From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (17 page)

CHAPTER TEN

When Max brought a tray with a pot of coffee, cups, saucers,
cream, sweeteners and cookies on it, he placed it on the table between Carmen,
Babe and Jake, and offered to pour.

“I’m fine,” Carmen said.
 
“Thank you.”
 

She poured herself a cup, took it black, sipped it, decided she
liked it and chose a short bread sugar cookie from the platter.
 
With the exception of the cheese and
cracker she ate earlier, she hadn’t eaten today.
 
She bit into it and leveled Jake with a
look.

“What’s your real name?” she asked.

“Fred.”

“So, Jake,” she said.
 
“Why don’t you fill me in on what you know?
 
Why were Alex and I targeted?”

“You’re end-of-cycle,” he said.

She knew what that meant, but she wanted to push him to see how
much he’d reveal.
 
“And what does
that mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious?
 
Even before you killed Laurent, they were finished with you.
 
They thought you knew too much and it
was time to invest in other people as skilled as you.”
 

“Too much about what?”

“No idea.”
 

“You must have some idea.”

“I don’t.
 
But they
think you know too much about something.
 
Maybe them.
 
Maybe something
they did.
 
Maybe something Alex
did.
 
Who knows?”
 
He leaned forward and poured himself a
cup of coffee.
 
“But now that you’ve
killed Laurent, they also want you dead for murdering their colleague.
 
Maybe even especially because you killed
him and thus dared to challenge them.
 
All of their resources are pointed at you right now, Carmen.
 
They want to send a message to the other
agents working for the syndicate.
 
Fuck with them, meet your death.”

“How many are on me?”

“Best guess?
 
Another agent recently told me that the syndicate employs about
seventeen people.
 
Give or
take.
 
Probably more.
 
Before Alex died, that included you,
Alex, myself and the two men who died last night—the one whose chest I
crushed, and the one hit by the truck.
 
With us out of the picture, that would leave about a dozen or so.
 
That said, no one knows for sure.”

“Why are you out of the picture, Jake?”

“End-of-cycle.
 
They’re cleaning house.
 
Apparently,
I also know too much, though I’m not sure about what and I don’t have time to
find out.
 
I want out of this city
and this life.
 
Time for a change.”

“Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me,” she said.
 
“If the syndicate wants you dead, why
did you agree to work for them last night?
 
Why were they on the phone texting you about my whereabouts?”
 

She looked at Babe, who was looking at Jake with a furrowed
brow.

“Am I the only one who finds that odd?
 
Do you, Babe?”

“I do.”

“So, why don’t you explain, Jake?
 
How are you a target one day, then their
champion the next?”

“I’m hardly their champion, Carmen, but I’ll tell you how it
went down.
 
The two men hired to
kill me last night proved that the syndicate wants me dead.
 
I needed to buy time and figure out a
way to get out of the city safe.
 
Because of what you did to Laurent, I thought I had another shot with
them and took it.
 
After the guy who
chased me became roadkill, I contacted Katzev and promised I could deliver you
to him.
 
I told him I knew he wanted
me dead, but to give me a chance to prove my loyalty to them.
 
So, I used my contacts.
 
I found you.
 
I bought time.
 
When you left me at the bar alone, I
answered their text, left you a note and got the hell out of there before they
arrived.
 
You and I both know that
when you’re targeted for elimination, that’s it with them.
 
Sure, I found you for them.
 
But they’ll still try to kill me.”

“So, in other words, you set me up for nothing.”

He studied her over his coffee.
 
“No, in other words, I bought myself
time.
 
You’ve been around long
enough to know this isn’t personal, Carmen.
 
You also know I owe you nothing.
 
My first responsibility is to
myself.
 
Same goes for you.
 
If I can buy myself time to figure out a
way to get out of this city and away from Katzev and the rest of them, that’s
what I plan to do.”

“And yet here you sit,” she said.
 
“Why?”

Babe McAdoo turned in her chair and looked at Carmen with
delight on her face.
 
“Finally,” she
said.
 
“The best part.”

“What’s the best part, Babe?”

“We’re going to have an adventure,” she said.
 
“My biggest and most aggressive one
yet.”

Carmen saw it and waited for it.

“It’ll be fun,” Babe said.
 
