building’s courtyard listening to an impossibly trendy band play. I parked the truck behind the bar in the reserved owner’s space and used the private back entrance, carrying Yasmin’s body on my shoulder, keying in the code Mila had given me to open the door. No one saw me. Lucy was still locked inside her windowless room. I left her there; right now if I looked at her I might kill her. I had to stay focused. I locked the doors behind me. The room had been soundproofed but I could still feel the distant beat of the music.
There was medical equipment in a closet, just as in Amsterdam. I found a scalpel. I spread plastic sheeting on the floor and carefully cut into Yasmin’s bullet wounds. I couldn’t shake either the image of the treasured daughter she had been in her father’s eyes, or that of the empty shell she’d become.
I found one of the bullets and carefully pulled it out. I wiped it clean and took it to the table.
The bullet was longer and slimmer than usual. Malformed slightly from the impact on entering Yasmin’s body, it carried a grid on its nose that matched the grid I’d seen on the bomb shrapnel and the gun. I pulled apart the bullet. Inside lay a complex web of miniaturized technology.
I took photos of the dismantled bullet and loaded them onto the computer on the desk.
Then I took one of the phones from the shelf, checked it, and called a number in New York City.
It rang three times. “Howell.”
“It’s Sam Capra.”
“Sam.”
“I have my wife.”
“You what?”
“I have captured my wife.”
A long shocked silence.
“You were right, Howell. She betrayed me, the Company. I have proof.”
“Slow down.”
“Have you intercepted that cigarette shipment?”
“No. The customs people in Rotterdam haven’t tracked it.”
“Listen. Lucy’s connected to a group-your Novem Soles-that has stolen a prototype for some kind of high-tech gun. I want to send you photos of a bullet. I need it analyzed.”
“No, you need to come in, Sam. Do this right.”
“No. I will send you the photos. I think that maybe they’re targeting kids with these guns.”
“Kids?”
“I saw a list of fifty people that I think may be targeted. Mostly kids, a few men and women. Give me an e- mail to send this information to you.”
“Bring in the evidence. Now, Sam.” Howell lowered his voice. “All could be forgiven if you really have Lucy.”
But if I told him everything, I’d have to give him Mila as well. I wasn’t prepared to do that.
“Give me an e-mail. That’s the only way we’re doing this.”
Reluctantly he did. I hung up. I went to the computer and used an anonymizer program to access a series of servers, finally ending up on one in South Africa hosting a popular celebrity gossip site. It was a Company front. I used an inactive account there I’d once had as Peter Samson to send the photos I’d taken. I’d give Howell a couple of hours before I called back.
I changed into dry clothes I found in a closet, then unlocked the soundproofed room. Lucy sat on the floor, chained to the wall.
I looked at her as though she were a complete stranger.
92
Lucy drew back against the wall. “You look like crap.”
“Edward has this weird gun. You aim at one person and it kills another. Tell me about it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It uses a computer chip.”
“I don’t know, Sam.”
“He has a list of children to target. Children, Lucy.”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“He told me he was going to have our son killed. Just because he can.”
I could almost see the next I don’t know forming on her lips. Then her mouth went slack. I waited to see what she would say.
“He said that he sold our son, Lucy. Is that true?”
She tried to stand. “You have to listen to me, Sam, please…”
“Did you help him sell our child?” I screamed in her face.
She shook her head. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again.
The number of people I have wanted to kill-not needed to kill, but wanted to kill-is very few. The men who killed my brother, who set me on my life’s course. Piet, for raping and selling those women into slavery and smiling about it. Edward. But now I wanted to kill Lucy. I felt my hands close around her throat and she didn’t fight me, she just looked up into my eyes.
My fingers began to tighten against her flesh. Then I shoved her away from me.
She closed her eyes. “Edward’s keeping Daniel so I cooperate with him.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. After he was born, they took him from me… I had only held him once. Just the once, and I’d kissed him and given him his name… I couldn’t stop them. The birth was hard, Sam. I wasn’t strong enough then.”
I knelt by her. “And?”
“And. He said he put Daniel with a trafficker. That he would sell Daniel to a couple back in the U.S. and I’d never find him if I didn’t obey him.”
She turned away from me. I turned her face back to me.
“I don’t believe for a second that you’re an innocent victim, Lucy. You might feel guilt for me, maybe even for our child. You let me live. But you have stayed with these people-”
“Because they had Daniel! Edward is very good at finding your one fear and capitalizing on it.”
“You put the bomb in the office,” I said. “You had money going through accounts that the Company thought were closed. You are not the innocent victim of a kidnapping here. They had no leverage over you then.”
“I didn’t know it was a bomb. I got in over my head. It was supposed to be a drive that just copied the hard drives. Edward wanted the files from the office. All of them.”
“Like the files on my investigations.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know it was a bomb until Edward told me. I was in the car. I knew you were inside. He got out of the car because the remote for the detonator wasn’t working and he had to get closer to the building. It had a twenty-second delay. He got it working and then he got back into the car and he realized I’d called you. Then everything exploded. I saved you, Sam.”
“And let everyone else die.”
“I had to make a hard choice, just like you do,” she said.
I took a steadying breath. “If you want to help me, you’ll tell me what I need to know. This weapon. It uses a chip. The chip I got was connected to a computer that had a DNA profile on it. You put the chip into the gun. It uses nanotechnology to somehow key a person’s DNA to the bullet.”
Slowly she nodded.
I sat across from her. “This is how I think it happened.”
She pulled her knees up to her chin.
“Edward is British but he’s working in eastern Europe. He works for one of these transnational crime rings our office was targeting. He finds out about these DNA-guided guns being developed in Hungary, maybe from the scientist informant that could have handed me the Money Czar. He kidnaps Yasmin to get leverage over her father.
