“He’s not dead in the video. Hang on.”
Rice surfed from camera to camera. “Got him,” he said after a few minutes.
They watched Zelvas stagger across the marble floor. He crashed into a bank of lockers, found one on the top row, and opened it.
Rice froze the image and zoomed in on the frame. “Jackpot,” he said. “Locker number nine twenty-five. How much you want to bet it’s not filled with cheese?”
Chapter 23
Rice unfroze the image, and Zelvas slumped to the floor. A wet circle fanned out from his body, slowly turning the white marble bright red.
And then wisps of smoke crept into the corner of the screen.
“Shit,” Benzetti said. “We’re going to lose the picture again.”
“Relax,” Rice said. “He’s a good two hundred feet from the blast.”
They watched as the smoke cast a pink haze over the picture, then lifted.
“Look at all those people run. They’re practically tripping over the poor bastard, and they don’t stop to help him,” Rice said.
“As far as they’re concerned, some terrorist just set off a couple of bombs. It’s every man for himself,” Benzetti said. “Wait a minute. Here comes Mr. Good Samaritan.”
The preppy-looking young man knelt down and tried to comfort Zelvas.
“Who is this guy?” Rice asked.
“Who knows? He looks like some latte-sipping pansy who was running for his life and decided to stop and smell the dead guy.”
“Zelvas is telling him something,” Rice said.
“Short conversation,” Benzetti said, as they watched Zelvas die. “He just cashed in his chips.”
“Now what’s this guy gonna do?” Rice said.
“If the kid is smart, he’ll move his ass out of Grand Central.”
But the kid didn’t move. He was staring up at the blood-smeared lockers.
“Uh-oh,” Rice said. “The monkey sees the banana.”
The young man stood up, reached into the open locker, and taking out a small leather bag, looked inside.
“The monkey is about to crap in his pants,” Benzetti said.
“He looks like a Boy Scout,” Rice said. “Maybe he’ll turn it into Lost and Found. I know I would.”
Benzetti laughed. “He could be as honest as a full-length mirror, but we all have our price.”
The young man shut the bag in a hurry and snapped the latch.
“My instincts tell me this dude just found out what his is.”
And then the cop showed up.
“This guy is NYPD,” Rice said.
“He must be from the Idiot Squad,” Benzetti said. “Why would he pull a gun on a civilian?”
The kid ignored the cop’s gun and tended to the dead Russian.
“He’s smart,” Rice said. “He’s using Zelvas’s bag as a prop and playing doctor.”
“And Officer Dumbass is buying it,” Benzetti said as the young cop holstered his gun.
They watched the scenario unfold. Finally the kid dug into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and started talking.
“How convenient,” Benzetti said. “A phone call.”
“It’s a ruse,” Rice yelled at the cop on the monitor. “And you’re buying it, Officer”—he paused the video and zoomed in on the cop’s name tag—“Kendall.”
He hit the play button and watched as Kendall listened to his radio. The call was brief but it seemed to energize the cop.
“Oh, crap,” Benzetti said. “I think I know how this movie is going to end.”
Kendall spent a few more seconds with the kid, then took off toward the Forty-second Street Passageway. The kid waited another ten seconds, then cut and ran in the other direction.
“Track him,” Benzetti said.
Rice followed the action from camera to camera as the kid made his way to the Lexington Avenue exit. The final camera caught the drama outside as three men haggled over a cab and the kid bummed a ride with the winner.
Rice froze the frame. “The hack number is six J four two,” he said, writing it down. “I’ll call the TLC and hunt down the driver.”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Benzetti said. “It’ll probably be some towelhead who won’t remember anything because he was too busy gouging people that night.”
Rice hit play, and the cab, the kid, and the leather bag with the diamonds were gone.
“He wasn’t carrying any luggage,” Rice said. “So he’s either a regular commuter or he works in one of the shops here at Grand Central. I’ll pull a screen shot of his face. We can find this guy.”
“And when we do, I will personally put a bullet through his head and bring the diamonds back to Chukov,” Benzetti said.
“Y’know,” Rice said, grinning, “there really ought to be a finder’s fee for something like that.”
“There will be,” Benzetti said. “A fistful of diamonds.”
“Two fistfuls,” Rice said.
A close-up of the young man filled the thirty-inch screen, and Rice froze the image. “And if the Russians notice that any stones are missing,” Rice said, “we can just blame it on Pretty Boy.”
Benzetti nodded. “LOL, baby. L.O. Fucking L.”
Book Two
The Chase
Chapter 24
Nathaniel Prince sat on his bed, his eyes fixed on the cordless phone beside him.
“You can’t make it ring by staring at it,” Natalia said.
“Chukov should have called hours ago,” Prince said.
“Then call him.”
“It’s not my job to follow that incompetent prick around with a broom and a dustpan,” Prince said. “Chukov is the underling. He’s the one who should be calling me.”
Natalia looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Pretty soon he’ll be too drunk to dial.”
Prince couldn’t argue with the logic. He picked up the phone and pushed a single button. Chukov didn’t answer until the fourth ring.
