The Last Minute (54 page)

‘I’m not lying. About your brother. Lucy always said that was why you joined, to get your revenge … ’

‘And that’s why you’d lie,’ I said. ‘Think about it. You’re bragging you founded the group that killed my brother? I really
would shut up now.’

I turned and went back down the hallway. I found Leonie and Daniel hiding in a closet.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘We’re all leaving. Together.’

She clutched Daniel close. She had held him for several minutes, and her closeness calmed him. He looked up at me. Blinked,
disinterested. Then looked at me again, one little fist raised toward me.

I took him from Leonie; I did not ask. She did not fight me. He was hers in a way but he was mine. I tucked his little head
under my arm, like I’d seen the fathers on television do, and I could smell his warm milky breath. The soft weight of him.
The miracle of him.

He raised his little fist again, and I kissed it.

Daniel was afraid of the water.

I held him close to me. I found it hard to let him go at times, it was almost as if I needed to drink in his touch. He had
grown used to me, in the past several weeks, and I liked to tell myself that my absence in the first months of his life was
not impossible to overcome. That being apart from me for so long at his life’s
beginning wouldn’t scar him. I read obsessively about the topic of parental separation on Google. It didn’t matter what the
experts said.

I would make it right.

We walked in the surge of the tide and he stared down at the waves eddying around my calves. I timed it carefully with the
surf and after a healthy wave passed I dipped his feet in the cool. He giggled. As the next wave surged forward I hoisted
him high out of its path and he loved being raised toward the sky. We played the game, him laughing, until I miscued and the
top of a foaming wave crept up past his swimsuit to splash his chest. Then he howled in dismay. Daniel, I had learned, liked
his comforts.

Leonie had taken good care of him.

With my fussy boy fussing, I walked back up to the beach cottage. I thought Leonie would be inside, fixing lunch, but instead
Mila sat at the table.

‘Hello,’ I said. I made Daniel’s hand wave. ‘Hello, Mila. I went surfing with no board.’

‘Please,’ Mila said. ‘Do not treat that beautiful child like a puppet.’ She got up and tapped his nose playfully with her
finger. She frowned. ‘He is like a greasy pig.’

‘Sunscreen.’

‘Did you dip him in it?’

‘I don’t want him to get sunburned.’

‘Amazed you could maintain a grip.’

‘Do you want to hold him?’

‘Linen,’ she said, pointing to her blouse. ‘I don’t want to risk a massive oil stain.’ But she waved her greasy finger at
the yawning Daniel and smiled a grin that seemed too bright for the Mila I knew. ‘Hello,
pui
or,
’ she chimed. I had learned this meant
‘little birdie’. Daniel gurgled back. He seemed a bit uncertain about Mila.

‘I think you’re a bit ambivalent about babies,’ I said, settling him into a chair and wiping his hands clean. An ocean explorer
deserved a snack. I opened a bottle of organic pureed pears. I sat down and spooned the fruity mush into his mouth. Daniel
gobbled.

‘Humans are much more interesting when they reach school age. Then I like them much better.’ She glanced at me. ‘Maybe by
then I will retire and be a teacher again. Just for Daniel. Perhaps I will open an exclusive language school.’ She made a
face. ‘I hear they are hiring.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘Ricardo Braun is now a big hero. I heard that he broke up a criminal ring here that was spying on American citizens and government
and companies. He killed the two ringleaders: an Israeli man, a French woman.’

‘Of course he’s a, and I quote, “hero”.’

‘Wounded in the line of duty. Retired with honors. No farewell cocktail party, though. Went back to Florida. Living very quietly.’

‘So giving August the notebook was the right thing to do. That picture of Braun with two of the Suns sunk his comeback.’

‘The lovely red notebook can’t hurt us.’ Mila shrugged. ‘I tore out the pages of interest to me.’

‘The ones about the Round Table?’

‘Very few. But there are some useful people in the missing pages of the little red notebook. I say give them a chance to redeem
themselves helping us rather than being blackmailed by Nine Suns.’

I shook my head.

‘On a voluntary basis,’ she said, with a cough.

‘The CIA has more resources than we do to bring down Nine Suns.’

‘And they will bring down at least a few of them that they can tie to the blackmail ring. The CIA will identify some of their
plans. But, Sam, Nine Suns, they will not go away. Some fall, they will be replaced. Your friend Braun created too good and
useful a template. They have made too much money, accrued too much power. They won’t give it up.’

‘I keep wondering if I should have killed him.’

‘You must not talk about killing people in front of
pui
or
,’ she said. ‘It is bad for child development. You need boundaries.’

‘So Braun’s not running Special Projects.’

‘No.’

‘Who is?’

‘One of the few big secrets I do not know.’

‘You really don’t know?’ I hoped August got the job. He’d brought in Jack Ming, after all.

‘I really don’t know, don’t care. You. You are my problem.’

‘How so?’ I knew what was coming.

‘We gave you many bars to run.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Bars to serve as a cover for you, so you could do jobs for us.’

