The Last Minute (11 page)

‘I’ve never heard of a bounty that high funded by a crime ring. How on earth has she survived three years?’

‘Very good or very lucky.’

‘Maybe no one’s gotten close to finding her.’ Braun studied the photo again. ‘She looks like an elf. Seriously, put pointed
ears on her and she’d be the perfect Santa Claus line monitor at Christmas. This big a bounty, and no one even knows who she
is? Incredible. Where was this chatter?’

‘It’s come up on a few discussion forums – usually of extremists looking for funding.’

‘Who posted the bounty?’

‘It leads to a Gmail account that’s never been accessed. Or, I should say, has only been accessed by a non-traceable computer.’

‘Are the details in your report?’

‘Yes, I’ll write it up for you tonight.’

Braun handed him back the photo. ‘Make it happen, August. Get us this informant. Get us this woman.’

Or, August thought sourly, get another job.

The internet café was near the NYU campus. He walked there an hour after August left; he did not wish to use a CIA-owned computer.
He also wanted to finish the exquisite pot of coffee he’d made. Ricardo Braun went inside and ordered a decaf with little
hope that it would match his palate’s demands and sat at an internet terminal situated far from any other patrons. He opened
an email account he had established six years before and that he only checked very infrequently. It was a hidey hole for him
on the web, and he remembered a message he’d seen two years ago. There were only a couple of dozen messages in the account,
all old, but kept squirreled away for when they could be useful. Requests for information. Offers of payment. CIA pensions
were not what they should be, and, although he’d had family money, Braun felt that more cash was never to be turned down.
As long as his small, creative side jobs did not hurt the country he loved, he saw nothing wrong with it. He was simply careful
to clean it through investments; the CIA did watch the incomes of its former agents.

The message had held a picture of the woman called Mila. He’d seen her face then for the first time. That fine, elfin face.

He checked the photo stashed in the email address. It might well be the same woman. The cut of her hair was different but
the bones were the same in her cheeks, the turn of the mouth, the sharp, haunted eyes. Mila. The photo of her was one with
a gun in her hand, wearing a leather jacket and leather pants, glancing about a room. The sort of photo that looked like it
had been lifted from a private security camera.

He reread the message.
Text to 45899 to get details on job. High dollar
. He wondered if the job was still open. He texted, on a phone that the CIA did not know that he owned.

He got an autoresponse, directing him to a private website, providing him with a password.

Braun jumped to the site. Its URL was a wild mix of numbers and letters, not the kind of site that someone would ever accidentally
stumble upon. He entered the password.

The site opened. It showed more pictures of Mila, shot from the same camera. And the text, in five different languages: $1
MILLION US FOR THIS BITCH. I WANT HER ALIVE
. Braun stared. This was the gold standard of hit contracts. A million dollars was usually a sum reserved for leaders of state,
heads of organizations. Braun himself had spent CIA dollars to kill a Rwandan warlord for Special Projects for a hundred thousand.
A drug kingpin in Ecuador for twice that amount. Braun had his own address book he could call upon when regular CIA personnel
were not an option.

Who was this woman and who had the deep pockets to off her? He glanced at the last update: a month ago, a single message.
Contract is still open
. An email address, another blind one.

He sent an email:
Is contract still open? I have a lead on an associate of hers but I need to know I’m dealing with someone who can guarantee
payment
.

He closed the email account, the website. He erased the browser history. He left the internet café and went and ate lunch,
standing up in a narrow student-geared pizza joint, chewing on a thick slice, drinking a Coke.

A million dollars. The terms of the reward preferred that she be alive. That complicated things.

Braun ate his lonely pizza, then walked home and sat in his leather chair, and thought about Novem Soles, and Mila, and how
he could collect that million dollars.

It’s not everyday that you a) inspect a new business you own, and b) make plans to meet a kidnapper there. Happy partiers
filled The Canyon Bar, escaping the tourist-swollen casino hotspots, searching for revelry and the next place you wanted to
be seen.

I was planning how to capture a woman who’d stolen my child.

