“Sam. My employers and I, we can help you… perhaps to find your child.”
“She’ll never call. My son is her shield. We’re not done. She and Edward took Yasmin. I am going to find her.”
“Where?”
“I am going to call the Company and alert them, and alert Customs. Maybe they’ll find Edward’s shipment; they have the resources. Howell didn’t believe me. Someone will. Maybe August Holdwine.”
“Try, if you like, but this Edward is no fool. He’ll disable the GPS trackers. There will be entirely new manifests for those cigarettes; there will be no way to trace them. Their crates will be labeled as an entirely different product now. Customs won’t shut down Rotterdam on what they’ll consider a prank call. And if the Company believes you to be a traitor, they’ll think your warning is simply a lie or a diversion. Your friend will be trumped.”
She was right. “Howell was a lot more interested in who’d helped me than my phantom shipment. He’s after a group called Novem Soles. I think he thinks you’re it.”
“Did you speak of me?”
“No. Never.”
She stood. “I didn’t think you would. I am glad I don’t have to kill you.”
“Well, I’m glad too, Mila.”
“Rest now like the doctor said.”
I closed my eyes. I kept thinking, in all the spin of information that I now had, that I was missing some vital element-a fact or an insight worming its way through my brain that could provide an answer. It all went back to London. The bombing to protect the man that Edward himself later murdered. Somehow, that was key. Work I’d done in London was worth all this grief to Edward and his people.
“I will. For a bit. But we’re going to London.”
“Why London?”
“I want to see Zaid. He put us on this job and ever since he’s been avoiding us, and he knows more than he’s ever been willing to share. He gave Edward weapons to smuggle. Now that the shipment has reached Edward, maybe Zaid is supposed to get Yasmin back. So we go to Zaid’s unannounced. Surprise him.”
“I will have to see.”
“Your bosses won’t approve? Is Zaid one of your bosses?”
She walked over to the table, set the glass on it. “No. But he is connected to them.”
“Who am I working for, Mila?”
“Me.”
“I think I’ve fought hard enough for you to deserve an answer. I could have given you to the Company. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“You might do anything to get your child back.” She raised a hand before I could interrupt her. “Sam. You work for me. Let’s leave it at that. If you wish to stop working for me, you may rest here, for however long you need, until you feel ready to leave. And we will not bother you if you do not bother us.”
“You have resources I need to find my child,” I said.
“That is an uncomfortable truth. For you.”
I looked out the window. “You dropped out of sight for a while, Mila.”
“I was busy.”
“How are the women?”
“They’re safe. We’ll get them back to their families, or find a place that’s safe for them.”
“I’m glad you helped them but you could have let the police handle them. I needed your help.”
“I could not let the police handle it,” she said. “I needed to. The police deport them, they just go back to Moldova where they could be targeted by the recruiters and the traffickers for revenge. Such has happened before. They need protection, them and their families. I had to arrange that.”
“I understand.” I closed my eyes. “I am going to find Bahjat Zaid. I am going to go to London in the morning. Either you can arrange the travel or I’ll risk using one of my forged passports and getting picked up at the airport or the ferry. Howell will be looking for me. Get me into England, if you’re so clever.”
“You won’t give up, will you?”
“I have a child to find. I cannot give up, Mila. My kid is to me what those women were to you. Innocents who cannot be abandoned. I can’t stop.”
She got up and closed the door. I sat in bed and I swallowed one of the pills the doctor had left, and then I fell into dreamless sleep.
78
Monday in London. Gray, bleak, the sky smeared with rain. My body hurt but not as bad as yesterday. I’d slept the rest of the day until early the next morning, gotten dressed in new clothes Mila brought me, and we’d taken a private jet to London. Very posh. Mila’s deep-pocketed employers must have given us the okay to chase down Bahjat Zaid. She used one of the new passports for me and there were no problems with immigration. Mila had a Jaguar waiting for us.
It was strange to be on British soil; where I’d been happiest, where I’d faced the worst day of my life.
Zaid’s office was near the Bank of England Museum, in a modern tower. Mila and I were dressed casually: slacks, shirts, jackets. I wore a dark cap to mask the bandage on my head. Zaid’s secretary at Militronics gave us a chilly smile.
“Mr. Zaid is not available,” the secretary said. “He was called away on a matter of urgent import.”
I glanced at Mila.
“Urgent import?” she said. “Do you really talk like that?”
The secretary frowned. “Perhaps if you’d care to leave a message?”
“You tell him that Sam and Mila came by to talk to him about his daughter. We know where she’s been.”
The secretary’s frown deepened. “He left to go see his daughter, sir,” she said. “But I will relay the message.”
“When did he leave?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
We left. We stood on the busy street corner. “Yasmin’s contacted him,” I said.
“Or they’ve finally worked out an exchange,” Mila said.
“We need to find where he’s at. Because if they’re delivering Yasmin to him, then Lucy and Edward are there.”
We walked back to the Jaguar. “You drive,” she said. I got behind the wheel and she opened the glove compartment. A modified netbook, wired into the car’s satellite system, lay inside. She slid it out, opened it, and began to type furiously on the small keyboard.
“There are cameras all over London,” she said. “For traffic and security. We have limited access to the grid. Let’s find out if we can see when Bahjat left.”
She found a video feed that displayed the front of Zaid’s building, rolled it back to the time Zaid stepped out of the building. A Mercedes was brought to the curb, the driver got out, Zaid got inside. He headed up Princes Street.
Mila opened another window on the netbook. Found him turning onto Gresham Street. Followed him making a turn onto St. Martin’s Le Grand, past the Museum of London. Then it looked like she lost him. She rechecked the video. He was heading north on Aldersgate Street. She tapped keys and a map of London appeared in the corner, turning the camera stations she’d tapped red so we could see his route through the city.
It was time-consuming, trying to spot his car in the press of autos, backtracking when she missed it, hoping he hadn’t made a turn when the video feed wasn’t snapping images.
A few more dots and she said, “He’s gone to St. Pancras. I’m a fool. Drive fast, now, come on!”
“What’s at St. Pancras?”
“The Eurostar arrives there. The train. From Holland and Belgium. Edward may have decided now to give
