Kill Me If You Can

Chapter 54

I SWORE THAT everything I was going to tell you would be true. It has been. I actually did serve in the Marines. I am an art student at Parsons in New York City. And I’m definitely in love with my professor Katherine Sanborne. But I did leave a few things out. Such as—

I’m a hired killer.

It’s not exactly something I signed up for on Career Day at my high school. My father was a Marine, and I more or less decided to follow in his footsteps — at least for four years. The night I got out, my dad took me for a beer.

I knew he wasn’t too happy about my going to New York to become an artist, and I figured he was going to try to talk me out of it.

“So, what did you learn in the corps?” he asked.

“Nothing that you hadn’t already taught me,” I told him and smiled. “Is that what you’re fishing for?”

“Don’t be a wiseass,” my father said. “I’m trying to be serious here. The Marines taught you a lot. I just asked what you learned.”

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he was definitely very serious.

“I guess I learned how to push myself to my limit,” I said. “Even farther than you pushed me. I learned the meaning of a lot of words that were just concepts when I was a kid—loyalty, bravery, friendship, selflessness.”

He nodded. “What else?”

“I learned how to survive,” I said. “And that means I had to learn how to kill. I did it for my country, but I doubt it’s a skill I can put on my résumé when I’m looking for something to help me pay for school in New York.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

We were sitting at a corner table in a little bar tucked away in the back room of the North Fork Diner in Hotchkiss, Colorado. My father took a long tug on his beer and set the bottle down.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you this, Matt.”

I could feel my chest tighten. Tell me what? I didn’t like the look on his face.

“For as long as you can remember, you’ve seen me travel around the world from one corporate headquarters to another as a security consultant. Well, that’s not exactly true,” he said. “I do fly all over the world, but I’m not a consultant. I kill people, Matthew. Bad people. But I kill them all the same.”

I was in shock. Complete. There was a buzzing sound suddenly in both my ears. My chest felt hot on the inside.

“You murder people?” I said. “For money?”

“I eliminate scum — the dregs of our world. Most of them are killers themselves. Some just order the murders of others. It doesn’t make it any more righteous that I target only folks who deserve to die. But you know what? I sleep okay at night. I don’t have a problem with it. Do you, Matthew?”

I did, actually. “And you think, what? That that’s what I should be doing? Killing bad people?”

“Not should be doing,” he said. “Could be doing. It’s just an option you have. I saw your service record. I held your shooting medals. You’re one of the best-trained Marines to come out of Parris Island.”

“Dad, fighting for this country is a lot different from being an assassin for hire.”

“Is it?” he said. “Badasses are badasses, aren’t they? I think so. Seems perfectly logical to me.”

“I don’t know about your logic there, Dad.”

But I’m pretty sure the seed was planted inside that barroom in Colorado.

A few months after I talked to my father, I took my first job, and I’ve been following in his footsteps ever since. I think of myself as the ghost of my father. That’s how I got my name.

I remember the last question I asked my dad the night he told me about his secret life. “Does Mom know?”

He nodded. “I didn’t tell her at first, but I knew I had to sooner or later. You can’t live a lie with someone you love. She could have walked out on me. She could have told me to give it up. But your mother stuck with me and never brought it up again. Rarely brought it up again, I should say. Occasionally she does. When she wants something she considers worthwhile — like tuition if you decide to go to art school.”

And now it was my turn. It was time to share my secret with Katherine.

I went to the closet and opened the room safe. I got out the doctor bag filled with diamonds. I sat down on the bed next to her.

“Katherine,” I said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Chapter 55

KATHERINE LOOKED AT the bag. “Dr. Matthew’s magic medical bag,” she said. “Is there another surprise in there?”

“Kind of.”

“Well, you gave me brie and baguettes when we went to France. What’s in there now that we’re in Italy? Chianti and cannolis?”

“No. Remember I told you I found a bag full of diamonds at the train station?”

“How could I forget?” she said. “The first thing I thought when we set foot in this incredible room was, I hope you brought enough diamonds.”

“But you don’t think the diamonds really exist,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, put her hand to her chin, and shook her head slowly from side to side. I think it’s something she learned in professor school. It’s a way of letting a student know he is completely wrong without broadcasting it to the entire classroom.

I dipped my hand into the bag. The diamonds were loose now. I had taken them out of my socks so I could show them to Katherine in all their dramatic glory. I scooped up a fistful just as Professor Sanborne decided to let me know how preposterous my story was.

“Matthew, you know I love you,” she said. “But love is not blind or stupid, and that whole cock-and-bull story about finding diamonds in a train station is ridiculous. I don’t care how you can afford to pay for this vacation, but I’d feel a whole lot better if you finally decided to tell me the truth.”

What the hell? I thought. I dropped the whole fistful of diamonds on the bed.

“Behold the sparkling truth,” I said.

Katherine shrieked. “Oh, my God!”

Then I opened the medical bag wide and held it so she could get a good look at the other thirty or forty fistfuls.

This time she jumped off the bed and the oh, my Gods came in a flurry. Then she sat back down. “Are they real?”

“Very.”

“My God, Matthew, they must be worth — I don’t know — millions.”

“So I’m told.”

“Are they yours?” she asked.

“They are now. In fact, they’re ours. This is the key to a whole new life.”

I gave her the watered-down version of how I found them in Grand Central. Bomb goes off. I stumble on Zelvas. He dies. I take the diamonds.

“What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

“Sell them. Depending on what I can negotiate, I figure I can get seven to ten million.”

She let loose another string of about half a dozen Oh, my Gods.

“But what about that man who got killed at Grand Central?” she said. “Maybe he’s got a wife, kids. I don’t even know what I’m saying, Matthew…”

“Trust me,” I said, “Walter Zelvas had nobody. No wife, no kids, nobody.”

I inhaled. It was time to tell Katherine the whole truth about myself and hope she didn’t walk out when she heard it.

“Katherine,” I said, “there’s one more little fact about me you really should know. That man Walter Zelvas who had the bag of diamonds.…I’m the one who —”

Bam! A loud cracking sound and the door to our hotel room flew open. And there she was — Marta Krall standing in our doorway with a large-bore gun in her hand.

Pointed at me, then at Katherine, then back at me.

“Where do I start?” she said.

Chapter 56

“Mr. Bannon, I presume,” she continued.

Katherine had gasped at the sight of the gun — who wouldn’t? — but now she bombarded me with questions. “Who is this woman? How does she know your name? What does she want? Matthew?”

Krall answered the important question for me.

“Some of what I want is right there,” she said, pointing the gun at the handful of diamonds on the bed. “And I’ll bet the rest is in that black bag — isn’t it, Ms. Sanborne?”

A shiver ran through Katherine’s body at the sound of her name. She whispered in my ear. “Give her the diamonds. Okay, Matthew?”

Krall heard every word. “Spoken like a woman who doesn’t want to die young. I can respect that.”

If Marta Krall had known I was the Ghost, she’d have shot me the second she entered the room. She already had what she came for — Chukov’s diamonds. But Krall wasn’t just a killer, she was a sadistic killer. Thinking I was Matthew Bannon, art student, she figured she could take her time. She wasn’t satisfied just to recover the diamonds. I had made her work hard to find them. She wanted to play with me now.

“So, tell me, Mr. Bannon,” Krall said, “are you sleeping with all your professors or just the pretty ones?” Then she went after Katherine. “I hope he was good in bed, because your affair is going to cost you your life.”

The talking was a big mistake. Those extra few seconds were what I needed. I pushed Katherine to the floor and flung the medical bag at Marta.

She got off a shot, but the bullet went inches wide and suddenly diamonds were raining all over the room. The distraction gave me a second and I barreled into Krall. Her gun fired again, the bullet smashing into the LCD TV, glass shattering in a spectacular fashion. I threw my body at Marta Krall, and her gun went flying.

I rolled, but she dived on top of me and began punching my face. She could really punch, too. I head-butted my way past a hail of fists and sharp elbows and rammed my skull into her perfect nose. She grunted like a man, toppled backward, and, still stunned, staggered to her feet. I sprang up and the two of us were standing face-to-face. No guns. Mano a mano, so to speak.

I aimed a right jab at her beautiful face. She ducked, and I drove a left hook into her stomach. She doubled over, gasping. I charged and hit her again with my full body weight.

I’m pretty sure she expected to crash into the wall behind her, but that’s not what I had in mind. There was no wall behind her. Just an oversize, multi-paned, arched window, and from what I could see from my vantage point, nothing behind it but blue sky.

“Ooooo-rah!” I screamed, and Krall went flying through the handcrafted Venetian glass window. Arms flailing, she dropped like a stone to the street below.

I was sure the fall would kill her. But she never hit the sidewalk. Venice isn’t famous for its sidewalks. She hit the water. I picked her gun up off the floor, leaned out the window, and scanned the canal.

At least fifteen seconds passed before Marta came up to the surface, sputtering. I could’ve shot her, but I didn’t do it.

Not in front of Katherine.

Chapter 57

KATHERINE WHISPERED ACROSS the room. “Is she dead?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said.

“Matthew, I can’t believe it. She tried to kill us. We have to call the police.”

“No, Katherine. That’s one thing we can’t do,” I said.

“What are you talking about? Of course we call the police. That woman is insane. She knows about your diamonds. She knows our names. What if she comes back?”

“Listen to me,” I said. I put my hands on her cheeks. Her eyes were filled with fear. “Sweetheart, we don’t have a lot of time, and I hate to play the do-you-love-me card, but do you love me?”

“Of course. Yes. Always.”

“Do you trust me?”

She hesitated.

“Let me rephrase the question. I didn’t ask if you understand everything that has happened in the past three days, but do you trust me enough to believe that whatever I ask you to do in the next few minutes will be because I love you madly and will do anything to keep you safe?”

“Absolutely,” she said. No hesitation, and with a hint of a smile.

“We don’t have to call the police,” I said, “because in a few minutes this place will be crawling with cops. If we’re still here, they’ll arrest us.”

“Why? We’re innocent.”

“Even if these cops speak perfect English, there’s no way they’re going to believe a word we say. There’s a bullet hole in our TV, a body went flying through our window, and there are millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds scattered around our room, which — oh, by the way, Officer, just happens to be totally trashed. We have exactly two minutes to grab whatever we can and get out. Trust me. Please.”

I hit the floor and started scraping diamonds off the rug and tossing them into the medical bag. A second later Katherine was scooping them off the bedspread.

The desk, the dresser, and two chairs had been knocked over, and I stood them upright. Then I moved the rest of the furniture so we could get whatever had rolled underneath.

“Ninety seconds and we pop smoke,” I said.

“Pop smoke?” Katherine asked.

“It’s Marine-speak for get the hell out of this hotel room before we wind up doing some serious time in an Italian prison.”

We crawled on the floor, scavenging among the broken glass, shattered furniture, and overturned room-service cart, grabbing as many loose stones as we could find.

A minute later I pulled the plug. “Time’s up,” I said. “You have thirty seconds to throw your clothes in a bag or leave them behind.”

At the two-minute mark I grabbed Katherine by the arm and pulled her toward the door.

“Over there,” Katherine said, pointing to a corner. “Is that diamonds or broken glass?”

They were diamonds, and my trained sniper’s eye could spot at least half a dozen spots where the sparkle was definitely not glass. But we didn’t have time to get them all.

“Leave them. They’ll be a nice tip for the maid,” I said, looking around our formerly glorious room. “Believe me, she’ll have earned it.”

Chapter 58

THE BEST WAY I can describe what was going on in the lobby of the Danieli was discreet commotion. The manager of the hotel, several of his assistants, four desk clerks, and a couple of bellmen were scurrying about — some of them communicating by radio in hushed voices. But I could hear the overtones of panic.

I caught the words al quinto piano repeated several times—“on the fifth floor”—referring to the location from which Marta Krall had just taken her swan dive. Members of the hotel staff were on their way to the room with the broken window. I figured la Polizia di Venezia couldn’t be far behind.

The chaos worked in our favor. Katherine and I strolled casually through the lobby and out the front door with our bags. Had anyone been paying attention, it might have been noticed that we hadn’t bothered to check out. But everyone was far too busy to notice a chatty couple who were debating whether to visit the Peggy Guggenheim collection at the Museo d’Arte Moderna or spend a few hours at the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

If this were New York City, we’d have jumped in a cab and tear-assed down the Grand Central Parkway straight to JFK. But there aren’t a lot of high-speed getaway options in Venice. A gondola would have been romantic but not too smart.

There was a water taxi parked in front of the hotel and we got in.

It was a ten-seater. We were the only two passengers.

“Railway station,” I said. “Venezia Santa Lucia.”

“Cinque minuti,” the driver said, not moving the boat. He pointed to the eight empty seats.

“What’s going on?” Katherine said. “Why aren’t we moving?”

“He wants to wait five minutes till he gets more passengers.”

I could see cops storming into the hotel. Katherine and I had registered in our own names, so it wouldn’t be long before the local police were looking for us. When they didn’t find us, they’d widen the search. We had to get out of Italy before our pictures were posted at every border crossing.

“Waiting is not an option,” I told Katherine.

She clasped her hands together and looked to the heavens. “God, my boyfriend’s been a little crazy lately,” she said. “Please don’t let him ask me to swim.”

I kissed her on the forehead and turned to the water-taxi driver. “Siamo in ritardo per il nostro treno,” I said.

Katherine looked at me.

“I told him we were late for our train.”

The driver shrugged. “Gli Americani sono sempre in ritardo,” he said.

“He says we’re always late. Quanto?” I said. “How much?”

“Novantacinque euro.”

“Ninety-five euros. How much for tutto?” I said. “The whole damn boat. Immediatamente! ”

“Seicento.”

I dug into my pocket and peeled off three two-hundred-euro notes. The engine turned over as soon as the bills left my hand.

“Siete Americani?” our taxi driver said as we cut through the water past the Palazzo Ducale.

“No, we’re not,” I said.

He shrugged again. He had all the money he was going to get out of me. No small talk required.

Katherine leaned into my chest and I wrapped my arm around her. “Just in case you were wondering,” she said, “I’m petrified.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t exactly what I had planned.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Paris was amazing. Venice is inspiring. Except for that blond bitch who shot at us, it’s been a heck of a vacation.”

I kissed her.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

“Amsterdam.”

“What’s there?” she said.

“Beautiful canals, great nightlife, and incredible art — the Rijksmuseum has all the Dutch masters. Rembrandt, van Gogh, Vermeer — you’ll love it.”

She stared at me. Her gray eyes were steely now. “Matt, cut the travelogue bullshit. The Italian police are looking for us, and instead of racing back to New York, we’re on our way to a museum in the Netherlands? What happened to Trust me?” she said. “So let me repeat the question. What’s in Amsterdam?”

I leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “People who buy diamonds.”

Chapter 59

IT TOOK FIFTEEN minutes to get to the train station. I was eager to come clean to Katherine, but just in case our six-hundred-euro captain had a better handle on English than he had let on, we just sat and enjoyed the view.

The next train to Milan was leaving in forty-five minutes. From there we could catch the overnight train to Amsterdam. Flying would take only two hours, but that meant going through airport security, and I had decided to hang on to Marta Krall’s gun.

I bought two first-class train tickets to Milan and reserved a sleeper car for the second leg of the trip.

We sat down to wait at a little coffee bar. I ordered a cappuccino. Katherine had a caffè con panna, which is basically espresso topped with sweet whipped cream.

“Do you remember what we were talking about in our hotel room before we were so rudely interrupted?” I said.

“Do I remember? First you nearly gave me a heart attack when you showed me what was inside your little doctor kit, then you said something like — but wait, that’s not all. You were going to tell me another big secret, when the door crashed in.” She sipped her espresso. “Are you going to tell me now?”

I nodded. “Walter Zelvas — the guy who got killed at Grand Central — was a professional killer,” I said. “He worked for the Russian mob. Among other things, they run a global diamond-smuggling operation, and Zelvas was taking off with a bag full of diamonds that he stole from them. They found out, and they hired another hit man to kill him. Zelvas didn’t die from a bomb blast. He was professionally terminated.”

Katherine put her hand up to her mouth. “You’re…you’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I swear.”

“But how do you know? How did you find out?”

“I’m the person…they hired to kill Zelvas.”

Her body started to shake. “No. No. No. It can’t be possible. No.”

“Katherine, first of all, it’s true,” I said. “I can’t expect you to understand, but I love you too much to keep it from you. And after what happened in our hotel room, you have to know. That woman’s name is Marta Krall. The people who hired me to kill Zelvas hired her to kill me and get their diamonds back.”

“This can’t be happening,” Katherine whispered. She was staring at the floor now, not at me. She couldn’t look me in the eye.

“I think I know what you’re going through,” I said. “The night I got out of the Marines, my father told me that he’d been a professional hit man. He made it sound almost all right. Logical. He only killed bad people, he said. It was like being an executioner in a prison — a really well-paid executioner. He wanted me to think about doing it, too. At first I wouldn’t even consider it. But eventually he turned me. I kill evil men like Walter Zelvas. And the money I get paid lets me follow my dream — it lets me paint.”

Katherine was in shock. Her face looked tortured. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t believe it. You kill people? For money? And your father was doing it before you?” She paused, and then she hit me with the same question I had asked my father. “Did he ever tell your mother?”

“Yes,” I said. “He said it took her years to get used to it.”

“Well, I’m not your mother,” she said, sobbing. “Good-bye, Matthew.”

She stood up, grabbed her bag, and started walking.

I jumped up and followed her. “Where are you going?”

“Away from you. There’s a bus that goes to the Venice airport. I’m buying a ticket and flying to New York. I’m going home. Don’t follow me. Don’t call me. Ever.”

I ran after her, took her by the shoulders, and spun her around. “Please, Katherine. Don’t leave.”

I stared into her eyes, but the eyes that looked back at me were empty, lifeless. My mind told me to let her go. She would be safer in New York. But my chest was heaving, my heart was breaking, and the emotions I’ve always managed to keep bottled up inside began spilling out.

“You know how much I love you?” I said, my voice cracking. “Please don’t leave. I’ll change. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

“Take your hands off me,” Katherine said. “Or I’ll scream.”

My hands dropped to my sides. “Katherine, what I do…what I did…it’s a job, like being in the Marine Corps was a job. But it’s not who I am. You know the real me. Nothing is more important to me than our relationship.”

“You’re wrong, Matthew. I never knew the real you. And our relationship has been built on a mountain of lies. Good-bye.”

She turned and walked off.

I stood and watched her disappear into the crowd, feeling something I can’t remember ever feeling before.

Abandoned.

Chapter 60

THE TRIP ACROSS the northern Italian countryside took almost three hours. The train stopped at Padua, Vincenza, Verona, and other cities steeped in the history of the Venetian Republic, but without Katherine to appreciate them with me, I barely looked.

It was 7 p.m. when we pulled into Milan, and I had forty-five minutes to stretch my legs before the sixteen-hour train ride to Amsterdam.

