The Last Minute (28 page)

I needed him to be a faceless stranger but his mother had died holding my hand.

‘I’m full of crap,’ Leonie said. ‘It’s never easy, is it?’

She moved her hand from my cheek to my forehead, caught her fingers in my hair.

What? I thought. I’m just so clever.

‘You must have really loved your wife.’

It was a strange observation to make. I opened my eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about her.’

‘Anna told me that you tried to find your wife … her way of saying you were a decent man. Anna didn’t want me to be scared
of working with you.’

Scared? I was supposed to be the good guy. Raised by globetrotting Christian relief agency do-gooders, the nice boy who went
to Harvard and stayed on track, the smart brother who didn’t go to Afghanistan and get himself and his best friend killed,
the boy who became a man in the CIA, fueled by revenge but tempered (I hoped) by fairness. And now what was I? Someone who’d
been accused of being a traitor because I’d married the wrong woman (an actual,
technical
traitor) and had dodged the CIA and now was in an awful limbo of untrustworthiness as far as that fine agency was concerned.

Death is a weird thing. The death for the driver was egregiously bad: being impaled is never anyone’s exit of choice. And
for Mrs Ming, she had died with an awful uncertainty clouding her mind and corroding her last moments. Leonie and I had nearly
died tonight. Death makes us thirst for life and all its basics: a comforting meal, the breeze of our own breath in our lungs,
the warm press of human flesh.

Leonie leaned down and she kissed my bruised lips.

No woman had kissed me since Lucy. I froze for a moment. This was crossing a line I’d seen from the corner of my eye, this
was knowing Lucy was gone and was never, ever coming back and even if she did come back that I wouldn’t want her back. I felt
myself … unfreeze.

My whole face hurt but I pressed my lips to hers in response.
The kiss didn’t accelerate, it grew slower. More thoughtful. She nibbled at my lower lip.

‘Sam,’ she said very quietly.

‘Yes.’

‘Afterwards, will we be cool?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t exactly know what cool meant but I wasn’t going to say no.

She started to kiss me again. With heat. It didn’t matter that my face ached. I wanted her with a sudden, fierce certainty.
I had not been with many women before Lucy. The idea that every spy is a womanizer is a patent falsehood. You are usually
keeping people at arm’s length. I never had time and I didn’t now but that did not seem to matter. Her kisses were quick and
darting and urgent. Her tongue, her fingertips were everywhere. I’m not even sure we got all our clothes off and then I joined
to her, Leonie groaning against me, a low, throaty growl, her face close to mine.

After a delicious while, she shuddered, her breath warm against my bruised eye, looking deep into my face as though surveying
curious terrain. Then she laid her face on my chest. I gasped in release a minute or two later, her urging me on with cooing
sounds. Her body felt lush and warm and smooth.

It was good but it was more comfort than passion. We stripped off the rest of our clothes and clutched at each other. Neither
of us wanted to talk. We just wanted to be.

‘Promise me,’ she said, lying curled next to me. ‘Promise me we’ll get our kids back.’

‘I promise,’ I said. What else could I say?

I just had to make it true. That promise bound us together. That promise would change everything.

We slept late, longer than we should have. Normally I can’t sleep late in New York because the rising noise of the traffic
is an automatic alarm clock. When I woke up Leonie was showered and dressed and tapping at her laptop. ‘No intrusions at the
building other than those at the security guard’s regularly appointed rounds.’ She looked up at me and gave me a wan smile.

What did I do? Kiss her, nuzzle her, pretend last night didn’t happen? My marriage with Lucy – full of deception and lies
and my own blindness – convinced me that I suck at relationships and it wasn’t like we were going to have a long-term one.
We would get our kids and part ways and never see each other again, except in our memories about the worst few days of our
lives.

The newspaper websites in New York and New Jersey carried no mention of two bodies discovered at the abandoned Associated
Languages School in Morris County.

‘I’ll go get us some breakfast,’ I said. Leonie made the noise one makes when one is absorbed in a computer screen. Again,
like Lucy.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought about what you said last night,’ she said. ‘I’m going to find out who that driver was.’

