Adrenaline (52 page)

“We’ll pretend, in other words, that it never happened.” His pet phrase he’d used with me in that distant prison where I had been the only inmate.

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” I said, and I shot him. The bullet sprayed through his heart and he jerked. The sound of the shot was loud but no one was right by the car then. Immediately afterward a group of Boy Scouts hurried by and they glanced at me and Howell sitting in the car. He stayed sitting up, his head down a bit like he’d decided to grab a nap, like the shooting, to use a phrase he favored, had never happened. I just got out and walked away from him, sifting into the crowd.

Let me go
. Now I’d let it all go. Everything. All of it. Gone.

W
HEN A COMPANY EXEC DIES
in a baseball stadium parking lot, right after an elected leader is assassinated, the case gets taken from the NYPD and the Company takes over the investigation. The Company was most interested in the nano bullets and the gun, and the shipment manifest tied to a container of cigarettes.

The fifty people I’d seen on Zaid’s computer were indeed the kids and spouses of America’s governors. No one is targeting them now, and they sleep safe in their college dorms, their beds at home, their cradles. Including Bryant Hapscomb, shielded by his father’s body; the bullet couldn’t change course fast enough. Thousands attended the governor’s funeral. He died for his child, although the world believed him to have been the target. It did not occur to anyone that a thirteen-year-old boy was the real target, and that the governor simply threw himself on his child, covering him in the same millisecond that Edward pulled the trigger.

A few days after the shootings at the stadium, I sat in the Round Table’s New York bar, an elegant space called Bluecut, drinking a Boylan Bottleworks Ginger Ale, my favorite soda, waiting for Mila to show up. The bar sat on
the edge of Bryant Park, not far from the hubbub of Times Square, and it was a beauty. Perfect Connemara marble curve, fine chairs, the right tools with which to lift cocktail creation to an art. A glance, even in the early afternoon, told me that it was a Destination. Every person at the bar, every person at a table had their own story. Soft jazz—but not light jazz—filled the air, played on a grand piano by an African-American woman with a shock of blond hair and fingers delicate enough to impress Monk or Mozart. I liked this Bluecut bar a lot, but I felt itchy waiting here. I had things to do.

I ordered a Glenfiddich for Mila and had it waiting for her. She had been kept in a rental office near a port; she’d been found by a member of a Salvadoran cleaning crew. Howell had been questioning her. The burn marks on the soles of her feet were taking a long while to heal.

August slid onto the stool. He pointed at Mila’s drink. “Can I just down that?”

“It’s for my friend Mila, but go ahead.”

“If she drinks that, she’s my friend, too.”

I thought it best not to mention that Mila was the one who’d grazed him with a bullet in Amsterdam. “Go ahead, but it’s eleven in the morning,” I said. “Try the ginger ale, it’s perfectly cold and good.”

“But whisky means good tidings,” he said.

“I thought whisky was for wakes.”

“One man’s wake is another man’s good tidings,” August said. He cupped his hands around the glass. “The police identified you, you know. Lucy getting shot got captured on a security camera. They know you didn’t do it.”

“I know. They haven’t bothered me.”

“The Company sat on it. It took a lot of grease and
muscle and loss of face. NYPD is quite particular about its officers being bested in terms of control of their firearms.”

I sipped my ginger ale. “So now the Company is shielding me?”

“They—we—oh hell,” August said. “None of us are fools. While I was being suffocated under the weight of New York’s finest, you were killing Howell.”

“If I did, they’re ignoring it. He’s the biggest embarrassment to the Company since—”

“Since Lucy. You can say it.”

“Officially, there are no prints.”

“Then it didn’t happen. Like Howell always said.” August cleared his throat, studied his drink, took a nice healthy sip. “The Company has deputized me to offer you your job back.”

“Why you?”

“They think you’ll only listen to a drinking buddy.”

“I
would
only listen to you, August. You were a real friend to me.” I clinked my green bottle against his whisky. “But I have to find my kid. And the Company, except for you, was quick to think me a traitor. Not a nice vote of confidence.”

“Sam, you must understand—”

“I do. I don’t want them. They had no faith in me.”

August savored his drink over several small sips. “This is why I needed the drink. You’re a bad influence. I can only hope you are going to find gainful employment.”

“I don’t care about a job. I have to find my kid.”

“How? Edward is dead, Howell is dead, Lucy may never wake up.”

Lucy was lost in a limbo between life and death, and I
couldn’t decide how I felt about that. Edward’s final bullet had left her in a coma. The doctors in the CIA hospital could give me no real hope that she would wake up; but the powers that be wanted her kept alive. She was a potential source about the mystery of Novem Soles. So she lay beribboned with wires and tubes, broken. Maybe she dreamed endlessly of her precious money. Maybe she dreamed of me and our child. “I lean on the right people back in Europe, I’ll find him.”

“The Company isn’t going to let you go quietly into that good night.” August lowered his voice. “They’re going to keep a watch on your passport. They’re going to be shadowing you when you might not expect it. This whole ‘Howell working for a secret group’ has them shaken. They’d like to pretend it isn’t as frightening as it actually is. They want to know what you’re doing. Who you’re going after.”

“They can try and find out, as long as they don’t get in my way. Are you sticking with them?”

“Yes, I must get my semisuspect hands on my retirement benefits.” August shot me a sidelong look. “I’m sure, though, we’ll see each other again.”

