‘Is there anything else I may get you, sir?’
‘Uh, perhaps some food. Is there a menu?’
‘Of course, one moment.’ The tall man smiled and left him to his beer while he got a menu.
Braun waited. He wasn’t hungry but food was good camouflage. He watched the door.
62
‘Two birds,’ I said.
‘Yes. End both threats without jeopardizing your child.’
I waited.
‘You and me, we capture the informant. We don’t kill him. We take what information he knows. Fake his death, if need be. Use that information to mount a rescue operation of your child. This seems clear to me as a superior solution.’
‘Leonie is very reluctant to defy them.’
‘That is good to know.’ Then she slapped me, hard. I took it.
‘You bloodied their noses before. They have no reason to give you back your child.’
‘If they kill Daniel I will never ever stop hunting them,’ I said. ‘I will burn them down. They know this.’
‘They’re not afraid of you. They respect you. But they don’t fear you.’
‘My problem,’ I said. ‘We will stay out of each other’s way.’
‘This is not the Sam Capra I know.’ She laughed and it broke something inside me. I could almost hear the snapping of my heart.
‘I’m not risking Daniel’s life for your agenda, Mila.’
Mila said, ‘If you betray us, I’ll kill you.’
Her threat made me blink. ‘What? How the hell did you get back on that track?’
‘You need a guarantee that your child will be delivered to you after you kill the informant. I don’t intend to be the sweetener in the deal.’
‘I would never betray you.’
Now she stared at the floor, then her gaze met mine. ‘Really? Not even to save your son?’
‘Mila. Don’t even go there. Even if I offered them you, that is still no guarantee I get Daniel back. All I can do is what they’ve asked me to do.’
‘Why use you to eliminate this threat?’
‘I don’t know. Because I can get close to him.’
‘Why? Because you’re ex-CIA? Because August will let you get close? Not any more.’
‘Because they have my son and they want to put him to good use. I don’t know.’
‘And what happens next, after you dance to their tune and they still want you to dance. I told you, they will never let you go.’
‘I do this, that’s it.’
‘No. You and I must come up with a way that saves Daniel and breaks their hold on you.’
I said nothing for fifteen seconds. I counted them out. It takes about fifteen seconds to weigh up alternatives and make a decision in a heated conversation when you decide to capitulate. Undercover work is 90 per cent acting, only 10 per cent observing. She needed me to be someone and I was going to be who she needed me to be, the man she wanted to see standing in front of her instead of the screwed-up brawler who just wanted his son back.
‘What’s your way?’
She jerked her head toward the closed door. ‘First, tell me who is the charm school dropout?’
‘Leonie. She’s an information broker; she hides people who need to vanish. She lives under a false name because she’s hiding from a guy named Ray Brewster; he’s tied to the killers who are hunting you. She’s done false documentation for Anna’s kids, so Anna grabbed her kid to force her to help me find Jack Ming.’
‘So since she hides people, they thought she could find Ming.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have both your children.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sleeping with her?’ This was asked with a very slight tilt of the head. She gave me a look best described as halfway between horrified and amused.
Mila’s bluntness: thank God you can’t bottle it. ‘None of your business.’
‘Which means yes. And we have another complicating factor.’
I so did not want to have this conversation with her. ‘We were exhausted and… upset.’
‘A woman would have to be.’
I shook my head, gave a weak laugh. ‘Is this what my life is going to be like once I find my kid and I’m working for you, still? Reporting on every detail of my life? Forget that.’
‘I wanted to know.’
‘Why?’ Then I thought: wait, she can’t care what I do. Who I sleep with. She’d never shown the remotest interest in me, or in anyone else. She was all ice except when she had a target. Then she was fire.
‘You forget that we – my employers and I – have made a big investment in you.’
‘Mila, go to wherever you go when you’re not riding my ass. Go on a vacation. I’ll either call you when this is all done or, if you don’t hear from me, you’ll know I’m dead. You don’t understand our situation. What it’s like to have a loved one taken and be at risk.’
She gave me a sad look. ‘No one could understand your unique pain.’ And something in the air shifted between us. ‘You asked me why there is a price on my head.’
‘I think it’s your endless charm and witty banter,’ I said.
She nodded toward the computer. ‘I wrote it down for you. You read it. Then you decide whether or not to trust me with your child’s life.’
PART THREE
63 Sam: This is what happened, this is how I came to be. – Mila Harp , Moldova
(My little town was named for a harp. Do you like that? But I do not play)
Three years ago. The children are done with their work and have escaped into the bright sunny afternoon; I mop up paint smears and bits of torn paper. The art supplies are a gift – from one of the families that runs Trans-Dniester, the sliver of Moldova that has declared itself free of the country. Aunt and Uncle say quietly at the Sunday lunch table that the whole region is ruled by crooks and outlaws. Not just crooked politicians but actual criminals – smugglers and Mafiya and drug lords who pour poisons west into Austria and Hungary and north to Moscow, Kiev and St Petersburg.
But let me be blunt: what do I care where the paints and papers come from? They are an extra to help my classroom. The children benefit and I don’t care if a Mafiya bought crayons to ease his conscience. The towns of northern Moldova can barely afford to heat the school in dismal winter; I won’t turn up my nose at free school supplies.
You are making a better Moldova, darling girl, Aunt tells me, and I want to shrug. No, I’m earning a paycheck and not having to be like my sister Nelly, casting her lot out into the distant world. I am a homebody who likes quiet.
After I gather up the scraps of supplies that can be used again, I take a rag and I dust the small TV, the old DVD player, the worn and loved books on the shelf. All again from the largesse of the criminal kings of Trans- Dniester, Uncle would say. But the machinery does not do evil and the books take no sides.