Milano Centrale is one of the most beautiful railway stations in the world, but it reminded me of Grand Central Terminal, and that reminded me of the night I found the diamonds. And of course finding the diamonds is what led to losing Katherine.

I was miserable. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the only person I knew who could understand what I was going through.

It was 11 a.m. in Colorado, and my father picked up on the first ring. “How you doing, boy?” he said.

“Been better,” I said. “I made the mistake of taking my girlfriend on a business trip and it didn’t go well.”

“I’m guessing she found out what business you’re in, and she’s none too happy about it,” he said.

“You’re pretty smart for an old jarhead.”

“Don’t have to be smart if you’re experienced,” he said.

“So lay some experience on me. I could use a little of that fatherly wisdom you enjoy beating me over the head with.”

“That’s the thing about us Devil Dogs. We never did get much subtlety training,” he said. “But I’ll give it a shot. I got three questions for you.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“First question,” he said. “Do you love her?”

“Of course I do. More than anything.”

“In that case, fatherly wisdom won’t do it,” he said. “Matthew, I could teach you how to shoot, how to live as a man, how to soldier, but when it comes to love I’m as dumb as the next guy, who’s as dumb as the guy next to him. Kind of like dominoes. Men are dumber than dirt when it comes to love.”

“So it’s hopeless.”

“No. You just have to learn to understand how women think.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay. Good. Second question, then,” he said. “How many pairs of your shoes did Jett chew up before you got her to quit?”

I smiled. Jett was my favorite hunting dog, but she had a taste for shoes, especially the ones that smelled like me. “About a dozen.”

“But you didn’t get rid of her after she ruined two pairs. Or four pairs. Or ten.”

“Hell, no, I loved her, and I was determined to train her.”

“That’s how women think,” he said. “They love us, and they’re determined to train us.”

Now he had me laughing. “So what you’re saying is I just need to be housebroken.”

“According to your mom, we all do,” he said. “Last question. This business trip you’re on — what’s the degree of difficulty?”

“It was supposed to be a slam dunk, which is why I brought Katherine along,” I said. “But I have this aggressive competitor who would like to put me out of business. Permanently.”

“In that case, it’s time to beat you over the head with some professional advice. Snap out of it, boy. Put that girl out of your mind and focus on your business a hundred and ten percent. You can’t afford to be pining away like a lovesick puppy when you’ve got chips on the table. You hear that?”

“Yes, sir.”

He was right. As soon as Marta Krall found some dry clothes and a new gun, she’d come after me again. Being in a funk could get me killed.

“So, here’s the wrap-up, boy,” my father said. “You’re a man, so Katherine expects you to be as dumb as the rest of us. She’s a woman, so she’s hardwired to fix you, which means you’re going to get at least one more chance at redemption. Most important, if you don’t watch your ass on this trip, there ain’t ever gonna be any grandkids. And if that happens, your mama will blame it all on me.”

“Good advice, Dad,” I said. “I owe you one.”

“You can pay me back right now,” he said. “I know exactly where you are.”

I figured he would. The stationmaster’s announcements in the background were a dead giveaway.

“I’ve been there a dozen times,” he said. “There’s an old nun, Sister Philomena, sitting outside track seven. She used to be a mail drop for me. Put a hundred bucks, or whatever that new Italian money is, in her basket. Tell her it’s from Colorado.”

“Will do.”

“I don’t want to know where you’re going, but is there anybody you want me to give your regards to?” he said.

That was code for I do want to know where you’re going, but don’t say it on the phone. Spell it out for me.

“Yeah, say hi to Adam, Mom, and Sarah,” I said. AMS. Airport code for Amsterdam.

“Safe travels,” he said.

“Thanks. I love you, Dad.”

“Semper fi, boy.”

My father is old school. That’s as close as he ever gets to I love you.

Chapter 61

JUST AS MY father had said, there was an ancient nun outside track 7. She sat on a folding chair with her head bowed, but she looked up to thank anyone who tossed a coin in her basket.

I dropped in a one-hundred-euro note. Her head came up fast. “Grazie mille.”

“It’s from Colorado,” I said.

“Ah, Signor Colorado. Nice man.” She studied my face carefully. “You are the young Colorado, sì?”

“I’m his son,” I said.

She beamed and touched a bony blue-veined hand to her heart, much the way I imagined she would have if she’d been in the maternity ward thirty years ago when my father announced, “It’s a boy.”

“Where are you going?” she said.

I hesitated. “I’d rather not say, Sister.”

She lowered her head and peered at me over rimless glasses. She smiled, amused at my lack of trust. The deep-set, watery eyes and crinkled-paper skin put her somewhere north of eighty, but her teeth could not have been more than a few years old. Straight, white porcelain dentures that were so perfect, I imagined they could only have been the generous gift of a devout Catholic dentist.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You can tell me. I will pray for you to Saint Christopher.”

I trusted my father, so I trusted her. “Amsterdam,” I said.

She took my hand, closed her eyes, and mumbled a prayer. Then she opened her eyes, flashed another dazzling smile, and said, “Vai con Dio.”

I said good-bye, not sure if my father was paying her back for past kindnesses or buying me some travel insurance.

I got my answer when I arrived in Amsterdam. The train ride had been uneventful, but as soon as I stepped up to the taxi stand at the station, a man called out, “Colorado.”

I turned, ready to fight.

The man held up both hands. “I’m a friend of Sister Philomena’s,” he said. “You don’t want to take a taxi. They remember every passenger and write down every destination. I remember nothing.”

My father had been long retired, but his network was still open for business.

My driver’s name was Harold, and my ride was a spacious black Citroën that still smelled factory fresh.

Harold was a professional. He asked no questions and spoke only when spoken to. He negotiated expertly through the midday traffic, and after driving me to the Zeedijk neighborhood, he handed me a business card that had nothing on it but a phone number.

“Anytime,” he said. “Day or night.”

I reached for my wallet, but he wouldn’t take my money.

I got out of the car and did a slow three-sixty, scanning the area. I hadn’t been tailed. I silently thanked my father and watched as the wheelman he had sent turned the car around and disappeared into traffic.

Chapter 62

THE ZEEDIJK REMINDED me of Times Square in New York — part trendy, part seedy. I checked into the Bodburg, a hotel on Beursstraat that was also a little of both.

The Bodburg should have been called the Bedbug. The elevator was out of order, the fire hose in the hall leaked, there were rat droppings in my room, and my only window looked out onto a sex shop. It was the ultimate comedown after the Danieli. But it was perfect. Hardly the kind of place you’d go if you were looking for a guy with a bag of diamonds.

Now all I had to do was sell them. Matthew Bannon might not know how to unload millions of dollars’ worth of blood diamonds, but the Ghost did. And my main contact was right here in Amsterdam.

When you think of organized crime in the European Union, the Italians overshadow everyone. But there are plenty of well-oiled smuggling operations in Holland. The Dutch play such a big role in transporting legal goods across the continent that crossing the line to smuggling is an easy step.

I knew most of the players by reputation, and I decided that the best possible buyer in the country was Diederik de Smet. I had two reasons. One, he had the money to handle the kind of volume I was selling. And two, he hated the Russians. A year ago, de Smet had been running a cell-phone hacking operation that was so profitable, the Russian mob couldn’t resist trying to move in on it.

The Dutch pushed back, and it escalated into a blood feud with a nasty body count on both sides, so I knew I didn’t have to worry about de Smet ratting me out to the Diamond Syndicate. I did have to worry about him, though. His street name was de slang—“the Snake”—and word had it he was as treacherous as a king cobra.

I had a meeting scheduled with him for tomorrow afternoon. But first I needed some sleep.

I locked my door, pulled down the window shade, got down on the floor, sliced open the underside of the box spring, and shoved my bag of diamonds in between the coils. Then I stretched out on the bed, not even bothering to undress first. The mattress was lumpy, and I felt good knowing that one of those lumps was going to bring me millions.

I woke up at 9 p.m., showered, got dressed, and felt almost human. I went downstairs and asked the guy at the front desk where to eat.

“The Grasshopper around the corner on Oudebrugsteeg,” he said. “They’re a steak restaurant, a sports bar, and a cannabis café. They’ve got a little something for everyone.”

I strolled over and opted for a rib eye and a baked potato at Evita, the Grasshopper’s Argentinean steak house on the third floor. The food was good, but it triggered the memory of the night Katherine and I shared a porterhouse at Peter Luger to celebrate my getting into Parsons.

Dinner was a lonely affair, and by the time I finished, I was feeling pretty damn sorry for myself. I knew I should get back to my room and keep one eye on the diamonds and the other peeled for Marta Krall, but sometimes, no matter how hard trouble is beating down on you, you just don’t give a shit. So despite my better judgment, I went downstairs for coffee and some weed.

Technically, selling marijuana is illegal in Amsterdam, but it’s not punishable, so the law isn’t enforced. Most of the coffeehouses that sell it follow some basic rules, like no hard drugs and no selling to kids. The espresso was mediocre, but the weed was primo. After my first few hits, I wanted Katherine to be with me something fierce.

I figured she was back in New York now, and I wondered if she missed me as much as I missed her.

And then I started wondering if my father was right. Would she give me another chance? And what did I have to do to earn it?

I hadn’t smoked grass since I got out of the Marines, and this stuff was powerful. It sneaked up on me, and before I knew it, I was half-baked.

I desperately wanted to call Katherine, but I knew I’d regret it in the morning. So I did what any lovesick, stoned-out artist would do.

I took a pen out of my pocket and began sketching her face on a place mat.

Chapter 63

I HAD ROUGHED out the portrait of Katherine when a group of about a dozen college kids piled in. They were loud, American, and drunk. A few of them pushed tables together while one guy with a wispy blond beard and a Duke University Blue Devils T-shirt leaned over my shoulder.

“Whatcha drawing, dude?” he said.

“Looks like I’m drawing a crowd,” I said.

My cannabis-infused wit escaped him. “How much to do a picture of me?” he said.

“No charge if you’ll pose nude,” I said.

He gave me the finger and joined his friends.

The waitress brought me another double espresso and a bottle of beer.

“I didn’t order these,” I said.

“They’re my treat,” she said. “Would you like to drink them outside, where you don’t have to put up with these dickheads?”

“Thanks,” I said and took a swig of the beer. It was definitely the better of the two beverages.

“We artists have to stick together,” she said. “My name is Anna.”

“Matthew.”

She picked up my coffee and carried it outside. The entire three-story building was bathed in an eerie green light. “The owner loves it,” Anna said, “because it’s the color of grasshoppers. Pretty ugly, right?”

“Not to another grasshopper,” I said.

There were at least forty tables, all empty. Anna set me up in the corner farthest from the noise and only ten feet from the canal. A street lamp cast a soft yellow light on the table. Anna excused herself, then returned a few seconds later with about twenty clean white paper placemats.

“We’re all out of sketch pads,” she said.

“Thanks again.”

She looked at my drawing of Katherine. “She’s pretty. Who is she?”

“Nobody,” I said. “I’m over her.”

“I get off work in an hour. You want to come up to my apartment, look at some of my paintings, drink some wine?”

Anna had a lithe, athletic body, blue eyes, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a heavenly smile. So it took me a solid five seconds to answer the question. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m kind of tired.”

Anna was not the kind of woman men say no to, so she looked a little surprised when I turned her down. But she shrugged and laughed it off.

She took another look at the sketch of Katherine. “You’re not as over her as you might think.” She turned around and walked back inside to deal with the rowdy college guys.

I took a long pull on the beer, picked up my pen, and started to work on a second drawing.

“I guess that’s the last I’ll be seeing of table service tonight,” I said as Katherine’s face began to emerge from the page. “I know you don’t approve of my job, but at least give me some credit for not jumping into some other woman’s bed.”

The sketch came to life quickly. I don’t know if it was the pot or the pain I felt from losing her, but it was the best drawing of Katherine I’d ever done.

Sometimes the difference between a piece of art and a piece of crap is the artist’s ability to know when to stop. I worked furiously. And then I set my pen down. I had labored over hundreds of sketches of Katherine since we met, but this one had poured out of me in minutes. It was not only finished, it was inspired.

I sat back and stared at her face. I wanted her in my life forever. I promised myself I would do whatever it took to get her back.

And then I felt the cold steel on the back of my neck.

“It looks like Ms. Sanborne doesn’t like this life you lead, does she, Mr. Bannon?” a female voice with a thick German accent said. “Don’t worry, you still have me.”

I sat there frozen.

“The party is over, pretty boy,” Krall said. “Now, tell me, where are Mr. Chukov’s diamonds?”

My assassin’s playbook of options ran through my head. I’d been in life-or-death situations before. There’s always a way out.

But at the moment I couldn’t come up with a single one. I was that stoned.

Chapter 64

“I’LL REPEAT THE QUESTION,” Marta said, digging the muzzle of the gun into the back of my neck. “Where are the diamonds?”

“I’m stoned,” I said, “not stupid. If I tell you where they are, you’ll kill me.”

“You’re right, but if you give me the diamonds, it will be quick and painless. One bullet,” she said, pressing the gun directly below my medulla oblongata.

“What happens if I don’t give you the diamonds?”

“You’ll still die fast,” Marta said, and I could sense a note of delight creep into her cold, robotic delivery. “But Katherine Sanborne won’t be so lucky.”

Hearing Katherine’s name was a jolt to my system.

“She had nothing to do with this,” I said. “I took the diamonds. She didn’t even know about them until ten minutes before you showed up. Keep her out of it.”

“And when I say a slow death,” Krall said, “I’m not talking about ten minutes.”

Krall was the Marquis de Sade of assassins. For many of her targets, death was only the beginning. When their hearts stopped, she’d rip the cord out of a lamp, plug it into a wall socket, and jump-start the victims back into consciousness. Then she would slowly torture and kill them again. She was sicker than Zelvas. And now she was threatening to kill Katherine over the course of days, maybe weeks.

My mental faculties had been dulled, but my adrenal gland started firing on all cylinders. I could feel the adrenaline rush as my body went into fight-or-flight mode.

I am invincible, I thought.

My brain shook off the effects of the marijuana and I forced myself to think in straight lines — somewhat straight, anyway. Maybe a little crooked. Marta Krall had a gun, but I had one small advantage. She still had no idea who I really was. If she knew I was the Ghost, I’d be dead already. I’d gotten the best of her in Venice, but she probably figured that was my Marine training. I was an amateur who got lucky. It wouldn’t happen again. I had to convince her she was right.

“I’ll take you to the diamonds,” I said. “Please don’t hurt my girlfriend. You have to promise.”

“You have my word,” she lied through her perfectly white teeth.

“I…I…I hid them.” My body started to tremble and my head shook from side to side. The trick was to look petrified and not to let her catch me scanning the area for a weapon, anything I could use against her.

But she was one step ahead of me. “Pick up the beer bottle,” she said, “and lower it to the ground. Slowly.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I did exactly what she asked.

“Where did you hide them?”

“Bus station. A locker.”

“Give me the key.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I hid that, too. It’s in my hotel room.”

“Take me to it.”

“Promise me you won’t hurt Katherine,” I begged.

“I already promised,” she said, disgusted with me. This was not what she expected from a guy who had thrown her out of a fifth-story window. She relaxed. The gun was no longer pressed to the back of my neck. She stepped around to face me.

I froze just looking at her — a deer in her headlights. My body language told her exactly what I wanted her to think—you won.

“Not so brave now, are you? Are you?”

I shook my head. “No. Not so brave. Not brave at all.”

“You’re nothing but a dickless wonder, Matthew Bannon. Let’s go,” she said.

I started to walk, but then stopped. “My picture. Please.”

“What?” she said.

“My picture. Katherine. I can’t leave it here,” I sniveled, acting stoned. “Can’t leave it.”

By now Krall was sick of me and ready to do whatever it took to get me to the bus station. “Take the fucking picture,” she said.

I turned, teetered unsteadily toward the table. I picked up my sketch of Katherine. Then I let out a moan. “Oh, no. Oh, God.”

“What now?” she said.

I lowered my head. “I pissed my pants.”

“You’re absolutely disgusting,” she said. “Turn around. Let me see you.”

I turned, and her eyes dropped to my crotch for an instant. I grabbed the Rapidograph pen from the table, and plunged the steel tip directly into the gel of Marta Krall’s right eye. She gasped, and I forced it deeper — into her brain. Her long legs went out from under her. She collapsed into me but I let her fall.

I think she was dead before she even hit the ground. Her green eyes looked up at me. No movement. Nothing. Dead killer eyes.

I scanned the patio quickly. It was still empty. There were no witnesses to what had just happened here.

I couldn’t help thinking — I’m damn good at this, killing bad guys. Even stoned.

Chapter 65

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT proved that I was definitely still stoned. I stood Marta Krall upright and put her arm around my neck. Her head drooped and her right eye socket was still leaking blood. “I wish I had one of those pirate eye patches,” I muttered as I slipped my sunglasses on her.

I sat her down in a chair and picked up my sketches and her gun — a J-frame Smith & Wesson snubnose. Then I lifted her up again.

“Here we go, sweetie,” I said. “I’m going to find a nice place for you to sleep it off.”

The canal was only a few feet away, but I didn’t have anything to weigh her down with. “Besides,” I said to her, “I already had the fun of tossing you in the drink on our first date.”

We started walking along Beursstraat, which was teeming with nightlife.

Three guys in Holy Cross sweatshirts were standing outside an Internet café, saw us, and immediately started laughing their asses off.

“Somebody’s not going to get laid tonight,” one of them called to me.

“Hey, buddy,” the second one yelled. “You’re supposed to get them drunk, not put them in a coma.”

I played along. “She’s a blind date,” I said. “She wasn’t blind when I met her, but she is now.”

That cracked them up, too.

“Where’d you meet her?” the third one asked.

“At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,” I said.

They whooped more laughter, and I kept walking. Marta and I were the entertainment of the moment, and people stopped what they were doing to stare at us. Not everybody said something, but those who did had a wisecrack. Nobody suspected she was dead.

Marta and I turned onto a dark side street that was lined with parked cars on both sides.

“Oh, look, honey, here’s our car,” I said, grabbing the door handle on a silver Vauxhall Corsa. It was locked.

I moved on to a second car. Locked. Same with the third.

The fourth one was a faded red Volkswagen van. I was able to open the door — after I smashed the side window with Marta’s gun.

I laid her flat on the backseat and retrieved my sunglasses. She stared vacantly at the roof of the van, her right eye a whole lot more vacant than the left.

“Thank you for a memorable evening, Marta,” I said, “but I’m afraid this is our last date.”

I shut the car door and headed back to my hotel to sleep off my buzz. I needed my wits about me tomorrow.

I had diamonds to sell.

Chapter 66

I CHECKED OUT of the Bodburg Hotel at 6 a.m. and relocated to a quiet little bed-and-breakfast on Geldersekade in the heart of Amsterdam’s Chinatown. I had about eight hours to get ready for my face to face with Diederik de Smet.

But first I had to change my face.

Too many people were looking for Matthew Bannon.

