On Highway 87 North
We headed north and east, leaving the city well behind, cutting up past Irvington, heading on 87 North. I wondered where we were headed. Peekskill? Albany? The Catskills? A silence filled the car because Zviman said, ‘No talking.’ Zviman put on the satellite radio and tuned it to the alternative classics of the eighties. He even sang, very softly, under his breath, barely audible. The Cars, Elvis Costello, and, God help us, Katrina and the Waves.
I did not trust this man in a good mood.
No one spoke for an hour at least, and, as we passed Newburgh I couldn’t contain myself further. ‘Where are our kids?’ I said.
‘At a safe place,’ Zviman said. ‘I’ll take you there and then you may have this car to go where you please. Considering you killed a man in the park I wouldn’t return to New York for a while. I’m sure Ms Jones would like to get home to Las Vegas.’ He sounded so calm, so reasonable. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.
‘You’re probably thinking, Sam, that you’re surprised we struck you a deal.’
‘Very.’ I wasn’t thinking he wanted to let me out alive. Now I was going to have to fight my way out, I felt sure, and I didn’t know how I was going to do that while holding a baby. The obvious answer was Leonie. Have her run to safety with the kids, if at all possible, and leave me to deal with Zviman.
‘I don’t think the CIA will be offering you a job again,’ Zviman said. ‘Now that you killed their prize asset. Of course, they didn’t see you kill him, but you’ll be the prime suspect. Unless you could convince them that you weren’t trying to kill him but protect him from a danger within the CIA.’
‘I should update my resume,’ I said. ‘And I’m not that good an actor to pull off that lie.’
‘In fact, with Jack Ming dead, they’ll be hunting for you. If you gave them someone else as Ming’s killer, well, you might be in the clear with them. Nice for you, that would be, for you and your son.’ His voice was like a knife.
‘Why are you so concerned about what happens to me?’
‘We made a deal and I intend to stick to it. What, you think I’m going to kill you?’
‘I think you’re going to try.’
‘That would undo all that’s been done.’
‘Done?’
‘To make you who you are, Sam,’ Zviman said. ‘You’ve been a long-term project for us. You could still be of value to us. We’ve watched you for years now. We’ve been interested in you for a long time.’
I stared at him. He didn’t look at me. He almost smiled as he drove. How could I have been a long-term project for a bunch of criminals? ‘That… that doesn’t even make sense,’ I said.
‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘We think long term. You’ve been thinking in terms of hours, days, weeks: how do I find my wife, how do I get my son back? Small problems. We think in terms of years. You have gone from being a problem for us to becoming useful to us. We were willing to sacrifice your usefulness because you could kill Ming for us, and he was a tremendous threat. But no one can prove that you killed him. You could still serve a purpose.’
I had a sudden, weird sense that I was a piece on a chess board, not the king, and some giant hand had flicked me around the squares. ‘I have no interest in being useful to you. I want nothing to do with you. I am getting my child and then we are done.’
‘I never had the pleasure of meeting your wife,’ he said. ‘But I think we all felt her loss.’
This is to make you snap, I thought. He wants to worm under your skin, get you off your game. Nothing but lies and distraction. ‘I’m not discussing my wife with you.’
‘You’re ready to quit the battlefield.’
I stared straight ahead.
‘You said, more than once, I think, when the Company kept you in their private prison and you slept on stone floors, and that the world believed that you were guilty, that all you wanted was your old life back.’
‘My old life is gone.’
‘No it’s not. Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Now be quiet. We’ll have plenty to say when we get where we’re going.’