The Canyon was not a tourist trap bar like so much of the Vegas nightlife scene. I’d noticed in the first hour there this
evening that the servers and bartenders were extremely capable; attentive, engaging, focused. Of course, when I’d come around
and introduced myself to the staff they might all have switched to best behavior, but you can’t hide sloppiness in the running
of a first-class drinking establishment.

I’d seen one server gently talk an indecisive customer out of ordering a chocolate martini and into a handcrafted Old-Fashioned:
a real drink for a real person. The décor was
high-dollar: carefully sculpted beams of wood undulated along the curving walls, the tables were of polished granite, the
chairs covered with faux rare animal hides. The Canyon was a destination bar for those too cool for the Strip or who wanted
a break from the casino nights and the nerve-numbing rattle of slots, dice, and chips. The crowd was youngish, a mix of more
daring visitors and well-heeled locals. There was a dance floor, small, and the DJ was mashing classic Massive Attack with
the latest hip-hop star’s word play and drum beat.

I watched all this from the security cameras mounted in my office on the second floor of the bar.

I scanned the crowd. I knew Anna’s face, from the security photo and the passport photo we’d acquired: tall, dark hair, a
beauty mark near the curve of her mouth. But those were elements easily changed. I didn’t see anyone who fit her description
in the crowded club.

But I did see a face I knew, apparently a recent arrival. There she was, Mila, sitting at a back table, her hair dyed auburn
now (or wearing a good wig), flirting with some thick-shouldered guy who wore a well-tailored gray pinstripe suit. His face
was familiar, and that worried me until I recognized him – a guy who once played tight end for the New York Giants. Dude probably
thought he was about to get Vegas-lucky. Mila wowed him a champagne-fueled smile, although the wine in her flute appeared
to be untouched. His was empty. He refilled and guzzled his twice while I watched. I guessed she was conducting her own surveillance,
observing every face that came and left the bar. She had to be careful, now that the Company had resumed its interest in me.

I went downstairs to a corner booth that I’d reserved for myself. I wore my hosting clothes: a pinstripe suit, a white shirt,
a gray-silver tie. In your own bar, you have to look better than
a lawyer. Sharper. And the jacket hid my Browning pistol and my slacks hid my knife, strapped to my calf.

Mila got up, whispering something that was (I am sure) most promising to her male camouflage, but came over and sat at my
table.

‘I understand I am to be your wife. Every time I play this role, there is trouble.’

She’d taken a later flight than me – best if we didn’t travel together. She flew under an assumed name. But no one tailed
me at the Vegas airport; I made sure.

‘I like the auburn,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

I could see the Giants ex glaring at me, waiting for her return. ‘Why did you sit with him?’

‘I generally ignore your American football. I thought maybe he was a bodyguard for Anna. I have talked to all the large, muscular
men here.’ She surveyed the crowd. ‘Thin pickings. She might send a woman.’

‘You don’t have to work the crowd for long. We just need to get Anna up in the office, then we force her to tell us where
my son is.’

‘Simple,’ Mila said.

‘I see no reason for this to be complicated.’

‘You are always such an optimist,’ Mila crossed her legs, inspected her fingernails. ‘This woman, Anna Tremaine, she tells
you the name of the couple who bought your baby. Great. What do you do with her then? Lock her upstairs for a few days while
we go collect your son?’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘You will have to kill her, Sam.’

‘Your bloodthirstiness is really not appealing.’

‘Truth is often very ugly, like the orange dress of that woman at the bar,’ Mila said. ‘An upstairs office is not built to
keep a hostage for the long term. And you can’t let her go. She will warn whoever bought Daniel so they can run.’

‘You have Mr Bell stashed away back in New York.’

‘No. Mr Bell’s very small brain has been plucked. He is back with his family, and now he is in our pocket when we need him.
He is a puppet on the string for me.’

‘He knows we killed two men.’

‘Yes, so he wants to stay on my good side.’

I let the sounds of the party rise and fall around us. ‘I have a plan.’

‘I am eager to hear this brilliant strategy.’

‘I’ll hand Anna over to the CIA. She can tell them all about her employers.’ It was certainly better than handing Mila over
to them.

Mila seemed to sense the direction of my thoughts.

‘What would you do to get your son back?’

‘Anything.’