The homeless-man disguise I used when I was stalking Zelvas was simple enough to do on my own, but this time I needed a total transformation that would stand up to close scrutiny.

I’ve used the services of a dozen different makeup artists around the world, and one of the best was right here in Amsterdam — a Cuban expatriate named Domingo Famosa.

Domingo had worked for Dirección de Inteligencia, the main intelligence agency of the Castro government. His job was to create special-effects makeup, sometimes for the DI agents, and sometimes for the face and body doubles who stepped in for Fidel when the assassination threat level on El Jefe was high.

I took a cab to Domingo’s studio on Waalsteeg.

He was in his late sixties and had a severe speech impediment that was reputed to have been caused by having his tongue seared with a red-hot poker. It’s not clear whether the punishment was at the hands of the enemy or his own people, but whoever did it made their point. In the six hours I spent in the makeup chair, Domingo never uttered a word.

He gelled my hair flat, glued on a bald cap, and covered my face with wet plaster bandages. Once it hardened into a mask he removed it from me, added Plasticine, and sculpted fifty years of lines and wrinkles into the face.

He made a second mold and filled it with hot gelatin, creating a flexible prosthetic that he applied to my face with surgical glue.

For the next hour he artfully applied makeup, giving me the uneven skin tone and the telltale age spots of an eighty-year-old man.

Finally, he added contact lenses to create old-man rings around my irises and topped off the look with a gray wig.

I looked in the mirror. Young Matthew Bannon was gone. I was staring at my grandfather.

“That’s frightening,” I said.

He nodded, then led me to a walk-in closet and pulled out a three-piece charcoal-gray suit.

“Prosperous, but conservative,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

He finished off my wardrobe with a white shirt, a conservative blue-and-gray-striped tie, and black-leather wingtips.

I got dressed and stood in front of a full-length mirror, adjusting my posture by dropping my shoulders and bending my head and upper back forward.

Domingo was behind me. I turned around. “I want to thank you, young fellow,” I said in my new gravelly voice. “You are a true artist and I am grateful for your services.”

He grinned.

I stood there for a beat and made little sucking noises through my teeth — my grandfather’s trademark. “So, Señor Famosa, what do you think?” I said.

The grin got wider. He raised his right hand, made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger, aimed it straight at me, and pulled the imaginary trigger.

I took it as a sign of approval. Still, it was unnerving coming from someone who had spent his career disguising guys to take a bullet for Castro.

Chapter 67

DIEDERIK DE SMET had been charming over the phone. “If the quality is good, and you’re selling at a reasonable price,” he said, “I’d be happy to buy your merchandise.”

From what I had heard about the Snake, I knew he’d be even happier to steal my merchandise. And he had the organization to do it.

De Smet set the meeting for 2 p.m. at the Café Karpershoek, the oldest bar in Amsterdam. It’s directly across from Centraal Station, so it’s usually crowded with tourists who are eager to drink down the Heineken and soak up the atmosphere.

It’s also a big draw for the locals, because the café has a hard-and-fast no-music policy, which makes it a perfect place for anyone interested in a pint, a snack, and a serious conversation.

I walked through the door at exactly 2 p.m. and took a red silk pocket square from my jacket and mopped my brow. A man at a corner table stood up. I recognized him immediately. His face had been on the front page of the papers many times, but his ass had never been in jail.

I walked over and shook his hand. “I’m Yitzchak Ziffer,” I said, adding an Eastern European Jewish accent to my aged voice.

“Diederik de Smet. A pleasure to meet you.”

“What a charming place,” I said, scanning the room. “The dark wood, the brass fixtures, the artwork…”

Two men at a far table and two more at the bar were watching my every move.

“What a rich history this establishment must have,” I continued.

“It was built in sixteen oh six,” he said.

“Ah, it’s good to find something that’s older than I am,” I said.

We laughed and sat down, and he poured two beers from a pitcher on the table.

“How come we’ve never done business before, Mr. Ziffer?” he said.

“I’m from New York,” I said. “I worked in the Diamond District. I retired fifteen years ago, but I’m helping a friend. He came into some lovely stones unexpectedly, and he doesn’t know anything about the art of negotiating.”

De Smet smiled. He was about forty-five and had a hawk nose, thin lips, perfect teeth, and enough gel in his thick black hair to wax a bowling alley.

“I heard something about a young man who recently came into quite a few lovely stones,” he said. “Can I see them?”

“These are but a small sample,” I said, handing him a velvet pouch that held about thirty diamonds.

He rolled them through his fingers, then put a jeweler’s loupe in his eye and studied about ten of them.

“Lovely, indeed,” he said. “Good color, slightly included. Where are the rest?”

I handed him photos I had taken before leaving New York. All the diamonds sat in a glass container on a scale.

“Very impressive,” de Smet said. “There are rumors circulating that these might have belonged to my competitor.”

“They belong to my client,” I said. “Would you rather I sell them to your competitor?”

“You couldn’t,” he said, his toothy grin turning into a sneer. “And if you tried, they would kill you. Word travels, Mr. Ziffer. The Russians are looking for some stolen diamonds.”

I stood up. “I came to Amsterdam looking for a buyer, Mr. de Smet. Obviously you’re not him.”

“Sit,” he said.

I didn’t. “I’ve wasted enough time as it is,” I said.

“Please,” he said. “Sit.”

I sat.

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Ziffer,” he said, “but you know what they say — let the buyer beware.”

“Beware of what?” I said. “Have I given you reason not to trust me?”

“Mr. Ziffer, I wouldn’t trust you if you were my Dutch uncle. But if all your diamonds are as good as they look, I’ll take them off your hands for five million American dollars.”

“I’m an inadequate photographer, Mr. de Smet. These diamonds are better than they look, and they’re worth thirteen.”

He didn’t blink.

I sipped my beer. “But in the interest of a quick sale, I will accept ten.”

“Six,” he snapped back.

I shook my head. “My client won’t be happy with anything less than nine.”

“Your client will be happy if the Russians don’t find him and connect his balls to a car battery. Final offer — seven million dollars.”

“I’m at nine, you’re at seven,” I said. “Let’s meet at eight million.”

“Let’s not. Seven million. Take it or leave it. Either way, the beer is on me.”

“You’re practically stealing them,” I said. “But I never had a problem with stealing. I’ll take it. Can we do the transfer tonight? You can pay me in euro banknotes. I don’t know what the equivalent of seven million American weighs, but at my age I don’t think I’ll be able to lift it.”

Actually I knew exactly what it weighed. Seven million in hundred-dollar bills would tip the scales at one hundred and fifty-four pounds — too much to carry at any age. The same amount in five-hundred-euro notes was only twenty-six pounds.

De Smet shrugged. Dollars, euros — he didn’t care. He was probably planning to hand over the money, take the diamonds, and then take the money back.

“Tonight is fine with me,” he said. “There’s a bar on Rembrandtplein where we can do business in total privacy.”

I shook my head. “It’s not only the buyer who must beware,” I said. “I’d rather go somewhere not so private. How about the two of us take a nice romantic moonlight dinner cruise along the canal. I’ll be on the boat that leaves the Prins Hendrikkade dock at seven-thirty. Bring the money. And come alone.”

“Of course,” he said. “You as well.”

“The cruise lasts two hours. When we get back to the dock, I will be at the front of the queue and get off first. You, my friend, will be at the very back of the line. By the time you will get off, I’ll be gone, and you won’t be tempted to follow me. Is that condition acceptable?”

“No problem,” de Smet answered. “All I want are the diamonds.”

Chapter 68

I STEPPED OUTSIDE the Café Karpershoek, and the two men who were watching me from the bar followed. The Ghost could have lost them in half a minute, but it wouldn’t have been smart for old Mr. Ziffer to shake them like a pro. I’d have to make them think they lost me.

I walked across the street to the cab stand at Centraal Station. I got into the first taxi and told the driver to take me to the InterContinental Amstel Hotel.

“Drive slowly,” I said. “I want to enjoy the view.”

De Smet’s boys caught the cab behind me and had no trouble keeping up.

I knew the Amstel well. I had stayed there the last time I had a job in Amsterdam. It’s a beautifully restored landmark building — a grand old palace that sits majestically in the heart of the city, overlooking the Amstel River. It’s the essence of Dutch charm, elegance, and efficiency.

The cab stopped at the entrance, and a burly uniformed doorman with a handlebar mustache opened the door. I recognized him immediately.

“Rutger,” I said as he helped me out of the taxi. “My favorite doorman. Do you remember me from last summer? Yitzchak Ziffer. You took excellent care of me. Good to see you again.”

I put a hundred-euro note in his hand, and his eyes popped. He had no idea who I was, but that didn’t slow him down.

“So excellent to see you again, Mr. Ziffer,” he said. “Welcome back. Do you have bags?”

“No, I checked in last night. But if it’s not too much trouble, I need one small favor.”

He slipped the money deftly into his pocket as he helped me to the red-carpeted stairs. “Mr. Ziffer, whatever you need.”

“As you know, I’m an author, and I’m here for another book signing,” I said. “But some of my fans are more like stalkers. Do you see those two men who just got out of that taxi?”

He looked discreetly over at de Smet’s men. “Yes, sir. Are they annoying you?”

“They mean well,” I said, “but sometimes this famous-author business can be exhausting. Could you just delay them at the door for a few seconds so I can get upstairs to my room to take a nap without being accosted by any more autograph hounds?”

“You’d be surprised how long I can delay them,” Rutger said.

“You’ve always been so kind,” I said, toddling slowly up the stairs. “That is why I stay here.”

I walked through the front door as de Smet’s men were approaching the stairs. I caught a glimpse of Rutger spreading his arms wide and stopping them in their tracks. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Are you registered guests?”

“Out of my way,” the first thug said, shoving him hard.

But it’s not easy pushing a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound doorstop out of the way. Rutger pushed back.

The thug threw a punch. I darted into the lobby and looked back. Rutger was bleeding from the nose. But he wasn’t down. He wrapped both his arms around the attacker and started blowing his whistle.

A second doorman, two bellmen, and a parking valet jumped into the fray, and suddenly all the palatial grandeur and European civility of the Amstel Hotel had disintegrated into a brawl.

I didn’t stick around to see how it turned out. De Smet’s men wouldn’t be held back for long. I bolted across the marble floor of the lobby to the rear door and exited into the hotel garden.

From there I ran along the riverbank, turned right on Sarphatistraat, and caught a cab back to my little bed-and-breakfast in Chinatown.

I looked out the rear window as the Amstel faded into the distance.

Someday I’d like to come back here, I thought. I’ll bring Katherine. And a serious tip for Rutger the doorman.

Chapter 69

DIEDERIK DE SMET was more treacherous than I had expected. I knew he would have me tailed, but the fact that his men beat up the doorman at the Amstel meant they had been ordered not to lose me. Their instructions had probably been to follow me to my room and grab the diamonds. So much for honor among thieves.

I took a cab to the Prins Hendrikkade dock at five-thirty — two hours before departure.

The excursion was a dinner cruise, so people were encouraged to come early — and buy lots of drinks. I bought a ticket and went on board. The entire dining area was enclosed in glass. Several couples had already commandeered the primo window-seat tables.

I spotted a tiny table right next to the swinging kitchen door, where the clatter of pots and pans and the constant waiter traffic would take most of the romance out of a dinner cruise.

It was perfect for me — in the corner, with a clear view of the dock, the gangplank, and the entire dining room.

I ordered a club soda from the bar and took a stroll around the boat. Most of it was under glass, but there was some deck space for people who wanted to fill their lungs with the fresh night air.

None of de Smet’s men had shown up yet. I was betting that two of them were still hanging out at the Amstel, waiting for me to come down from my room.

At 7:15 I spotted de Smet on the dock. He was wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket and had a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I had no doubt that he would show me the money. But I was pretty sure he didn’t plan for me to get off the boat with it.

He bought a ticket but didn’t board yet.

A minute later, two of his men from the Café Karpershoek arrived. They bought tickets and stood a few yards away from de Smet, pretending not to know him, having a smoke and a chat.

Finally, the two punks who had followed me to the Amstel showed up. They didn’t buy tickets. One of them picked up a brochure and tried to look fascinated by it. Four brutes with a passion for dinner cruises? The rest of the passengers were all boy-girl couples. How dumb did de Smet think I was?

At 7:20 de Smet gave the signal, and his two hulks came on board. They stood at the front of the dining room and began eye-searching all the tables. As soon as one of them spotted me, he gestured to the other, who dialed his cell phone. I watched as de Smet took the call, smiled, and came on board.

Chapter 70

AT 7:30 ON THE DOT, the boat pulled away from the dock, and de Smet slithered into the dining room. He caught my eye, then headed directly for my table, all smiles.

“Yitzchak,” he said, shaking my hand.

“Diederik,” I responded. We were obviously now on a first-name basis.

He looked around the room. “This is an inspired place to meet,” he said. “Crowded, but nobody will bother us, and we can enjoy a nice leisurely dinner while we do business.”

You’re so full of shit, I thought. “I’m so glad you like it,” I said.

“How did you come to think of it?” he asked.

“My late wife and I took this same dinner cruise along the canals fifty years ago,” I said. “I’m only in Amsterdam for a brief time, and I couldn’t leave without coming back here.”

“A sentimental diamond merchant,” he said.

“Guilty as charged,” I said.

It was partly true. In an uncharacteristic fit of sentimentality I had transferred the diamonds to a small Adidas sports sack. Zelvas’s doctor bag had changed my life, and I wanted to hang on to it as a memento.

“But I’m also practical,” I said. “Let’s get down to business.”

I set the bag of diamonds on the table.

De Smet took it, then passed his much larger duffel to me.

I opened it and looked inside. It was filled with purple five-hundred-euro banknotes.

“Would you like to count it?” de Smet asked.

“Yes,” I said, and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. That should give you time to inspect the stones. I won’t be far.”

The men’s lavatory was at the opposite end of the dining room but still easy to see from where de Smet was sitting. He didn’t plan on letting me out of his sight. I took the bag into the lav and locked myself in a stall.

I had no plans to count the money. Now that de Smet had the diamonds in his hands, I wouldn’t have time. I set the duffel bag on the floor and climbed over the divider into the empty stall next to it. I stepped onto the toilet lid and crouched down.

Twenty seconds later, through the crack between the stall door and the wall, I saw de Smet’s two heavies walk in.

They looked at the two stalls, ignored the one that appeared empty, and leveled their guns at the one with the locked door and the duffel bag on the floor.

They pumped half a dozen suppressed rounds right where they expected me to be sitting counting the money.

One of them kicked open the stall door. I bet he was real surprised to find it empty. But I never got to see his face.

I stood up on the toilet lid in the adjacent stall and fired a bullet straight down into his skull. Then I shot his partner.

I jumped down and retrieved the duffel bag, which was sticky with blood. I stepped over the bodies and walked to the bathroom door. I opened it a crack. I could see de Smet sitting at his table, waiting for his men to bring back his seven million.

I pulled out my cell and quickly sent a text. I had a partner — and we had a plan.

Then I bolted through the bathroom door and ran for the deck.

De Smet saw me. He jumped up and followed in a big hurry.

Most people were in the dining room, but there were a few couples strolling along the deck, oohing and aahing at the illuminated bridges and the brightly lit houses along the canal.

I crashed into them, knocking down one poor guy. De Smet was right behind me, the bag of diamonds in one hand, a gun in the other.

He began firing on the run, not even bothering to aim.

Glass shattered and wood splintered. My fellow passengers screamed and ducked for cover.

I raced down the deck like a broken-field runner dodging tacklers, only I was avoiding bullets.

De Smet was right behind me. “You’re way out of your league, old man,” he yelled. “Give me the bag.”

“And then what? Are you going to throw me over the side?” I said as I climbed onto the rail on the port side of the boat. “Why don’t I save you the trouble?”

And I jumped overboard.

I landed on a pile of rafts that a friend of mine named Kino had tied together to break my fall. I had just texted him from the bathroom. He was my partner for this getaway.

“Well, look who dropped in,” he said as he gunned the engine and a sleek Stingray Cuddy/Cruiser barreled down the canal.

Within seconds, the lights of the cruise ship and the outraged screams and wild gunshots coming from de Smet faded into the distance.

“How’d it go?” Kino yelled over the roar of the three-hundred-horsepower dual prop.

“I got paid; he got what he paid for,” I said. “Seems incredibly fair to me.”

“Sounds like a perfect evening,” Kino said

“It was, but then it got wet. Very wet,” I said.

Kino shrugged. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah, it does,” I said.

I reminded myself not to explain it quite that way to Katherine when — that was, if—I ever saw her again.

Chapter 71

WHAT CAN I say about Kino? My buddy is an ex-Marine who left the service with a chest full of medals, got engaged to the daughter of a millionaire real-estate developer in Hong Kong, and could have spent the rest of his life in Fat City. But he missed getting shot at.

So Kino went back into combat, and over the next eight years got wounded five times, each one for a different foreign government.

I’ve never met anyone happier about his work.

He’s five foot four and a hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle — though he swears that at least five pounds of it is shrapnel.

“You won’t have to bury me when I die,” he always says. “Just take me to a salvage yard.”

He’s worked in dozens of hot spots around the world but decided to live in Holland because “it’s the most tolerant damn country on the whole damn planet.”

As soon as the cruise ship was out of sight, he slowed the Stingray down to a safe, respectable canal speed.

There was a compact little sleeping cabin below the deck, where I shucked my clothes, peeled off my old-man face, and washed up. My Red Oxx Sky Train bag with my clothes was waiting for me, and I put on jeans, a clean shirt, sneakers, and a Windbreaker.

I went back up on deck. Kino had pulled into a dock and was tying the boat down.

“Abandon ship,” he said.

I grabbed my Red Oxx and the duffel bag, and we walked to his car.

“Where to?” he asked.

“There’s a bank on Vijzelstraat. I have a deposit to make.”

“It’s almost nine p.m. Good time to avoid the crowd,” he said, laughing, as we headed out. “So how’s your old man?”

“I spoke to him the other day,” I said. “He said something about wanting grandkids.”

“Did you explain that’s not something you can do on your own?”

He made small talk as we drove, never asking me what went down on the cruise boat or what was in my duffel bag. It’s something you learn in the corps. Respect the other guy’s personal boundaries.

The bank was next door to an Indonesian restaurant on a wide, busy street. Kino parked directly in front. “I’ll wait here till you’re inside,” he said.

“You don’t need to do that,” I said. I thanked him for his help, unzipped the duffel, and pulled out a stack of bills.

He waved me off. “What do I look like, a mercenary?”

“I came into some serious money,” I said. “I want to spread it around.”

“Put it in a college fund for those grandkids,” he said.

“Thanks.” I opened the car door and got out.

“Semper fi, bro,” he said.

“Right back at ya,” I said.

The lobby of the bank was well lit, and I walked up to the double glass doors and rang the after-hours bell.

A young man in khakis and an open-collar shirt unlocked the door.

“I’m Matthew Bannon,” I said.

