For a moment neither of us moved. The blade was broken by the blunt weight of the spike. I held it because I had no other weapon.
And then Lizzie began to scream, incoherent rage, the kind of fury that rises like a storm in the soul. She screamed: ‘Meggie!’ She yanked back the spike by seizing onto the chain, whipping it into a cloud of frenzy.
I dropped the broken knife, grabbed the one still clutched in Beth’s hand. I stood and the weight of Lizzie’s surujin began to spiral around my neck. Instinct to save my throat kicked in and I raised my arm. The weight and the chain caught it, pressing it against my face, the blade now above my head, wedged and useless. Lizzie yanked me toward her, the spike raised. The whirring had cleaned a fair amount of Beth’s brain and blood off of it.
No playpen for me. No keeping me alive now. Now there was just the vast, awful, empty rage in her eyes.
So I flowed with the tug on the chain and I threw myself into her.
We crashed to the floor. She hit me in the head with the spike and the weight at the same time, cymballing my head. I couldn’t shrug free from the chain to release my arm and she whirled me loose and snapped a brutal kick into my face. I fell back and then she looped the chain in a savage noose and began to squeeze, her knees in my back.
Colors swam before my eyes, broke apart, descended into grays. I gritted my teeth. The blade was beyond my reach. I pulled away from her, like a plow horse dragging an impossible weight. Grasping for the knife. She howled and shoved her foot hard against my spine.
Daniel. The thought of him fueled me. My hand closed around the knife.
She leapt over me clawing for it. And this is how a person dies.
The pressure on the chains eased.
We both grabbed for the knife.
I could hardly breathe. When she tried to pull it away, I let her do the work and I just steered it. With a thrust that surprised us both the blade pierced her chest.
She gasped, a very quiet sound for such a loud, bragging fool. I lay beside her. There was not a lot of blood because it had slid into the heart with a pure straightness.
She didn’t die as fast as Beth but then she was gone. I pushed her off me.
Special Projects was basically a rogue group. What happened when you had a rogue inside the rogue? They know about Mila, and they know about my son. I’ll do what they want and they’ll just ask for Mila next. It won’t ever end. Ever.
I staggered to my feet. I pulled the chain free from my throat like a man just spared from the gallows. I got to the window and I spat blood.
Think. I dug in my pocket, I found my cell phone. I just hoped I still had my voice.
44
Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan
The phone buzzed early, at 11 a.m., and August had changed the ring tone to match an appropriate song: Aretha Franklin’s classic cover of ‘Until You Come Back to Me’.
‘Hello,’ the informant said.
‘Hello,’ August said.
‘So, we’re doing this. An hour early. Forgive the change of plans.’
It didn’t surprise August; the informant was trying to keep him slightly off-kilter. He supposed it gave the informant a sense of control. ‘Yes.’
‘I want you and you alone showing up.’
‘Why?’
‘Those people I pissed off are threatening to kill me and say they can do it as soon as I surrender to you. That they’ve got people inside your team ready to bring my head on a platter.’
‘That is what is known as a scare tactic, my friend.’
‘You’re not my friend.’
‘I’m trying to save your life.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
‘I can assure you of your safety.’
‘I am so reassured, August.’
‘You haven’t told me how you know my name.’
‘I’ll tell you when you’ve made me safe.’
August was silent.
‘You don’t tell anyone where you’re going. You come alone. Understood?’
‘And when I’ve seen the evidence we get you to a safe house and we get you your money.’
‘It’ll be worth it, August, I promise. They are insane that I have this. Insane.’
‘Understood.’
‘Don’t lie to me. I have had a shitty week. I want this to go smoothly and to be a day you talk about when they hand you the gold watch.’
‘I’m all for that,’ August said.
‘Go to the United Nations Plaza. Be there in thirty minutes. Alone, like you promised. I’ll call you then.’ He hung up.
August folded the phone. He headed out the door. He told no one where he was going. But two men on the street followed him.
A visitor might expect the United Nations plaza would be a riotous color of international garb, but it seemed most people wore the same dark suits nowadays. And everyone seemed to be speaking English. August stood at the plaza’s edge for four minutes before his phone rang.
‘You came alone.’
‘As promised. Where are you?’
‘Not here. Go to FAO Schwarz on Fifth. I’ll call you there. Stay alone. I’m watching.’
How? August thought. He pocketed the phone in annoyance. He understood the informant’s precautions but this seemed almost theatrical. Was the informant watching him now? He glanced around, smoothing out his pale hair with his hand. He walked and doubled-back. He did not spot a tail.
The two men tracking him fell off, to be replaced by two new ones, one staying ahead of August, one behind, frowning.
*
At FAO Schwarz, tourist children danced on keyboards and August thought: they still make those? Kids swarmed the aisles and standing there alone, childless, August thought: I don’t want to draw attention. One mother, with four-year-old twin boys orbiting her, gave him the greasy eyeball of doubt. He told himself he was a visiting businessman buying a gift for his own child and that’s how he would act.
The phone rang as he surveyed an astonishing display of action figures. I’d like my own action figure, August was thinking. New York Spy Skulking Guy. He answered the phone.
‘You’re supposed to be alone, August,’ the informant said. ‘I spy, with my little eye, two goobers who picked you up at UN and are still with you.’
August kept his poker face in place. How did he know he had agents following him, tasked to help him scoop up the informant?
‘Now. Those guys could be your buddies, backing you up, or Novem Soles, following you to get us both into a corner and to kill me dead. Lose them.’
August was silent. Shocked.
‘Do you know what they look like?’
‘No,’ August lied.
‘One is black, wearing a blue suit and dark rectangular glasses. The other has brown, slightly longish hair, wearing jeans and a maroon shirt. Lose them. When you have lost them I’ll call you back.’ He hung up.
