Authors: Jeff Abbott
Ricki tapped her lip. ‘A passport and credit cards? I know a guy in Brussels who works wonders, but he’s not cheap. He can
probably have you a passport in three days, another day to overnight it.’
‘All right.’
‘Your money, I can ask a guy in Russia. He moves a lot of funds for me. But I can’t promise. Could you just withdraw all the
cash?’
‘Yes, but I’d prefer to keep it electronic, less likely to lose it.’ He did not want to add that he didn’t care to keep tens
of thousands of euros he’d earned hacking for Nic’s criminal ring about his person. He wanted the money moved, cleanly, hidden
where he could reach it under a new name. And where he wouldn’t have to worry about customs, or the police freezing his accounts
if they figured out Jin Ming was a lie. He was a potential murderer in their eyes now, everything had changed. He needed to
keep as many of his secrets close to him as he could.
‘Okay, this guy you need to contact. He doesn’t want to be found?’
‘He is part of a bureaucracy that can hide me.’
‘Government?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dutch?’
‘No. American.’
Ricki stared. ‘You want me to penetrate a top-level American
government network. Did you go to a smoke bar after you left the hospital?’
‘No. I’ll do it. But if I run into a wall I will want your expertise.’
Flattery was the most potent currency in the hacker world. That and respect, acknowledgment of skills. She didn’t smile until
she’d lifted the tea cup and she thought Jack couldn’t see her grin. ‘I thought you might have some programs to help me chisel
my way in.’
‘I might. You hungry?’
‘Yes. Very.’
‘I can cook some pasta, open some wine. Oh, I didn’t think about giving you more alcohol, are you on meds?’
‘I would very much like a glass of wine. And, no, I have no meds.’
‘Now that would be a challenge,’ she said. ‘Get an online pharmacy to send you what you need, without placing an actual order.’
She laughed and so did he, and for a moment the memory that he had killed a man, albeit an assassin, edged from the center
of his thoughts. He was always happier when he had a problem with which to play.
‘Is that all you need?’
‘Yes,’ he said. But it was a lie. He knew where Nic lived. And Nic being dead, and the police would have had all his computers
confiscated since he was a known con artist and trader in online filth. So had the police found the notebook and taken it?
Surely that would be news, if a murdered man’s notebook could blow open an international crime ring. But the police could
keep the discovery silent, the same way they’d shielded his name and location while he recovered.
Ricki brought him wine and sat down next to him. Close to
him. She smiled at him, warmly. Was surviving a shooting … was that sexy? He’d avoided most girls at Delft because he didn’t
want to risk blowing his cover story. Girls always wanted to know about you, to delve into secrets. But Ricki had secrets
of her own. She might not ask too many more questions.
They drank the wine and before he knew it, before he could analyse it, he’d taken her wine glass and set it on the coffee
table and he was kissing her warm mouth. She kissed him back. He was alive. He’d forgotten how good it could feel. So he did
all the things necessary for living; he kissed her, he laughed with her, they ate dinner, they made love. Then they lay in
bed and watched a movie she’d stolen from a studio’s laptop, a film that wasn’t hitting theaters for another three weeks.
When she fell asleep and the movie was over, Jack began to think. He needed a way to figure out where Nic would hide his most
potent and powerful secret of all, and he would have to start by breaking into Nic’s house tomorrow morning.
I hit the ground wrong.
I rolled too sharply, and felt a pull in my shoulder. I stopped and the early morning desert sky loomed above me. Back in
my London days I ran parkour – extreme running, where you vault up walls and use handholds and drop from heights without breaking
bones (hopefully). It had been my release from the tension of work, exploring abandoned spaces, turning walls into
roads, using precision to power through a space in a more efficient way. But I was out of practice; when your child is missing
you don’t really want to take the time for exercise. I’d arrived around midnight Las Vegas time last night, and couldn’t sleep,
too wound with excitement and tension. Today was a waiting game, with the rest of the day to kill before Anna Tremaine arrived
for our meeting. So I’d gotten up early to try my luck against gravity. It was 5 a.m. and the quietest hour in Vegas, and
no one around to see me run.