‘He doesn’t matter any more.’

‘You’re not working alone,’ she said. ‘Why presume that he is? We don’t know how much of a head start we have on finding Jack.
We may have none. And I’m not going to sit here and fret and wait and do nothing while waiting for Jack to show up.’

I walked to a diner on the corner and got breakfast for us to
go: mushroom and spinach omelets, hash browns, fruit, bacon, coffee, orange juice. You eat when you can because you never
know when you might get your next meal on days like today.

When I came back we ate. I tried to make conversation.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

She seemed to measure her answer by staring into her Styrofoam coffee cup.

‘I know your real name isn’t Leonie, that you live under a false name.’

‘Trust me, it’s better you not know much about me. I am infinitely boring.’

‘I know that’s not true,’ I said with a smile.

She smiled back, just for a moment. ‘You, where are you from?’

‘All over. My parents worked for a relief agency. My mom’s a pediatric surgeon, my dad’s an administrator. I lived in over
twenty different countries before I was eighteen.’ I finished my coffee. ‘If I don’t make it, and you get my son back from
Anna, you can take him to my parents. They live in New Orleans. Alexander and Simone Capra. They’re in the phone book.’

‘Are you close to them?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Why?’

‘My brother died and it ruined their hearts. They either want to take over my life entirely or shut me out completely. Him
dying made them a little crazy.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He went to Afghanistan, to do relief work like they’d done for years, and he and his best friend from college, they got captured
by the Taliban. Their throats were cut in a propaganda video.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Leonie said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ It was about the
best thing she could say. Really, it’s so horrible, it shocks people. You cannot imagine what it is like to see your brother
die, helplessly. To see his friend die. Then to see them discussed on every news channel, as though they are just names to
learn,
Danny Capra
,
Zalmay Qureshi
, not people, just distant unfortunates, just names. ‘That was when I joined the CIA.’

‘But you’re not with them any more.’

‘When your wife betrays the CIA, it kind of destroys your career path.’

‘I would think.’

‘A constant cloud of suspicion.’ I stood up and shoved my Styrofoam food holder in the trash. ‘So we parted ways.’

‘And she had this baby while you were apart?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was she like? Your wife?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘I’m just curious. You seem too smart a guy to be easily fooled.’

‘We all have our blind spots. She was one as large as the Sahara to me.’

‘Sometimes we don’t pick wisely.’

‘No. And the price we pay is very heavy.’

Leonie turned back to her computer. ‘Any luck with tracing the driver?’

‘No,’ she said. Not looking at me.

‘Really? No track on his driver’s license or his limo plates?’ She had memorized the plates during the long haul out of Manhattan
and New Jersey, following him.

‘Stolen, I guess,’ she said. Still not looking at me.

I stood up and watched the Ming building with my binoculars. Two o’clock couldn’t come soon enough for me. I needed
inside that building now, in between the last pass of the security guard and Jack’s (presumed) meeting with August.

And then I thought of a way.

I left Leonie in her room and went down to the lobby. I called Russell Ming’s property company, now owned by his wife.

‘Ming Properties,’ the woman answering the phone said.

‘Hi, may I speak to,’ and I looked again at the name I’d jotted down, the one under the number on the Ming Properties sign,
‘Beth Marley?’

‘This is she.’ She sounded bright and enthusiastic, like talking to me was the highlight of her day. I’m sure it was.

‘My name is Sam Capra, and I’m interested in the building in Williamsburg.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘I own the The Last Minute Bar, over by Bryant Park.’

‘I know that bar!’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s great. I’m interested in leasing some property in Brooklyn that you own, in Williamsburg. Would it be possible
to see it today?’

‘Today might be difficult, sir. What about tomorrow?’

‘I’m just in town for the day. In fact, I might be interested in leasing the whole building. I just happened to see it and
think it’s perfect for what I need.’

‘Well. Okay, let me do a little juggling.’ I could hear her
flipping papers. ‘Sure. I could do eleven o’clock, would that work?’

‘You’re so kind. That will be great. I’ll just meet you there, okay?’

‘Thanks, Mr Capra.’

