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 Yasmin back.”
Driving in London is often an exercise in madness and patience. I drove like a man possessed.
“This doesn’t make sense. Say Edward has decided to give Yasmin back,” I said. “They could easily have asked for Zaid to come to Holland. But they take the risk of moving her, a kidnapping victim? So they want something from Zaid, goods he couldn’t bring to them.”
“Sam,” she said. “If Lucy is here with them, and we catch them, would you like me to kill her for you? I know it may be hard for you to do so.”
It was the single strangest offer I had received in a life full of bizarre opportunities. “Thank you, no. I don’t want you to harm her. I will deal with Lucy.”
“Unwise. I have no baggage with her to slow me. I am worried enough if you are emotionally stable for this, knowing she is a crazy loser bitch.”
“I won’t hesitate if need be.”
“The words ‘if need be’ are hesitation,” she said, and she was right.
“I want to talk to her.”
“The child. Forgive me. I mean no cruelty. But you don’t even know if she had the baby, Sam. You have no proof the child is alive.”
“I don’t think she’s lying about this.”
“She’s lied to you every second of the day for the past three years. Now she tells the truth?” Mila made a disgusted snort. The tires lost their hold on the road, hissed wetly as they grappled for the grip. I eased up, and the car regained its footing as we sliced through an intersection.
“She could have killed me. Why would she spare me and lie to me?”
“A thousand reasons. She wanted you found, alive, with all those dead people. Again, you alive is a distraction for the Company. You attract blame and investigation. She wanted to feed you false information. She is cruel and she toys with you. Leave her to me.”
“You don’t touch her, Mila,” I said. “You do not touch her. I want to know where my kid is. She knows.”
Then Mila said the truest thing I’d heard in months: “Your wife has made herself bulletproof to you with that lie, Sam. You do not know that there is a baby anymore. Or that it is even yours.”
“It’s mine,” I said.
“She lied about everything else. Perhaps she and this Edward were lovers here in London.”
“Thank you for the head screw.” Then I made my words bricks: slow and steadily added, building a wall. “I have considered all these options, long before you did,” I said. “I knew maybe she’d fooled me, maybe she was a traitor when I saw the evidence. But it was all circumstantial. She saved me then, she saved me now. She knows where my child is. It’s the ultimate insurance policy and she wouldn’t give that advantage away.”
“It’s only insurance if you believe her. You cannot properly interrogate her. I will. I will get to the truth.” Mila set her mouth in a firm line. “You are not much use to me if you are distracted by this loose end of your kid.”
Loose end. I wondered what forge had formed Mila, that she could think such a way. I was afraid to know. I thought of her solicitude for the captured Moldovan women back in Amsterdam. She could be kind. She could be cruel. I thought Piet might have suffered mightily at her hands. She might also be right. Lucy would dance a dance with me; she would play on our past, on the embers of my feelings for her, on the obvious wish that I had that she had loved me. Mila would not dance. I almost felt a tremble of fear for Lucy—misplaced and ill-advised—thinking of her at Mila’s mercy.
Unleashing Mila might be the quickest path to my child.
My child. I didn’t want to think about what Mila was saying. I had to know. I couldn’t walk away from the possibility of my child, lost in the world, or worse, being raised by a woman like Lucy Capra. Lucy and Mila were both willing to use my child to reach their goals; I was willing to let them think they could use me, but I would use them. It’s an ugly world when we fight over children.
I veered the Jaguar into a parking garage. We were here.