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 c
hange,” 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 ste
aming 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.”