I’d decided to run through an unfinished building not far from my bar. The last thing I needed to do before capturing Anna
– and I had every intention of taking her prisoner – was to hurt myself so I wouldn’t be at peak condition.
But the parkour helped my head. When I had to plan a run, a vault, a leap that I could barely make, only then I didn’t think
of Daniel. Then I didn’t think of Lucy. Distraction is a sure way to break a leg or an arm. I got up, dusted off my butt.
Looked at the wall before me, five feet high; beyond its rim was air.
I was tired of the walls around me, the false ones in the shapes of threats and violence. I wanted my son back. That was the
only wall to conquer. I ran at the wall, did a
saut de chat
(jump of the cat). I went head first, my hands landed on the wall’s top surface. My legs powered past my arms as I flew from
the wall. I landed fair and kept running.
I hadn’t had a clean run since the bombing, when my wife was taken from me before my eyes in a London street and I did a parkour
run through a remodeled building, bomb-damaged scaffolding collapsing around me, running like I never had before to keep her
in my sight, to not lose her.
But, of course, I did lose her, and in a worse way than if she had been kidnapped and killed.
I vaulted up a narrow staircase in the unfinished motel, bouncing off the walls, feeling the sweat explode from my skin. Burning
off the too many drinks of the middle of the night, the worry about Daniel, the stress over whether I might be arrested or
grabbed by August’s team to force me to tell them more about Mila and the Round Table.
I reached the roof and the desert early morning sun shone on me. Las Vegas, even at its edges, is never entirely hushed. I
wished there were neighboring roofs. I used to run the council housing projects in London, and on a roof I felt like I had
wings. I ran in a circle here, staying warm, building up my power, stopping only to study the balconies jutting off the side
of the building, wondering if I could navigate the seven stories in a series of controlled jumps and drops from balcony to
balcony. Who needs stairs?
Dropping from balcony to balcony might attract attention; the police are rarely parkour fans. I studied the line of movement
it would take to do the balcony drops. Part of my mind said too risky, but another part wanted to feel like I’d pushed myself,
like I was testing myself for the final stretch of confronting Anna Tremaine and getting my son back. I wanted to be sure
I still had my nerve, my daring.
Drop, roll, vault, drop again, roll. I played the run in my head.
I dropped down to the first balcony and from the edge of my eye I saw the car on the facing road brake to a halt.
I should have checked first. I’d needed to be sure that I didn’t have a witness, someone who might call 9-1-1 on the crazy
guy doing the balcony surfing. I stood up from the balcony.
The road near the unfinished motel was empty. Except for the one car, stopped at a light at a deserted intersection.
Okay, I thought, not me, it stopped for a light.
A green light. I could see the double glint of binoculars past the window.
I dropped back out of sight.
Waited. I heard the purr of the car’s engine moving. I glanced over the edge. I could see the driver below, a sleeve of purple
jacket, a snug knit hat pulled tight over the head.
The car sped away.
Maybe he just stopped because he saw you jump. That’s it. Yes, that’s all.
But the run was ruined for me. I dropped down the rest of the balconies and ran back to my car.
Mila would be here this afternoon, and then Anna Tremaine. And, by tonight, I hoped, I would have my son back.
The doorknob to Nic’s apartment turned under his hand. Unlocked. But Jack stood and knocked for the fourth time, his heart
hammering in his chest. If Nic had a woman or a roommate still living here, that person was also likely connected to Novem
Soles. But he had to know. And he couldn’t wait. The police were looking for him. The dead man had been discovered at the
hospital. The papers carried a picture of both Jack’s face and one of the man he’d killed. The online news site had the most
up-to-date information, and by noon Amsterdam time the police had released the man’s identity: a Czech immigrant named Davel,
who had an arrest record a meter long, mostly as a rented
enforcer for eastern Europeans who were muscling into illegal activities in the West.
A hired thug, sent to kill Jack, and he’d ruined Jack’s plan to slip out of sight.
Jack remembered Hollywood blockbusters about a man on the run. Being on the run could look like a bit of a lark. You could
always outpace and outthink the pursuers. It was not fun. Jack was sick with the thought that even walking on the street he
would be seen, noticed, made for the man on the front page of the paper.
He pushed the door open and called out: ‘Hello?’
