took a step toward her. “I am so close, Mila. So close to finding this Edward jerk, and to finding my wife and child. To saving Yasmin Zaid. Please don’t walk away. Help me.”
“You don’t need me, Sam. You need only yourself, and your unbroken focus. Everything else is a distraction. And I have to help these women. I have to.”
She spoke from a place of pain and I couldn’t argue with her. “All right.”
“I can always be reached at this number.” She gave me a cell phone number; I repeated it and she nodded.
“Good luck, Sam.” She left. I didn’t want her to go; but in one way it was easier. Because there was no way in hell she would agree to what I was going to do next. I went to my duffel bag, where I’d stashed it under the bed, and I pulled out the cell phone August had given me a lifetime ago in Brooklyn.
I went downstairs and I walked a half mile away and stood on a bridge that spanned the Prinsengracht. A sightseeing boat cruised below me; a group of students, laughing, walked past me. I dialed.
It rang seven times before it was answered. “Yes?”
“Hi, August.”
A pause. “Where are you?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You better be turning yourself in.”
“No. I need to see you. Face-to-face.”
“Um, I was shot today, you know.”
“Are you in the hospital?”
“No. Flesh wound in the arm and I took a blow to the head. The bullet is out and my head’s hard as steel. But I get sent home tomorrow. They didn’t have a plane available tonight.”
“I need your help.”
“You need help, all right, Sam. You know there was a dead body in the apartment next to you, don’t you?”
“I knew that.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Sam.”
“Well, he started it,” I said. “Can you come see me? Without Howell or anyone else?”
“You have to be kidding!”
“The guys I was with are tied to the man who set off the London bomb and kidnapped my wife,” I said. “Now, if you want to grab me, you will ruin any chance of getting this guy. He’s behind the bombing in Amsterdam and he’s working on getting experimental weapons of some sort to the States. He sent the dead guy who tried to kill me. He’s tied to the Money Czar we were investigating in London. August, it’s all knitted together and I’m this close to pulling it apart. I need your help.”
“You are so major-league screwed up, Sam. Look, come in; tell us all about it and let us help you.”
“I can’t, August. They’ll just put me back in jail. Howell thinks I’m in with these people. I don’t have time to explain to him that I’m not.”
“I’ll lose my job if I don’t report this conversation, and you know it.”
“Yes, you will.” I waited.
“Where are you?”
61
AUGUST ARRIVED AN HOUR LATER. Alone. I was at a back table in the Rode Prins, near the curtain screening the corridor that led to the kitchen. He sat heavily across from me. I’d kicked him in the side of the head and a purplish bruise stretched from temple to jaw. I could see the heft of a bandage underneath his jacket.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like hell. Howell’s gone to a meeting and I told them I needed fresh air.” He stared at me. “Sam. What in God’s name are you doing?”
“One of the crime families the Company had an interest in are the Lings. They’re based here. One of the Langley guys mentioned them in London.”
“Okay. They behind the grab on Lucy?”
“No. But I need to know if they are still being tracked by the Company.”
“What for?”
“I need to know where their shipments are. I need to steal one.”
His mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Insanity doesn’t agree with you, Sam.”
“It’s the only way for me to get close to the guy who took Lucy. He… he has a hostage, August, so I can’t force my way in. I have to draw him to me. But I need to know what we know about the Lings’ routes.”
“You’re crazy, Sam. I can’t imagine what you’ve lost. I can’t. But I think your grief has damaged you. Badly. And you have to accept—you’re not getting Lucy and the baby back. They’re gone. You know they wouldn’t have kept her alive for months. They wouldn’t have been saddled with a baby.” He stopped, as if horrified by his words.
I stared at him.
“This is all… for nothing,” August said. “You’re not