The Last Minute sc-2 Read online

  The Last Minute

  ( Sam Capra - 2 )

  Jeff Abbott

  The Last Minute

  Jeff Abbott

  PART ONE

  A VERY PRIVATE WAR

  1

  Manhattan, Upper West Side

  I knocked on the green door and knew that in the next five minutes I’d either be dead or I’d have the truth I needed.

  The man opened the apartment door just as I raised my fist for the second, impatient knock. He did not look like a man who traded in human lives. He looked like an accountant. He wore a dark suit, a loosened tie with bands of silver and pink and a slight air of exhaustion and impatience. His glasses were steel-framed and rectangular. His lips were greasy with takeout Thai, and the remains of a meal – maybe his last – scented the air.

  He looked at me, he looked at the pixie of a woman standing next to me, then he looked at his watch.

  ‘You and your wife are late, Mr Derwatt,’ he said. ‘One minute late.’

  There were several misconceptions in his statement. First, my name was not Derwatt. Second, the woman standing next to me, Mila, was not my wife. Third, we were exactly on time; I’d even waited for the second hand to sweep past the twelve before I knocked. But I shrugged, full of graciousness, and he opened the door and Mila and I stepped inside. He looked her over. He did it all in a second but I saw it. She was glancing at the two thick-necked thugs who stood by the apartment’s dinner table. Then she cast her gaze down, as if intimidated.

  Nice bit of acting, that. Mila could stare down a great white shark.

  I offered the accountant a handshake. ‘Frank Derwatt. This is my wife, Lilia.’

  ‘Mr Bell.’ He didn’t shake my hand and I let it drop down to my side. I threw in an awkward laugh for effect. I was wearing jeans and a navy blazer with a pink polo underneath. Mila had found a horrible floral skirt that I suppose approximated her bizarre idea of what an American suburban housewife would wear. She clutched her pink purse. We looked like we were more interested in country club membership than an illegal adoption.

  ‘I thought we were meeting alone,’ I said. Mila stepped close to me, like she was afraid.

  The accountant dabbed a napkin at the Thai sauce smearing his mouth. I wanted to seize him by the throat, throw him against the wall and force him to tell me where my son was. But that would only get my son killed, so I stood there like I was the nervous suburban wannabe dad that I was playing.

  ‘Face the wall,’ one of the big men said. He was a redhead, with his hair sliced into a burr and freckles the size of pebbles on his face. ‘Both of you.’

  We both did. I set down the small canvas briefcase I was carrying.

  I didn’t argue. I was supposed to be a nervous, law-abiding citizen and, although I have been those things in the distant past, I wasn’t right now. No wire, no weapons. Just me and my shining personality and a rage I kept caged up in my chest. The redhead searched me thoroughly. Then he did the same to Mila.

  ‘Frank,’ she said, about halfway through, a tinge of fear in her voice. She was selling it.

  ‘Just be patient, honey, it’ll be over in a minute,’ I said. ‘And then we can get our baby.’

  Mila made this soft hiss of assent, the patient sigh of a woman who wanted this deal to be her gateway to happiness.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Derwatt are clean, Mr Bell,’ the redhead said. He stepped back from us. I took Mila’s hand for just a moment.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Derwatt,’ the accountant said. ‘Excuse the mess. We decided on an early dinner. I don’t usually meet with clients at night.’

  I knew that normally the accountant would now be on a commuter train back to New Jersey. I had checked into every nook of his life: a wife, two sons, a mortgage on a cozy little place to live, a life full of promise.

  All the sweet elements I’d once had, and had lost.

  The accountant and his toughs studied me. Let them, I thought. I’d been careful.

  One opened the briefcase. He dumped the bricks of cash out onto the table and began to sort them.

  Mr Bell glanced at me.

  ‘My wife and I,’ I lied, ‘we’ve failed to conceive after three years of trying. It has nearly destroyed our marriage. I’m eager to give my wife a healthy, happy baby.’

  ‘You could adopt through legit channels.’

  ‘Yes. But, um, some of my business practices, I don’t care to have them scrutinized by well-meaning social workers. We simply wish to acquire a child.’

