He went into the kitchen. There wasn’t much food inside the refrigerator: bottles of beer, sandwich meat, cheese furred with mold, jar of mustard. He closed the door on the rising smell. Then he pulled the refrigerator out from the wall. A layer of dust and grit lay on the floor. He began to search the cabinets and the drawers, removing dish towels, boxes of sugary cereal, bottles of hard liquor. Nothing. He pulled up the tatty lining paper to see if anything was hidden underneath. Zero luck. When the cabinets were empty he inspected them, tapping on them.
The top cabinet sounded different.
He tapped again. Then he stepped down and found a knife and worked it against the corner of the wood.
It gave slightly. He stuck the knife in and the wood folded back; there was a hidden hinge.
Wedged in the space was a red book, large, with a moleskin cover and an elastic band to keep it closed.
He pulled the red notebook free. He sat down on the kitchen floor and flipped through the pages. In the den he could hear Mrs ten Boom dribbling more whisky into her glass, moaning, a soft keening of grief.
The first few pages were numbers. Just numbers, in two columns. Maybe a code? Or maybe passwords? Or maybe account numbers. They were written in a neat, spare hand, as though they had been carefully copied.
He flipped to where the columns of numbers stopped.
Next page was a photo. A lean whippet of a man he’d never seen before, older, Caucasian, in a gray suit, walking with another man and a woman. The woman was Asian, striking, in her twenties. The other man was tall, heavy-set, black, also in a fine looking suit, scowling. Behind them was a rather grand house, with a huge porch and columns, with a curving driveway in its front.
He had no idea who these people were. Were these three of the Nine Suns? He realized he didn’t know if Nine Suns referred to nine specific people, or if it were simply a dumb code name. Written below the picture, in the same precise handwriting, First Day at The Nursery, 2001.
The Nursery. But there were no children in the picture.
He flipped through the rest of the book. It seemed that Nic had printed out an image from the computer screen capture and just taped it into the book. The red notebook was fat with paper. He studied. Photos of people: sometimes what appeared to be family photos, or people in meetings, talking together, in a range of settings: street plazas, sidewalks, office buildings. He did not recognize any of the faces.
Next were printouts of what appeared to be emails and transcriptions of phone conversations: ones where secret, illegal deals were struck between competitive companies, where bribes were subtly offered, where threats were made. The email addresses included government offices in the US, across Europe, and in Japan and Brazil, across Africa. And some of the world’s most powerful corporations. It was like a jigsaw of high-powered, white-collar crime: many pieces, and Jack couldn’t see how they all fit together.
Then a series of photos that looked like passport pictures, a dozen people, and in the top left of each photo a small notation: eliminated, and a date.
People that Novem Soles had killed? He flipped through the photos: he didn’t know who any of the people were. There were no identifiers.
Spreadsheets, partial, with items bought and prices paid: office rental in London, purchase of C-4 for London bomb, bribes to police inspector in Oslo. Jack’s stomach churned.
This is what his hidden programs had plucked for Nic: financial information that could gut or elevate markets, corporate secrets, a money trail of death, leverage for blackmail. If this was how Novem Soles was going to control people in key positions, and these were the people they used as levers, then one could deduce what their intentions and their targets were, and what their next major plot would be.
He read through the mass of stolen gems but no pattern formed. Maybe this was simply a way to control people in powerful positions who had troublesome secrets and could be manipulated. Other pages were filled with code, with more numbers that meant nothing to him.
But here was his shield; here was his sword. If he could not make full sense of it then he knew who could.
He found a landline phone in the apartment. He picked it up and was relieved to hear a dial tone. It hadn’t yet been disconnected. He unplugged the phone and plugged its cord into the MacBook Pro that Ricki had loaned him. He activated a cheap, throwaway dial-up account. Getting through to the CIA would not be easy. He would have to write a vivid note that would seize their attention, past all the cranks and weirdos who saw a conspiracy in every shadow and emailed their theories to the Agency. He needed to jump to the front of the line of incoming emails. On the CIA’s website he found a standard email form for people to share information or comments with the Agency.
He typed in the message page:
I have critical information for a CIA officer named August who was in Amsterdam several weeks ago. I offer serious, actionable dirt on the group called Novem Soles. This offer is only good for three days.
He entered in a prepaid cell phone number he’d bought after leaving Ricki’s apartment. He did not sign his name.
He reread the message. If he got too specific August might figure out who he was. This was tantalizing enough, he decided. He would talk to August and only August. August had kept him from being hurt worse; August had argued to leave him in the van, safe from danger.
He pressed Send. He stood, closed the laptop.
‘Mrs ten Boom, we should go.’
‘No. Nic will be here soon, won’t he?’ She was drunk again, a crooked smile back on her face. She’d refilled from one of the whisky bottles. ‘Nic will be here soon.’
Oh, God, Jack thought, he couldn’t leave her. But now that he’d contacted the CIA, he had to move quickly. He couldn’t be anchored with the old drunk woman. But he couldn’t leave her here either, in the horrible place of her son’s worst crimes.
‘Let’s go back to your place, Mrs ten Boom.’
She hit on the whisky bottle again and she lay down on the couch. ‘I want to stay here. Please.’
He stood watching her, and then he said, ‘Goodbye. Thanks for your help.’
She was asleep, holding onto the last shred of her son.
Jack Ming stumbled down the darkened stairs, clutching the most important book in the world to his chest.
10
NoLita, Manhattan
August Holdwine took the subway to NoLita, the neighborhood North of Little Italy. He walked under the bright morning sky. The safe house sat above a clothing boutique off Mott Street. He went inside and in the kitchen he found his trackers waiting for him. The guy who Sam had manhandled sat at the wooden table, sourly drinking a caffe latte, ignoring Cuban pastries they’d picked up from August’s favorite neighborhood cafe. Instead of eating he pecked on a laptop keyboard.
‘Writing up a report on how you got played last night?’ August asked.
‘A complaint against you for not taking Sam Capra into custody after he attacked me.’
‘Be smarter next time,’ August said. ‘Email that to me and my supervisor, if you must, but why don’t you think about it some more?’
‘You should have grabbed him,’ the tracker said. ‘We got you breakfast, by the way.’
‘Did you spit in it?’
‘Thought about it. Thought you’d make him come back here and talk.’
‘Detention hasn’t much worked with him in the past,’ August said.
‘So, finding this Mila woman, what do we do now?’ the woman tracker asked.
August considered. That thought had kept him awake much of the night. He was charged with finding Mila; but what if, despite Sam’s protestations, this Mila was helping Sam find his son? Was he going to interfere with that? Duty and friendship were often uneasy partners. But duty had to come first.