The Last Minute
Authors: Jeff Abbott
Jeff Abbott
is the author of thirteen previous novels, published in twenty languages. His books
Panic
and
Run
have been optioned for film and are in script development. Jeff graduated from university with a degree in History and English,
and worked as a creative director at an advertising agency before writing full-time. He lives in Texas with his wife and two
sons.
Sam Capra series
Adrenaline
Whit Mosley series
A Kiss Gone Bad
Black Jack Point
Cut and Run
Other fiction
Panic
Fear
Run
Trust Me
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748129744
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Jeff Abbott 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
6: Midtown Manhattan, near Bryant Park
12: Greenwich Village, New York
17: Flight 903, Las Vegas to New York
18: Flight 902, Las Vegas to New York
21: Claiborne Hotel, Manhattan
23: Midtown Manhattan, New York City
24: Fagin’s Nest, Chelsea, New York City
25: Midtown Manhattan, New York City
28: East 59th Street, Manhattan
29: Along Highway 206, New Jersey
33: Hotel Esper, Williamsburg/The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
36: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
41: Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan
42: Ming Properties office, Lower Manhattan
44: Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan
48: The Streets of Williamsburg
55: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
57: Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan
59: Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan
60: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
, Moldova68: Red-light district, Tel Aviv, Israel
71: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
73: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
75: The Last Minute, Manhattan
76: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan, upstairs
77: Ming apartment, East 59th Street
78: The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
79: The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan
80: The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan
82: Parking garage near Central Park
86: Associated Languages School, near the Catskill Forest Preserve, New York
For Shirley Stewart
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.