The Last Minute (5 page)

I stayed on the train. So did she.

I got off at the next stop, which was Seventh Avenue. So did she and a moderate sized crowd of people. I slowed, forcing her
to get ahead of me. I had to figure she had at least one partner, someone who would stay with me if she peeled off, someone
I hadn’t seen when I exited the building.

The woman, pushed slightly ahead of me by the crowd, climbed the stairs to street level and she had to choose. She went left
with brisk, heel-clicking purpose. I headed right. I didn’t look back to see if she’d turned to follow me.

I didn’t hurry. I wanted to see if she would backtrack. I also wanted to see who was sticking close to me. I turned into a
small convenience store and I browsed. I bought a bottle of red wine, a couple of apples and a wedge of Cheddar cheese. I
took my time, waiting to see what fly would stick in the honey. Seven other shoppers in the narrow aisles. I glanced at their
faces, their profiles, without them noticing. One was familiar. He’d been on the subway with me. Late twenties, a bit older
than me, dark hair, wearing a Yankees cap and a dark T-shirt and a light jacket although it’d been a warm day. Jackets change
your appearance to the casual eye, and they’re easy to ditch. So are hats.

I paid for my purchases and I headed back toward the subway station. I didn’t look back but in the rearview of a parked car
I saw the Yankees cap coming behind me. I ducked into a clothing store at the next corner.

At a distance he followed and in one of the mounted security mirrors I saw him enter the store. I grabbed a brightly colored
shirt that would have embarrassed a peacock off one of the racks and I asked the clerk where the changing room was. She nodded
toward the back and told me I couldn’t take my grocery bag in with me, like I’d planned to shoplift some ugly plaid. I gave
it to her to keep under the counter and I went into the changing area. Four saloon-style doors, a tailor’s stand with a triptych
of mirrors. I went inside one of the changing rooms and I waited.

If he’d seen me come with just one shirt he might wait. He
might still think I hadn’t spotted him; at no point had I looked at him directly.

So I decided to really, really consider the merits of this kaleidoscope of a shirt.

Five minutes. Ten. The clerk hadn’t come back to check on me yet. Then I heard him. I knew it was him because he gently pushed
open one saloon door. Then another. If he was just looking for a place to try on clothes he would have stopped with the first
one.

If I was wrong I would apologize.

He pushed on the unfastened door to my cubicle and I seized his hand. I levered him forward hard, slammed him in the wall.
I smashed his face against the wall and he ooofed. You got to love an oof. Then I cracked his head again.

I wrenched his arm hard against his shoulder blades. Checked the left ear. Empty. Right ear. Oh, there it was, like a tiny
beige fleck of wax. The earphones get smaller every year. I reached down, flicked off the lead for his mike under his shirt.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer.

‘Special Projects?’ That was the secret CIA branch I worked for; they have trouble saying goodbye.

He didn’t answer. He tried to lever back and free his arm. I kept my grip above his wrist, on the cloth of his shirt.

I don’t believe in giving multiple chances to cooperate. I battered the juncture of neck and shoulder, twice, and he folded.
I took the mike, the earplug, and put them on, switched them to live. I searched his pockets. There was a wallet that I left
alone, but a telescope, palm-sized. I took it. I put the unconscious shadow up on the small seat in the changing room. He
was breathing just fine.

‘Gato, respond.’ He was being called. I knew the voice. So I answered in Special Projects code.

‘He did a four-nine.’ I’d heard him speak in the grocery, the barest tinge of a Boston accent, when the cashier asked if he
had coupons. So I copied it. It only had to be good enough and I’m a decent mimic. Four-nine meant the subject had cut me
loose in a crowd.

‘Lucky, respond.’ Now the speaker was calling the other agent; I figured this was the older woman from the subway. I looked
around for her as I tossed the shirt I hadn’t tried on back to the clerk and scooped up my bag of groceries. I hurried back
onto the street.

‘I don’t have visual confirmation,’ she said. ‘He did not return to subway station.’ She had hung close to the subway to pick
me up if I doubled back.

‘Return to base,’ the voice said. ‘We’ll see if we can pick him on the traffic cameras.’