“Nathaniel, I was just going to call you,” Chukov said. “I have good news. We zeroed in on the guy who has our diamonds.”
“It’s about time,” Prince said.
“I e-mailed you his picture.”
“His picture? I want his head delivered to my front door with his balls stuffed in his mouth,” Prince screamed. “Who is he?”
“He’s just some asshole kid who was at the right place at the right time. Zelvas stashed the diamonds in a locker at Grand Central. This guy found them and took off.”
“You told me the diamonds were in Zelvas’s safe,” Prince said. “Why did he move them to a locker in a train station?”
Because Natalia knew the combination, and Zelvas didn’t trust a whore who would bed down with her own father, Chukov thought.
“I don’t know, Nathaniel,” he said.
“What do we know about the guy who has the diamonds? What’s his name?”
“We don’t know his name yet,” Chukov said, “but he probably either works at Grand Central or is a regular commuter. Somebody has to know who he is. We definitely will find him.”
“Who’s we? ”
“Me, Rice, Benzetti, and the Ghost,” Chukov said.
“Not enough,” Prince said. “I want more people on it.”
“I have a dozen of my men…”
Prince cut Chukov off before he could finish. “I don’t want foot soldiers. I want a professional. A hunter. A killer.”
“The Ghost is a professional…”
“He’s one man,” Prince said. “The Syndicate is going to blame me for the missing diamonds. I don’t care how good this Ghost guy is. He can’t be everywhere. I need insurance, backup. Somebody smart. Somebody we’ve worked with before. What about the German?”
“Krall?”
“That’s the one.”
“I don’t know,” Chukov said. “These killers for hire are like prima donnas. They don’t like to be in competition with someone else. They want an exclusive contract.”
br />
“I don’t care what they want,” Prince said. “They’re mercenaries. I pay, I make the rules. I want you to find the bastard who took my diamonds, and I want his fingers chopped off, one by one. And if Krall doesn’t want to do it, find somebody who will.”
Prince hung up the phone and went to his computer. He printed out the picture of the man who had stolen his millions. He showed it to Natalia. “You know this muzhik? ” he asked.
She studied the picture. “I’d definitely remember him if I saw him. He’s cute,” she said, toying with Prince.
“He won’t be so cute when I’m finished with him.”
“Don’t be jealous,” she said. “I think you’re cuter.” She dropped the picture to the floor and kissed him lightly on the mouth, letting her lips linger.
He kissed her in return. Not so lightly.
She unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, button by button.
He unbuttoned her black silk blouse the same way. Then he cupped her breasts.
It was a ritual they had performed many times before. Undressing one another slowly, tantalizing and teasing each other. But this time Nathaniel couldn’t wait.
He pulled down her slacks, then her panties and got behind Natalia as she leaned forward over his heavy oak desk. He dropped his trousers, planted his hands on her ass, angled her into position, and entered her.
It had been twenty years since the taxi mowed down his wife and son and left his little girl for dead. They had forged a bond since that tragedy. And as Natalia grew into a beautiful girl, the bond became a physical and emotional union, a fierce, unstoppable love that had erupted the summer she was seventeen. For the next decade their love had flourished without guilt, without regret, and without shame. If it was forbidden and wrong, then so be it. It was their lives, their choice to make.
It was a give-and-take relationship, but tonight Nathaniel Prince needed to take more than he could give. His body was racing to climax and he couldn’t wait for Natalia. He came violently, repeatedly, panting, exhaling her name like a prayer.
She called out to him in Russian—just as she had called out to him every day and every night as he sat by her in the hospital, watching her fight for her life.
“Papa, Papa.”
Chapter 25
Marta Krall was as beautiful as she was intelligent, as intelligent as she was deadly. She was nearly six feet tall, with white-blond hair, a former model who could make a man’s heart beat faster just by walking into a room. But for the right amount of money she could make a man’s heart stop. Permanently.
Chukov had tracked Krall down in Los Angeles. Eight hours later, she entered his apartment, wearing Marc Jacobs pleated black leather jodhpurs and a Derek Lam dark gray cashmere cowl-neck sweater. Her hair was cropped close to her face, framing perfect features and flawless skin that most men and many women longed to touch.
She sat down and stared at Chukov.
An ice sculpture, he thought. Cold to the very core. The perfect killer.
“I read in the New York Times that Walter Zelvas was found dead in the Grand Central fiasco,” she said.
“Yes,” Chukov said. “He decided to take early retirement.”
“You should have called me,” she said. “Then his retirement party might not have been front-page news.”
“It was a rush job. He was planning to leave town.”
“More likely he was planning to leave the hemisphere,” Krall said. “Why was he running?”
“He was stealing from the Syndicate, and we found out about it.”
“I see. And since you’re in the diamond business, I’m guessing he wasn’t pilfering office supplies.”
“Very observant,” Chukov said. “And now I want to recover everything he stole.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. “I don’t do lost and found. Call me when you have something more challenging and interesting. Wet work is best for me.”
“Here,” Chukov said, handing her a photo of a preppy-looking young man standing next to a locker. “Get this guy as wet as you want.”
