From Manhattan with Revenge (The Fourth Book in the Fifth Avenue Series) (13 page)

“Fine,” Babe said. “Katzev. We need to
show him that we know who he is and where his family lives. If he’s so damned
secretive about his life and who and what that involves, this information
should rattle him to the core, especially since we learned that his family only
knows him as Iver. They know nothing about the double life he leads elsewhere,
which means they have no idea that their little Iver, who speaks fluent Russian
under an assumed Russian name, is really a masquerading murderer turned
multimillionaire.”

“You have a way with words, Babe,” Carmen
said.

“I wanted to be a writer.”

“Thrillers?”

“Is there another genre?”

Carmen’s cell hummed in her pocket,
followed by a beep. Someone left her a message. She removed phone and saw it
was from Katzev. She stared at it for a moment, secretly worried by what he had
to say to her now that he had Chloe, then she told Babe and Jake that it was
from him.

“What does it say?” Babe asked.

Carmen opened it. Surprised, she said,
“It’s a video.”

Babe and Jake stood and walked behind
her—they’d watch it together. Carmen pressed a button and the video,
which opened to a black screen, started to play.

Gradually, Chloe came into view. She was
sitting in a chair. Her hands were cuffed and resting awkwardly in her lap. Her
head was turned at an unnatural angle. There was blood around her mouth and a
bruise just beneath her bottom lip, which looked split. As she looked at Chloe,
whom Carmen had known since the girl was eight and considered a daughter, she
felt herself start to seize up in fury. Either Chloe was drugged or she was
unconscious. Carmen noted the blood on her sweater and knew it was the latter.

Focus. Remove yourself from her. Pay
attention to the details.

There was a light shining directly above
her, making it difficult for Carmen to get a read on where she might be because
everything else was intentionally in shadow. She had no feel for the size of
the room, but there was nothing around Chloe. Just her in a chair on a cement
floor with a light above her head.

Industrial.

Then came Katzev’s voice.

“Carmen,” he said off camera in his fake
Russian accent, “here is your Chloe. Sad sight, I know, but she wouldn’t
cooperate, so measures were taken and now she’s resting comfortably, I think,
until she wakes with what likely is going to be one mother of a headache. I
have to say, I see why you’re taken with her. She has nerve, which I admire.
Did she get it from you? Hard to say since she comes from the streets. Still,
she thinks the world of you, which must be gratifying, don’t you agree? Even
when I told her you are an assassin, she defended you. Refused to believe me.
It must feel good to be held in such high esteem. To be unconditionally loved,
so much so that Chloe asked me to take her life instead of yours. That kind of
devotion to another human being is foreign to me, of course, but I still
recognize it as something special and rare.”

He let a beat pass. Carmen felt her
stomach sink at the news that Chloe now knew who she really was. Babe put a
hand on her shoulder. The frame tightened on Chloe’s face and this time, Carmen
saw another bruise, this one at Chloe’s temple. So, they struck her there and
knocked her out. The well of revenge rising up within Carmen was growing to the
point that she felt like a dangerously fraying thread, something that could
snap if any more weight was applied to it.

I want to kill him
, she
thought, thinking of Alex and now Chloe.
I’m going to kill him
.

“The trouble with Chloe is that ‘special’
and ‘rare’ die in eight and a half hours,” Katzev said. “That’s all the time
you have to save her. And saving her is simple. You just need to call me and
come in. You’ll be given a designated spot to meet. We’ll pick you up. Then
we’ll talk so nothing is unclear to you. You’ll know exactly why you’re being
eliminated, although I know with all the intimate canoodling you did with Alex,
you already know. Still, on the off chance that there is any confusion, we’ll
be clear with you before we kill you. Then, Chloe will be allowed to go free.
You have my word on that. So, call me soon. Very soon. As in less than
eight-and-a-half-hours soon. I’d hate to have to kill Chloe. Or to light some
fires tonight...”

Carmen clicked off the phone. For a
moment, nobody said anything. They just processed. Then Babe McAdoo, who as
Gelling noted would become more and more exacting and less flighty as the
situation unfolded, walked away from Carmen with her hands pressed in front of
her, almost as if she was dividing the space before her as she walked through
it. Carmen had seen her do this before. This is how she thought.

“We need to think strategically,” she
said. She motioned toward her butler, Max, who stood beside the parlor’s
massive marble fireplace, where he awaited instructions from her. Carmen
watched her make a circle in the air with her finger and mouth the word
coffee
,
and watched him leave the room with a promptness that suggested why they had
such a long working relationship.

“Alex must have learned something,” Carmen
said. “He didn’t share it with me, but he must have found out something
damaging about the syndicate and they’re assuming that because we were lovers,
he told me, which isn’t true because he knew it would compromise me.”

“Any idea what it could be about?” Babe
asked.

She shrugged. “He could have had
intelligence on them. Maybe he learned who some of them were. Where they lived.
I don’t know, but it must be something along those lines. Because we were
intimate, they’re assuming that Alex also shared whatever he had on them with
me.
If
he had anything. Regardless, they targeted us both for it.”

“How do we go forward?” Jake asked.

“Chloe is my priority,” Carmen said. “To
get her out of there and to keep her safe, I’m going in. I’m giving myself over
to them.”

Babe turned her head sharply at her. “You
can’t be serious?” she said. “No matter what you do, they’ll still kill her.
She’s seen his face. We know how this works. You’ll both die there, wherever
‘there’ is.”

“If he gets lucky, he may kill me, but
there’s no way he’s killing her. It won’t happen. I’ll see to it.”

“How can you be certain? They’ll strip you
of your guns and whatever the hell else you have on you when you meet them.
You’ll have no way to fight back. We need to explore other options.”