Yes, please, return to base. I waited. I had nothing more to contribute to class discussion, as Gato, so I stayed quiet. If
the unconscious man was found an alarm might be raised. And I had to hope that they were the only two on me. Normally a team
of four would have been used. Either I didn’t matter or resources were thinner than usual. I didn’t care about the reason.
This stopped now.

I melded into the constant stream of pedestrians on Seventh and cast my gaze down the street with my palm curved around the
telescope, as though shading my eyes. I caught the woman walking away from me, back the way we’d come. She pushed back her
hair and in the telescope I could see her blue earrings I’d noticed before. I followed at a distance.

Several blocks later, along West 58th Street, I saw her
approaching a parked van. It advertised a floral delivery service. I thought that was funny because it’s an old CIA joke that
Langley does more to keep florists and chocolatiers in business because spouses get neglected and we have to make frequent
apologies.

I don’t have to worry about that any more.

I ran. I caught up with her, put my palm under her ribs, and gently – and rather gentlemanly, I thought – propelled her forward.

‘Open the door,’ I ordered.

She did. She was smarter than Gato. She tapped on the van door, three times, and it opened.

My best friend sat on the other side. August Holdwine is a smart Minnesota farm boy: big, broad-shouldered, cherub-faced,
with a blond burr of hair and ruddy cheeks and eyes of sky-pale blue. I love him like family. He frowned at me. ‘Well. You
can wipe the Cheshire cat smile off. Where’s my guy?’

‘Sleeping it off.’

‘Don’t tell me you actually hurt him.’

‘Bruises heal. He’s okay and probably awake now. He might be too embarrassed to check in. I left him his cell phone. Call
him.’

‘You assaulted a CIA officer.’

‘And you used the names of your childhood pets for your team. Stupid.’ I glanced at the woman. ‘Lucky was the nice cat, so
August says.’

‘Get in the van, Sam,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk.’

‘That might be an illegal action. You aren’t supposed to be operating on American soil.’

‘Go get yourself a coffee,’ August Holdwine said to the woman. ‘We’ll talk later back at the office.’

‘Your earrings,’ I said to her. ‘The blue is a shade too bright against the gray of the street and the buildings. Too memorable.
But they do set off your eyes.’

‘Don’t be a punk,’ she said and she turned and vanished into the river of people.

‘Get in,’ August said. ‘Please.’

‘That would be stupid if the point of following me is to grab me.’

‘It’s not. It’s to talk to you.’

‘You could walk up and say hello.’

‘Not while you’re with that woman. Mila.’ He tossed his headphones on the computer keyboard in the back of the van.

‘No one’s here, August. Don’t lie to me. Are you thinking I’m going to lead you to her?’ But I needed to know why August and
the CIA were interested in Mila. I needed to know now. So I got into the van. August moved up into the driver’s seat.

‘Where to?’ August said.

‘What about your guy?’

‘He can find his way home. Where can we go and talk in private?’

‘I know a bar.’

Jack Ming couldn’t sleep. He watched the clock tick toward midnight. He remembered reading once that there were eighteen million
cellular phones in the Netherlands, and it frustrated him
that not a single one was within reach. With one call he could be out of the hospital, his bill settled, safe under arms.
He should have asked Ricki to leave him hers. But her showing up had surprised him too much, and she’d left before he’d thought
to ask.

August. That had been the muttered name of the kind CIA officer who’d grabbed him, the one who stopped the others from beating
him further. That was the name he was going to use when he phoned the CIA. He would call and ask for August. That was his
ticket to safety, to money, to freedom.

Ten minutes after Ricki left, Van Biezen reappeared in his doorway, looking tired and rumpled, looking ready to go home. ‘Your
story checked out about being grabbed from the café. I thought you would want to know.’ He raised an eyebrow to see if Jack
would speak.

‘Am I going to be released now?’

‘From the hospital or our protective custody?’

‘Both.’

‘I cannot speak for the doctors. But I think you should be careful. These smugglers were apparently part of a much bigger
criminal enterprise.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘On ten Boom’s laptop we found evidence he had been hacking into police databases, downloading classified documents relating
to far-ranging investigations. The sort of information that a criminal network would like to buy.’