“Just the three of us, with Spocatti a phone call away to offer guidance
should we need it.
 
Oh, and so long
as we call him with daily updates to feed whatever part of him needs to be fed
in order to keep him alive, Gelling has promised us access to his
contacts.
 
And of course we have
mine, which dig deeper into the roots of New York than Katzev ever could
imagine.
 
This isn’t, after all, my
first time at the rodeo.”

Carmen held Babe’s gaze and sat unmoving.
 
She looked at that weird little Zen bird
sitting before her—her red hair and yellow caftan clashing against this
room she had sheathed in gold—and couldn’t help feeling her gut
sink.
 
Go on
, she
thought.
 
Just say it.

“Don’t you see?” Babe McAdoo said.
 
“Gird your loins, Carmen.
 
We’re going to take down the syndicate.”

CHAPTER ELEV
EN

While Carmen met with Babe McAdoo, Illarion Katzev prepared to
address the syndicate.

On the massive stainless steel wall before him were thirteen
flatscreen monitors.
 
In the center,
one was left dark out of respect for Jean-Georges Laurent, whose face was blown
off at the Four Seasons several weeks ago in ways that demanded a closed casket
at his funeral, where people clucked their tongues in pity not because he was
dead, but, some felt, because they were cheated out of seeing the ruined nature
of what rested within.

The other twelve monitors, on the other hand, were alive with
images of unhappy people from around the world, all locked in their safe rooms
and transmitting across secure lines.
 

In the wake of Laurent’s death, these people comprised what was
left of the syndicate—three women and nine men.
 
None was pleased to be here now, though
at least they understood the importance of why they were asked to leave behind
their heady lives to deal with a potentially dangerous situation before it
became too late to do so.

For Illarion Katzev, that understanding would make the meeting
more productive and, when decisions were made, easier to deal with when plans
were put into motion.

In the wake of Carmen Gragera’s escape from the Waldorf Astoria
the night before, Katzev decided to call the meeting in an effort to get in
front of the situation before Carmen got in front of it herself.
 

Each person who looked back at him now knew the extent of
Gragera’s skills, which were impressive.
 
She wasn’t somebody they took lightly—some feared her—which
is one of the few reasons they marked her for death several weeks ago, thinking
it was time to destroy her connection with them and sow fresh talent
elsewhere.
 

But what concerned them most was her romantic relationship with
Alex Williams, whom they also considered a threat because a respected third
party informed them that for whatever reason, Williams had been gathering
intelligence on them.
 

In Bora Bora, they successfully killed Williams, but Carmen
escaped, which all agreed left them in danger because Alex likely shared his
intelligence with her.
 
And if he
had, with enough investigative work, that knowledge could lead her straight to
them, which was a concern because with her lover dead due to them, all believed
she’d seek revenge soon.

So, Illarion Katzev, a formidable man not yet fifty who made
his fortune the old-fashioned way—through murder and with ruthless
calculation—read over his notes a final time while the others prepared
themselves for his recommendation on how best to handle the elusive Gragera
now.

“Colleagues,” he said, glancing up at the monitors.

“Katzev,” came a dozen replies.

“Since last night, I’ve been reading over our files on Carmen
Gragera and our seven-year history with her.
 
There’s no question that she must go, as
many of us agreed upon weeks ago due to the potential threat she invites via
her relationship with Alex Williams.
 
The good news is that in researching the information we’ve compiled on
her over the years, I’ve found a possible Achille’s heel.”
 

He let a beat of silence pass and watched the impatience on some
of their faces turn to interest.
 
“Carmen loves children,” he said.
 
“I have no idea why, since I can’t stand them myself.
 
But Carmen loves them in ways that are
almost...unnatural.”

“How do you know this?”

The question came from Conrad Bates, who owned more of Las
Vegas than he probably should given the financial straits that city was
in.
 
Still, for balance, his
portfolio offered a wealth of other properties, mostly hotels located in
Manhattan, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and throughout Europe, with particular
attention paid to London and Paris, where his businesses thrived.

He was younger than Katzev, a product of one of the better
Boston families who took his sizable inheritance and actually did something
with it.
 
He was aggressive and
unethical, which were fine traits the syndicate embraced, though Katzev had
never liked the man, not that his feelings for him mattered much.
 