“I’m sure, too.”

He got up and fished in his wallet.

“I got it,” I said. “Least I could do.”

“Yes, but I have a job,” he said.

“No, really, I got it. Thank you, August.”

“You will find your son, Sam. I know you will.”

“I know I will.” I watched August leave and wondered if anyone was shadowing him. I could smell the whisky left in August’s glass and I ordered one for myself.

I was just starting on its replacement when Mila slid onto the stool.

H
ELLO, SAM
.”

“Mila.”

“I promised we would have a drink together when all was done.” Her bruises were healing, but there was a sadness in her eyes instead of the steel I was used to in her gaze. I gestured at the bartender. He brought her a Glenfiddich without being told.

I said, “That doesn’t go with painkillers.”

“Americans have obsessive worry about drug interactions. So risk-averse.”

“With such a nice place, why did you go drink at Ollie’s?”

“I would like to buy Ollie’s bar, as he said. He won’t sell.”

“Two bars in one city?”

“Brooklyn and Manhattan are two different concepts.” She glanced around. “Oh, yes, I like bars. Bluecut is really marvelous.”

“I like bars, too.”

“Good,” she said. “Would you like this one?”

I glanced at her. “I like this one just fine.”

“You misunderstand. Would you like to own it? Bluecut, and all the bars we have? The Adrenaline in London,
the Rode Prins in Amsterdam, Taverne Chevalier in Brussels? We have many more: in Las Vegas, Sydney, Miami, Paris, Moscow, all around the world. I think we’re up to thirty.”

She had to be kidding so I laughed. “Sure. You and I can go have a drink in each one. After I have my son back.”

“Sam. My employers are interested in retaining your services. You did extraordinary work for us.”

“Was Bahjat Zaid part of your Round Table? One of the rich and powerful members?”

She didn’t show surprise that I knew the Round Table name. She said, “Yes, he was. He supplied us in the past.”

“He wasn’t such a nice guy.”

“He was a desperate man, trying to save a daughter. He made poor choices.”

I started to shake my head, but Mila deserved better than scorn. “I don’t even know who you people are.” And I remembered what I’d said in London to the suits, about networks that came together only to do work, snapped apart and re-formed in new shapes, some so powerful and with such reach that they had infiltrated government. I’d talked about criminal networks that way; perhaps the Round Table was such an informal network, but a force for good. Novem Soles could be its opposite, the dark to its light.

“Together we stopped Edward. We stopped Howell. You know we’re on the side of the angels.”

“I’ve had enough mystery. I
have
enough mystery. I have to find my son.”

“Sam. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” That wasn’t a hard decision. I did trust Mila. She was halfway to crazy, and she was unpredictable, but I
could see a core of decency that ran through her clear as iron in stone.

“There’s a reason certain people inside the Company don’t want you to find your child,” she said quietly.

“What?”

She slid a piece of paper over to me. It read: AGENT CAPRA CAN ONLY BE CONTROLLED BY HIS DESIRE TO FIND HIS CHILD. ALL FILES ON CAPRA ARE CLASSIFIED DUE TO and then long black lines of redaction. “That is from a highest-classification file. Whoever has taken your child, the powers that be wish to keep that person’s identity a secret. Out of a desire to control you.”

I stared at her. “I don’t believe this.”

“I think the Company would like to help you. I am not at all indicting the CIA. But there is a secret cabal inside it, I believe, connected to Howell; perhaps he was only their tool. These people will block you at every turn. If you try and work inside with them, your quest for Daniel will be futile.” She took a long, savoring sip of her whisky. “I do not like being the bearer of bad news.”

“Why would this be so?” But then I thought of my work in London. Criminal networks, tied into governments. It had happened across Europe; now it was happening here.

“Because we don’t yet know all their secrets, Sam. Lucy’s and Howell’s. Maybe even yours.”

“I don’t have secrets.”

“Sometimes you don’t know… what you don’t know,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“You need to find your son. We need your talents, from time to time. You need a cover. So, I propose this: to the
public, you will be given the ownership of the bars. All of them. Run them, keep them profitable.” She smiled. “The bars give you a reason to go wherever your search for your son, or wherever our assignments, take you. A cover that the Company cannot question. You do, after all, have a background in working in bars, and you need gainful employment. You will do jobs for us when needed. Jobs that require your skill set, your vision, your sense of action.”

It was a profound compliment. “They’ll still suspect. And now you’re saying I’m working against the CIA.”

“No. Against someone—probably several—inside it, who have no loyalty to the CIA, or to your government, or to humanity, for that matter. Have you not wondered if Howell had a master?” Only Mila could say the word
master
and have it sound cruel rather than funny. “This Novem Soles, Howell was their boy. Even with his high rank, he must have been nothing to them, just a flunky being paid. Worse will come, I think.”

I studied the bottom of my whisky glass.

“We will help you. I swear to you, Sam. Please say yes. Here.” She slipped me a DVD. “Security tape from the clinic Lucy said she had the baby at. You will see a tall, dark woman leaving Lucy’s room, carrying a baby, the day after your child was born.”

I didn’t dare to breathe.

“We can help you ID this woman. Pick up the thread.”

Find the line, I thought, just as I had raced to find it in the parkour run on that long-ago morning in London, the last normal morning of my life. Find the line.