell me what happened’ and ‘does this hurt?Does this?’ She did not blink when I described
getting hit in the arm with a flowerpot, or throwing myself off a building, or landing in a sand truck. She ran fingertips
along my arm, tested it, watched me wince. ‘At worst a simple break.’
‘Can’t you tell?’
‘The kryptonite is interfering with my x-ray vision,’ she said
dryly. ‘I can equip you with a fiberglass cast. You need to rest the arm, though. No more jumping off buildings.’
‘Okay,’ I said. She set about her work of setting and casting my arm. Bertrand went and turned on a television to a local
twenty-four-hour news station. After a weather update, and a political scandal out of Albany involving a state senator and
a prostitute, the gun chase through the streets of Brooklyn and us falling off the building were the top stories. But they
hadn’t caught me, and they hadn’t caught Jack Ming.
‘I need you to move into fast gear, Doctor, because I got places to be.’
Bertrand said, ‘Inspect his head for concussion, please.’
‘I don’t have a concussion.’
Bertrand brought me black slacks and a black shirt. The doctor assembled a bandage around my arm and put on the cast. I got
dressed. She said hardly a word. She left me instructions and a large bottle of illicit painkillers. Bertrand stuck a wad
of cash into her hand and she was gone.
‘What is it you want me to do?’ Bertrand crossed his arms. He looked like he should be in charge, not me.
‘Special Projects will be working to find him. But they won’t go to the police because they don’t want to explain why they’re
causing gunfire in the streets. Now I just have to figure out where Jack will go.’
‘Sam!’ Leonie screamed. ‘Sam, come here!’
I hurried into the room where Leonie sat. A messaging window was open on the screen. Leonie pointed and I leaned down and
read the words
you will never find me losers so fuck you.
‘Jack?’
‘Yes. He’s got a remote access program. He’s got control of the system.’
Damn. He could format the hard drive remotely; he could wipe out all the information on the system.
I leaned down and typed
I want to make a deal with you. We have a common enemy in Nine Suns
.
The words stood alone until another sentence appeared below them:
Is this Sam Capra?
Yes.
‘Don’t tell him anything. Don’t,’ Leonie said.
You say you want me dead to save your kid. I know. But you know even if you kill me, your kid is dead.
‘He’s lying,’ Leonie said. ‘He’s lying just to protect himself. To scare us.’
Give us the notebook and we’ll tell them you’re dead, I wrote. You can hide or surrender to the CIA or whatever.
I have no reason to trust you, he wrote. You threw me off a building.
I’m sorry. We have a common enemy. You know I’m being forced to work for them. We can both be free.
This is a trap and I’m not stupid
.
Why are you even talking to me then?
I wrote.
I want you to know you’ve lost. You will never, ever find me. I’m sorry about your kid
.
We could fool them together. Give them a fake notebook. Tell them you’re dead, they’re not looking for you. We get our kids
back. We all win.
No. I won’t risk it.
I took a deep breath and typed:
I’m sorry, Jack. They killed your mother. I’m sorry to tell you this.
Long silence. Then:
You’re lying.
No. I’m not. We tried to save her. They took her and they killed her. At a house in Morris County, on River Run Road. Only
house on the street.
I expected then that he would cut off the communication. He would reformat the drive, he would steal our hope from us, he
would snap the link.
I offered the sparest of olive branches:
I killed the man who killed her. If that’s consolation.
The words just felt so empty.
How did they?
The letters appeared one at time, typed slowly, as though his hands were shaking.
They shot her. We tried to help her.
Sure you did. Sure you did.
Will you listen to me?
I wrote.
Please.
Silence again.
I wrote:
They will kill you, Jack. Our only hope is to help each other. We fake your death, you’re free of them and we get our kids
back.
That requires me to trust you, and that’s not going to happen, Sam. They’re going to want proof. A body.
I will give them proof that satisfies. I have an idea on how we can do it. They care more about the notebook.
‘What the hell are you promising him?’ Leonie said. ‘Anna won’t believe us.’
‘We’re not delivering a body to them. Just proof. She wants that notebook more than she wants anything else.’
I’ve read the notebook, so I’m a dead man. So are you if you read it. They’ll draw you in to give you back your kid and then
they’ll kill you. There is no way out of this that works for you. If you let me go I can use the information in the notebook
to bring them down. That’s the best I can do for you.
