‘August. Go home. Let me get my kid back.’
‘Have you made progress? Can we help you?’
‘I trust you. But if you tracked my kid and there’s another traitor inside the Company working for Novem Soles, then, well, maybe my kid is dead. Right now they don’t know what I’m doing and I have to keep it that way. I get him back, that’s all I care about. I’m not in the revenge business.’
‘We don’t even know what Novem Soles is,’ he said. ‘Some of the thinkers at the CIA are arguing that Novem Soles actually stands for “nothing special”. They could just have been a few guys who decided to make some cash committing corporate espionage and smuggling weapons. They got a gang of low-level thugs to tattoo themselves and talk like they were part of a big deal and maybe it’s all just a grand illusion.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think they’re big.’
‘I think you’re right. My hope is that Mila could tell me exactly what and who they are.’
‘If she knew that they’d all be dead.’
‘I’m glad Mila and I are on the same page, then. What were the two of you doing today up on the Upper West Side?’
‘Meals on Wheels.’
August tapped a finger against the base of the martini glass. ‘Look, I want Daniel back for you. More than anything, Sam. But you can’t grab him back and just let these people roll on.’
‘I am going to do what’s best for my kid and me.’ I gestured toward his martini. ‘I want out, August. I want a normal life again. They took it from me and I’m going to get it back.’
‘And, what, run a bar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sam. You did us, and the nation, a good turn here in New York.’
‘You sound like an award plaque.’
He ignored my sarcasm. ‘I won’t ever forget it. But I’ve had to argue, repeatedly, not to pull you back in. I’ve protected you because we’re friends. I did it because I know you want it this way. But Novem Soles is much, much bigger than you. I’m running a task force in Special Projects on finding information about this network, what they want, who they are.’ He turned the martini glass. ‘They’re something new. Different. I would expect a terrorist group to try to do a mass assassination. But not a criminal group. What’s the profit in it for them? Who are they? Why are they doing what they’re doing? It makes no obvious sense.’
‘Good luck.’
‘So. Let me help you. We’ll find them together.’
I let the piano music wash over me for a moment. ‘A few weeks ago I saw a redacted document from a Company file. It claimed that I could be controlled through my son. Inside the Company, August, on your side of the fence. I’m not exactly looking for help.’
He said, ‘Where did you get this document?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, I’ve certainly never seen it, Sam, and documents can be forged.’
‘This wasn’t. Because it’s true. I can be controlled through my son. Which is why I and I alone am going to get him back.’
‘You’re not alone. There is Mila. There’s no record of her in any government database we can find. Her name is Mila, right?’
‘So the only reason you are following me is to find her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is now or where she lives. I’m sorry. Would you like another martini before you go?’
‘No, thank you. I saw her, I think, in the internet cafe in Amsterdam, when we grabbed that Chinese hacker that was tied to Novem Soles. I showed her picture to some people in Europe who provide us with information now and then, at a cost.’
‘Well, if I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t say if you saw her or not.’ I risked a smile.
The scene was vivid in my head. I’d tried to infiltrate a criminal ring in Amsterdam, and the Chinese hacker was some poor college kid they’d used to research my forged Canadian identity and had gotten caught by August. The hacker had died in a shootout later that day where most of the ring died as well, and I’d barely escaped with my own life. Mila had been watching me from the same internet cafe across the canal.
‘You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ August said. ‘She does not have a nice reputation.’
I said nothing.
‘There’s a price on her head. Did you know that?’ August delivered this with the kind tone of a friend breaking bad news. ‘A cool million dollars for your Mila, preferably alive.’
The words hung in the air. I distantly heard the trill of piano jazz, the clink of the crystal, a drunken bray of laughter from a guy who’d had a pint too many.
‘I mean, you can have someone killed rather cheaply these days – under ten thousand. There’s been a price deflation on hits, what with the economic downturns. But a million on her head, Sam.’ August gave out an amused whistle. ‘That’s trouble. Some very bad people are looking for her to collect that payday. I wonder what she did that’s worth a million dollars.’
Maybe he already knew. He had been my one true friend in the CIA, and until he proved otherwise I had to consider him a friend. One of the waitresses passed. I pointed at August’s martini and raised two fingers. August’s brain needed picking.
‘We could protect her, Sam. In exchange we’ll find out who has the contract on her and we’ll make it go away.’
Once again I said nothing. I couldn’t negotiate on Mila’s behalf. Someone must truly, truly hate her. It did not surprise me.
‘Makes you wonder who she’s pissed off.’
‘Who put out the hit?’
‘We picked it up on chatter online.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘You’re not helping me.’
‘Sam. She can tell us what we need to know. Clearly she’s connected to movers and shakers. She armed you, she financed you, she got you into the Netherlands and into the UK and into the United States with no trace of entry. She helped you get inside a major criminal ring that was planning the biggest assassination plot in American history.’ He shook his head. ‘We want to know who she works for and what she knows about Novem Soles, Sam. Give her to me.’
‘You have a very vivid imagination. Maybe I did all that hard work.’
‘Not on your own. You didn’t have the resources, the money.’
‘You following me today is no different than when you had me living in Brooklyn, waiting to see if someone from Novem Soles tried to kill me or grab me. I don’t work for you, August. I quit the Company. So you worry about your projects and let me worry about mine.’
‘Let me talk to Mila, Sam. Please. We can help each other.’
‘I’m not going to repay any help I’ve gotten from her by handing her over to you for interrogation. If she wants to talk to you, she will.’
The silence between us felt like one you’d find at a poker table when the cards still hold every possibility and the only measure you take is in your opponent’s face. ‘I don’t want to play hardball with you.’
‘August, you don’t even know where the hardball court is located. Now. You’ve learned you can’t follow me, and you’ve had your most excellent drinks.’ I stood. ‘I have to go tend to my business.’
‘I find it fascinating that you now own a bar. Where’d you get the money?’
‘Good night, August.’
‘Who are you working for, Sam? What have you gotten yourself into, hanging with a woman who has a million-dollar bounty on her head? You and I both know that only happens when you get down and dirty with the very worst.’
‘I’m going to find my son. No matter what it takes. Remember that.’
He was silent, staring at his martini glass. I know he wanted to help me. He was my friend. But he couldn’t.
‘You said you wanted your life back. If that means working for Special Projects again, and it should, then have your lady friend talk to me. Tell me who’s been helping you. Give us them and get what you had back.’
‘The Company showed me zero loyalty in my hour of need, August. Let me guess: you’ll run straight to them and tell them I own this bar now. Although it’s none of their business, and I want them to leave me alone.’
He sat silent for ten long seconds. ‘I don’t need to tell them your business. You may not think it, Sam, but I’ve always been your friend.’ He looked more angry than hurt, and I knew he wasn’t playing me. He stared at me. ‘In the crazy hours, right after you were accused of killing everyone in London Special Projects, I thought – do I know him? Do I really know him, could what they say be right? You could have fooled me, could have fooled everyone else. You could have been the worst murderer and traitor in CIA history. But then I thought, no, if he killed them he wouldn’t have been so stupid about it to be there when the bomb blew. He would have vanished. Because Sam is not stupid. Sam always does a calculatedly good job.’