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“Ah,” he said, and Theo could almost see him smiling. “There’s always a girl.”
“No, it’s not like that. I mean, literally, she’s a girl. A teenage runaway.”
Theo could feel the vibe change.
“Uh-huh,” said Cy. “Now, you need to be very careful here, boy.”
“There’s no funny business. She’s in trouble. She’s on the street.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“She’s not cut out for this. It’s not gonna turn out good, I can tell. I want to help her.”
“I see.”
A motorcycle pulled up to park on the street outside the booth, engine rumbling. Theo waited for the noise to stop, then spoke into the phone.
“Do you really?” he asked. “Understand, I mean?”
“Sure do. You want to save this girl from herself. Just like I tried savin’ yo’ mother from herself.”
Theo had not done the full psychological self-analysis, but he would never forget that night in Miami, when Cy was a much younger man. When the crowd of onlookers had gathered outside the liquor store on Grand Avenue in the heart of what white folks called the Grove Ghetto. When Theo and his friends had pedaled up on their bicycles to see what was going on. When his uncle Cy had pulled him away, kicking and screaming, a moment too late to keep Theo from seeing that the thirty-year-old woman lying lifeless on the street with her skirt hiked up for all to see was the same teenage runaway who’d given birth to him.
“You’re one smart old man,” said Theo.
“Yes, I am,” said Cy. “You be careful.”
“I will. It’s just going to make it harder to come home. The safest thing for me is to get out of London and fly home from Paris or someplace like that. But I can’t take a teenage runaway out of the country. That’s asking for trouble.”
“You do what you gotta do,” said Cy.
“You don’t think this is stupid?”
“I didn’t raise no fool.”
“Damn straight,” said Theo, and he hung up the phone.
Jack settled in at his desk for a zoom conference on his computer. The image on his LCD screen was Madeline Coffey from London. Jack listened as the FBI legal attaché explained how this would be her last update on the extradition of Sergei Kava and the safety of Theo Knight.
“Is there any chance that the judge’s decision to deny extradition will be reversed on appeal?” asked Jack.
“An appeal would accomplish nothing. Sergei Kava was released from prison the minute the magistrate judge ruled against extradition. He’s probably in Moscow eating caviar as we speak.”
“Understood,” said Jack. “Even so, is there really nothing you can do to help Theo get home safely?”
“I suppose there would be a few things we could do,” said Coffey. “If we were so inclined.”
Her implication did not sit well with Jack. “Theo is an innocent American caught in a terrible situation. Why would the embassy be anything but ‘so inclined’?”
“The judge at the hearing was swayed by the argument that the extraction kidnapping made extradition illegal. He seemed especially interested in the fact that MAP was behind the kidnapping.”
“Theo is not part of MAP.”
“Here’s the problem. Sergei Kava’s bodyguard was the only witness who testified about the kidnapping at the hearing.”
“So?”
“He was tasered and incapacitated during the kidnapping. There is no way that bodyguard could have possibly known that Amongus Sicario and MAP were behind the kidnapping. Nonetheless, that was his testimony.”