“I’m not going to just throw myself to the
wolves, Babe. As you suggested, we’re going to be strategic.” She looked up as
Max entered the room with a tray service of coffee. He put it down on the table
between the red chairs and she nodded at him. “I’m going to tell you what I
have in mind,” Carmen said. “I’m open to suggestions, even from you, Jake. When
we’re on the same page, I’ll call Gelling to see if it’s something he’s capable
of doing and also to help him feel connected. If we all agree on what I’m about
to propose, I can’t have him dropping dead on me now.”

* * *

When they finished talking and all agreed
upon what needed to be done, Carmen stepped away from Babe and Jake, who were
discussing the plan, and called Gelling.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, Carmen,” he
said. “That’s my second surprise of the day. The first was when I woke up. I’m always
startled by that. It takes me a minute to believe it. The ceiling over my bed
is painted bright white and sometimes, if the light hits it just right, as it
did this morning, it’s blinding to the point that I think I’ve gone into the
light. The second surprise is hearing from you. Do you have any news for me?”

She told him about the video, what she’d
discussed with Jake and Babe, the compromises that were made, and the plan that
resulted from it.

“It can be done,” he said after a moment.
“To what extent I’m not sure, but at least partly, which should be enough. How
quickly do you need this?”

“As soon as possible.”

“It’s always as soon as possible, just
like it’s always Berlin or Beirut, Moscow or Madrid, but never Brisbane. Never
Canada. Never Maine.”

“We’re in a bind, James.”

“Let me ask you something, Carmen. You’re
willing to die for this girl?”

“I am.”

“But why would you do such a thing? It’s
puzzling.”

“Because I love her. Because she’s
involved in this because of her association with me. Everyone has let her down
in her life. I know how that feels. He told her what I do for work, so now I’m
another disappointment in her life. I plan on repairing that.”

“You’re a complicated woman, Carmen.
Nuanced. You don’t think twice about taking an adult’s life, but you’ll go to
great lengths to save this young woman’s life.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s why I find you fascinating. I
want you to listen to me for a moment. Are you in a place where people can hear
you?”

“Yes.”

“And it would look odd if you left the
room?”

“Yes.”

“Then just listen and take from this what
you will.”

“All right.”

“I’ve done some additional digging.”

She didn’t know what he was going to say,
but the hesitant tone of his voice told her she wasn’t going to like it.

“What I found is intriguing. Did Babe
McAdoo ever tell you that she knew Katzev?”

“Yes. Briefly.”

“Did she tell you that once they were
lovers?”

A chill railed up Carmen’s spine.

“It was very quick. Just an affair. Matter
of weeks, happened years ago and ended badly. But before you go forward with
this plan of yours, you need to know everything. It’s what I promised Spocatti
I’d do. Tell you everything I know as I find out about it. Just before you
called, we spoke and he was concerned about the news. Babe and Katzev were
lovers and what I’ve learned during my one hundred and three years of life,
Carmen, is that when you’ve had sexual relations with someone, things become
skewed, especially when death is at hand. If she hates him still, it could go
well for you. But if some part of her doesn’t hate him, if seeing him again
evokes a fond memory of a romantic dinner or a good fuck, I’m not sure that
she’ll go the distance or what that will mean for you if she doesn’t. Has she
ever told you that they were lovers?”

Carmen looked over at Babe, who was
sipping coffee while listening to Jake, who was gesticulating with his hands
and saying something Carmen couldn’t hear because of the roaring in her ears.
“No. Never.”

“Shouldn’t she have?”

“I would have.”

“Be very careful, Carmen. I have to
apologize. If I’d known this earlier, I never would have sent you to see Babe
McAdoo.

CHA
PTER
SIXTEEN

Aberdeen, Scotland

Liam Martin, longtime friend and colleague
of Vincent Spocatti, with whom he recently joined forces in taking out the wife
and family of an English banker who refused to pay the millions he owed one of
Spocatti’s clients, arrived at Aberdeen Airport with only a carry-on, an
overcoat, and a mission.

So the information could be employed as
quickly as possible, he was given just over two hours to get the photos and the
footage requested of him. Then he’d wire it all to Spocatti, who would send it
directly to Carmen.

As quickly as he could, he went to the
Alamo car rental agency, where he rented a Lincoln MKX, which would was large
enough for his needs, not the least of which was his own size.

Liam Martin, a former Royal Marine, was
not only tall but also a former body builder, which had its curses and its
blessings. At forty-two and in his line of work, it was rare that he didn’t
view his size as a blessing. It was only when the situation physically became
an issue, such as limiting his possibilities for concealment or fitting into
tight spaces, that he wished he were smaller.

Once inside the shiny black Lincoln with
its tinted windows, he made a telephone call and simply said to the person who
answered, “Fifteen minutes.”

He severed the connection, left the airport,
and took a left on Dycer Drive. Fall had settled upon Scotland, which now was
robbed of much of the deep greens Liam had come to love and associate with it
during the several times, often in summer, he had been hired to go there to do
a job.

The earth was hardening. Few leaves were
on the trees. There was a chill in the air, so he clicked on the heat as well
as the heated driver’s seat and drove across the curving road until he came to
an intersection. He stopped and then turned right onto A96. He drove for five
kilometers before he pulled off on the side of the road, where his contact was
waiting for him in a black Audi SUV.

The exchange was swift. Wordless. In a
wide leather duffel bag put into the back of the MKX were all the rifles, guns,
and ammunition he’d need. In a smaller leather bag were the cameras and video
equipment, which were so powerful, Liam Martin could do the work he needed at a
comfortable distance without drawing attention to himself until he was given
the order to do so. Should, of course, that order come.