I hung up and went back to the hotel room. ‘Well, that was easy. I have an appointment.’

Leonie, crouching over her computer, didn’t answer.

Ricardo Braun was not concerned with legalities as much as expediency: after he had discovered the limo driver’s body, he
had Fagin and the Oliver Twists setting up electronic surveillance on every person in New York connected to Jack Ming, with
careful instructions to report only to Braun, not to August Holdwine or anyone else in Special Projects. Braun preferred that
Jack Ming’s identity not be known to anyone else.

So Fagin and the Twists watched Jack Ming’s friends on his abandoned Facebook account (which were few, mostly friends from
his NYU years), a few family friends, his father’s property company. The initial surveillance centered on monitoring Facebook
pages and personal email accounts. The only phones to be tapped via a hack were the phone of his father’s company and the
cell phones of his two closest college friends.

The silence on Jack was deafening. There was no mention of him at all.

Until a mid-morning phone call struck Braun’s interest, not because it was about Jack Ming. No. It was about Sam Capra.

Braun called the sisters. He hoped they could contain their crazy long enough to do the job the exact way he wanted it done.
He got Lizzie on the phone. He would have preferred Meggie. She was the more reasonable one. But you didn’t put off Lizzie.
She held grudges.

Lizzie listened to his instructions. ‘The two men, Ming and Capra. Can we play with them for a while?’ The sisters had a cabin
in upstate New York where they entertained special guests when the need took Lizzie, or when Braun needed someone interrogated,
with guaranteed results.

‘If you needn’t kill them straight out, they’re yours. I would like to know what they both know. Get that out of them and
report back to me.’

‘What about anyone else with them?’

He thought of August, with regret. ‘You can kill anyone else if need be. If there is a woman named Mila with him, I want proof
of her death.’ The sisters needn’t know about the bounty. He would collect it himself, throw them a little bonus.

Lizzie laughed. ‘Thanks for the work.’

She hung up and looked at her sister. ‘Go get dressed. We have a lead on the job.’

‘All right, but you promised to make those phone calls about the cruise.’ Her sister Meggie stood up from the couch. She had
been reading a Special Projects file on Sam Capra that Braun had just emailed her. Know thy enemy.

‘Yes, yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll get to it.’

‘Don’t put it off,’ Meggie said. ‘They book up like a year in advance.’

‘Cruises are for old people,’ Lizzie said.

‘That is completely untrue.’

‘They keep a morgue on those boats because so many old people die during cruises. I saw that on TV,’ Lizzie said.

The sisters considered this interesting tidbit.

‘You are not going to have fun on a cruise. I mean, that kind of fun,’ Meggie said. ‘Parameters for today?’

‘Capture if we can, kill if we must. Capra’s sort of a pretty boy, don’t you think?’

‘Not really.’

‘His file says he runs parkour. That daredevil running where you jump from building to building.’ Lizzie’s smile sparkled.
‘Do you think I’ll get to chase him? I better use a weapon that helps me
catch
him.’

‘No.’ Meggie rolled her eyes. ‘He won’t get a chance to run. Let’s focus, Lizzie.’

‘Your standards are far too high,’ Lizzie said. ‘Not every apple has to be perfect, you got to give it a big bite to see how
sweet it tastes.’ She glanced over at her sister’s laptop screen, at Sam Capra’s photo looking out at her. Brownish-blond
hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a full mouth. ‘I like his face. It would take a lot of time and careful thought to ruin
it, truly. Those cheekbones, probably you’d need a touch of acid for them. And that runner’s body, lovely and spare. Braun
had said I could play with them if we aren’t forced to kill them outright.’

Meggie didn’t care much for the fixated tone in her sister’s voice. This was always the way with Lizzie: an idea elbowed its
way to the front of her mind and bit down in Lizzie’s brain with deep teeth, and wouldn’t let go until it was appeased. Her
sister’s hungers were dark ones.

‘Guns?’

‘Naturally, but if we want to keep them for a while I don’t want to deal with gunshot wounds. Bandages are such a pain. I’m
in kind of a Japanese mood today.’