The Last Minute

87

In the back of a van

This was how Mila thought it might end: bound and handcuffed, riding in a bounty hunter’s car, to be delivered to her fate, because Zviman wanted her alive.

Six had tried in the past three years, and six had died. Two had come closest, handcuffing her (which she respected: it was much quicker than tying her with rope or even plastic cuffs) and binding her feet. The first of the two were ex-IRA, seized her outside The Adrenaline Bar, the Round Table-owned drinking spot in London, in the hipster Hoxton neighborhood. Kenneth, the manager of (now) Sam’s bar in London saw her grabbed, injected in the neck with a sedative, and forced into an Audi’s trunk. Kenneth had caught up the kidnappers on the A5 and shot the driver through the car window. The car crashed and Kenneth shot the other kidnapper, then politely carried Mila out of the trunk. She was grateful, of course, but humiliated to be saved.

The second time was barely three weeks ago, two Filipinos trying their luck. They had gotten her handcuffed in her apartment but before they bound her feet she had, to put it bluntly, kicked and stomped the two of them to death. The unpleasantness made for a gruesome evening, when all she’d been in the mood for was a nice Thai green curry for dinner, a cold bottle of lager and watching Emmerdale on TV. But both times she’d had to have Kenneth slice the cuffs off her. Then, of course, she had to vanish and get an entirely new apartment, under a different name, on the other side of London. Very inconvenient. It made her think.

Those were the last two attempts: word had spread among the shadowy vines that connected hired killers that she was very dangerous. Kill four people who come after you and everyone recalculates the value of hunting you down.

She blinked back slowly from the chloroformed unconsciousness. Her nose ached and her lips were thick where he’d hit her. She could see, on the van floor, splinters from the boxes where she and Bertrand had loaded in the dead guards she and Sam had killed when they got the best lead on Anna Tremaine and Daniel. She should have swept it more thoroughly.

Why are you in New York? Sam had asked her when he’d come to The Last Minute after leaving Las Vegas, and she answered, with a smile: shoes. He thought she was being Mila, joking, parrying his question. But what Sam had not quite learned was that she spoke the truth more often than not.

She had indeed gotten shoes in New York. Custom-made boots. She eased the back of her heels closer to her hands. On the left boot she maneuvered her fingertips into place and gave the heel a slight twist and push all at once, like on a medicine bottle. The right heel popped off. Embedded in it was a handcuff key. A universal key, especially made for her by a master locksmith who had once been the KGB’s finest lock designer. She freed the key from the heel with a finger flick, and then repositioned herself gently, trying to ease the key into the lock.

‘I can hear you, you know,’ the man driving the van said. ‘Nice sleep?’

‘I had bad dreams.’

‘Baby, you’re about to have much worse. But then your dreams will end.’

‘You have a poetic soul.’

‘I have received many compliments in my life but that is a first. Thank you, Mila.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Oh, I should keep some secrets. I’m just a nobody.’

‘I have seen your face on a camera. A picture I think Sam will send to the CIA.’

Silence.

‘Ah. You do not like that,’ Mila said. ‘You are a nobody they will know, yes?’

‘My name is Braun.’ He said it with pride. ‘I want you to know who’s beaten you after others have failed.’

‘Well, Mr Braun, I will pay you more than a million dollars to let me go.’

‘Tempting. But this isn’t about money. It’s about cleaning house. Setting a mistake to right. I understand that’s how you got your start, setting a mistake to right.’

‘It’s hard to be the star of your own legend.’

‘I find your confidence in the face of death charming. I like you. If Mr Zviman wasn’t so specific about getting you alive and in a state to be tortured, I might give you a mercy bullet.’ His voice sounded almost merry. ‘Out of respect.’

‘I am curious… ’

‘Why would you be, when you’re about to die? I wouldn’t bother learning new facts. I would be reflecting on all the old choices that brought me here. We have a duty to learn more from our mistakes. I mean, you’re one of my mistakes, and I’m learning from you. I would have liked to have dinner with you, Mila. Talked to you. You fascinate me. Both you and Zviman.’

He wasn’t talking about her but she wanted him to keep talking. He would be less likely to notice anything she did.

‘I am not sure how I am your mistake,’ Mila said. The handcuff pick slid home. Now, if it would work. It better. She had paid very good money for it.

‘You. Zviman. Two sides of the same coin, my dear. I mean, there’s an irony that I’m going to profit from my mistake. But after all I am cleaning up the mess. I was retired. I had a place to live in Florida. I was going to focus on golf and fishing. Mistakes shouldn’t come back to haunt you at that point in life. Mistakes should die first and then let you die.’

This Braun was a crazy man. The handcuff opened. She gave out a little sigh.

‘I do not know what you mean. I am not a coin.’

‘No, Mila, you’re a jewel. But you are worth a great number of coins. Retirement doesn’t go as far as it used to.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Now I can retire in peace, knowing my past mistakes are rectified. It should really help my golf game.’

She eased a wrist free. She was careful not to make a clicking sound.

Now the other heel. She loosened it and wedged in the heel was a small, sheathed knife. She flicked off the sheath and the knife, forged from Japanese steel, rested in her hand. It was actually harder to cut the ropes around her feet than open the cuffs; it required more movement to saw through the fibers.

‘Well, I find it odd that I am your mistake when I have never seen you before. Are you my long lost father, Mr Braun?’

‘Not biologically, but, yes, I am your father, in a manner of speaking.’

Okay, she thought, entirely crazy. ‘You cannot answer straight questions,’ she said. ‘You must have been CIA. You talk all vaguely, just like Sam.’

‘Yes, he’s the problem, isn’t he? It all comes back to him.’

She felt the van slow, make a turn. They had been driving north in a relatively straight stretch; she couldn’t see, but she assumed he had the GPS monitor up in the seat with him.

‘We’re here, Mila. Here where it all began,’ he said. ‘Where it was all born.’

He stopped the van.

‘Well, that’s not good,’ he said. ‘I better not be too late.’

And then he got out of the van and slammed the door.

Mila writhed, slashing at the ropes. She had maybe eight seconds before Braun opened the van’s rear door.

Not enough time.