  Mila moved close to me. ‘You have done our background checks, yes? We wish to make our selection and get a child.’

  ‘It’s not that easy, Mrs Derwatt.’

  ‘I’ve brought the down payment. We select our child and then we go get him or her.’

  He blinked at me.

  ‘That was what was agreed,’ I said.

  ‘The money’s all here, Mr Bell,’ the redhead had counted with the precise quickness of a man used to handling banded stacks of cash. ‘Twenty thousand dollars.’

  ‘There were some anomalies in your background checks,’ Mr Bell said.

  ‘Anomalies. I do not know this word,’ Mila said. She’d thickened up her eastern European accent.

  ‘Um, questions, Mrs Derwatt.’

  I held my breath. We had been very, very careful in setting up these identities. Mila had worked on them while we tried our best to find any link to the one clue we had to my son’s whereabouts: a photo of a woman leaving a private clinic in Strasbourg, France, soon after my son’s birth. I had been told she’d sold my son. We still did not know who the woman was, but using Mila’s considerable resources we’d found a surveillance photo of her arriving in New York, a week after my son’s birth, walking out of the terminal with this man. Mr Bell, whose face was in a criminal database maintained by the state of New York for having been convicted of embezzlement six years ago and had gotten parole. We matched him to the airport photo. Found out where he lived, where he worked and who his associates were. Slow, plodding detective work but it had paid off. We had sent out feelers as potential adopters of a child, provided background, gotten this meeting to pick out a son or daughter.

  But now.

  ‘We could not find a complete enough history for Mrs Derwatt before she came over from Romania.’

  Mila was from Moldova, but the languages are identical. She turned to me and said in Moldovan, ‘We will have to kill them.’

  I forced a smile. ‘She doesn’t understand what you mean,’ I said to Mr Bell in English.

  ‘You said you met Mrs Derwatt through an online dating service that matches Western men with eastern European brides.’

  ‘Yes. What does this matter? We’ve brought the money. We want a child.’

  ‘She’s Romanian, why not adopt there?’ Mr Bell said. ‘You could just go to eastern Europe and buy yourself a kid like you bought yourself a wife.’ Nice sneer at the end.

  Somewhere, we’d left a hole in our story. Or, conversely, this was a test. I put on my outraged face. ‘We don’t care where the child comes from. I told you, I cannot use normal channels.’

  ‘As many of our clients can’t, Mr Derwatt. So you understand why we must be so cautious. Our potential parents are… dangerous people.’

  ‘My business is my business. I’ve provided you with what you need to know about me. Anything more could be compromising.’

  ‘For me or for you?’ Mr Bell asked.

  ‘Darling, let’s gather up our money,’ I said to Mila. ‘We’re leaving.’ I continued to play the outrage card.

  ‘Don’t touch the money, Mrs Derwatt,’ Bell said.

  ‘We had a deal.’ I pointed at the laptop on the table. ‘Pay a deposit, pick a baby from the list, pick him u
p and pay the rest.’

  ‘We can decline to do business with anyone who makes us uncomfortable.’

  ‘What is problem?’ Mila said. ‘Maybe you make misunderstanding, and this is easy to fix.’ She tried a bright smile with him.

  ‘You claim to be Lilia Rozan, from Bucharest, immigrated here three years ago.’

  ‘No claim. Am.’

  ‘That particular Lilia Rozan is currently in a cancer ward in New Jersey.’

  Misstep. We’d used a bad identity. Mr Bell stood a little straighter. He was nervous but he had the muscle here. ‘So, Mr Derwatt, we want to know who you and the lovely missus are.’

  ‘We’re wanted by the police,’ I said. ‘We had to lie.’

  Mr Bell smiled. ‘Details, please.’ The two men were on each side of him. They didn’t have their guns out but they thought they didn’t need to; we were unarmed.

  I looked at Mila. ‘Look, our money’s good as anyone else’s. Please.’

  The bald man moved behind Mila. She clasped a hand over her wristwatch.

  ‘We want to know who you are. Right now. Or he starts in on your wife.’