‘Ah.’

‘I don’t believe you are going into fights with
pui
or
strapped to your back.’

‘No.’

‘So. May I have the bars back?’ She was asking so politely. ‘No.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Well, the Round Table still needs the bars run, right? And any
other employees such as yourself need to avail themselves of the bars as safe houses, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So let me run the bars. I’ll make sure they turn a tidy profit.’

‘And that will be enough for you.’

‘For now.’

Mila drew her knees up to her chin. ‘And what about what that old asshole said about your brother’s death?’

‘I have Daniel. I’m not interested in the revenge game.’

‘May I be honest?’

‘You’re still my boss.’

‘I forgot momentarily. Right now you are captivated by this greasy child. You will want to be a good and present father. But
you will get restless, bored.’

‘Never of him.’

Mila nodded. ‘You will get bored of not knowing.’

‘The truth?’ Nine Suns had a plan for me, according to Zviman. One cultivated over the years. I still didn’t know what that
plan was. Did I want to?

‘No, you will want to know what these jerks are doing,’ Mila said. ‘You and Jack Ming destroyed their main source of information.
Now. Extortion does not have a long life anyway. But they will replace Zviman in their constellation of assholes, and they
will find new mischief. New ways to earn profits or grab power. Or there will be some other jerk to fight because no one else
knows that he is a threat, or no one else will dare to fight him.’

‘Not my problem,’ I said carefully, ‘until it is.’

‘Ah. My glimmer of hope. Therefore you may keep the bars. For now. Run them at massive profit or I will bring Barney DVDs
for Danny boy.’

‘Leonie calls him Dat.’

Mila made a face. ‘For a woman who invents names she has horrible taste.’ She jerked her head toward the sliding glass door.
‘She left when I came here.’

‘Your charm is contagious.’

‘Why is she still here?’

‘For Daniel.’

‘How convenient his nanny is a master forger. No doubt she can teach him to copy your signature on excuses for his teachers.’

‘She’s not his nanny.’

‘Well. She is not his mother, she is not your wife, what is she? Aside from a champion liar?’

‘We’re deciding.’

Mila watched the pear ooze past Daniel’s lips. ‘I noticed there were three bedrooms here. All used.’

‘You can count.’

‘Sam. She has no claim on your child. Her adoption was both illegal and immoral. Don’t reward her. Don’t let … this woman
into your life.’

I glanced up at her. ‘Do you think I want to send someone who loves Daniel, who would have died for him, to jail?’

‘No. You can’t expose yourself that way, either, to police questions as to where you were when Daniel was born.’

True.

‘It’s done,’ I said, ‘and it’s my business, not yours, and … ’

‘And I will let it go,’ Mila said quietly.

I decided to change the subject. ‘Did your CIA source have anything new on Jack Ming?’

‘Yes. He and his girlfriend have new names, new city, new jobs. They have a brand new start.’

New start. Didn’t everyone deserve one?

I left Mila considering whether a towel would protect her
from Daniel’s oily embrace and walked along the sand. Leonie stood at the water’s edge. The ocean surged then retreated around
her feet. Tides. Where one world ends, another begins. I had loved when my parents, in their globetrotting do-gooderness,
were assigned to coastal areas. Beginnings and endings, on the sand, the water erasing and renewing, all at once. She stood
in a yellow sundress, a big floppy hat.

‘You saw Mila arrived,’ she said as I joined her.

‘Yes. We had a nice chat.’

‘She still hates me.’

‘She hates most people. Except Daniel.’

‘Her one redeeming feature.’

‘I’m keeping the bars,’ I said.

‘Oh. So. I guess Daniel will be traveling with you.’

‘I’m not sure I’d wish my vagabond childhood on him.’

She looked out at the boats skidding across the sea, then back at me. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I travel and then I have a home. Where Daniel is. Where I will need help.’

‘Are you offering me a job?’ Her voice sounded cold.

‘A job, no. You’re the only mother he’s known, Leonie. I cannot take him from you, I can’t take you from him.’

Her lips narrowed. ‘If you are going to do that someday, Sam, do it now. Now is easier.’

‘No. I know you love him.’

‘And my legal standing with Daniel?’ she asked in the barest whisper, a question she almost couldn’t risk.

‘None, right now. This is a test drive, Leonie. We’ll see.’ I did not feel the need to say that if she ran with Daniel, she
couldn’t run far. Not with me and Mila and friends looking for her.

She scratched at her lip, considering.

We were silent for several moments, watching the water wipe the sandy slate clean.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I accept.’

‘I might be at home a lot, I might have to travel. I plan on staying well clear of trouble.’

‘Man plans, God laughs.’ She crossed her arms. ‘You know I didn’t sleep with you because … I did it because I wanted you.’

‘I know. I wanted you, too.’

‘But.’

‘But. We were both in an extreme mental state. It’s too soon for me, after Lucy. I’m sorry.’

She steepled her fingers before her face and studied me. ‘And the future?’