Marta studied the picture. “Sexy guy,” she said. “I almost hate to kill him. Not really, but a little. I’d prefer to play with him first, though.”
“Just find out what he did with my diamonds. Can you do that?”
“With one hand tied behind my back,” she said, staring at the Russian with sea-green eyes. “And both hands tied behind his.”
They negotiated her price, a high one.
“One question,” Marta said. “Who am I in competition with? And if you lie to me, I’ll know it, and I’ll be on the first flight back to L.A. Or Hamburg.”
“It’s not a competition,” Chukov said. “I got two local dickhead cops who work for me, and one professional.”
“Who?”
“The Ghost.”
Marta kept her icy exterior, but inside she was roiling. She had never met the Ghost, but she despised him. People talked about him like he was a god.
“The Ghost,” she said casually. “I’ve heard he’s pretty good.”
Chukov laughed. “Pretty good? They say he’s the only assassin who will go to heaven. Satan would be too nervous having him around.”
“If he’s so good, why do you need me?”
“Because my boss wants a backup.”
She stood up. “I’m nobody’s backup. Get somebody else to suck hind tit.”
Chukov knew he’d handled her wrong. He watched as she headed toward the door. Prince would kill him if he lost her.
“Wait,” he said. “Forget about what my boss wants. I want you because I think the Ghost might know more about the missing diamonds than he lets on, and I’ll pay you double if you’ll do me the honor of killing him.”
Krall looked surprised. Nothing would make her happier than to eliminate the Ghost. And now someone was willing to pay her to do it.
She reached out and shook Chukov’s hand. “I accept.”
Chukov had surprised himself by his impulsiveness. But then he lowered his eyes to his chest. He could still see the red dot boring into his skin, into his flesh, trying to tear a hole in his dignity.
He had no regrets about his sudden decision. The Ghost must die.
Vadim Chukov bows to no man.
Chapter 26
Marta Krall took a cab to 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue and bought a turkey, avocado, and bacon sandwich at the ’wichcraft kiosk in Bryant Park. She found a quiet table under a London plane tree in the northern promenade and called Etienne Gravois in France.
He wasn’t happy to hear from her. He never was. Marta had saved Etienne’s life, and he had been paying for it ever since.
Etienne was a compulsive gambler who made the mistake of borrowing twenty thousand euros from an Algerian drug dealer and failing to pay it back. Marta was hired to kill him. Instead, she paid off his debt. Etienne was much more valuable to her alive. He worked in computer records for Interpol.
“Bonjour, Etienne,” Marta said. “I e-mailed you a photo of a young man.”
“I’ve left the office for the evening,” he said.
“Then go back.”
“I’m meeting my wife for dinner. It’s her birthday.”
“Please give her my best. And tell her that in a few days I, too, will be meeting her. Only by then she’ll be your widow.”
“I’ll go back to the office.”
“The photo was taken at Grand Central Terminal in New York City a few days ago,” she said. “I want to know who the man is and where to find him.”
“Do you know anything about this man?”
“No. That’s your job, Monsieur Gravois. You sold your worthless soul to the devil. Now go back to your computer and get the devil what she wants.”
“Yes.”
She gave him a phone number. “How long?”
“If he has a criminal record, maybe two hours. If I have to dig deeper, a little longer.”
“Don’t waste time. I need it now.”
&nb
sp; “I understand.”
“One more question, Etienne. Do you have anything new on the Ghost?”
“No.” He laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing, nothing. It’s just that half the police agencies around the world are looking for the Ghost. Now you, too.”
“Well, if you get anything on him, I hope you don’t make the mistake of calling any of them first. Comprenez-vous, Etienne?”
“Oui.”
She hung up.
Marta Krall rarely smiled. All those years of posing for fashion photographers had drained the joy from her. Her eyes were cold and malevolent-looking. Her face could not hide the evil in her heart.
But that was before Chukov hired her to kill the Ghost. She opened her bag and took out a pocket mirror.
Just as she suspected. She was smiling now.
Chapter 27
Marta was confident that Gravois would identify the handsome guy in the photo. His life depended on it. As for tracking down the Ghost, she had a better resource. And he was right here in New York City: Ira.
She took a cab down to lower Manhattan and got off on Canal Street, where the air was thick with the fumes of the hundreds of trucks and a few scattered cars that crawled their way into the Holland Tunnel heading for Jersey.
She walked from Canal to Laight, then along West to Watts, and finally, positive that no one was tailing her, past the sprawling UPS truck garage to a soot-gray brick building on Washington Street.
The building was a little piece of old New York gone to seed. Six stories; six doorbells. She pushed the only one that had a name on it—ACME INDUSTRIES.
A voice answered. “Sorry, we’re closed.”
“I’m told that you’re open late for your premier customers,” Marta said.
The voice came back. “What level premier customer?”
“Titanium.”
She was buzzed in. She walked past the elevator and took the stairs. On the second-floor landing she saw a rat gnawing on a moldy bagel. He didn’t move, just glared at her and bared his teeth until she passed.