  Mila turned, hands clasped together as if in prayer. ‘Oh no, please, don’t hurt me. We just want a baby. Please. That’s all we want.’

  He shoved her into the wall. She kept her footing but tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh, please.’

  I stayed very still. The bald man glanced back at me, frowning with disgust that I would let him manhandle my woman, and in that second Mila pulled the watch from its band. Connecting them was a thin steel wire. She leapt onto his back and looped the garrote over his neck, the watch and the band serving as handles so that she didn’t slice her fingers off. His yell became a gurgle in an instant.

  I hammered a fist into Mr Bell’s chest and he went heaving into the air and landed on my money. The redhead started to draw but he couldn’t decide, for one crucial second, whether to shoot me or save his buddy, now purpling under Mila’s wire. As he swung the silencer-capped Beretta 92FS back toward me – hello, self-preservation – I launched into him. I levered the gun down as he fired and he hit his own foot. He howled and I slammed a fist into his solar plexus and then into his throat. He staggered back and we fought for control of the gun. He was bigger than me. I wrenched the gun, pushing it back toward his chest. His eyes widened as he realized the barrel was going to slip under his chin. It did and I squeezed his hand and his own finger pulled the trigger. A spray of blood and flesh fountained as it carved a path into his face. He looked surprised before the bullet distorted his flesh.

  I freed the gun from his fingers and whirled, aiming at Mila’s opponent. But that guy was already gone. She’s not big but still a hundred pounds, hanging onto a wire; a throat can’t survive the trauma. The bald man lay in a sprawl at her feet; she hovered over Mr Bell, panting.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked her. She nodded. I felt a tickle of bile at the back of my throat and I swallowed it down.

  ‘You killed them,’ Mr Bell said, gasping. People say the most obvious things when they’re in a daze.

  ‘They sell people,’ I said. ‘They’re worse than I’ll ever be.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  I didn’t answer. I’m just a man who wants his stolen child back. My son I’ve never seen, except on this video, being carried by a woman who sells human beings for profit. My child. I was much closer to finding my kid than I’d ever been. And I thought of the times I rested my hand on my wife’s pregnant swell, feeling the bubble of movement beneath the skin, knowing it was a baby but not knowing it was going to be Daniel, this unique and special person who I’d never gotten to see with my own eyes, hold with my own arms.

  I’m coming, I told him, my breath like a prayer on the air.

  Mr Bell swallowed; his mouth quivered as he looked at the dead men. ‘Okay, you can have a baby. Whichever one you want.’

  ‘I want one born on January 10th at a private clinic in Strasbourg called Les Saintes. His birth name on the certificate was Julien Daniel Besson but his real name is Daniel Capra. This woman took him from the clinic. All we’ve been able to find out is that she travels on a Belgian passport under the name of Anna Tremaine. Now, I asked around, and I found out that you work with Anna Tremaine.’

  He gave a half-nod. He was scared to death, blinking at the bodies of the muscles.

  ‘Where is my son?’ I asked, very quietly.

  ‘I didn’t handle that placement. Anna would know. Oh, God, please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘Don’t lie to us.’ Mila held up the watch-garrote, slicked with blood.

  ‘I’m not lying. I’m not.’

  I squatted by him, put the silencer – still warm – against his modishly unshaven cheek. ‘Did Anna know you were suspicious of me?’

  ‘Um, no. We initially reject every adopter – we claim they aren’t suitable, that there’s a hole in their story. Our clients are normally so desperate, they will do almost anything not to be rejected. Usually we can pressure them into “qualifying” by sharing information that is valuable – you know, insider info on a company, or they can render services to us that can be useful later.’

  Extortion and blackmail, as if illegal adoption wasn’t enough. What charming people.

  ‘So you meet us. We pass your test. Then what?’

  ‘I call Anna. We set up a meeting. You give her the rest of the money. Then she makes a phone call and the child is brought to you.’

  ‘Has my son been sold?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. Please. Please!’