‘I know nothing about whatever this man was doing,’ Jack said. ‘And if you are going to question me further along these lines,
I would like to see someone from the embassy and I would like a lawyer.’

‘I wasn’t questioning you. I was warning you. These are
dangerous people, Mr Jin.’ Van Biezen’s voice was measured and careful, sleek as a diplomat’s. Just like his mother. ‘Are
you planning to return to Hong Kong? I understand you have not given the doctors a clear answer.’ Just a bit of a sarcasm
in his tone.

‘I haven’t decided. I am already ruined for this semester. I have much work to do.’ He paused. ‘You said you were giving me
a warning. Do you think I’m in danger?’

‘We have kept a guard by your room. He’s not for show.’

Immediately after Van Biezen stepped out, a polite functionary from the Chinese embassy stepped in, now that he was speaking;
to be sure that he was all right, and that there was no issue of embarrassing the motherland with the police. It was frightening
to Jack because he had no desire to be shipped off to Hong Kong and the fact that a bureaucrat was here so late at night made
him nervous. But his false identity held. Yes, he said as Jin Ming, his parents and his grandparents were dead, he had no
family back in China. He had been careful to craft an identity without family. The Chinese diplomat was concerned for his
wellbeing and Jack reassured the man he was the innocent victim of a crime. He thanked the embassy visitor and when the man
had left Jack stared at the window.

He wondered if his mother was looking for him; he thought not. She didn’t want him. He had been lucky, too lucky, and it was
time to place a surer hand on the reins of his own fate.

He couldn’t sleep. He got up for a walk.

Each day, the doctors had encouraged Jack to walk to stretch his leg muscles, even if it was just around the floor for five
tottering orbits, ambling past rooms and equipment in the hallway. His mind full of Ricki and his rapidly unraveling situation,
he was walking back to his room and as he turned the final corner
he saw, from down the hallway, a man he didn’t know in an orderly’s uniform enter his room.

His police guard was gone.

Jack stopped. The man looked short, thickly built. He shut Jack’s door behind him. He knew the night-shift orderly; he had
seen him on the opposite side of the floor, during his walk.

If Ricki could steal a uniform …

He can see I’m not in the bed, Jack thought. He must think I’m in the bathroom.

He ducked back behind the corner, keeping one eye focused on the door.

After thirty seconds, the man stepped into the hallway. Heavy eyebrows, pale skin, a soft mess of a mouth, a bottom lip long
ago disfigured in a fight.

You’re a loose end, Jack thought. And now either someone who knew Nic, or someone who knows Novem Soles has come looking for
you. They know you’re alive. They’ve either waited for the guard to go to the bathroom or they’ve paid the guard off. They
want to be sure you can’t talk.

And if he was wrong, then no harm done. But if he was right …

The man saw Jack. The twisted lip smiled. He raised the eyebrows as if in greeting. Like he was a friend, come by to talk
to Jack.

Jack ran.

Or, rather, Jack stumbled in a loping run. He wasn’t entirely recovered from the bullet that had grazed arteries and windpipe.
He wore a bathrobe and the hospital gown and flimsy slippers the nurses had given him. He saw a stairway and he hit the door,
leaning out into the cool slightly stale air of the concrete staircase. His mind moved as fast as it did when he was crafting
a software
program. If the guy was here to silence Jack he would expect Jack to try and escape.

Most immediate escape meant down, toward the ground floor.

So Jack headed up. He wasn’t used to physical exertion and little black clouds dotted his vision. His breath sounded loud
in the stairwell. He hit the next floor, opened the door, stepped out into the unit. More recovery rooms but this floor was
less crowded. He was on the opposite side of the floor from the main nurses’ station.

An old man in a brown bathrobe walked past him, ambling with an insomniac’s shuffle, carting an IV feed on a wheeled pole.
Jack moved in the other direction. He had to hide. Get to a phone, get Ricki to come and pick him up at a nearby pub or café.
He couldn’t stay out on the streets of Amsterdam dressed like a patient; even in the world’s most laid-back city around midnight,
it would attract too much attention. He looked like someone who might have wandered away from the hospital and needed help.

He opened the door of one room, saw an elderly woman sleeping inside. He eased it shut.