‘Yes, we do have to talk. I know you are upset. I know what you’re feeling because I’m feeling it, too. If we can’t trust each other, we won’t get far in finding Jin Ming.’
She gave me a doubting look. ‘I tell you where he will be. You kill him. That’s all we have to discuss.’ She took another hit of the pinot.
‘Leonie-’
‘Listen. This is the single worst day of my life. You are a dude who kills people. So I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to be your friend or join your support group for parents of kidnapped kids. I just want my Taylor home.’ She picked up the wine glass. She stared past my shoulder toward the loud group in the back corner. ‘If those assholes are on our flight, I may end up punching someone.’
A dude who kills people. That was so not what I was. But now wasn’t the time to reassure her I wasn’t some slavering ax-wielder. Winning her trust would be a slow process. ‘This target. What can you tell me about him? What does he know about Novem Soles?’
‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t flinch at the name of the group; she’d heard it before.
‘You must. That knowledge would be key to tracking him, predicting where he will run, who he will ask for help.’
‘All you need to do is kill him.’ She set the wine glass down hard. ‘You’re the bullet, I’m the brains. I just tell you where to shoot. The bullet doesn’t need any details except a location.’
Well. ‘Did Anna threaten your daughter if you tell me something you’re not supposed to?’
‘I would say kidnapping in itself would be threat enough. I… know Anna. Children are simply a commodity to her. Products that other people make for her and from which she profits. She’ll kill or sell our kids and we’ll never find them if we give her anything other than complete obedience.’
Was she trying to provoke me? See how I’d react? I studied her again. Fierce intelligence in the eyes. I leaned forward.
‘Has it occurred to you that neither of us is getting our kid back? We have zero guarantees she’ll honor her side of the bargain. We need to find a way to protect ourselves, to make sure she hands the kids back. We could trade her Ming, alive, for the kids.’
‘You listen to me.’ Leonie pointed a finger at my face. ‘You hear every word I’m saying. Don’t you dare think of going against Anna. If we deviate from the plan, Anna will kill the children.’ She lowered her voice to the barest whisper. ‘We are doing exactly what she tells us to do. If you try to fight back… well, you won’t.’
‘You’ll kill me?’
‘I’ll do anything for my child. Anything.’ Stare down between us.
‘We are on the same side,’ I repeated.
‘This is crazy. Please, Sam. Let’s just try to get along out of necessity.’
I’d mishandled this. But where was the primer for this situation? I got up and fixed us two sleek plates of appetizers, laid on the sleek buffet by the sleek hostesses. Leonie watched me. I brought back her food, set the silvery plate in front of her.
‘Thank you.’ She nibbled at a meatball, then at a carrot stick, out of politeness.
‘You hold yourself together remarkably well for someone whose child was just taken,’ I said. ‘I have the advantage. My child was taken weeks ago. I have had time to… adjust.’
‘That’s a white lie,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re adjusted at all. It’s all stifled just inside.’
I ate a slider, sipped at the whisky.
She looked at me. ‘Inside I’m a wreck.’
‘When my kid and my wife were taken – I couldn’t eat or sleep for days.’ I was also framed as a traitor, undergoing interrogation in a CIA-run prison in Poland, but that was an avalanche of detail right now for Leonie.
‘Your wife was taken. I thought you said… ’
‘Anna’s people grabbed my wife when she was seven months pregnant. I’ve never seen my son face to face.’
She just stared at me for a long moment. ‘How awful. I am sorry.’
‘Let me guess why you can’t go to the police. Anna provided you with your baby girl.’
She ate some more of the carrot. She did not seem the type for an impulsive admission. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘You said you work on hiding people which suggests to me you are breaking a few laws, committing forgery for new papers, maybe credit fraud. You know her. She got you your kid. What Anna giveth, Anna taketh away.’
She was good at concealing her emotions – after all, me dissing her was nothing compared to the agonies she must be feeling for her kid – and the only sign of betrayal on her face was the momentary quiver of her lip. ‘No. Taylor is mine. But I’ve done work for Anna. Sometimes the children she places with parents’ – note she didn’t say the unthinkable word of sells – ‘need birth certificates. I forge them for her. And I’ve helped hide people she sent to me.’
‘Did you do a birth certificate for Julien Daniel Besson?’ My breath couldn’t move in my lungs. I leaned in close and she leaned back. I grabbed her hands again. ‘That was the name my son was given at birth. He was born in France. Julien Daniel Besson.’
‘I didn’t. But if Anna’s using your child as leverage against you then she hasn’t placed him. She’ll only place him now if she doesn’t need him any more.’
Her words were a knife across my throat. She saw it.
‘I’m sorry, Sam. I really am.’
‘You help her, forging certificates.’
I thought I could hear the soft burr of her grinding her teeth. ‘It’s not a choice.’
I stared at her. ‘They have more dirt on you.’ I didn’t know yet if I could trust her. Cornering her about her secrets wasn’t going to win her over to my side.
‘I am not up for Twenty Questions.’ She stood. ‘Don’t talk about defying Anna. We do what she says, and nothing else. I’m not putting Taylor’s life at risk. And you shouldn’t be endangering your own child’s life, either.’ She spat the last word like I was the scum of parenting.
There was no point in saying, you’re wanting us to entrust babies to killers and murderers. ‘Okay, Leonie. Okay. Calm down.’
‘I don’t need to know you, you don’t need to know me.’ She downed the pinot noir in two hard gulps, picked up her bag. ‘Let’s go get on our plane.’
17
Flight 903, Las Vegas to New York
We sat together in first class. Most of the cabin, weary from partying in the desert and not looking forward to a work day tomorrow in New York, slept. I watched an old movie, Aliens, on my personal viewer in the chair back and thought, now there’s a movie about how you save a kid. I had seen the film a dozen times before and I could watch it without thinking, without having to follow the story. Leonie’s eyes were closed. She had spoken so few words to me on the flight I felt sure no one believed we were traveling together. I got up to splash cold water on my face in the lavatory. Most of the other passengers were locked in their own digital cocoons, watching movies on their personal movie screens or hooked into their iPods or iPads. Technology has made it easy for us to be totally alone in a crowded room. I envied those who slept. I needed sleep, badly, but I couldn’t settle my mind. I’ve never been good at sleeping on planes.
I sat back down and Leonie opened her eyes. She stared at me, blinking, as though unsure where she was wakening. I was surprised she’d managed to doze off. The adrenaline shock from her daughter’s kidnapping was fading, the inevitable exhaustion settling into her. She looked guilty at having done anything as weak and self- indulgent as sleep, when I knew it was the body’s natural response to cope with crippling stress.
‘You okay? You want something to drink?’ It’s the bar owner in me. I always want to offer a drink. The flight attendants should just let me man the beverage cart. They could go watch the movie.