  ‘Watch him,’ I said to Mila. I opened the laptop. On the screen was a catalog in PDF format. Pictures of babies. Countries of origin. Description of parents, if known – but no names. The spring catalog featured over two dozen children. Beautiful kids on the auction block. I scanned it quickly. None were listed as being born in France and I didn’t see what the point of lying in the catalog would be.

  ‘You’re going to call Anna Tremaine, and you’re going to set up a meeting.’

  Mr Bell’s lip trembled.

  ‘Where is she based?’

  ‘Her cell phone has a Las Vegas area code. But that’s not where she necessarily meets people,’ he added in a little rushed lie.

  ‘Las Vegas will be just fine.’ I decided I’d make it extra easy for Anna Tremaine. ‘You tell her that Mr and Mrs Derwatt have checked out and that we’ll be in Vegas tomorrow night to collect our child and pay the money.’

  ‘You have to pick one, then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A child. You have to pick a child.’

  ‘This one.’ I just pointed to the infant whose picture was on the current page of the digital catalog.

  ‘Okay.’ His breathing slowed. ‘I’ll do it, please don’t kill me.’

  ‘Call her. Now. And if you say a single syllable that I don’t like, I will kill you.’ And I slipped Mila’s garrote around his throat. The bloodied wire lay against his shirt and I tightened it enough so that the steel lay against his soft throat. I gave him an address in Las Vegas to suggest as a meeting place. He nodded.

  He dialed. He waited. I leaned close enough to hear.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Anna. It’s Bell. The couple today, the Derwatts, they checked out okay. They’ve made their selection.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Number fourteen.’

  I could hear the barest scratch of pen and ink. ‘All right.’

  ‘They don’t want to meet in New York. I think they would be willing to come to Las Vegas.’

  A pause. ‘All right.’

  ‘Do you know a place called The Canyon Bar, just off the Strip?’

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ she said. ‘Hipster parents.’

  ‘They suggested meeting there. Tomorrow evening at nine.’

  I thought she might suggest her own choice. But any public spot could be put under surveillance. Our locale was as good as any other. ‘That’s fine,’ she said.

&nbs
p; ‘All right, I’ll tell them.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ The conversation felt off. Tense. But he hadn’t said anything I could pinpoint as a signal to her.

  ‘The wife and kids all right?’

  ‘Yes, Anna, thanks for asking.’ He swallowed against the wire. ‘Brent starts flag football this weekend. Jared’s joined swim team.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. All right, I’ll see the Derwatts tomorrow. How will I know them?’

  ‘She’s very petite, dark-haired. He’s about six foot, wiry, dark blond hair, green eyes. Nice looking couple.’

  ‘Tell them to get a table, preferably in the back. Order me a martini, three olives, and leave it at the table with a seat for me. I don’t like the look of anything in the bar, I skip the meeting, and no baby.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’

  ‘Very well,’ Anna said. ‘Bye.’

  He hung up the phone and dropped it to the floor. Shivering under the wire, waiting for me to kill him.

  Mila knelt to meet his gaze. ‘You’re not going to die. You’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Novem Soles.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Novem Soles, also called Nine Suns.’

  ‘What? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean the criminal ring that Anna works for.’

  ‘I only know Anna. She’s self-employed.’

  I pushed up the sleeves on his shirt. There was no marking tattoo, a fiery nine transformed into a blazing sun. Novem Soles’s mark of ownership; I’d seen it on too many arms back in Amsterdam. I checked the arms of the two muscles. One had a tattoo, but it was the Chinese symbol for luck. Hadn’t worked.

  ‘She’s not working for herself,’ I said. ‘She works for an incredibly dangerous group of people. They were plotting a mass assassination a month ago. You screw them over, you die.’

  Mr Bell’s lip trembled. He was trying to find his bravery but failing.

  ‘You see them?’ Mila pointed at the bodies.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re not going to be like them unless you make trouble. You’re going to be locked up in a room and wait until we’ve taken care of Anna. And you tell my people all you know about Anna Tremaine and her operation,’ Mila said. ‘Everything. And then you’re going to go back and live with your family and you’re going to stay the hell out of illegal activities.’