The sand truck smashed along the cars parked on the side of the street. Metal crunched, glass shattered. I tried to get to my knees on the sand.
And then the back of the truck’s bed fell open. I didn’t know if Jack got clever and resourceful – he was already that, he’d thought of stealing the truck before I did – or if he just hit the wrong switch, or if the rods that hit the truck when we fell damaged the catch that kept the hinge of the bed in place.
The sand spilled, as though from a broken hourglass, and carried me with it into a slide onto the street. Cars behind the truck braked as the sand exploded out onto them. Which was good because I tumbled out with the sand and I landed on a heap of it, approximately three feet in front of a honking cab. I leapt forward and the sand stopped the cab’s bumper, just short of my shoes.
I tried to scramble to my feet.
Jack hammered that sand truck through the traffic, leaving a swath. I saw him barrel through a red light, turn, and he was gone. I pulled myself out of the sand heap. I saw the cab that nearly hit me was empty and so I kicked the sand heap smooth.
Back toward the building where we’d fallen there were multiple police units and officers racing down the sidewalk.
I felt certain someone was going to point at me at any moment. I did not care to have a discussion with the police. So I got into the cab. There was no one in the back seat.
‘Hi,’ I said to the cabbie. ‘Are you for hire?’
He stared at my sandy self, turned around in the seat, gaping. My once-sleek Burberry suit was a ruin; I was bloodied and holding my arm awkwardly, and I still had that black eye.
I glanced at his name on the cab permit. Vasily Antonov. Russian. So I said to Vasily, in Russian, ‘Can you take me where I need to go?’
Speaking Russian must have reassured him. Cars behind him were honking so he inched forward, over and through the sand. The cops stormed past us, toward the intersection where Jack had turned. ‘Where do you need to go?’ he asked me back in Russian.
We pulled up to the intersection where Jack had turned with the truck. ‘Turn right, please.’ Still in Russian.
‘You want me to follow the sand truck?’ he answered.
‘That would be great.’
‘This man stole your truck?’
‘Yes.’ Sounded as good a reason as any.
‘You look like you put up a good fight for your truck.’
‘I tried,’ I said.
Six blocks down the truck was pulled over. The door stood open, the cab empty.
Jack Ming was gone. My arm was broken. He knew my face. He knew I was hunting him and intended to kill him. And the police swarmed everywhere. I had to retreat. Daniel, I’m sorry. Dad is so sorry, baby, wherever you are.
‘Take me here.’ I gave him The Last Minute’s address. I had to hope Leonie had made it there as well.
‘Nice bar, yes, I’ve gotten fares there.’ He glanced at me. ‘So. Where in Russia are you from?’ I guess I had no accent he could detect.
‘I once lived in Moscow.’ It was easier to lie than to explain my globetrotting childhood, salted with a dozen languages before I was even sixteen.
‘Ah, I did not know a Russian speaker owned that bar. I will recommend it to the tourists.’
‘And you are always welcome to come in for a drink. When off duty.’
‘Ah, thank you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, and leaned back against the upholstery. The cabbie slid in a tape of Russian pop music to pass the time. Electro-style, sounded like Tatiana Bulanova. So thoughtful. It had a beat and you could dance to it.
I did my best not to pass out.
54
Brooklyn
You have to look normal. Slapping the sand off his clothes and from his hair, Jack ran down to the Marcy Avenue subway station. The luck he’d wheedled from the world shone on him for the last time for a while: a train pulled in just as he reached the track. He didn’t care where it was bound; he joined the press of people.
He sank down into one of the hard plastic seats. The shock of what he had survived made him shiver. No one sat next to him and that didn’t surprise him. He was filthy from having hit the sand. His wrist hurt where Sam Capra had grabbed it when the lunatic, the absolute fricking crazy-ass lunatic, had thrown them both off the side of the building. He leaned forward, clutched his elbows with his palms. The gun he’d taken from his mother’s apartment was gone; dropped on the roof before the fall. The clip was empty anyway. He should have shot the man dead when he had the chance but he didn’t know if he could fire a gun into another human being’s face at point-blank range and he’d taken the chance to run. But that Sam Capra bastard was crazy.
He had thrown the two of them off a building.
The notebook. A cold terror seized him. If he’d lost that he had nothing to bargain with for his life. He felt its cool weight in the back of his pants. The red leather had slipped further down, caught in his boxers, one strip of the tape torn loose, the other still, thank God, in place. He pulled out the notebook, ignoring the momentary stares from the women sitting across from him. Not much in New York rated more than a momentary stare, including producing a notebook out of your underwear. He brushed the gritty sand away from the red leather, hugged the volume close to his chest.
He couldn’t go home. His own mother had betrayed him; the CIA had failed him; Novem Soles had sent Sam Capra and that redheaded woman to the rendezvous point to kill him.
Novem Soles had infiltrated August’s group. They knew about the meeting.
What do I do now? he thought. Where do I go? And for the first time, Jack Ming didn’t know an answer, or have an idea. He pulled up his knees and he rode the train under the great beating heart of the city, the only way at the moment he knew how to hide.
What do I do?
The notebook’s weight in his hands, like gold. All he had. He’d lost his knapsack, his laptop.
Sam Capra’s odd words rattled in Jack’s head. I have to. They’ll kill my kid if I don’t. I’m sorry. What did that mean? And the redhead: I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to die.
Why the hell were Novem Soles flunkies apologizing to him? It made no sense.
But he was willing to die to kill you. He apologized for having to kill you. That’s not the act of a hired killer. That’s not the action of a CIA agent gone bad.
That’s the act of a truly desperate man.
They’ll kill my kid.
Jack ran his fingers along the edge of the notebook.
Well, I’m sorry for that, Sam Capra, he thought, but I’m not dying for your kid. Sorry.
His first impulse was to run and keep running, maybe until he hit the Pacific Ocean, or the Andes. Sounded like a masterful plan. But you can’t run forever. Running is what they expect you to do. You have to stop them or you’ll never breathe free. Look where running has gotten you. Nowhere, nearly dead, alone. Fight back, do what they don’t expect. Which means using the two weapons you have. Your brain, and this notebook.
Not weapons. Bait. Bait to lure them in at the time and place of his choosing.
He started to think about a plan. And he wondered that if someone would be nice enough to turn on his lost laptop, he could remotely access it and he could set his burgeoning plan into motion.
