The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott

them together.’
    I let the piano music wash over me for a moment. ‘A few weeks ago I saw a redacted document from a Company file. Itclaimed that I could be controlled through my son. Inside the Company, August, on your side of the fence. I’m not exactly
     looking for help.’
    He said, ‘Where did you get this document?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    ‘Well, I’ve certainly never seen it, Sam, and documents can be forged.’
    ‘This wasn’t. Because it’s true. I
can
be controlled through my son. Which is why I and I alone am going to get him back.’
    ‘You’re not alone. There is Mila. There’s no record of her in any government database we can find. Her name
is
Mila, right?’
    ‘So the only reason you are following me is to find her?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then you’re wasting your time. I don’t know where she is now or where she lives. I’m sorry. Would you like another martini
     before you go?’
    ‘No, thank you. I saw her, I think, in the internet café in Amsterdam, when we grabbed that Chinese hacker that was tied to
     Novem Soles. I showed her picture to some people in Europe who provide us with information now and then, at a cost.’
    ‘Well, if I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t say if you saw her or not.’ I risked a smile.
    The scene was vivid in my head. I’d tried to infiltrate a criminal ring in Amsterdam, and the Chinese hacker was some poor
     college kid they’d used to research my forged Canadian identity and had gotten caught by August. The hacker had died in a
     shootout later that day where most of the ring died as well, and I’d barely escaped with my own life. Mila had been watching
     me from the same internet café across the canal.
    ‘You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ August said. ‘She does not have a nice reputation.’
    I said nothing.
    ‘There’s a price on her head. Did you know that?’ August delivered this with the kind tone of a friend breaking bad news.
     ‘A cool million dollars for your Mila, preferably alive.’
    The words hung in the air. I distantly heard the trill of piano jazz, the clink of the crystal, a drunken bray of laughter
     from a guy who’d had a pint too many.
    ‘I mean, you can have someone killed rather cheaply these days – under ten thousand. There’s been a price deflation on hits,
     what with the economic downturns. But a million on her head, Sam.’ August gave out an amused whistle. ‘That’s trouble. Some
     very bad people are looking for her to collect that payday. I wonder what she did that’s worth a million dollars.’
    Maybe he already knew. He had been my one true friend in the CIA, and until he proved otherwise I had to consider him a friend.
     One of the waitresses passed. I pointed at August’s martini and raised two fingers. August’s brain needed picking.
    ‘We could protect her, Sam. In exchange we’ll find out who has the contract on her and we’ll make it go away.’
    Once again I said nothing. I couldn’t negotiate on Mila’s behalf. Someone must truly, truly hate her. It did not surprise
     me.
    ‘Makes you wonder who she’s pissed off.’
    ‘Who put out the hit?’
    ‘We picked it up on chatter online.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’re welcome.’
    ‘You’re not helping
me
.’
    ‘Sam. She can tell us what we need to know. Clearly she’s connected to movers and shakers. She armed you, she financed you,
     she got you into the Netherlands and into the UK and into the United States with no trace of entry. She helped you get insidea major criminal ring that was planning the biggest assassination plot in American history.’ He shook his head. ‘We want to
     know who she works for and what she knows about Novem Soles, Sam. Give her to me.’
    ‘You have a very vivid imagination. Maybe I did all that hard work.’
    ‘Not on your own. You didn’t have the resources, the money.’
    ‘You following me today is no different than when you had me living in Brooklyn, waiting to see if someone