“We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “I’m Jan Schoningh. Come on in.”

The bank was twenty-first-century techno architecture — mostly steel and glass — and completely devoid of old-world charm. But they still adhered to that old-world banking tradition that states, “We’re always open late for a guy who shows up with a shitload of cash.”

I expected Schoningh to escort me to a private office where I’d meet some venerable old guy in an expensive suit, but I guess these days it’s the young bankers who get to stay late and service the late-night clientele.

There was a cashier waiting to count the money.

“This is Katje,” Schoningh said.

Katje was blond with a knockout smile and a no-nonsense approach to handling seven million bucks.

She dumped the money on a table, unbanded the packets, and ran the bills through a machine.

Then she ran them through a second time.

The total came to $7,024,362.18. The exchange rate had shifted a few tenths of a point in my favor.

I guess you’d say I was rich. Mr. Schoningh did not seem overly impressed, though. “Do you want to deposit the entire amount?” he asked.

“Everything but eighty thousand euros.”

Katje counted out the money and put it in a pale yellow bank envelope for me. We spent another twenty minutes filling out papers, and then Schoningh escorted me to the front door.

Kino was still parked outside.

He rolled down the window and called out to me. “Hey, Matthew, you need a ride to the airport?”

“You didn’t have to wait. I could’ve caught a cab.”

“Cabs are expensive,” he said. “Get in, kiddo. I’m damn happy to do it.”

And he was. I think the only thing that would have made Kino happier was if Marta Krall had still been around, taking shots at us.

Chapter 72

THE NEXT AVAILABLE flight to New York wasn’t until two o’clock the next afternoon. That left me with seventeen hours to cool my jets at the airport.

But life changes when you have money. Maybe it can’t buy happiness, but it sure as hell can get you where you want to go in a hurry.

Kino dropped me at the General Aviation Center. Two minutes later I was walking across the tarmac with Captain Dan Fennessy, pilot of the Falcon 900EX jet I had chartered.

By the time we got to the plane, I knew everything I needed to know about him. He’d been a pilot for thirty years, got laid off by Delta two years ago, and was happy to give me a bargain rate of only seven thousand dollars an hour so he wouldn’t have to deadhead back to the States.

I paid cash.

The copilot was in the cockpit. “Where would you like to land?” he asked. “JFK, Newark, or Teterboro?”

“For forty-nine thousand bucks, I’d like to land on the corner of Bleecker and Perry in the West Village,” I said.

The two flyboys laughed, and I opted for Teterboro, a small general aviation airport in New Jersey used mostly by corporate jets and small private planes.

“Good choice,” Fennessy said. “Much less hassle with customs.”

He gave me a short tour of the aircraft, pointing out the amenities and explaining emergency procedures.

“You have fourteen seats to choose from, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “Too bad there’s only one of you.”

I’m sure it was his standard icebreaker. I didn’t correct him, but as far as I was concerned, he had two passengers — Matthew Bannon and the Ghost. And Vadim Chukov was determined to kill us both.

I sat down in a window seat and buckled myself in. Five minutes later we were wheels up.

If the Ghost had been calling the shots, we’d have been heading anywhere but New York. The Ghost was hardwired to be as emotionally detached as humanly possible. With the Russian mob after him, and seven million dollars in the bank, he would gladly disappear and start a new life elsewhere.

On the other hand, there was Matthew Bannon, the passionate, caring, wannabe artist, whose mission would be to fly home, win back Katherine’s heart, and live happily ever after.

But there was a third choice. And after a lot of soul-searching, that’s the one I finally made.

I was going back because I had screwed up the best relationship I’d ever had and I needed to apologize.

I was going back because, even though Chukov would be gunning for Matthew Bannon, I had put Katherine’s life in danger, and I had to make sure that she was okay and that she stayed that way.

The old me never would have been on that plane. I was always so careful, so self-involved. But something had changed me. Actually, someone had changed me. Katherine. I loved her desperately. I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted to set things right, and then maybe, just maybe, start my life over again.

Was that too much to ask? Probably, yeah.

Chapter 73

THE FALCON TOUCHED down at Teterboro at a few minutes after 10 p.m.

The customs and immigration agent who met our plane checked my passport and asked me why I went to Paris, Venice, and Amsterdam.

“I’m an artist on tour,” I said.

He stifled a yawn. My name wasn’t on his watch list, so he stamped my passport and sent me on my way.

A customs agent asked me if I had anything to declare.

“Only that I’m happy to be back in the good old U.S. of A.,” I said.

He nodded like he’d heard it before. “Welcome home,” he mumbled.

And that was it. Maybe in these times of young rock stars and baby-faced Hollywood celebrities, nobody wonders why a thirty-year-old in jeans and sneakers flies in from Europe on his own charter jet. Or maybe it was the end of a long day and nobody gave a shit.

Captain Fennessy had ordered a town car for me, and the driver took the Jersey Turnpike to the Lincoln Tunnel, then went down Ninth Avenue to Bleecker.

I got out three blocks from my apartment and walked south toward Perry. I checked the cars and the windows along Bleecker. Nobody was staked out waiting for me to come home.

I unlocked the front door and climbed the stairs to my apartment.

It was exactly as I’d left it.

I dropped my bag and stashed what was left of the eighty thousand euros I had taken from the bank in Amsterdam. Then I dug Marta Krall’s Glock out of my bag. I had been ready to ditch it, but there had been no security at Amsterdam and even less at Teterboro. It was a nifty gun. A definite keeper.

And then I heard the scratching at the door. It was followed by a long-drawn-out meow. My cat was home. I opened the door a crack and Hopper strolled in, looking well fed.

“What’s new, pussycat?” I said.

I pushed the door shut, but it wouldn’t close. I swung it open wide to see what was holding it back.

And there they were. Three men, armed to the teeth.

“Welcome back,” one of them said.

Then they shoved their way into my apartment and shut the door.

Chapter 74

“BOY, AM I glad to see you guys,” I said.

Zach Stevens, Ty Warren, and Adam Benjamin are Marines Corps — to the core. We met in boot camp, trained together, and fought side by side against ruthless fanatics in the mountains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq. Once I decided to become the Ghost, I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. And there was nobody I trusted more than these three. They were my best friends in the world.

So I had hired them to be my backup and my bodyguards, and they’ve been living in apartment 1 ever since. They are loyal, lethal, and, while you’d never know it to look at them, kind of lovable.

We exchanged bro hugs all around.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot sneaking in here,” Adam said. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming back?”

“I was going to knock on your door at a more civilized hour. How did you guys know I was home?”

“You tripped the silent alarm,” Zach said.

“No I didn’t,” I said. “I totally bypassed—”

“Sorry, boss,” Zach said. “I’m talking about the new silent alarm. I installed it on the third step below the fifth-floor landing.”

“You had a nasty-ass visitor the other day,” Ty said. “We figured she’d be coming back.”

“What did she look like?” I said.

Zach took a picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was a black-and-white screen grab from the closed-circuit camera at the front door.

“Her name is Marta Krall,” I said.

“She tried to pass herself off as one of your art teachers,” Zach said.

“Well, I guess I taught her a few things,” I said. “And we don’t have to worry about her ever coming back. She flunked the final.”

None of them even blinked; kill-or-be-killed was in our DNA.

“We’ve been at threat-level red since she showed up,” Ty said. “You think we should ease it back to orange?”

“If Marta Krall was the only one who wanted me dead, I wouldn’t even bother locking the front door,” I said. “But I’ve made a lot of new enemies recently.”

“Don’t worry about it, Captain,” Adam said. “Nobody is getting in here.”

“What are we looking for?” Zach asked.

I told them the whole story. Zelvas, Chukov, the diamonds, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Marta, and of course, Katherine.

“Where’s Katherine now?” Adam asked.

“New York,” I said. “At least I think she flew back to New York after she left me in Venice. I phoned her, texted her, but no response. She probably thinks I just want her back, so she’s avoiding me.”

“Knowing the Russian mob,” Ty said, “if they can’t find you, they’ll go after her.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s why I came back here. I want them to find me. Fast.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Four rings later a voice that was laced with sleep and booze picked up.

“Chukov.”

“This is the Ghost,” I said.

Chukov woke up in a hurry. “Where the hell are you? Where are my diamonds?”

“I’m still in Amsterdam,” I said. “Your diamonds are back in New York.”

“Where? Who has them?”

“Matthew Bannon,” I said. “He couldn’t unload them. The kid is an amateur. He couldn’t sell a fire extinguisher in hell. By the time I tracked him down, he chickened out and skipped town.”

“Where’s Bannon now?” Chukov said.

“He flew back home. He’s holed up in his apartment, trying to figure out how to get rid of those stones,” I said.

“He’s in New York?” Chukov said. “That son of a bitch.”

“Relax, Vadim. I’m catching a flight out of Schiphol in a few hours. I should be in New York by tonight to wrap things up. I’ll call you then.”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Chukov said.

I hung up and turned to my three bodyguards.

“Let’s ramp up, boys. The Russians are coming.”

Chapter 75

CHUKOV’S PHONE RANG.

He clenched his teeth and picked it up. “Hello, Nathaniel. I was just going to call…”

“They sent for me,” Prince screamed.

“Who sent for you?” Chukov said.

“Who do you think? The heads of the Syndicate. You’ve made so much goddamn noise trying to find my diamonds that they found out Zelvas was stealing and now they want answers.”

“But Zelvas was only stealing from us,” Chukov said.

“That’s not the way they will see it. Now, where the hell are my diamonds?” Prince screamed.

“We’re working on it,” Chukov said. “We had a little setback.”

“What? What kind of setback?”

“Marta Krall is dead,” Chukov said. “From what I can put together, she tracked Bannon to Amsterdam and he killed her.”

Chukov had to hold the phone away from his ear as Prince let out a torrent of insults aimed at Krall, Bannon, Chukov, and the mothers who spawned all three from their respective wombs.

“Nathaniel, I know it sounds bad, but it’s under control,” Chukov said. “I just heard from the Ghost. Bannon couldn’t sell the diamonds, so he brought them back to New York. I swear I’ll have them in another few hours.”

“Natalia and I are at the airport now,” Nathaniel shouted. “In another few hours, I’ll be in Nassau and the Syndicate will have my balls in a vise. I want those diamonds back, and if Bannon already sold them, I want the money.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Chukov said.

“That’s what you told me when you hired Krall, may she rot in hell,” Prince said. “And unless you get the diamonds now, you’ll be joining her.”

“Nathaniel, I promise you I’ll—” Chukov stopped. Prince had hung up.

He grabbed a bottle of vodka from the bar, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swig. He had seen Prince go off the deep end before, but this was the worst.

He needed to put together a team. He called the top five professionals on his list. Three were out of the country on assignment, but both the Sicilian and the Jamaican were in New York and available. Then he called Nick Benzetti.

“Bannon is back in New York,” Chukov said. “He still has the diamonds and my boss is going batshit.”

“What happened to your sweet little German girlfriend who shoved the Glock in my face?” Benzetti said. “I thought she was handling the whole mess.”

“She’s dead,” Chukov said.

“Aw, poor thing,” Benzetti said. “Is she really dead, or are you just saying that to make me feel good?”

“I’m putting together a team,” Chukov said. “I want the diamonds back and Bannon at the bottom of the East River. I have two men already. Do you and your partner want in?”

“Yeah, but we’re not working for chump change,” Benzetti said. “Whatever you’re paying the other two guys, we get the same.”

“I can’t afford to—”

“No problem,” Benzetti said. “There are plenty of cops who work cheap. Just dial nine-one-one. Nice talking to you.”

“Wait. Don’t hang up.” Chukov could feel his chest tightening. He grabbed his inhaler. “Okay, okay,” he wheezed. “But it has to be now. We’re running out of time.”

“Relax,” Benzetti said. “The guy is a dipshit art student. How long can it take?”

Chapter 76

NATHANIEL AND NATALIA caught the early-morning JetBlue flight to Nassau in the Bahamas. The Syndicate had rented a block of suites at the Atlantis, a sprawling ocean-themed resort with waterslides, river rides, a hundred-million-gallon aquarium, and almost as many slot machines. It was Disneyland, SeaWorld, and Las Vegas all rolled into one. The Princes despised it.

A limo picked them up at the airport and took them to the One&Only Ocean Club on the eastern end of Paradise Island. Once a private estate, it was now a gated community of oceanfront guest rooms, garden cottages, and luxurious villas.

“You’ve hardly spoken a word since we left New York,” Nathaniel said as soon as they were alone in their room.

“What is there to say?” Natalia said. “We’re here for an inquisition, not a vacation.”

“The inquisition doesn’t start for five hours. Till then, let us enjoy life.”

By noon Natalia was swimming laps in the pool, ignoring the stares of strangers who were trying to figure out the relationship between the voluptuous woman in the white bikini and the silver-haired man who looked old enough to be her father.

She toweled off and slipped on a pair of sandals. “I’m tired of giving those mudaks something to gawk at,” she said. “Let’s walk in the garden.”

Directly behind the pool area were the lush multi-terraced Versailles Gardens, the thirty-five-acre centerpiece of the Ocean Club.

They walked hand in hand past tropical trees, bronze and marble statuary, and a pond whose surface was graced with water lilies and lotus blossoms, until they reached the final terrace — the Cloisters — a twelfth-century monastery that had been shipped stone by stone from France and now stood overlooking Nassau Harbor.

The air was fragrant with the scent of roses, hibiscus, and oleander. Natalia sat down on a stone bench.

“Why are they persecuting you?” she asked. “Zelvas shortchanged the customers and skimmed off the diamonds. You’re the one who caught him. You’re the one who had him killed.”

But they both knew that was only a half-truth.

When Nathaniel found out that Zelvas was stealing, he knew he should report the violation to the Syndicate immediately and return the stolen diamonds to them.

“I have a better idea,” he had told Natalia. “Let Zelvas take the fall, but we’ll take the money.”

He had recruited Natalia to get close to Zelvas.

“How close?” she asked.

Nathaniel didn’t hesitate. “Whatever it takes.”

And so Natalia worked her magic, the big, ugly Russian fell in love, and the cache of diamonds grew fatter.

It was all falling into place until the night Chukov got drunk and let Zelvas in on the family’s most-guarded secret. Natalia’s lover Nathaniel was also her father.

After that, it all unraveled like a Russian soap opera. Zelvas’s love for Natalia turned into sheer disgust, and he made plans to leave the country.

Now it had come to this: Zelvas dead, the diamonds missing, the Syndicate ready to cut off Nathaniel’s hands for stealing and put a bullet through his heart for betraying them.

“I’ll be all right,” Nathaniel said. It was a hollow promise.

And then he heard it — a soulful moan, like an animal in pain. It took several seconds before he realized the sound was coming from Natalia. She buried her face in her hands and began weeping.

He sat by her side and wrapped his arm around her. “What? What is wrong?”

“You swore—” Natalia said through her sobs. “Night after night you held my hand in the hospital and swore you would never leave me.”

“And I haven’t. All these years, I have always been here for you.”

“But I know them, Papa. They’ll kill you.”

“All they want is money. The man who stole our diamonds has it, and Chukov will find him.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“It may take everything I have,” Nathaniel said, “but I’ll pay it back, and the Syndicate will be happy.”

She shook her head. “No. They’re evil. They will still want their pound of flesh. They’ll kill you. Please…please…don’t go to the meeting. Let’s pack our bags and run.”

“We can’t run. Zelvas tried to run. It doesn’t work.”

“But I need you,” she wailed. “Now more than ever.”

“No, lyubimaya moya. You are no longer a little girl in a hospital bed. You’re a grown woman. Smart, strong, brave. I’m proud of you. You need me less than ever.”

Natalia’s body heaved with sobs. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and with tears streaming down her face, she kissed him again and again — his cheeks, his eyes, his lips.

“Papa,” she moaned. “You can’t leave me alone. Not now. I’m pregnant.”

Chapter 77

THERE ARE TWELVE hundred and one rooms in the Royal Towers at the Atlantis Resort. Twelve hundred of them are just what you’d expect from a luxury hotel. But the twelve hundredth and first is beyond imagination.

The Bridge Suite is an expanse of ten rooms on top of the bridge that connects the two Royal Towers buildings. It overlooks the entire resort and marina, and at twenty-five thousand dollars a night, it’s the most expensive hotel suite in the world.

It’s where the Diamond Syndicate held their meeting.

Two men in dark suits picked up Nathaniel and Natalia at their hotel, drove them to the Atlantis, and escorted them to the Bridge Suite by private elevator.

Nathaniel was patted down, then both of them were body-scanned — first with a metal detector, then with an EMF meter looking for bugs.

So much for trusting me, Nathaniel thought.

“You’ll wait in the other room,” one of the guards told Natalia.

He escorted her down a hallway while the other guard unlocked the front door of the suite and led Nathaniel into a lavish living room decorated in red, black, and lots of gold.

Six men sat on sofas upholstered in muted shades of silk damask. Nathaniel recognized the five Syndicate heads. The sixth man was a mystery.

Arnoff, the senior-ranking member of the Syndicate, spoke. There were no pleasantries, no foreplay, no invitation to sit.

“Did you know Zelvas was stealing from us?” Arnoff asked.

“No,” Nathaniel said. “When he delivered merchandise to our customers, he would always come back with the exact amount of money I expected. My ledgers were balanced to the penny. You saw them every week. It was months before I finally found out he was shortchanging the diamond merchants a few stones on every shipment.”

“Those merchants are our loyal customers,” Arnoff said. “Without them, we would be out of business. Every time he extorted a little bit from each client, he was doing damage to our reputation and goodwill.”

Nathaniel was still standing. “Absolutely,” he said. “That’s why I had him killed.”

“And what happened to the diamonds?” Arnoff asked.

“Unfortunately, they were stolen from Zelvas before I could retrieve them,” Nathaniel said. “But I have my people looking for them. I’m confident we’ll have them back soon.”

“That’s good to hear,” Arnoff said. “Very reassuring. Have a seat, Nathaniel. Make yourself comfortable.”

Prince lowered himself into a soft gold-and-white Queen Anne chair.

There was a brass samovar on the table in front of Arnoff, and he leaned across, turned the spigot, and filled a china cup with steaming aromatic coffee.

“Smells like home, yes?” He smiled. “It’s imported from Leningrad. Can I offer you some?”

“Thank you,” Nathaniel said.

“Liar!” Arnoff roared and lifted the samovar by the base, dumping the entire pot of scalding coffee on Nathaniel’s lap.

Prince screamed. He leaped up from the chair, grappled frantically with his belt, and dropped his pants to the floor. His thighs were already burned red, and he shoved both hands into his underwear and cupped himself, but nothing could relieve the scorching pain.

“Zelvas was stupid,” Arnoff bellowed. “We are not. He stole. You helped him.”

“No. I swear on my mother’s grave,” Nathaniel said, blinded by the searing pain. “I run the North American operation. Why would I steal from myself?”