No
, I wrote.
The CIA is going to find you before you find me, Sam.
Leonie said, ‘I feel sick.’
Is there mention of a man named Ray Brewster in the notebook?
A pause.
No.
That’s the name of the man who’s after you, we think.
I don’t know that name.
I know you don’t trust me. I know. All I’m trying to do is save my son.
We waited for Jack’s words to appear.
‘If they find him first and they tell him that you offered him a deal … ’ Leonie started then stopped.
I waited, fingers poised above the keyboard for him to answer. He didn’t. I typed into the void:
Please don’t let my son die. He’s never had a chance at life. He’s only a few months old. Please.
They won’t let Daniel live. I feel certain. You don’t know how bad these people are.
Daniel. He knew my child’s name. A cold fear struck me:
Is there something in the notebook about my son?
Yes.
Behind me, Leonie sucked in breath.
What?
No. I won’t tell you.
That was his insurance then, to stay alive at my hands.
All right. But then you know I’ve told you the truth. This is our only chance, for both of us. Let’s meet.
Silence for the thirty longest seconds of my life.
What do you propose?
We meet. You give me the notebook. We pose you in some photos to appear dead, which I take. I deliver the notebook and proof
of your death. I get my son back. Nine Suns thinks you’re dead and they never touch you again.
I have to have money.
That was why he went to the CIA, I realized. He wanted to sell the notebook.
I can get you money
, I wrote.
How much?
A half-million. And a new name, and a place to hide.
Thirty long seconds.
All right, meet tomorrow at the Statue of Liberty. 3 p.m.
Then the machine whirred, the hard drive reformatting. He seized remote control of the system and he blanked out all the files.
Leonie hit keystroke combinations, but nothing worked. The screen went gray and blue and a reformat pro gress window appeared.
‘I can’t stop it,’ Leonie said. ‘Damn it to hell.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘I can’t believe he agreed to meet us.’ She sounded stunned.
‘Oh, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s completely a trap. He’s going to tell August that’s where we will be. He knows we’re after
him, and so is August. This ties up both sides as pursuers. Maybe if someone inside Nine Suns tries to warn us it’s a trap,
Jack will tell August that information will ID who the mole is. Everyone who’s chasing him tangles and then Jack’s running
and gone.’
‘But he needs money.’
‘The one thing we know about Nine Suns is that it’s global. So he didn’t sell the information to the Americans. He can sell
it to the British, the French, the Chinese. Someone will pay. And then Jack hides, and our kids are gone.’ I leaned back.
‘The only trump I had was his mother.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He might really want justice for his mom. That might make him take a risk.’
‘But you said he wasn’t close to his mom.’
‘She’s still his mom. Don’t you think one day Taylor would do anything to save you?’
Leonie swallowed. ‘I would hope.’
‘Mrs Ming died and he’s going to feel responsible. He wants
to set a trap for us; we have to set one for him. One where we can grab him and get the notebook and then draw in Anna.’
‘Kill him and take the notebook. Why is this so hard?’
‘They will not just hand us back our kids, Leonie. That notebook is our leverage. We have to have it to guarantee a safe exchange
for the children.’
‘I do not like this.’
We were at an impasse.
‘I’ve told you what I’m doing. Either you want to help me or you don’t. If you think you can track Jack and kill him, then,
please, by all means.’
The silence grew uncomfortable. ‘Fine,’ she finally said. ‘We’ll do it your way. Not that you’re leaving me much choice.’
‘I told you we will get our kids back.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like to eat.’
‘I’ll have food sent up. There’s a menu over there. Order whatever you like.’
Leonie got up. She stretched hands above her head. She studied the menu. ‘High end bar fare. A calamari panini? Mini caviar
sliders? Yuck.’
‘Bertrand likes to experiment. I can recommend the Kobe beef burger and the fish and chips.’
She put the menu down. ‘I hope they’re feeding our babies okay.’
‘Leonie, hold it together.’
‘I am. I have been.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I’ll go downstairs and order us some food. What would you like?’
‘You order for us both, I like everything on the menu. Perks of being the owner.’ I tried to give her a reassuring smile.
I supposed she might take her revenge on me by bringing back that questionable calamari panini.