“Well, Sam, you’re a mess.” Then he told his two puppies to start processing the scene. The van door slammed closed. We were alone.
“I need a doctor,” I said. I enjoy stating the obvious.
“You’ll get one if you cooperate. How did you know August was in Holland?”
“I saw him when I stopped a guy from shooting him at that machinists’ shop,” I said. “I stopped those psycho twins from shooting you, too. And you’re welcome.” I could smell my own blood sticking to the clothes on my back, my arm. My injuries were untreated; I’d been Tasered and then tranquilized. My limbs felt heavy and awful and disconnected from bone and tissue.
“August got sent home because he was hurt. I’m glad. I think he would have affected my judgment regarding you. He is actually your friend, useless as that position is to him.”
“I can explain all this. Sort of.”
“Listening.”
I took a painful breath. “I’ve been undercover. Kind of.”
“Governments and police agencies give cover. You pretending you’re someone else is just breaking the law, Sam. Sort of, kind of.”
“Please, I want to talk to Langley. This guy, Edward, that took Lucy—he’s moving illicit weapons of some sort.”
“Is that who shot at us as we arrived?”
“Yes. I don’t know. Was it a truck?”
“We didn’t see a truck leave. A man in an Audi shot at us as we arrived.”
“Audi. That’s him. Please, take me seriously. Call the ports.” But Edward wouldn’t use Rotterdam. Not with this heat. He’d move the weapons out of France, or Belgium, or Spain. “Here, I can tell you what was in the Ling shipment. You can stop it. Call Langley, get authorization. I’ll talk to them—”
“Maybe Langley doesn’t want to talk to you, Sam. Maybe Langley just wants you to go away and stop being a giant pain in the ass.”
I swallowed. “What I said about Lucy is true. Please. She was here—”
He raised a hand. “I’m going to offer you a deal, Sam. I want you to consider it carefully, because right now your life is in my hands in a way it never was before. I don’t like your answers, I put a bullet in your brain and we’re done. I have permission to do whatever I need to do to you.”
“The Company won’t let you execute me. They want to know what I know. They want the connections I’ve made here. They want information and I have it.”
“The Company doesn’t know that I have you yet, Sam. Right now, you and I get to write our own history. You were found in a building full of dead bodies.”
“The woman, and one of the men—they have tattoos like the guy in Brooklyn who tried to kill me. Novem Soles. You asked me about it, well, here they are.”
He stared at me, ran a finger along his chin. “And you killed them all?”
“No! Edward killed them because he didn’t need them anymore.”
Howell folded his arms and he looked at me with a glare I had not seen on his face since I had been his prisoner in Poland. “I think you’re the sole survivor, Sam, but I think these people were your colleagues. I think they helped you blow up the London office and I think they helped you escape me in New York. The guy in Brooklyn could have brought you your money and papers to escape, and you killed him to keep him quiet.”
“He tried to kill me. These people sent him to kill me.” And then I wondered: Edward or Lucy? It had to be Edward who’d dispatched the assassin. Lucy had let me live twice.
“And where’s the lovely Mrs. Capra?”
“She Tasered me and she left. Look at my chest. I’ve got the Taser rash.”
He opened my shirt and inspected the needle marks.
“So she works with these people. Goodness, after all those months you kept insisting on her innocence.” His tone was mocking.
“I’m a good husband,” I said. “You don’t assume your wife is a traitor or a criminal. I saw her taken by Edward. She saved my life. Twice.”
“I think you were both working with this group, gang, whatever. I think she turned, and then she turned you. I tend to go for the simplest explanation.”
“That’s because you’re simple,” I said. “Life isn’t. This isn’t. I don’t understand why Lucy’s done what she’s done.”
“Where’s your baby?”
I looked at my knees. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want him to know she’d offered me my child for