“Because you’d be stealing from all of us.” Arnoff gestured to the other men in the room, all of whom nodded, corroborating the fact that they had been grievously wronged.

“Zelvas was the one who was disloyal,” Nathaniel said, sobbing. “As soon as I found out, I had him killed. You must believe me.”

Arnoff turned to the sixth man, the stranger in the room. “Do you believe this svoloch, Gutov?”

Gutov looked at Prince in disgust and spit out a single word. “Nyet.”

Arnoff stood up. He was tall and muscular, with a perpetual tan and thick white hair that was combed perfectly in place.

“Anton Antonovich Gutov is your replacement. He doesn’t believe you. I don’t believe you. No one believes you.”

Nathaniel stood there, his pants around his ankles, his legs and genitals burning hot, his dignity and his dreams gone.

“You were the golden boy, Nathaniel,” Arnoff said, a hint of regret in his voice. “Another five years, and you would have been seated among us. But now, the gold is tarnished. The price of your mistake is ten million dollars. If you pay it, you can return to Russia and live out your days without threat from us. Your prior service has earned you that.”

Nathaniel dropped to his knees, more overcome by the blessed reprieve than the intense pain. “Thank you,” he said, weeping. “Thank you.”

Chapter 78

I WAS DESPERATE to find Katherine before Chukov did.

I phoned, e-mailed, and texted. No whining, no pining, no please come back, I need you messages — even though that’s how I felt. I made it clear that the people who were after me could come after her and that I had to get her out of harm’s way immediately.

By midmorning I still had no idea where she was.

But the Fortress was battle-ready. Ty had set up a surveillance post on the roof that gave him clear visuals of all points of access to the building. Zach was on the first floor, waiting in his apartment to flank our enemies and trap them inside when they charged up the stairs. Adam and I were in my apartment, tactical harnesses strapped on, magazines checked, going over our points of cover one more time.

“Déjà vu,” he said. “Takes me back to Phantom Fury.”

“Not a place I want to go back to,” I said.

And yet I go back there in my head all the time.

Operation Phantom Fury had been part of the second battle of Fallujah. A year after Saddam fell, the insurgents had turned the city into a rat’s nest of booby traps, IEDs, and snipers. Adam, Zach, Ty, and I were attached to Third Battalion, 1st Marines — the Thundering Third.

Our mission was to take Fallujah back one block at a time.

I was leading a squad of nine men when we took on enemy fire from the top floor of the Qukayh Hotel. We ducked into an abandoned apartment building and raced up the stairs to get a better shot at the hotel hajjis. As soon as we made it to the roof, two of our guys were hit. The rest of us scrambled for cover, but it was only a matter of time before they’d either pick us off or hit the roof with mortar fire.

I was about to give the order to head back down the stairs, when the insurgents stormed through the front door and started heading up.

Pinned down by fire from above and with the enemy blocking our retreat below, we radioed for an evac team. Tank support was still six blocks away, trying to navigate through a maze of IEDs.

We were carrying two wounded, running low on ammo, and didn’t have enough cover to wait for air support.

There was only one way out. Down the stairs through a shitstorm of enemy bullets. I figured half of us would make it out alive. I was ready to go first.

I’d be dead if it hadn’t been for Middleson. Jody Middleson was nineteen, a kid from rural Kentucky who spent most of his free time thumbing through a dog-eared Bible, playing the harmonica, and writing home to his mother, father, and his four sisters. I’d never seen him drunk, never heard him curse, and rumor had it he was still a virgin.

“No, sir,” Jody said. “The squad needs you. I’ll go first.”

“Thanks, but it’s not your call, Private Middleson,” I said.

The kid had never disobeyed an order until that day.

He didn’t argue. He just pulled the pins on two grenades and ran for the rooftop entrance to the hotel.

I screamed at him to stop but he kept running, miraculously making it to the doorway without being hit.

But as soon as he opened the door, five insurgents riddled him with bullets. He dived forward, letting the armed grenades fall from his lifeless hands.

In all my years in combat, it was the finest act of courage I had ever seen.

The explosions rocked the building, and the insurgents were either killed or stunned enough for the rest of the squad to finish the job. An hour later, the tanks got through and cleaned up the snipers’ nest.

Jody Middleson was awarded the Medal of Valor.

I learned a hard lesson that day, one that neither the Ghost nor I ever forget. Consider every possible angle. Think the unthinkable.

Adam was right. It was déjà vu. But this time, I was on my home turf, and I had no excuse for being trapped in a desperate situation.

I made a promise that afternoon in Fallujah never to lose another man to poor planning.

The Russians were coming. And we’d be ready for them. We knew we had one big advantage. No matter what Chukov threw at us, we still had the element of surprise.

“I’m not going to second-guess you,” Adam said, “but do you think this is the best idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“You let Chukov know where you are. We’ll win this battle, but these guys are like cockroaches. You squash one, and the next day ten more crawl out of the woodwork. These maniacs will keep after you until they get their money or kill you — or, most likely, both.”

“I have no choice,” I said. “I need to get their focus off Katherine.”

Adam shook his head. “All these years you’ve managed to keep the Ghost off everybody’s radar. But the way this is shaping up, the Russian Mafia will be chasing Matthew Bannon. You’ll be running for the rest of your life.”

“I’m not running anywhere. Not until I can convince the woman I love to run with me.”

“And if she says yes?”

I smiled at the thought. “They’ll never catch me. I’ve got plenty of money and the three best bodyguards on the planet.”

Adam put both hands to his heart and fluttered his eyes at me. “And the woman you love.”

I punched him in the shoulder. It was like hitting granite. I’m sure I felt it more than he did. “Are you making fun of the guy who signs your paycheck?” I said.

“No, sir. Just let me and the guys know if you decide to change your handle from the Ghost to the Hopeless Romantic.”

My cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID. It was Katherine.

I grabbed it. “Hello.”

I heard her say my name, but it was a terrible cell connection and she was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Katherine, what happened?”

“Leonard…Leonard Karns. They shot him. He’s dead.”

This was no coincidence. Karns was about one degree of separation from me — the same as Katherine. I had to get to her. “Where are you now?” I said.

“Subway station. I just got off the—”

And then the phone went dead.

“Damn it!” I turned to Adam. “They killed one of the guys in my art class. An asshole, but still. We’ve got to find Katherine. We’ve got to find her right now.”

I started to dial again, when my walkie-talkie crackled.

“Bartender to DJ, over.” It was Ty on the roof.

Adam answered. “This is DJ. Go ahead, Bartender.”

“I’ve got five dancers headed our way, looking to tango. They’ve come to the right place.”

“Roger that. We’ll start the music. Have Doorman let them in. Let’s do what we do best. Over and out.”

Chapter 79

THEY ARRIVED IN three cars — an Escalade, a Crown Vic, and a Mercedes S550—all black. They parked a block away, out of sight, but not out of camera range. Ty had a top-of-the-line Pelco surveillance camera pointed down onto Perry Street.

Adam and I went to the video monitor.

“Let’s see couple number one,” Adam said.

The two men in the Escalade were standing next to the car. Ty pushed the 22x optical zoom in on the first one, a black guy with a scar running from his left ear down past his collar and beyond.

“Umar Clarke,” Adam said. “Jamaican hit man. Operates out of Brooklyn.”

The camera panned to his partner. “Rosario Virzi,” Adam said. “Complete scumbag. And from what I hear, racist. Chukov must be desperate if he threw those two together.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s desperate,” I said. “He owes somebody a lot of diamonds.”

“Couple number two,” Adam said.

“Chukov likes to hire dirty cops,” I said as Ty panned to the two men in the Crown Vic. “The one in the FedEx getup is Nick Benzetti. Partner is John Rice.”

“That’s their play?” Adam said. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? FedEx. That’s a goddamn insult. Do they think you’re a complete idiot?”

“They probably figure all art students are as easy to pop as Leonard Karns. I guess I owe Leonard a debt of gratitude.”

The driver of the Mercedes stayed behind the wheel. The camera zoomed through the windshield, and I saw a familiar face.

“Chukov,” I said. “He must have the entire Russian mob up his ass to show up, but he’s not going to storm the castle. He’ll just sit there and watch.”

“You realize Ty could take him out right where he’s sitting?” Adam said. “Do you have any wiggle room in your don’t clutter the neighborhood with dead bodies policy?”

“None whatsoever,” I said.

“Okay, I’m headed back to the first floor. Once you’ve drawn them up here, Zach and I will box them in from behind.”

“Bartender to DJ,” Ty said over the walkie-talkie. “Cue the music.”

He pulled back to a wide shot. The four dancers were on the way.

Tango time.

Chapter 80

BENZETTI, THE COP in the FedEx outfit, entered the vestibule alone and rang my bell.

I responded on the intercom. “Who is it?”

“FedEx,” he said. “I got a priority envelope for Matthew Bannon. That you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m about to jump in the shower. Just leave it at the front door. I’ll get it later.”

“No can do, fella,” he said. “Needs a signature.”

“Who’s it from?” I said.

“Katherine Sanborne.”

“Damn,” I said. “I can’t come down. Do you mind walking up five flights of stairs?”

“No problem.”

I buzzed him in. He opened the door. He was oblivious to the CCTV camera, and I watched him slap a piece of duct tape on the latch. The door closed but it didn’t lock. A few seconds later, the other three followed him into the building.

Zach called in from apartment 1. “FedEx man and two others on the way up. They left a sentry at the front door.”

Thirty seconds later, Benzetti rapped on my apartment door. “FedEx.”

“Door’s open,” I said.

Three of them stormed in — Benzetti, Clarke, and Virzi — pistols drawn and suppressed and ready to shoot. But there was nobody to shoot at. They slowly fanned out around my living room.

“Where are you?” Benzetti called out. “I got deliveries to make.”

“Be right out,” I yelled. “I’m in the john.”

Hearing my voice, Virzi pushed Benzetti aside and rushed to the bathroom door. Planting his boot inches above the doorknob, he splintered the jamb and sent the door crashing inward. I put a bullet through his head before the door even struck the wall. He never crossed the threshold.

As soon as Virzi hit the floor, I could see the Jamaican charging toward me from behind him. I fired, but the bastard was quick. He lunged straight at me, his body going horizontal, narrowly ducking my shot. He plowed into my midsection and we both went down in a heap on my bathroom floor.

Benzetti, more accustomed to shakedowns than shoot-outs, began firing in our direction. I’m sure he didn’t care if he killed the Jamaican, too, as long as he kept himself alive. But Umar Clarke cared. When a bullet shattered the tile an inch above both our heads, his eyes grew wide and the scar on his face seemed to flush. He turned his attention away from me and fired a pinpoint shot at Benzetti. The bullet passed through Benzetti’s thigh and the cop fell back against the wall.

Benzetti staggered toward the door, and the Jamaican turned to me. We had both held on to our guns, but his knee was pressing mine to the floor. I desperately grabbed his wrist, twisting the barrel of his gun away from my face. He pressed so hard, I felt the trigger guard of his Beretta jammed under my nose. He strained to turn the barrel a few more inches so he could fire a 9-millimeter slug through my left eye.

If he had been smart, he would have hauled back and pistol-whipped me. It might have stunned me and given him the edge he needed to get off a shot.

But he wasn’t smart. He was strong. Stronger than I was, and he knew it. And as he forced the barrel of the gun closer and closer to my face, he grabbed me by the jaw and twisted my head, trying to angle it for a better shot. I could see he was determined to win this one on brute strength alone.

Macho bullshit. Not my style. Certainly not my father’s style. Rule number one according to Dad was “There are no rules. Do whatever you have to do to win. Kick him, pull his hair, gouge his eyes out, fight like a girl, bite him.”

I bit him.

With his giant palm pressed under my jaw, his fingers digging into my face, I got my teeth around the first joint of his thumb and clamped down hard. Real hard. They passed through the skin, through the flesh, and right between the joint of his first knuckle. I spit the end of his thumb straight into his eye.

The Jamaican yanked his bloody hand to his chest, and as his body lurched backward, his knee lifted off my gun hand.

I shoved my gun under his nose and fired. At point-blank range, one bullet was more than enough. Covered with blood and bits of gray matter, I reeled out of the bathroom and toward the door in pursuit of Benzetti.

His leg was bleeding and he was limping toward the top of the steps.

Adam was standing directly below him on the fourth-floor landing, a 9-millimeter Glock in his hand. Benzetti fired his gun. Adam fired his. The only difference was that Adam took the time to aim. Benzetti toppled forward and bounced noisily down the stairs.

Rice yelled up from the first floor. “Nick. Nick. You okay?”

Then I heard him running toward us. I counted ten frantic steps before I heard the whispered pop of Zach’s gun.

It was over. And since everybody used suppressors, there was almost no noise. Just death.

The walkie-talkie sprang to life. “Bartender to DJ. Chukov knows there’s trouble. One of his guys must have entered the building with a wire or an open cell connection. He jumped in the Benz and drove up. He’s right in front of the building. I can drop him.”

“Stand down, Bartender,” Adam said. “Hold your fire.”

I expected Ty to say, “Roger that,” but instead he came back with “Oh, shit. Matt, it’s Katherine.”

I grabbed the walkie. “What do you mean, ‘it’s Katherine’?”

“Big as life,” Ty said. “She’s walking down Perry, headed straight for us.”

Zach’s voice came on. “Matt, I’m going out there to get her.”

“Stand down, stand down,” Ty yelled. “Chukov has a gun trained on the door. He’ll drop you before you get to the top step.”

“Where’s Katherine now?” I said.

“Thirty feet from the building,” he said. “Oh, shit—he sees her. No question — he recognizes her.”

So much for my good-neighbor policy. I keyed the walkie. “Take him down,” I said. “Now.”

“I don’t have a shot,” Ty yelled. “He grabbed her!”

Zach jumped in. “I’m going after him. Cover me. Oh, shit — he has her, Matthew. He took Katherine in his car. She’s gone.”

Chapter 81

“MATT, I’M REALLY SORRY,” Zach said, and my friend looked incredibly sad. “I should’ve—”

I held up my hand. “No apologies. You couldn’t have seen this coming. I should have, though. Oh, man. Katherine is Chukov’s negotiating tool. He’ll trade her for the diamonds.”

Almost on cue, my cell rang. It was Katherine.

“Where are you?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m in a car. A man grabbed me.”

“Bitch!” It was Chukov’s voice. “Give me the phone.”

I could hear Katherine crying as Chukov grabbed the phone and screamed at me. “Bannon, can you hear what’s happening to your girlfriend?”

“Let her go,” I said. “This is between you and me.”

“You and me?” he bellowed. “I don’t even know who the fuck you are. But I’ll bet you know who I am. I’m Chukov, the man whose diamonds you stole, and I want them back!”

“Okay, okay, just don’t hurt her.”

“I haven’t hurt her. Not yet. Right now she’s in the front seat of my car, stretched out nice and comfortable with her head in my lap.”

“You touch her, and I swear to God, I will hunt you down and there’ll be nothing left of your lap but a bloody stump.”

“Tough guy,” Chukov said. “You’re not just some art student, are you, Mr. Bannon?”

“I would be if you assholes would leave me alone. I want my girlfriend back.”

“And I want my diamonds,” Chukov said.

“I have them right here,” I lied. “I’ll trade you. You can have your goddamn diamonds — just give Katherine back to me. Untouched. Unharmed.”

“Now you’re getting smart,” Chukov said. “There’s a self-storage warehouse under the Williamsburg Bridge—”

“No. I’ll bring the diamonds to the exact same place where I found them,” I said. “The main concourse of Grand Central.”

“Too crowded,” Chukov said.

“I like a crowd,” I said. “It’s safer. We’ll do it after rush hour. Ten p.m. It’ll be quiet, but there’ll still be people around. If we both behave, this can be a civilized exchange. Nobody gets hurt; everybody’s happy.”

“I’m happy right now, Mr. Bannon,” Chukov said. “You know, your girlfriend has a beautiful ass.” I heard a smack and Katherine screamed.

Chukov belched out a sickening laugh. “Ten o’clock, Bannon.”

Chapter 82

I HAD SET the grand finale exchange with Chukov for the main concourse — center stage at Grand Central Terminal.

Chukov wasn’t too happy about it, but he agreed. He probably believed that Matthew Bannon the art student would feel safer surrounded by people walking through the terminal.

But the reality was that Matthew Bannon the Ghost had picked the spot because it offered the best field of fire.

Adam and Zach were already scoping out the building when Ty and I arrived. Then we worked together to map out the best possible combat plan.

Ever since the night I threw those smoke grenades and turned Grand Central into total pandemonium, security had been beefed up. This meant that four strapping ex-Marines standing in the middle of the main concourse on a recon mission would definitely attract cops.

So we opted for aerial surveillance. A table for four at Michael Jordan’s Steak House on the north balcony of the terminal, overlooking the rendezvous spot. It was an excellent vantage point. Plus, we were all starving.

We ordered, then sat there and quietly studied the traffic patterns below. When you’re standing in the middle of the terminal, it seems like people are crisscrossing the concourse without rhyme or reason. But from twenty feet up, the perspective changes, and they begin to look more like a colony of ants, each one racing about with purpose.

Very few people come to Grand Central to stroll through it aimlessly. Everyone is on a mission — headed for a stairwell, a train, a Starbucks, an exit. If the concourse floor were a giant lawn instead of a vast expanse of polished marble, you’d be able to see where the steady stream of travelers had trampled the grass and created distinct pathways.

“Right down there,” I said, pointing at an area where almost no one had walked for fifteen minutes. “That looks like the smartest place to make the exchange.”

Adam nodded slowly. “The exchange,” he said, a sardonic little smile crossing his lips. “Which exchange are we talking about? The one where Chukov trades us Katherine for the diamonds, or the exchange of bullets that will start flying as soon as he realizes that he just gave up his ace in the hole for a bagful of worthless glass?”

I couldn’t show up completely empty-handed, could I? So in the afternoon, we had found a theatrical prop shop on Twelfth Avenue that sells loose rhinestones for twenty-five dollars a gross. Zelvas’s medical bag was now filled to the brim with them.

“How long do you think it will take Chukov to realize he’s been played?” Ty asked, digging into a bowl of Louisiana Crawfish Chowder. The rest of us were chowing down on the only thing you go to a steak house for: meat.

“They look like the real thing from a distance,” I said. “That’ll help me get close to Katherine, but I guarantee that Chukov will know they’re bogus as soon as he gets his hands on them.”

“And I guarantee you that as soon as he does that,” Adam said, “he and his squad of Russian goons will start shooting up Grand Central Terminal.”

That was our biggest challenge — collateral damage. You do your best to minimize it, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Innocent people getting killed is part of the reality of war. As dangerous as this operation was, it was complicated by the potential for civilian casualties once the bullets started flying. And knowing how desperate Chukov was, that seemed inevitable.

I would be wearing a vest. But some weary advertising executive trudging out of the Graybar Building toward Track 17 hoping to catch the 10:14 to Larchmont wouldn’t have the benefit of Kevlar.

And neither would Katherine.