No answer. The apartment was small and not tidy. Old newspapers sat stacked, unread, on a coffee table. He could smell spilled
lager. A muted television played in the corner, offering news of the world, ignored.
He had the gun he’d taken from his assassin in his pocket.
He stepped down the hallway to where a door was half closed and inside the room lay an old woman. She slept, a vodka bottle
clasped loosely in her hands. Her pose could have been a poster highlighting the blight of alcohol. He glanced at the label:
very cheap vodka, the kind the university kids with no money drank, and the room smelled as though she didn’t invest much
in soap, either. She looked like a female, fragmented version of Nic – strands of red in the graying hair, short, stocky,
a fleshy mouth.
Nic lived with his mother, at his age? Jack couldn’t imagine. Of course, Jack’s mother didn’t want him around. He stepped
out and made sure the rest of the apartment was empty. He guessed a back bedroom had been Nic’s. Large desks with a slight
settling of dust, with clean spots where computers and monitors had likely sat.
Naturally the police had taken all of Nic’s gear. It was evidence – he was a hacker and a scumball and he’d been murdered.
He searched the rest of the room. Nothing electronic remained. He saw no papers, no records. The room had been picked clean
except for Nic’s computer books.
No sign of a notebook. He didn’t even know how big it was, which could affect where it was hidden.
He checked the room a final time, being extra careful, and then went back to the old woman’s bedroom. She was snoring now.
He sat on the edge of the bed and shook her awake. He thought she would scream in horror at a stranger in her room. Her eyes
stared at him, muddled, then widened in fear. ‘Who … Get away from me.’
‘I won’t hurt you. I’m a friend of Nic’s.’
‘Friend of Nic’s.’ She spat at him, made her face a scowl.
‘I am. He gave me a job.’
She stared at him. ‘Get out of my house.’
He pointed to the healing wound on his neck. ‘The people who killed your son did that to me. I want to make them pay.’ He
tried to smile. What did you say in a situation like this? ‘I am his friend, I promise you.’
‘His friends got him killed. And now the police, they say all these lies about my Nic. That he did terrible things.’
‘Mrs ten Boom, please, let me help you.’ He got up and jetted water into a clean glass and brought it to her. She drank it
down and then she glanced at the vodka bottle. Uncertain, he poured a tiny bit into the glass. She took a tiny sip, as though
embarrassed, and then looked at him with sullen eyes.
‘I’ll leave you alone,’ Jack said, ‘but I know of a way to get back at the people who hurt Nic.’ Like avenging Nic was his
motive. Lying to a grieving mother. Gosh, he was so proud of himself these days. A slow throb of headache began to pulse in
his temples. He looked at the vodka glass instead of her, which was fine as she was looking at the vodka as well.
‘How?’
‘Nic was researching the bad people who led him astray. He learned their secrets. I helped him a bit, but I don’t know where
he would have hidden the information.’
‘He kept everything on computers. I don’t even know how to work one. I don’t like them.’ She flapped her hands, as if computers
were gnats floating near her face. Her voice turned a bit petulant.
‘It’s a notebook. With printouts in it from the computer. Where would he keep it?’
Her gaze went sly. ‘How do I know you’re not a cop, or one of the people who hurt Nic?’
‘If I was a cop, I’d arrest you and take you down to the station,’ Jack said. ‘If I was your enemy, I would not pour you vodka.’
‘You waited a long time to come.’
‘The people who shot me killed Nic,’ he said. ‘I just got out of the hospital. You see the news last night?’
‘Yes.’ She blinked at him and then sipped the vodka as though it would sharpen her recollections rather than dull them. And
maybe, Jack thought, they would. ‘Yes. I remember you. Nic’s friend. At the coffee shop. The smart boy from Hong Kong.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Yes. All right. Give me some more.’
He dribbled more vodka into the glass, feeling guilty with each chug of the clear liquid. No vodka like morning vodka, he
thought. She drank it down, wiped her mouth with an
age-spotted hand. ‘I can’t help you. The police came. They took all the computers. They said there were dirty pictures on
them, and they said Nicky had hacked into the police’s own computers.’ She threw up her hands. ‘He’s dead. No one cares about
his reputation any more except me.’