‘Anything covers so much.’ She glanced across the bar at her neglected conquest. ‘Oh, your American football player, I left
him uncomfortable with anticipation. He does have a nice thick neck, though. I like a thick neck. Nice to hang onto.’

‘That neck is not supporting a large brain.’

‘Ha, brains.’ Mila gave me a sideways glance. ‘Brains do not matter so much as heart, Sam.’ She pounded her chest with her
little fist.

‘Look. We get Anna Tremaine upstairs to finalize our purchase. After she talks, I load her up with an anesthetic and we leave
her locked up in the apartment. We find where Daniel is and I go get him and you keep an eye on her.’

‘And then what?’

‘We give her to August Holdwine and Special Projects and she can tell all she knows about Novem Soles.’

‘I have missed the exciting announcement where you have rejoined the Central Idiot Agency,’ Mila said. ‘I thought you worked
for me.’

‘And what does the Round Table do with her, Mila? You just told me I’d have to murder her. Am I supposed to think you won’t?’

‘I’m hurt.’

‘The CIA won’t.’

‘Ah, yes. She will be their prisoner who goes on trial? No. They will make a deal with her. Protect her to talk. To tell what
she knows. This is the way the world works. She sells your baby, she gets a plea bargain. A new life tucked away on the other
side of the planet, in Sydney. I sometimes think half of Sydney must be people hiding from the rest of the world.’ She picked
up my bottle of Pellegrino water, took a sip.

‘There’s a price on your head,’ I said.

She stopped mid-swig. She set down the bottle of mineral water. Her gaze met mine.

‘Is Mila short for a million? Because that’s the price tag. Huge for a hit on someone who says she’s a nobody.’

‘It’s gone up,’ she said. ‘The power of compound interest.’ Then she laughed. ‘Or compound hatred.’

‘Mila, who wants you dead?’

‘Besides you?’

‘Don’t joke. Don’t joke at all about this.’

She took another long drink from the Pellegrino bottle. ‘It doesn’t matter, Sam.’

‘I believe it has the slightest of bearings on working with you.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘I want to know who wants you dead.’

‘What? So you can help me kill my tormentor? I’m not going to kill him.’

‘Him.’

‘Someone beyond my reach,’ she said. ‘It’s an uncomfortable fact of life. Like the most beautiful shoes hurt your feet the
most.’ She shrugged, as though my words, my concern, were nothing more than mist in the air.

‘If we’re working together, I deserve to know who’s hunting you.’

‘Just because there is a price on my head doesn’t mean there are takers.’

‘Have you killed everyone who’s come after you?’

‘You make me sound so bad.’

‘I know you perhaps were unfamiliar with capitalism growing up in Moldova’ – she answered my comment with a roll of her eyes
– ‘but let me tell you, a million dollars on your head is going to lead to an endless supply of candidates stepping forward.’

‘They must find me. Then they must kill me.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s like the words at the end of a commercial for a contest:
“Many will enter, few will win.” The many have failed. No winners so far.’

‘People have already been trying to kill you?’ I felt a creep of shock along my skin. I’d been worried about the CIA finding
her. But they just wanted to talk to her. August didn’t want her dead.

She didn’t shrug again, because I think she read me and she knew pretend indifference would only make me mad. ‘Look. There
is a man who is very angry at me. I humiliated him. It was worse than killing him.’

‘Who?’

‘Not anyone who you should care to know, Sam.’

‘Who, Mila?’

‘We get Daniel back first, then we will worry about my problems.’ She smiled. ‘I know how Daniel dominates your every thought.
I am flattered you are concerned about me.’

I felt a sick mix of rage and annoyance and fear for her. Mila is not exactly my friend. She’s not exactly my boss. I don’t
know what exactly she is but I could hardly let her be targeted and killed. If I wasn’t going to give her up to August I sure
as hell wasn’t going to give her up to some hired killer.

‘And once you have Daniel, you will want a calmer, quieter life, Sam. This is only natural.’

‘There is no way that I am abandoning you.’

‘Life is a series of abandonings.’ She finished the Pellegrino. ‘Now. How did you know that my head had a price tag attached
to it?’