Chapter 83

WE LEFT ZACH behind to patrol the area in and around Grand Central and call us if he saw any sign of Chukov’s men arriving early and taking up positions. The rest of us took the subway back to the Fortress.

There was only one thing more intimidating than facing Chukov and his Russian triggermen. That was facing my father.

He knew what I did to earn a living. Hell, he had gotten me into the business. I think he naturally expected that I would be as good — and as lucky — as he had been.

But this time was different. Going into Grand Central to trade diamonds for my kidnapped girlfriend was a suicide mission. And the fact that I didn’t even have the diamonds made it all the more impossible.

If somebody had tried to hire me to do it, I’d have said no thanks and walked away — I don’t care how much they would have paid me. But this wasn’t about money. This was about Katherine’s life. I didn’t care if I took a bullet. I just had to save her.

I called my father. It was midday in Colorado. My mother picked up.

I spent five minutes answering all her excited questions about my trip to Paris.

“It sounds so romantic,” she said. “I wish your father would take me.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. “Is he around?”

“He’s in his workshop with his harem,” she said, using her favorite expression for Dad’s gun collection. “I’ll buzz him on the intercom and tell him to pick up.”

I could picture my father in his shop with a gun-cleaning kit and a bottle of Hoppe’s solvent, carefully going through the same ritual he taught me, and his father taught him. “A clean gun is a mean gun,” he always said.

It’s a philosophy I had lived by. At least so far.

“Hey, boy,” Dad said, answering the phone. “How you doing?”

I told him the whole story, from the night I found the diamonds to the last phone call from Chukov — everything I hadn’t told him when I called from Milan. As usual, he listened without saying a word.

When I was done, he simply said, “Anything I can do?”

I gave him all the information he’d need to get the money out of the Dutch bank. Then I told him how to divide it. “Half gets split up evenly among Adam, Zach, Ty, and Katherine. The other half goes to you and Mom.”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“I’ll never see a penny of that money,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if anything happens to you, your mom will kill me faster’n look at me,” he said. “So listen up, and listen good, boy. You’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna get through this because you know that not only is your life and Katherine’s life on the line, but so’s your old man’s. Ooooo-rah.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, boy.”

Chapter 84

AT 5:30 ZACH called in. This was it.

“Two guys showed up fifteen minutes ago. Early twenties, dark suits, dark turtlenecks, gold jewelry, Russian accents. They scoped out the drop zone.”

“They’re probably trying to figure out choke points,” I said.

“Choke points would require some military intelligence,” Zach said. “These guys are thugs, not tacticians. They’re counting cops and checking out security cameras. It’s like they’re planning to stick up a Seven-Eleven.”

“I’m insulted,” I said. “They still don’t seem to think I’m even a threat.”

“Try not to take it personally,” Zach said. “As far as they know, you’re some fey art student. They’re worried about the cops.”

“So am I,” I said. “What else did you get?”

“I can give you the three spots where Chukov is going to position his men.”

“How’d you get close enough to hear that?” I asked.

“Matt, I didn’t have to get close. These idiots were broadcasting. They were pointing there, there, and there.”

Adam leaned into the speakerphone. “Tell us where, where, and where.”

I had sketched a map of the main concourse while I was wolfing down my rib eye at Michael Jordan’s. Zach rattled off three locations, and Adam marked them on the map.

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“The Oyster Bar, getting primed for the showdown with a few vodkas. Do you want me to follow them when they leave?”

Zach is tough and confident. Sometimes too confident, sometimes too tough. Even if he could follow Chukov’s men without getting caught, I didn’t want him to even think about rescuing Katherine on his own.

“No,” I said. “Let’s just stick to the plan. Did you find a good spot for the rabbit?”

“Best place is across the street from the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance,” Zach said. “I counted half a dozen uniforms who circulate between the main concourse and the lower level. When they’re not on patrol, they cluster upstairs near the Vanderbilt door on the north balcony. One rabbit ought to take care of most of the cops.”

“What about K-nine?” I asked.

“Oh, they got dogs. I haven’t seen any so far, but I chatted up the counter guy at Starbucks, and he told me there are cops with bomb-sniffing dogs who patrol the main concourse randomly. Seems like another reason why the rabbit is better outside the terminal.”

“Good job,” I said. “Call us if anything pops. Otherwise we’ll meet you at nineteen hundred hours.”

I hung up.

The feeling I had in the pit of my stomach was all too familiar. Pre-combat butterflies. Anyone who tells you it doesn’t happen to him is lying to you. Or to himself.

“It sounds like we took out Chukov’s best men, and he called in a bunch of amateurs,” Adam said.

“I think that works against us,” I said. “Amateurs tend to panic and go trigger happy. I don’t want civilian casualties.”

“Matt’s right,” Ty said. “We signed up for this. The people who’ll be walking through Grand Central tonight didn’t. Katherine didn’t. Our job is to make sure none of them gets hurt.”

“Oh, they won’t get hurt,” Adam said, “but when those T-four-seventy-ones go off, they’ll wish they’d never gotten out of bed this morning.”

“You only have a narrow window before the Russians shake off the T-four-seventy-ones and start shooting,” I said. “As soon as Katherine is out of the field of fire, take them out. Every one of them. Fast.”

“Don’t worry, Matt,” Ty said. “We’re gonna kill the bastards who took Katherine, and we’re gonna bring her home safe.”

We had gone into battle before. But this time, I swore to myself, would be different. No matter what the outcome, this battle would be my last.

Chapter 85

BY 7 P.M., the four of us were in Position Alpha.

We had three hours to wait for Chukov to arrive, which in our line of work we could do standing on one leg with a full bladder. Waiting in complete silence, barely breathing for hours, even days, at a stretch is what we’re trained to do.

Ty was on East 43rd outside the entrance to the Lexington Avenue subway. Adam was on 42nd, covering the south side of the terminal. Zach was at 45th and Vanderbilt with the rabbit.

I was inside, my hand clutching the medical bag, my eyes scanning the commuters who poured out of the MetLife Building to take the escalator down to the main concourse.

The four of us were fitted with the same wireless communication system the Secret Service uses. Micro earbuds, transmitter necklaces under our collars, and invisible microphones in our lapels. The protocol was for each of us to check in with an update every quarter hour.

Ten o’clock came and went. Ten fifteen. Ten thirty. Ten forty-five. No sign of Chukov.

At eleven o’clock, Adam was the first to check in.

“Cab Forty-two to Dispatch. Our passenger is still MIA. What do you make of it?”

I radioed back. “Dispatch to Forty-two. He’ll be here. He just wants to see me sweat. It isn’t working.”

One of the most critical skills a combat Marine has to hone is patience. I had once sat in a sniper’s nest for seventy-two hours without moving. This assignment was much harder. Knowing that Katherine was in the hands of a sadistic maniac like Chukov made every minute drag and every quarter hour endless.

I paced from one end of the waiting area to the other. The escalator from the MetLife Building whirred quietly. No one had set foot on it for twenty minutes. The traffic in Grand Central had thinned out dramatically. That, at least, was a plus. Fewer people. Less chance of hitting an innocent bystander.

I was ready. My team was ready. But where the hell was Chukov?

Eleven fifteen. Eleven thirty. Eleven forty-five.

At three minutes before midnight, my cell rang. The caller ID said it was coming from Katherine’s phone. I answered. The voice on the other end was ice cold and menacing. It was Vadim Chukov.

“It’s over,” he said.

“Over? Where are you?” I said. “I’ve been standing here in Grand Central with your diamonds since ten o’clock.”

“Shove them up your ass,” he said.

“What are you talking about? We have a deal.”

“The deal is off,” he said. “You lied. You sold the diamonds in Amsterdam.”

“That’s crazy,” I said. “I tried, but I couldn’t. I have them right here in my hand.”

“You want to know what’s in my hand, Bannon?” Chukov said. “A seven-inch carbon steel knife, and as soon as my men have finished gangbanging your pretty little girlfriend, I’m going to use it to slit her throat.”

He hung up.

I stood there shaking. Unable to breathe. Sweat pouring off me.

Chapter 86

“FORTY-THREE TO DISPATCH.”

It was midnight, and Ty was doing his quarter-hour call-in from Lexington Avenue.

“Slow night,” he said. “No passengers.”

“This is Dispatch to all cabs,” I said. “I just got a call. The Russian isn’t coming. He’s backing out of the deal.”

None of us said a word as each man on the team let the bad news penetrate. And then Adam broke the silence.

“Forty-two to Dispatch. We may have some signals crossed. You said the Russian isn’t coming, but his Benz just pulled into the loading zone at the Grand Hyatt.”

The Hyatt was next door to Grand Central. “There are a lot of Benzes in this city,” I said. “Are you sure it’s his?”

“Hold on,” Adam said. “Let me put on my reading glasses.”

Adam’s reading glasses were a three-thousand-dollar pair of 13x Steiner sniper-grade binoculars.

“Affirmative,” he said. “He’s in the front seat, passenger side. There are people in the backseat, but I can’t get an angle on them.”

“Forty-five to Dispatch.” It was Zach calling in from Vanderbilt. “I have three men looking for a taxi. I recognize two of them from this afternoon. You should see them in a few seconds.”

Even as he spoke, three men in dark suits walked through the Vanderbilt entrance and down the stairs. One of them pointed to the three spots we had targeted on the map, and each headed for his assigned place.

I tried to process the new information. Chukov was outside the terminal. His men were taking their positions inside. I was trying to make sense of it all when my cell rang.

It was Chukov.

“So, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “Do I have your attention?”

“Undivided,” I said.

“It’s painful when you think that something you love is gone forever, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s how I felt when you ran off with my diamonds. You have experienced only a moment of pain, but I have the power to make your pain last a lifetime. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “I want to see Katherine.”

“And I want to run my blade from her perky little nipples to her creamy white thighs. Let’s see which one of us gets what he wants. Where are my diamonds?”

“Right here in my hand,” I said. “I didn’t sell them.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Chukov said. “I don’t think you could. You know why? Because you don’t have the brains and you don’t have the balls. Where are you now, Bannon?”

I gave him my exact location.

He hung up.

A few seconds later, Adam reported in.

“The Russian just got out of the Benz. The back doors are both opening. People are getting out. One man…a second man…”

I held my breath.

Finally Adam came back on. “And a woman. Matt, it’s Katherine. She’s headed your way.”

I exhaled and gave the command I had been waiting to give all night. “Dispatch to all cabs — go to Position Bravo right now. Let’s do this.”

Chapter 87

THE NEXT THING I saw made me want to throw up.

Vadim Chukov — the short, fat, tattooed, asthmatic turd who had sat naked, sweating, and in total fear for his life that morning in the Russian and Turkish Baths — was walking down the wide marble passageway from 42nd Street. He was brimming with confidence, and he was arm in arm with Katherine.

I’d always told her that it was impossible for her to look anything but beautiful. Even when she wakes up with bedhead and no makeup, she exudes a beauty that comes from her soul.

But now that soul was badly damaged. I wanted to blame it all on the fat bastard at her side, but I knew the truth. It had started with me. First I brought Katherine into my life; then I dragged her into my world.

Chukov and Katherine stopped at the foot of the passageway. Two more Russian punks stood behind them. High above them was Old Glory — the giant American flag that had been suspended from the ceiling in those dark hours following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Chukov spotted me instantly. Then he looked up at the vast expanse of stars and stripes — the flag I had fought for, the colors so many of my fellow Americans had laid down their lives for — and the Russian son of a bitch slowly extended his middle finger.

He looked back across the vast cavern of Grand Central and threw me a mock salute.

He took his phone from his pocket and dialed. Seconds later, my cell rang.

“I’m ready to do business,” he said. “Bring the diamonds here.”

“Send Katherine over here,” I said. “I’ll put the diamonds down and we’ll leave quietly.”

“Nyet. She’s not going anywhere until I see them,” Chukov said. “Start walking toward me. Nice and easy. I’ve got three guns pointed at you and three on her.”

I muted my cell.

“Ready to tango, boys?” I said softly.

Ty’s voice came back first. “In Position Bravo, dancing shoes on.”

Then Adam. “I was ready to stomp all over him as soon as he gave the flag the finger.”

Then Zach. “The rabbit and I are hopping mad. Let’s kick some Russian ass.”

There were about two hundred feet between Chukov and me. I started walking toward him. Operation Nighthawks was under way.

The city that never sleeps was living up to its name. Even though the crowds had thinned, there were still hundreds of people all around us — some chattering away upstairs in the restaurant, some waiting for a late-night Metro North commuter train, and a steady stream of straphangers on their way to catch a Lexington Avenue subway or the shuttle to Times Square.

“Lots of foot traffic,” Adam said.

“We’ve got a pair of eyes on the Vanderbilt balcony checking out the main floor,” Zach said. “A cop. I can’t tell if he’s focused on you or just staring into space.”

I was halfway there, a hundred feet to go. I didn’t look up at the cop. I just kept walking.

I could see Katherine clearly now. Her tan pants were stained with dirt and grease, her hair was matted from sweat, and her eyes were red, puffy, and filled with dread.

When I got thirty feet away, I stopped and unmuted my cell phone. “This is as far as I go, Chukov,” I said.

I put the phone down, unlatched the medical bag, tipped it forward, scooped up a fistful of rhinestones, and let them trickle through my fingers and run back into the bag.

A smile spread across his jowly mug, and I knew that the worthless glass had passed for the real thing. I closed the bag and picked up the phone.

“You wanted to see them?” I said. “You’ve seen them. Now send one of your men over here with Katherine and he can have the diamonds.”

Chukov hesitated.

“Don’t take too long,” I said. “There’s a cop on the west balcony who is starting to get interested in this little tableau, and I think we all should get out of here before he decides to ask embarrassing questions.”

Chukov looked up at the cop who was standing on the balcony. He turned to one of his men: a big, burly, stoop-shouldered Eastern European.

“Grigor,” he said. That was all I understood. The rest was in Russian.

Chukov let go of Katherine’s arm. Grigor stepped in, gently tapped her shoulder, and said, “We go. Please.”

They walked toward me and stopped less than two feet away. I could feel the fear coming off Katherine’s body.

“Take the bag,” I said to Grigor. “Take it back to Chukov and get the hell out of our lives.”

I waited for him to bend down and pick it up. He didn’t. Instead, he nudged it into position with his foot, then kicked it hard. It skittered across the floor and stopped directly at Chukov’s feet.

It would take Chukov less than ten seconds to open the bag and realize the diamonds were fake. Grigor stood silently, one hand on his gun, the other on Katherine.

I tilted my head down toward my lapel.

“Release the rabbit,” I said.

Chapter 88

THE BEST WAY to get a greyhound to race around a track is to give him a mechanical rabbit to chase.

Our rabbit was an olive-drab rucksack packed with smoke grenades like the ones I had thrown the night I found the diamonds. As soon as Zach pushed the remote detonator, it exploded outside the prestigious Yale Club at 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, across the street from the terminal.

Our mission was to create chaos outside Grand Central before all hell broke loose inside.

It worked like gangbusters.

The explosion was not much more than noise and smoke, but the earsplitting boom was enough to cause a coronary a block away, and the billowing acrid cloud of smoke could have blanketed a football field.

The blast was far enough away that down on the main concourse it sounded like a muffled car backfiring. Those who heard it waved it off — a classic case of This is New York. I have my own problems. That noise ain’t one of them.

Not so with the cops at the door. For them, standing around hour after hour, day after day, night after night, this was a holy shit moment. The shoe they had been waiting to hear drop.

And despite the fact that the streets of New York are the sole jurisdiction of the NYPD, the MTA state cops bolted out the door like a pack of greyhounds from the starting gate, racing to nail the exploding rabbit.

Katherine heard it, too. If she could be any more petrified than she already was, the noise pushed her to the edge. After her body twitched from being startled, fresh tears made tracks over the ones already dried on her dirty cheeks. I desperately wanted to wrap my arms around her and apologize for the pain and suffering I had caused, and vow to spend the rest of my life making amends for it. But all I could do now was make that promise to myself. I turned my attention back to Chukov.

The noise didn’t faze him. He was too busy opening the bag. He reached in and grabbed a handful of the glittering stones. A second later his head snapped around and he screamed at me. The words were in Russian, but I needed no translation. It was the cry of a man who had just come up with a fistful of worthless glass.

“Light it up,” I yelled into the wireless.

Chukov flung the rhinestones to the floor and went for his gun. I reached for Katherine and screamed, “Close your eyes! Cover your ears!” as I shielded her with my body.

She was too dumbfounded to follow through with my instructions. I pressed her face to my chest, covered her ears with my arm, and braced myself.

Unlike the benign smoke grenades that had drawn the cops onto the street, the ALST471 magnum ultra-flash grenade produces a brilliant flash, a deafening concussive blast, and a shower of white-hot sparks. It’s the military’s nonlethal version of shock and awe — developed as a stun device for a variety of tactical operations, including hostage rescue. Launch one into a crowd and it leaves everyone temporarily blind, deaf, and totally disoriented. Adam and Ty launched two.

The flash grenades hit their marks and rocked the place. Even with my eyes closed and my ears covered, the white light and the thunderous noise were like a lightning strike.

The shrieks and cries of the throng who were caught by surprise bounced off the marble walls and echoed from the domed ceiling.

I screamed into my wireless for Zach, opened my eyes, and saw him running toward me.

“You’re safe, you’re safe,” I yelled at Katherine as I passed her over to Zach. “Zach, don’t let her out of your sight. Go, go, go!”

Chapter 89

ZACH PUT HIS arm around Katherine and half dragged, half carried her toward the stairway to the north balcony, our designated safe zone.

The rest of us had six incensed Russians to deal with. Like everyone around them, they were still stunned, unable to fight back.

First, Grigor. He was flailing, still blinded, trying to get his bearings. I gave him a vicious chop to the larynx with the blade of my hand. The blow drove quantities of blood into his lungs. He dropped to his knees, gasping for air and coughing up thick red puddles. I grabbed his jaw with one hand, put my other hand behind his neck, and twisted. Hard. Harder than I would if I were trying to get a stuck lug nut off a wheel.

Even over the screams echoing through the cavernous train station, with its high ceilings, I was close enough to hear the wet pop, and I let him fall to the floor.

“Tango down,” I told my team.

A volley of gunfire reverberated through Grand Central. It was coming from above. Adam and Ty had raced up the stairs into Michael Jordan’s Steak House. They’d taken positions on the north balcony.

One of Chukov’s young punks had parked himself under the New Haven line departures board. He was still dazed from the flash grenade when Adam fired. The man’s chest tore open like a pumpkin that’s been hurled off a rooftop. His shirt turned red and he dropped in a heap.

“Tango three is on the west balcony,” I said.

Ty came back. “I don’t see him.”

“He hit the ground when the grenades went off. He’s hiding behind the marble balustrades.”

Ty kept talking. “Chickenshit bastard is socked in good. I can see a sliver of his punk ass between the sixth and seventh column.”

