‘Tomorrow. What time?’
‘He has told the contact he’ll call him at noon with instructions.’
So Anna had someone inside the CIA.
‘I know where Jack wants to meet them. So your worries are nearly at an end, Anna.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘I said tell me.’
‘We ran into a problem. I think you might have a leak on your side.’
‘Impossible.’
‘Jack Ming’s mother is kidnapped and now dead, and so is her kidnapper. If you don’t have a leak, then a third party is interfering in our work.’
A chastised silence. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’ll talk to you after Jack Ming is dead.’
She hung up.
‘You can’t cross her,’ Leonie said. ‘She holds all the cards.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She only thinks she does.’
‘So who’s trying to screw us? Is it the CIA?’
‘Anyone could say that they’re CIA,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. But as long as we find Jack Ming first, it won’t matter.’
‘Who is this Mila?’
How do you explain Mila? ‘A friend.’
‘Who has a price on her head.’ Her voice was steady.
‘An interesting friend.’
‘You were just trying to panic the driver.’
‘I wasn’t going to sell out anyone, thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘Thank you. You got us out of that alive.’
‘We’re in this together.’
‘Yes,’ she said, but now we believed it in a way we hadn’t before. She fell silent. I thought about how Special Projects might have identified their informant as Jack Ming in the past few hours. I thought about Fagin. I thought about him talking to his bosses at Special Projects and whether anyone there would hire an ex-Latvian spy and current limo driver to do their dirty work.
We drove to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the address of Russell Ming’s property, the one for which Jack had presumably taken the keys. All the windows were darkened. It was a squat, four-story building – it wore the look of having once been a small factory. It had not been redone into shops or studios or apartments for the throngs of young, hip professionals and former Manhattanites crowding into Williamsburg. The windows were boarded. A sign on the side read MING PROPERTIES.
‘Do we break in?’ she asked. Her voice was strained.
‘Yes. He could be inside right now.’
I picked the locks and we went inside.
An alarm sounded.
‘Hell,’ I said. We bolted back to the car. From a side street we watched. First a private security car responded. The guard went inside, stayed inside, turned off the alarm.
‘I don’t think Jack Ming is there,’ Leonie said.
After a few minutes the guard came back out, locked the door, did a final walkthrough around the building, and then left.
‘No Jack,’ she said.
But he’d taken these keys for some reason. If he wasn’t here now, he soon would be. I refused to consider the possibility that I was utterly wrong.
‘Do we wait here? Wait here for him to come?’ she said.
The pain in my head throbbed. My eye was nearly swollen shut; I was going to have a shiner and I didn’t want a shiner. Black eyes are memorable. I needed to be invisible.
‘We need a vantage point,’ I said. ‘We need to be able to watch the building, know how often the private security comes and goes.’
We drove past the building again and our headlights danced on the sign. Security by Proxima Systems. She looked them up on her iPhone. Then she pulled Mrs Ming’s phone from her pocket, listened to her voicemail and dialed the number.
‘Proxima New York.’
‘Yes, this is Sandra Ming of Ming Properties. I own a building in Williamsburg for which you provide security.’ Leonie made her voice brisk, slightly deeper.
‘Yes, ma’am, and may I have your account passcode.’
She hesitated about five seconds. ‘Jack.’
We could hear typing and then ‘Thank you, ma’am, how can I help you?’
I stared at her. How had she known?
‘I need to confirm the security check schedule for that building. I’ve heard from other property owners that there might be a crime increase going on in the neighborhood and I just got a phone call that there had been a breach.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Typing noises. ‘The guard comes by at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m., then again at noon, with up to a ten-minute variant. If he will be later than that we contact you. Do you want to increase your patrol profile?’
‘Not now. Thank you,’ Leonie said. She hung up.
‘You should have canceled the service,’ I said dryly.
‘Generally that requires a face-to-face meeting, or a separate confirmation password,’ Leonie said. ‘I didn’t want to arouse attention. We know our time windows now.’
‘How did you know the password?’
‘Because I’m a mom. Moms use their kids’ or pets’ names, or a variant as passwords, like eighty per cent of the time. It was worth a try.’
‘So we know when the guard comes. Yes, and there’s a long gap when Jack and August can meet.’ I considered. ‘And I don’t think Jack is going to camp out inside the building. He risks being caught by a security guard as well, or being noticed. But we need to find a place to watch from, to be sure.’ I scanned the buildings. ‘There. Two away. That’s a hotel.’
33
Hotel Esper, Williamsburg/The Last Minute Bar, Manhattan
Leonie got the room at the Williamsburg hotel, a trendy, high-end spot with the meaningless name of Hotel Esper (was it short for esperanza, hope? Or did it imply you could read minds while a guest there? I wondered); just one room, with a window facing the Ming building. We were going to be awake in shifts and if anyone else – say a rogue element in the CIA – was looking for us, they’d be looking maybe for a man and a woman checking in together but in separate rooms. I drove back to our Manhattan hotel and washed my face clean of dirt and blood. I looked okay except for the black eye. It wasn’t so bad. I gathered all Leonie’s notes and papers and stuffed them into her small suitcase. I put on fresh, untorn clothes and collected our bags and checked out for us both.
Then I took the rental and swung by my bar, The Last Minute. I looked like a wreck going in and Bertrand raised an eyebrow at me. I went straight upstairs. There was an apartment up there but I didn’t dare bring Leonie to it. She already knew I owned The Canyon in Las Vegas but she didn’t need to know more of my business. And I didn’t need Mila knowing what I was doing.
But when I opened the door, there Mila was. Sitting at the computer, a neat Glenfiddich at her elbow.
She was typing something. She looked up at me and wiped her hand back across her eyes.
