The Last Minute (50 page)

I said nothing.

‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘No. I just have nothing to say to you.’ I put my gaze back to my book.

‘I have taken precautions. If I do not call in to a number and give a correct passcode, your son dies. Don’t decide you can
kill both Ming and me, or take me hostage for your son.’

‘I can follow orders.’

‘I played with your son the other day,’ Zviman said.

My blood went cold.

‘He’s very responsive for a child. I don’t know a lot about babies, but your little lad looks you in the eye. I enjoyed getting
to hold him.’

Wordless rage.

‘I know you’ll do a first-rate job. Then you’ll get to see your son. I hope I don’t cry. Family reunions make me tearful.’

I saw a man move from the walkway to a dense copse of black locust trees, a good thirty feet off the path. He stood in their
shade, and produced a smartphone from his pocket. The blond mohawk was a trimmed, ghostly strip of hair. I knew his face from
Mila’s description. It
was
Zviman. He didn’t walk funny, though. I didn’t look at him but I felt quite sure he looked at me. I kept scanning the approaches.

Then I saw Jack Ming. Dressed in jeans, and a Giants windbreaker, and a Giants baseball cap.

He was holding the red notebook in his left hand, and had his right hand in his pocket.

The stiletto I had hidden in my cast felt heavy. The handle of the blade I’d cut down to conceal it rubbed against my wrist.
Bertrand has an interesting collection of knives at The Last Minute.

‘Here he comes,’ I said.

‘I see him,’ Zviman said. ‘Look at him, he thinks he’s tough. I wonder how he thinks he got tough sitting at a keyboard all
day.’ The hatred in his voice was thick.

I glanced around. Two people, binoculars up, looking the opposite way, focused on their birding. A couple and a single man
heading toward Bow Bridge. A young woman, iPodded, lost in her music rather than birdsong and park noise.

Ming had his back to me.

Jack Ming stopped and glanced around. Then he looked right at Zviman. And he walked to the tree.

I waited.

Courtesy of Zviman’s earpiece I could hear the conversation.

‘Hello, Jack.’

‘Let’s set the conditions. If I don’t come back from this meeting, a friend calls the police and gives them your description.
He already took your photo with a telescopic lens.’ Jack’s voice was steady. ‘I think you’d have to shave off that Velcro
strip on your head and wear a wig to make it out of the city.’

‘Jack, please don’t insult me.’ Zviman’s voice was kind. ‘I’m a businessman. I’m here to make a trade. We both end up happy.’
He shrugged. ‘Look, I’m not unmindful you wrote the code that let us steal the secrets. I respect that what you’re getting
could be considered a fair cut.’

‘Move the money.’

Zviman held up his smartphone so Jack could see its screen. He keyed in the account transfer code and kept the phone raised
so Jack could see the blue progress bar fill as the dollars and cents jumped from an account in the Caymans into a Swiss account.
Silence between them.

‘Done. Check it for yourself if you like,’ Zviman said.

At the word
done
I stood. Jack Ming still had his back to me. I moved forward, silently across the grass, weaving in between the trees, my
hand on the hidden stiletto handle in the cast.

Jack brought a cell phone up from under the red notebook. He kept his right hand in his pocket. No one watching would like
that. He’d apparently preset the phone’s browser to his bank account and he hit a refresh button.

I kept approaching, keeping the center of his shoulders as my axis of approach. I moved quickly and quietly across the damp
grass.

‘The page isn’t loading,’ Jack said, a tinge of nervous frustration in his voice.

‘The internet. So unreliable.’

He thumbed a button again. ‘Still locked up. I’m not giving you the notebook until the money’s in my balance.’

Zviman smiled with infinite patience. ‘That’s fair.’

I was twenty seconds away.

‘You’re trying to cheat me,’ Jack said. And he pulled the gun from the pocket of the windbreaker.

I was still ten feet behind him but now running at full force,
no attempt at stealth. Jack jabbed the gun toward Zviman, as though counting on his target’s own flesh to muffle the sound
of the shot. Zviman jumped back, wrenching Jack’s arm up, and by then I slammed my cast into the side of Jack’s neck. He staggered
and I yanked him backward, away from Zviman, and he tried to aim the gun at me. I folded his elbow back toward him and he
made a little mewling protest as the gun’s barrel touched his stomach. He bent and I got a hand on the trigger and the shot
wasn’t as loud as it could have been. I moved the gun to the chest and pulled the trigger again and he fell to his side, two
small, bright blossoms of blood on his shirt. He gave a hard, wet cough of red and then he lay still among the trees.

I pulled him back against the trunk of the tree and zipped up the Giants windbreaker to cover the blood. ‘Make it look like
he’s sitting. He won’t draw attention that way.’

Zviman moved away from me, staring at Jack. ‘The stiletto. Drop it.’

‘What?’ I was trying to raise and settle Jack’s head so it didn’t loll and I couldn’t get the angle right.

‘You didn’t need the knife. But you’re not getting armed into a car with me.’

I dropped the stiletto to the ground, kicked it behind the tree.

‘Hey, hey!’ A tall black man, with a birding book and binoculars, had wandered closer to us, directing his shout to a bird
in a distant tree, but he seemed absorbed in his lenses. Which were aimed in the sky above our head. He could notice Jack,
or us, at any moment and I heard Zviman suck in a hiss of breath.

‘Go. Walk. Now. Before he sees the blood.’ I used my sleeve to wipe Jack’s mouth blood away.

Zviman knelt, picked up Jack’s phone – and the red notebook. It was one of those classic leather-covered ones, with an elastic
band to keep it closed. It was smaller than I thought it would be. He started hurrying away from the body, flipping the pages.

‘Don’t run,’ I said to him. ‘Keep walking normally.’

He glanced back. The tall black man still studied the sky, then glanced at his birding book, then at the treetops again.

Zviman and I continued our steady walk.

‘Where are the children?’ I asked.

‘Wait, we’re not clear yet.’

We cut across Bow Bridge, silent with each other, and headed down to the 72nd Street Transverse that sliced through the park.
Zviman hurried to the street and raised his arm for a cab. Well-dressed guy, moneyed – a cab stopped within thirty seconds,
releasing a pair of tourists clutching Beatles memorabilia who looked like they intended to go pay tribute to John Lennon
over at Strawberry Fields. New York luck. We both got inside.

Zviman gave the cabbie the address of a parking garage a dozen blocks away. He raised a finger toward his lips, like I was
stupid enough to speak in front of a witness. He flipped through the pages of the notebook, shaking his head. ‘Little bastard,’
he said more than once. ‘Little, rotten bastard.’

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.’

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?