The balustrades were only inches apart, and Ty was at least two hundred feet away. Hitting the target would be like driving a golf ball through a chain-link fence.

“Do you have a shot?” I asked.

“No…”

Then there was a loud crack.

“But I took one, anyway,” he added. “Tango three is down.”

I watched as a trail of blood flowed through the marble balustrades on the west balcony and dripped to the floor below.

“Nice work,” Adam said.

The place was sheer bedlam. I had used flash grenades in combat and seen the effect it had on the enemy. But this was a hundred times worse. The people around us had no training. Many of them were suddenly blind, deaf, or both. It was temporary, but they didn’t know that. And now bullets were flying, too.

Random screams filled the air. People calling out to God. People cursing out the unseen enemy. People proclaiming their love for parents, spouses, and children they thought they would never see again. I could smell the fear.

In the midst of all the insanity, the Russians were reeling and unable to find a target. Ty and Adam had excellent vantage points, but they had to be careful not to shoot innocent bystanders helplessly stumbling through the mob.

One of Chukov’s men who still didn’t have his vision completely back began firing wildly up toward Adam and Ty, riddling the marble railing, shattering glassware, and popping the overhead lights.

“We’ve got a loose cannon down there,” Adam yelled.

Ty stood away from his cover. Just for a second. One of the Russians spotted him and fired. The round caught Ty square in the chest. He went down hard, and I moaned.

“Son of a bitch, that smarts,” he said, pulling his six foot six frame off the floor. He tapped the body armor that had stopped the bullet. “God bless you, Mr. Kevlar.”

He got back in position and opened fire on the shooter. Not just one shot, three—a double tap to the chest, one through the forehead. A perfect Mozambique Drill.

“Tango four is down and out,” I said. “Talk about overkill—”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens to people who piss me off.”

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine. Vest is a little torn up.”

“For the record,” I said, “there’s no Mr. Kevlar. You should be thanking Mr. DuPont.”

“Noted,” Ty said.

There were two shooters left. Chukov and his number two. They were coming out of their daze, and Chukov, his gun now in his hand, screamed, “Shoot the bitch! Kill her!”

Then Chukov turned his gun on me. I dived as bullets chewed up chunks of marble behind me. I rolled and pulled my own gun. The Russian going after Katherine was already thirty feet away from her, moving fast. I had one shot. Maybe. I drew a quick bead, exhaled, squeezed the trigger lightly. The bullet drilled straight through the back of his neck. He pitched forward, driving his face into the marble staircase.

“Matt, behind you!”

I spun around and Chukov’s first bullet caught me in the chest. The second one ripped a hole in my left shoulder. The pain was immediate and excruciating. I hit the floor hard. Truth was, I’d never been shot before.

Chapter 90

EVEN OVER THE mayhem, I could hear Katherine scream when I got shot. Then I heard Adam’s voice in my earpiece. “Junkyard Six is down.”

That was me. I hadn’t been Junkyard Six since we left Iraq, but in the heat of battle, Adam reverted to familiar territory.

“Cover him, cover him!” Adam yelled.

There was a hailstorm of bullets. My guys were laying down suppressive fire at Chukov, forcing him to take cover and stop shooting at me.

I was in pain, but I was grateful. The bullet that Chukov fired at my chest was lodged in my body armor and not in my body. But the force of the concussion had knocked the wind out of me, and I felt like I had a couple of cracked ribs.

The bullet in my shoulder was what the medics casually refer to as a flesh wound. But it’s impossible to be casual when it’s your flesh that’s wounded. I struggled to get up.

“Matt, Matt, are you okay?” Ty said.

“Where’s Katherine?” I yelled.

Zach jumped in. “Shaken but safe. Are you okay?”

“No. And I won’t be okay until we get Chukov.” I stood and looked around. “Where is he?”

“Running up the south ramp,” Adam said. “I don’t have a clean shot from the balcony. Matt, how bad were you hit?”

“Enough to really piss me off. I’m going after him.”

I could see Chukov barreling his way up the ramp through the frenzied crowd toward the 42nd Street exit.

My shoulder was burning as I headed toward the ramp. Chukov looked back and saw me. Then he looked at the bottleneck in front of him. Hundreds of people were screaming in terror as they fought to squeeze through doorways that were designed to handle one person at a time.

Ten more seconds and I’d have him.

There was a second ramp — one that went down into the subway. It was wide open because nobody wanted to go down there. The lessons of 9/11 were still fresh in people’s minds. Grand Central was under attack. Get out of the building. Don’t risk being trapped underground. Only a crazy person would head down there.

The mob kept clawing at the front doors. One crazy person broke off from the pack and raced down the ramp toward the spiderweb of subways below.

Chukov. He had realized he’d never make it out the narrow door.

A second person, bleeding, in pain, and probably just as crazy, followed.

Me.

Chapter 91

THE GRAND CENTRAL subway station is a labyrinth of uptown, downtown, and crosstown options. Along with its sister station under the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Times Square, it is one of the busiest stations in the entire system, so it’s easy to get lost in the subterranean maze, even if you don’t want to.

Chukov definitely wanted to.

By the time I made it down the ramp, he was out of sight.

There were dozens of subway riders who had just gotten off a train and were walking through the passageways oblivious to the chaos going on above them.

I stopped the first man I saw. “Did you see a short, fat guy? He was probably running—”

“Whoa, man,” he said. “You’re bleeding real bad.”

I hadn’t realized what I looked like. “I’m okay,” I said. “Did you see—”

He held his hands up and backed away. “Didn’t see anyone. You better get to a hospital, dude.”

There were half a dozen staircases and at least that many passageways that Chukov could have taken.

I tried to weigh the pluses and minuses using the same logic he would have used. The passageways would eventually lead him to a street exit. But the streets would be clogged with cops responding to the bomb blasts and the gunfire. The stairs would take him to a subway. He could be miles away in minutes. That was the best option.

But which subway? Uptown? Downtown? Local? Express? Flushing line? Times Square shuttle?

I was headed for the downtown staircase when I heard the scream.

A woman came running up the opposite stairwell, shouting, “Run! There’s a man down there with a gun!”

I charged back to the Lexington Avenue uptown and took the steps three at a time.

The platform was deserted. No passengers. No cops. No Chukov. He had just been here, but the screaming woman had sent him running again.

The tracks. Chukov was a madman. Would he be crazy enough to try to escape through the tunnel?

I stepped to the edge of the platform and looked into the semidarkness. There was enough light to navigate the tunnel, and I realized that if he was smart and careful, he could make his way uptown to 51st Street this way.

“Turn around.”

I froze. The madman was behind me. My gun was tucked in my belt. Even without looking, I knew where his gun was — aimed right at my back.

I turned slowly, and there he was, pointing a semiautomatic Marakov PM at my chest.

His eyes were on fire, and I could hear the asthmatic rattle in his lungs as he breathed. I knew what was coming next — the diatribe, the rant, the blistering harangue cataloging every injustice I had inflicted on him, followed by threats of retribution he would bring down on me and everyone connected to me. And then, one last negotiation. He still wanted the diamonds, and even though I had duped him on the exchange, he still believed I had them.

Scream at me all you want, I thought. I need as much time as I can get to figure a way out of this.

But I was wrong. He didn’t utter a word. He just aimed the gun at my heart and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet slammed into the shock plate of my body armor and blew me backward off the platform onto the tracks. The pain was unbearable, but once again the vest under my sweater had saved my life.

But only for a few seconds. Chukov stepped up to the edge of the platform and pointed the Marakov at my head.

“Do svidaniya, modderfocker,” he said.

Chapter 92

BULLETPROOF VESTS SAVE lives, but they don’t do much for bones. I have twenty-four ribs, and it felt like every one of them was broken.

Chukov aimed at my head. Every ounce of my training told me to roll before he pulled the trigger, but I could barely breathe, much less dodge a bullet.

I was a dead man.

I heard the gunshot and saw the muzzle flash, but I wasn’t dead. The tile wall behind me shattered and a mighty bellow from Chukov echoed through the tunnel as his body flew off the platform.

Someone had hurtled down the stairs and slammed into Chukov from behind, sending the bullet wide and pitching his fat Russian ass onto the tracks.

It wasn’t a miracle. God bless Adam, Zach, and Ty, I thought. I sat up to see which one had saved my skin. But it wasn’t any of them.

“Matthew, get his gun, get his gun!” It was Katherine.

Chukov’s gun had skittered along one of the rails when he landed. My adrenaline surged. I managed to get to my knees and dig for my own gun. Chukov was already up. He swung his foot into my jaw. That hurt. Plus, it raised hell with the hole in my shoulder.

I went sprawling, and Chukov grabbed for the gun in my hand. He dug his fingers into my face with one hand and yanked at the weapon with the other.

The pain was blinding. I almost lost consciousness. I did lose the gun.

“You stupid piece of shit,” he screamed, pointing the muzzle at my face.

I was out of strength. And I knew that as soon as Chukov finished me off, he would shoot Katherine. I had to get her to run. I looked up at the platform.

And there she was, hoisting a New York City Transit Authority trash can high over her head with a strength that must have been born of fear and red-hot anger. She hurled it at Chukov.

It hit him square in the face and knocked him off balance. The wire mesh left a bloody grid on his cheek.

Totally enraged, he pressed his palm into my shoulder, pushing himself up and once again sending waves of agony through my body.

And then I heard it. The number 6 train.

Chukov heard it, too. After a darting glance between me and the platform, he decided to save his own ass and let the train take care of me.

With my gun still in his hand, he leaped toward the platform like an overweight mountain lion.

Katherine screamed.

Chukov threw his right leg onto the platform and screamed back at her. “I’ll kill you, you goddamn bitch.”

I lunged and clawed at his left foot. I jerked hard, and we both toppled backward onto the tracks. I rolled as we fell, so that by the time we got our bearings, I was straddling his chest.

I grabbed his head and whacked it against the rail. I leaned forward to pry the gun from his grasp, but Chukov slammed his oversize forehead into my face. I felt my nose break.

Down the track, the headlights of the Bronx-bound subway were bearing down on us fast. The whistle screamed.

I bet the motorman screamed, too. He of all people would know that no matter how hard he applied his brakes, he wouldn’t be able to stop in time.

I heard the squeal of metal on metal as the train’s wheels skidded along the track.

Chukov and I had been engaged in a battle to the death. In a matter of seconds, the battle would be over.

Chapter 93

CHUKOV AND I had our hands wrapped around the gun. The way we were going, there could only be one winner: the number 6 train.

I knew I was out of time. So I let go of the gun. I threw my good shoulder back and drove my right elbow into his left eye. I think I heard bone crack as I drilled down into the socket. Then I jumped up. Kicked the gun out of his hand. Planted the other foot on his throat.

Katherine leaned over the platform. She peered down the tunnel at the oncoming train. “Matthew,” she yelled, “get off the tracks now!”

I looked into the darkness. The train’s headlights, which had been pin dots only seconds ago, were brighter and looming larger.

Chukov struggled to get up, but I had weight and leverage on my side.

“Matthew, please — he’s not worth it,” she begged. “Please, please run.”

I couldn’t. If I took my foot off Chukov’s throat, he’d still have enough time to vault the platform. I had to finish this.

And then I remembered. I pictured Chukov sitting in the steam room with the bronchodilator on his lap. Chukov the asthmatic.

I lifted my foot off his throat and slammed it down on his chest. The compression was more than his lungs could take. He began gasping for air.

I reached down and scooped up a fistful of the black dirt and subway soot that lay between the ties. And just as Chukov inhaled deeply, struggling to breathe, I flung it in his face.

He sucked it all in.

I grabbed another handful of the powdery filth and threw it at his nose and mouth. He was now in a full-blown asthma attack — choking, spitting, screaming half-gurgled Russian. His eyes bulged with fear.

I leaned in close to his face. “What’s the matter, Vadim? You look like you’ve seen a Ghost.”

Chukov’s eyes grew even wider as the truth sank in and he realized whom he had been up against all along.

I took one final look into the face of evil and drove both fists into his failing lungs.

“Do svidaniya, modderfocker,” I said.

I started to run. Chukov didn’t follow.

“Matthew, hurry!” Katherine yelled. “The train is coming.”

As if I needed a reminder.

The whistle screamed and screamed and screamed. I turned as best as I could. I could see sparks flying off the wheels as they scraped the metal rails. I could even make out the outline of the motorman in the front cab. I could only imagine the sheer horror in his eyes.

The front of the station was maybe five hundred feet away. I’d never make it. I couldn’t get out of this. I was going to die.

Chapter 94

I RAN FOR my life anyway.

Katherine ran right alongside me on the platform.

“Take my hand,” she screamed down. “I’ll pull you up, Matthew.”

“No,” I shouted. “I’d pull you down.”

“I don’t care,” she said.

Her words rushed over me, and if they were the last ones I’d ever hear, I’d die happy.

Well, maybe not happy, but a little more at peace with the world.

“I’m sorry for everything,” I yelled, hoping she could still hear me over the roar of the number 6 train. “I love you.” And then I broke into a sprint — or as much of a sprint as I could muster with multiple fractures and heavy blood loss.

Grand Central is a four-track subway station. Two single tracks on each side and a double set of tracks in the middle. If I had been on the center set of tracks, I could have stood between them and let the train pass me. But the outer track is a death trap — a platform on one side and a wall on the other. The only possible escape was a service door set in the wall.

I could see one twenty feet ahead.

I looked back. The train had just entered the station — sparks flying, whistle blowing — and now I could see the motorman’s face: absolute panic when he saw one man lying on the tracks and another running toward the tunnel.

And then I heard the thump.

If Chukov had any air left in his lungs, he might have screamed when the train hit him. But he didn’t. All I heard was a flat, dull whoomp, like a tennis racket slapping a mattress. It was unmistakable. Chukov was dead.

I reached the service door that was tucked into the wall below the platform. I pulled the handle. Locked!

Another hundred feet still lay between me and safety.

The train was slowing down. Maybe I could outrun it after all.

And then my foot caught a railroad tie, and I fell face-first into the bed of debris and muck between the tracks.

It was over. I took comfort in knowing that the most evil son of a bitch in the world was dead and the most wonderful woman in the world was alive and safe, which was what I had set out to do.

Mission accomplished.

The squeal of the brakes was deafening now. Even an art student knows a little physics.

The train couldn’t stop in time.

Inertia wins.

I lose and die on the train tracks.

Chapter 95

ZACH HEARD THE crying before he reached the platform. He raced down the stairs. It was Katherine. She had her face buried in Ty’s shoulder and was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Ty, am I glad you found Katherine,” Zach said. “Matt would kick my ass if I let anything happen to her. Let’s round everybody up and get the hell out of here.”

“Zach…” Ty hesitated.

“What?” Zach snapped back. “What’s going on?”

“Matt’s dead,” Katherine said.

“Matt and Chukov went head-to-head down on the tracks,” Ty said. “The train took them both out.”

The last three cars of the number 6 train were still inside the tunnel. The doors to the train remained closed. A handful of passengers were pressed against the front window wondering why the motorman was on the ground, his back against a steel column, his legs stretched out in front of him. A transit cop was kneeling beside him.

“Oh, God,” the motorman said, breathing hard. “Oh, God, I can’t believe it.”

“Try to stay calm, Mr. Perez,” the cop said, putting her hand on his arm. “The paramedics are on the way.”

“Paramedics?” he said. “For what? They’re both dead.”

“For you,” she said. “They’ll be here for you. Try to calm down.”

“I had green lights all the way from Thirty-fourth,” Perez said, “so we were moving. But legal. A hundred percent legal.”

Katherine let out a mournful wail.

The cop turned sharply and looked at her. “I’m trying to get a statement here. Can somebody please—”

“Hey!” Ty snapped at the cop.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said, “but we got a situation here.”

She turned back to the motorman. “Did they fall, did they jump, what happened?”

“I don’t know. They were already there when I saw them. One guy was on the track and couldn’t get up. It looked like maybe the other guy was helping him. I hit the brakes as soon as I saw them, but the man on the tracks was too close to the rear of the station. He never had a chance.”

He closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands.

“And the second guy?” the cop said.

“He started running. The train had slowed down to four miles an hour. He could have made it, but he fell. It wasn’t my fault.”

Five cops came bounding down the stairs. One was a sergeant.

“Sarge,” the cop said. “We have two civilians under the train. The motorman is in shock. I told the conductor to keep the doors closed until I can get someone here for crowd control.”

“Any witnesses?” the sergeant said.

“That woman,” she said, pointing at Katherine.

By now a dozen passengers had moved forward to the front car. One started pounding on the window and yelling, “Let us off. Let us off.” The others immediately picked it up.

“Keep her on ice,” the sergeant said. “Let me deal with the passengers first.”

“I’ll wait with her,” Adam said and put his arm around Katherine.

“We have to get you out of here,” he said in a whisper. “Now. While the cops are still busy.”

“I can’t,” she whimpered. “Matthew’s still down there. His body’s there.”

“Katherine, you don’t want to see him,” Zach said.

“He’s gone,” Adam said. “We can’t do anything for the captain. He wanted us to keep you safe. That’s what we’re going to do.”

He tried to move Katherine toward the stairs.

But she dropped to her knees. “Matthew. I love you so much. I love you,” she said, sobbing. “And I forgive you.”

A faint voice came from under the train. “If you can find someone who can get this train off me, you can tell me in person. I love you, too.”

Chapter 96

I WAS LYING right under the second car, maybe twenty feet from Katherine. I had managed to fall flat into the track bed. Forty-odd tons of the 6 train had passed over me before it finally came to a stop.

I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Between losing blood and whacking my head when I fell, I was out of it for a while probably. But when I came to and heard Katherine saying she loved me and forgave me, I had another reason to get out of there.

Up on the platform, I could hear Katherine crying and my guys laughing and screaming and then orders from someone in charge.

“Don’t move,” the voice said.

“Don’t worry,” I responded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Matt!” It was Adam. “You okay?”

“No,” I said. “You know how disgusting it is on these tracks? I’ll probably die from being facedown in subway grunge.”

I heard Ty next. “At least we know his sense of humor is still awful.”

It took half an hour before the power to the third rail was turned off so the fire department guys could pull me out. EMTs laid me on a stretcher on the platform. I looked up, and the next person I saw was Katherine. “Nice shot with that trash can,” I said.

She knelt down and pressed against my filthy, foul-smelling, bloody body. She kissed my face a dozen times before the EMT guys pried her off.

“Ma’am, we’ve got to get him to the hospital. You can ride with us.”

Four firefighters and two EMTs lifted the stretcher, and we headed for the stairs.

“Wait. I have to talk to him. That guy there.”

It was the motorman. He came forward and stood over me. His face was ashen; he was crying. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see you till it was too late. I’m so sorry.”

I was the one who should have apologized. It was I who had left Chukov gasping for air on the tracks and made this poor man feel like an executioner.

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “That guy on the tracks — he was evil. He tried to kill this beautiful woman, Katherine. He was on the tracks trying to kill me. You saved both of us. Thank you.”

He nodded, but his expression didn’t change, and I knew his life would never be the same.

He was a killer now, too.

Chapter 97

THEY TOOK ME to Bellevue Hospital, where the ER docs removed the bullet from my shoulder, gave me a blood transfusion, and told me that my broken nose and three cracked ribs would heal on their own in about six weeks.

Then they pumped me full of painkillers and let me sleep. Katherine slept in the chair in my room, and my three buddies spent the night in the hospital, taking turns standing guard at the door.

At four in the afternoon, I had my first visitors. Detectives Steve Garber and Nathan Watt, NYPD.

“We’re trying to piece together what happened last night,” Watt said. “Do you mind if I ask you both a few questions?”

“It’s all a blur,” I said. “This crazy man attacked me and my girlfriend. I tried to fend him off, but the New York subway finished the fight.”

Katherine nodded in total agreement.

“Did either of you know this guy?” Watt said.

“No.”

Watt smiled. “Vadim Chukov. He had a record on two continents. Smuggling, arson, robbery, murder — the list goes on — but this is the first time he ever tried to pick a fight with an innocent young couple waiting for the subway. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”

“I don’t know anyone like that,” I said. “I’m just a struggling art student.”

“A struggling art student and a war-hero Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Garber said.

“My Marine days are over,” I said.

“Were you aware that Chukov and five of his men launched some kind of terrorist attack in Grand Central Terminal earlier last night?” Garber asked.

“It was in the paper this morning,” Katherine said.

“Was anybody hurt?” I asked.

“Counting Chukov, there are six dead. All bad guys. It seems like somebody knew they were coming and cleaned up the mess without any help from the cops.”

“Good Samaritans, I guess,” I said.

“But you weren’t there,” Watt said.

“No,” I said.

“It’s easy enough to check,” Watt said. “They have the whole incident on video.”

Katherine’s eyes opened wide, and she squeezed my hand.

“Oh, crap, I just remembered,” Garber said. “The terminal is not our jurisdiction. That’s MTA — the state cops.”

“Then I guess there’s no sense in looking at the tapes,” Watt said. “We’re just here to ask questions about the incident down in the subway. Does either of you have anything else to add?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Then I think we’ve got it all,” Watt said. “Detective Garber, why don’t we let this young war hero and his girlfriend get some rest.”

They headed to the door. Watt stopped and turned around.

“Mr. Bannon, I have to take issue with just one thing you told us.”

“What’s that?”

“You said your Marine days were over,” Watt said.

“Yes, sir.”

“They’re never over. My partner and I both served in Desert Storm.” He grinned. “Semper fi, bro.”

He threw me a wink and a salute, and the two of them walked out the door and never came back.

Chapter 98

WE FLEW TO Paris and rented a funky studio on the fourth floor of an art deco building in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The mattress was too soft and the toilet was temperamental, but the northern light that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows made it an artist’s dream. My broken nose healed. My cracked ribs healed. And three months after that night in the subway tunnel, my relationship with Katherine was also mending rather nicely. She had told me she loved me in the heat of the moment, but I wanted to make sure that she could forgive me for the life I had led and for dragging her into it.

It was a Sunday morning in September. I woke to the aroma of fresh-brewed french roast, the sounds of Coldplay on the stereo, and the sight of Katherine in jeans and a paint-spattered tank top, sitting on the sofa. There was sunlight on her bare shoulders, and my cat, Hopper, was curled on her lap, purring gratefully.

“Hold that pose,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee and a paintbrush.”

“You don’t do portraits,” she said.

“I do nudes,” I said with a smile. “You know where I can find one?”

“I just happen to have one under here,” she said. Then she peeled off the tank top. She scrambled out of her jeans. Lord, she was good at undressing.

“The coffee can wait,” I said.

Morning sex for us was usually fast, urgent — kind of like an asteroid is heading for the planet and we only have a few minutes left fast.

That morning we took the better part of an hour.

“I hate to be practical, especially at a time like this, but we should shower and get dressed,” Katherine finally said.

We were lying in a heap of tangled sheets, skin to skin, soaked in sweat. I was still inside her. More or less.

She put her lips on mine, kissed me gently, and found my tongue with hers. That’s all it took to reboot my libido.

“We need to go, Matthew,” Katherine said. “We have to get up.”

“As you may have noticed, I’m pretty much up,” I said. “Give me two good reasons why we should leave this bed. Ever.”

“Your mother and your father,” she said. “We’re meeting them for brunch at ten o’clock.”

“We’ll be late,” I said. “They’ll understand.”

Chapter 99

AN HOUR LATER we were sitting at a sidewalk café, eating duck eggs Benedict and buttery petites brioches, while my mother, giddy on half a mimosa, extolled the joys of Paris. She was like a Colorado schoolgirl on her first holiday. Even my father was smiling some.

It was our au revoir brunch. My folks had spent a week in Paris, and now they were moving on to Rome, Florence, and Venice. They were capping it all off with a two-week Mediterranean cruise. It was outrageously expensive, but it only put a small dent in the seven-figure account I’d opened for them at my Dutch bank.

We drove them to the airport and went back to the apartment, where I painted for six hours straight, breaking only for coffee and a few words of inspiration.

At seven, Katherine and I sat on our tiny terrace, sipping a light white burgundy while watching the steel-gray western sky slowly turn spectacular shades of red, orange, and indigo.

The doorbell rang.

“Poor man,” Katherine said. “I hate to put him through this.”

“It’s good for him,” I said.

We were expecting company, but old habits die hard, so before buzzing our visitor in, I checked the tiny security camera I had installed at the front door.

He tromped noisily up the steps, stopping often to catch his breath or complain.

“My darlings,” Newton gushed as he finally made it to our front door. “You’re coming down in the world.”

“Meaning what?” Katherine said.

“The first time we met, Matthew was a starving artist living on the top floor of a five-story walkup. Today you’re on the fourth floor. I look forward to the day when you are rich and famous, and I can ride the elevator to your penthouse in the sky.”

“You’re full of shit, Newton,” Katherine said. “The day Matthew is rich and famous is the day you’ll go off and find another poor struggling artist with no money and lots of stairs to climb.”

Newton laughed. “She’s right. Now let me see what I came for.”

He stepped in. “Oh, my,” he said as he took in my latest work. “Oh, my, my, my. Genius.”

“Really?” Katherine said. “You think Matthew is a genius?”

“Oh, heavens, no. I’m the genius. I said he’d get better, and he has. The lad has discovered color. And hope. And passion.”

“Keep talking, Newton,” Katherine said. “Every word of praise is going to cost you more money.”

Newton shrugged. It wasn’t his money.

He picked out five paintings.

“Someday these will be worth millions,” he said. “Until then, I’d peg them at ten grand apiece.”

He wrote me a check for fifty thousand dollars. I couldn’t believe it.

“There’s one catch,” he said, waving the check in my face. “You must let me buy you dinner.”

“Shouldn’t I be buying?” I said. “I mean, that check will cover a year’s worth of dinners.”

He laughed. “Not where we’ll be dining, my boy. Have you ever heard of La Tour d’Argent?”

“I have,” Katherine said, gently plucking the check from his hand. “We accept your generous offer.”

“Excellent. I’ll pick you up at eight forty-five.”

As soon as Newton left, Katherine started rummaging through her closet. “I have nothing to wear,” she said. “Rien. Nothing.”

“You look fabulous in nothing. It’s my favorite look for you.”

“You’re not helping,” she said. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

“One question,” I said. “Why is he taking us to dinner?”

“Because he loves to eat, he has a big fat expense account, and he wants to be seen in public with a handsome artiste Américain and his ugly professor who doesn’t have a thing to wear. Why else would he take us to dinner?”

I didn’t know. And that made me nervous.

Chapter 100

La Tour d’Argent has been a Paris institution since the sixteenth century. Perched on the river Seine in the heart of Old Paris, it’s a mecca for people who live to eat. Not exactly the kind of place where you pop in and ask for a table for three.

And not just any table. Ours had a sweeping view of the river and Notre Dame Cathedral.

“How’d you manage to get such a good table at the last minute?” I asked.

“All it takes is charm and money,” Newton said. “I supply the former and my employer has oodles of the latter. Voilà. We’re in.”

The sommelier handed him a wine list.

“This is the manageable version,” Newton said, handing it to me. “They have half a million bottles of wine in their cellar, and the complete wine list is four hundred pages.”

He ordered a bottle of 1990 Louis Roederer Champagne Cristal Brut that cost more than my first car.

“A toast,” Newton said once our glasses were filled. “To our blossoming young artist, Matthew Bannon.”

“And to the beautiful woman who made it all possible,” I said, “Katherine Sanborne.”

“And to Matthew’s generous new patron,” Katherine said. She looked innocently at Newton. “What’s his name, anyway?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Newton said. “He’s a lovely man but rather secretive.” He smiled at me. “I’m sure you understand, don’t you, Matthew? We all have our little secrets.”

“But we’re toasting him,” Katherine said. “He has to have a name.”

Newton grinned. “In that case, feel free to give him one.”

“Copernicus,” Katherine said. “Newton and Copernicus — both drawn to the stars.”

We all drank to Copernicus.

“So, Newton,” I said, “are you as secretive as your boss, or can you tell us a little bit about yourself?”

“Secretive? Moi? Heavens, no. My life is an open book. In fact, I plan to write one someday. I already have the title—Confessions of an Art Whore.”

“I can’t wait for the book,” Katherine said. “Tell us some of the good parts.”

“Actually, my dear, they were all good parts. When I was twenty years old, I fell in love with Andy Warhol. Some people dismiss him, but he was the bellwether of the art market,” Newton said. “Notice I said art market. Andy was the rare artist who mastered the delicate balance between art and commerce. Are you familiar with one of his early works—Eight Elvises? It recently sold for a hundred million dollars.”

“And you knew him personally?” Katherine asked.

“Intimately,” Newton said. “Andy introduced me to Timothy Leary, who of course introduced me to LSD.”

“You took LSD?” Katherine said.

Newton shrugged. “It was just a phase, but who among us didn’t experiment in the eighties?”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I was hooked on breast milk back in nineteen eighty. But it was just a phase.”

Newton let out a guffaw, and we spent the next few hours swapping stories of our lives. Mine were carefully edited. His were delightfully entertaining, but I’d be willing to bet they were more bullshit than substance.

By one o’clock I felt like I had learned very little about this man whom I knew only by a single name. Hopefully he knew even less about me.

On the ride home, he had the driver open the moonroof. The three of us rode in silence and gazed at the sky.

“For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream,” Newton said when we arrived at our apartment.

“That’s beautiful,” Katherine said.

“Vincent van Gogh said it first. Off to bed with you now,” he said with a wink.

Which is exactly where we went.

That night, we undressed each other slowly, gently touching, exploring, caressing. There were no threatening asteroids hurtling toward us. I knew in my heart there would be lots and lots of bright, beautiful tomorrows. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe on that perfect night in Paris.

Chapter 101

IT WAS A warm September evening when Nathaniel Prince set out on his five-mile jog through the streets of Moscow. A half hour into his run, the fine mist that had been in the air turned into a pelting rain. Two minutes later, it stopped as suddenly as it started, but Nathaniel was already soaked to the skin.

He laughed. He didn’t care. Soon he’d be home, and Natalia would draw him a hot bath, and then they would sit down to their traditional Sunday-night meal: borscht, golubtsy smothered in sour cream, and his favorite — sweetbrier berry kissel.

A jog, a bath, a home-cooked dinner, and then a few hours of mindless Russian television before bed. Life was simpler now. Nathaniel found it impossible to comprehend, but for the first time since he was a boy, he was happy. More than happy. He was at peace.

It had come at great expense. His power, his home, and his wealth were all gone. In exchange, he and Natalia had been allowed to live.

That night at the Atlantis Hotel in Nassau, he still held out hope that Chukov would recover the diamonds and he could humble himself to Arnoff and the other members of the Syndicate. But within hours of the meeting, Chukov and five of his men were dead and the diamonds were lost forever.

Nathaniel sold the house in Park Slope, raped his bank accounts, and with Arnoff’s guarantee of amnesty without forgiveness, he and Natalia moved back to Moscow.

Even after forking over the ten million, they were far from poor, and Natalia had found a beautiful apartment in a vintage Stalin-era building on the Frunzenskaya embankment. Six spacious rooms, high ceilings, and a wide terrace with sweeping views of the Moskva River.

It was a family neighborhood, and in another three months, he and Natalia would be pushing a baby pram through the tree-lined streets, over the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park and the Neskuchny Gardens on the opposite riverbank.

A father again at the age of sixty. Three months ago, he thought the Syndicate would have him killed. Now he had everything to live for. Who knows? he thought as he reached the front door of his apartment building. Maybe that bastard Zelvas did us all a favor.

He stretched his calves and his hamstrings and took the elevator to the tenth floor.

Even before he opened the door, the heady aroma of meat and onions wrapped in cabbage and simmering in a pot of creamy tomato sauce welcomed him home.

He entered the apartment and saw the intruders. Instinctively he reached for his gun. But of course he didn’t have one in his wet jogging suit.

The men in the apartment had guns. All four of them.

Natalia was sitting in the middle of the living room, tied to a dining room chair. Her eyes were red and puffy, her mouth taped shut.

“How dare you!” Nathaniel screamed. “What is the meaning of this? Do you muzhiks know who I am?” He charged forward to untie his daughter.

One of the men slammed him in the face with a gun barrel, and Nathaniel reeled backward, spitting blood and teeth.

Nathaniel studied his attacker. One side of the man’s face was covered with scars and skin grafts. It was a face that was difficult to look at, but Nathaniel knew that if he had ever seen it before, he would surely remember it now. But this man was a stranger.

“Sit,” the man said.

A second dining room chair was pushed under him, and Nathaniel was shoved into it.

“Who authorized this? Who sent you?” Nathaniel demanded as one of the other men tied him to the chair.

The man with the scarred face seemed to be in charge. “Nobody sent us,” he said, winking at the others. “We heard there was a party tonight, so we came on our own — no invitation.”

The other three laughed.

But Prince didn’t see the humor. He was incensed. “I gave those Syndicate assholes ten million dollars, and they agreed to let me live in peace as long as I never returned to the United States again,” he said. “We had a deal. Ironclad. Bound by the Vorovskoy Zakon.”

“I see,” the leader said. “A deal. An agreement between the Diamond Syndicate and the illustrious Mr. Nathaniel Prince. Or should I call you Mr. Nikita Primakov?”

It had been decades since Nathaniel had heard his real name.

“I don’t care what you call me. Just untie me and get out. You’ve made a big mistake. None of the senior members of the Syndicate would ever choose to violate the Vorovskoy Zakon.”

“That may be true,” the gunman said, punching Nathaniel in the mouth and shattering more teeth. “But we are not from the Diamond Syndicate.”

Chapter 102

AS SOON AS Natalia’s father took the blow, muffled screams erupted from under the duct tape that covered her mouth.

One of the men slapped her face. “Shut up, bitch.”

Prince strained against the ropes the men had tied around him. “I’ll kill you,” he screamed.

“Your killing days are over,” the leader said, driving a fist into Prince’s left ear.

Nathaniel could feel the vital tiny bones in his ear splinter. But he couldn’t hear them break. His left ear could no longer hear anything.

The punch perforated his eardrum. Fluid leaked from his inner ear and he became dizzy and nauseated. He tried to focus.

Not from the Diamond Syndicate?

For a moment he felt a flash of justified anger. His gut feeling had been right — the Syndicate would never do this to him. But who would?

“Who are you?” he asked, the bloody shards of his two front teeth flying out as he spoke.

The leader pointed to his men and each one answered in turn.

“Fyodor Dmitriov.”

“Kostya Dmitriov.”

“Leonid Dmitriov.”

“And I am Maxim Dmitriov,” the leader said. “We are what remains of the Dmitriov Cab Company. You murdered my father and my uncles, you killed our brothers, our cousins—”

“And my son,” Kostya growled. “My only son, Alexei. He was eighteen, and he died in the fire that morning in the garage.”

“I was late for work that day,” Maxim said. “By the time I arrived, the garage was an inferno. Twenty-seven of my friends and family were locked in a storeroom. I tried to get to them, and this is all I got for my efforts.”

He rolled up his shirtsleeves. Covered in skin grafts, his arms looked even more gruesome than his face.

“My bride-to-be was locked in that storeroom,” Maxim said. “She didn’t even work there. She came to show me photos of our wedding cake. We were going to be married in two more days. You killed her.”

“Not me,” Nathaniel said. “It was Chukov. Vadim Chukov—”

A swift cuff to the right eye silenced him.

“Chukov was your puppet,” Maxim said. “You pulled the strings. You lit the match.”

“What happened was not my fault,” Nathaniel said. “I swear. I was in the hospital. My own family had just been run down by one of your drivers.”

“One!” Maxim screamed. “Not twenty-seven. Not three generations of an entire family.”

“I know your pain,” Nathaniel said. “We were both injured parties. Let me try to make it up to you. I have money — not a lot, but some. I could make restitution for Chukov’s evil deeds.”

“Money? You think we’re here for money?”

“Everybody needs money,” Nathaniel reasoned. “Tell me what you want.”

“You took what we want. You murdered what we need. Now, like they say in America, you have to face some music.”

He took a cassette player from his pocket and pressed a button.

“Wedding music,” Maxim cried out.

Even with only one good ear Nathaniel could make out the fiddle, the mandolin, and the garmoshka playing the joyful sounds of his homeland’s traditional folk music.

“Everyone,” Maxim said, “a toast to the bride.”

The four men lifted their imaginary glasses.

“Nazdaróvy!” they shouted. Then they began to dance around the bride.

Natalia.

“This is the wedding dance you stole from me,” Maxim shouted.

Fluid was seeping out of Nathaniel’s inner ear. The room was spinning, and watching the four men dance in a circle around Natalia made him even dizzier.

Maxim ripped the tape from Natalia’s mouth, and she gasped for air.

“Raise the bride up high,” he bellowed.

The four men each grabbed a leg of the chair and hoisted it almost to the top of the ten-foot ceiling.

Natalia screamed in terror. “Papa!”

And in that moment Nathaniel knew.

“Please,” he begged. “I’ll give you everything I have. Three million dollars. You can have every penny.”

“This will be payment enough,” Maxim said, as the four men danced toward the terrace door.

Leonid kicked it open, and now Natalia, too, realized her fate. “Please,” she screamed. “You can see I’m pregnant.”

“I hope,” Kostya Dmitriov said, “with a son.”

“Death to the whore,” Maxim yelled, and they heaved the chair, the woman, and her unborn child over the balcony rail.

Natalia’s screams were loud and piercing, but Nathaniel couldn’t hear them. He was vomiting. He was still gagging on his own puke when he realized the chair underneath him was being lifted up. He closed his eyes and felt the cool September air as it penetrated his wet jogging suit.

The last thing he heard was the voice of the scar-faced man.

“Feed this incestuous pig to the pigeons.”