What mattered was the money Bates
brought to the syndicate, which like everyone else here, was substantial.
 
It also was critical to achieving what
each desired as they moved forward not just into greater wealth, but into what
they really wanted—unfathomable power.

“Hello, Conrad,” he said.

“Illarion.”

“How’s Vegas treating you these days?”

“I’m hoping we can address that at our next meeting.”

“I’ll bet.”
 

“But if you could answer my question now, I think we’d all
agree that’s more pressing.
 
Or at
least it seems to be given the urgency of this meeting.”

“In reading over Carmen’s files, one thing became clear.
 
Each time she was assigned a job that
involved killing a child, she turned it down flat.
 
She gave no reason why.
 
She simply refused to do it.
 
In her files, there are seventeen
instances of her doing so over our time with her.”

“Who cares?” Bates said.
 
“So, she likes kids.
 
Some of
us do.
 
What’s your point?”

Katzev kept his features neutral even though he wanted to call
the man an idiot for not having the imagination to see something so
obvious.
 
“If Carmen loves children
so much, then we threaten her with them.”

“Does she have children?”

This time, it was the eighty-year-old Greek shipping heiress
Hera Hallas who asked the question.
 
Katzev looked up at the elegant woman with the tan skin and the chic,
pure white hair pulled away from her face in a blunt ponytail and knew again
that in her youth, she must have been a great beauty.

“She doesn’t have children,” he said.

“If she loves them so much, why not?”

“Caring for a child while gunning down adults is probably a lot
to handle,” Conrad Bates said.
 
“I’d
imagine changing diapers and changing gun magazines would be a challenge for
any single mother.
 
But I still
don’t see the significance, Illarion.
 
So what if she loves children?”

Patience,
he told himself.
 
Patience.

“In going through the intelligence, what also came to the fore
is that she gives to only one charity.”

“Crying Toddlers Anonymous?” Bates said.
 
“Early Onset Childhood Dementia?
 
The Skinned Knees Institute of
Montana?
 
The Boogieman Fund?”

Hera Hallas rolled her eyes in reaction to the juvenile
comments.
 
In the monitor next to
her, another member of the syndicate, who was in Paris, where it was evening,
was wearing black tie and starting to look annoyed.
 
Katzev saw him check his watch.
 
Since they all could see each other, he
wondered if Bates also caught the man’s impatience.

“Actually, Conrad,” Katzev said, “regardless of the disrespect
you bring to the table, not to mention your cynicism, which is unwarranted,
you’re not that far off as the charity does have to do with children.
 
Under Franco’s leadership, Carmen
Gragera’s father became an unintended adopted orphan.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Bates asked.
 

“If you pay attention to the news—and I hope that you do,
Conrad, beyond the truncated information wedged into the CNN crawl—you’ll
remember the scandal that broke out in Spain in 1989, when it was revealed that
three hundred thousand babies were stolen after their mothers gave birth to
them.
 
Does anyone remember that?”

“I do,” Hera Hallas said.
 
“It was awful.”

“The mothers—often young and unmarried and thus
considered worthless under Franco’s regime—were told that their child was
stillborn.
 
Or that it died soon
after birth.
 
When the mother asked
to see the child, she was shown, at a distance, a baby’s corpse the hospital
kept in a freezer.
 
Why?
 
Because her child already had been sold
by the Catholic Church.
 
That
adopting couple who paid for the child was generally affluent and a member of
the church, and thus deemed more suitable to raise the child than a single
mother considered a disgrace to Franco and naturally to the church.
 
Franco died in 1975.
 
The church continued this practice for
another fourteen years, only stopping when the scandal came to light because a
man on his deathbed revealed the truth to his son that he bought him for two
hundred thousand pesetas.
 
Or about
fifteen hundred dollars.
 
It became
a sensation.
 
Worldwide news.
 
Another bullet to the heart of the
Catholic Church.
 
Certainly, you
heard of it, Conrad.”

Bates hesitated, but then said of course he had.

Bullshit
, thought Katzev.
 
But he pressed on.
 
“For Carmen’s father, the problem went
beyond the mere kidnapping.
 
The
parents who bought and raised him were Christian zealots.
 
Monsters.
 
They bought him with the sole intent to
abuse him, thinking that if they beat this child born to a woman they
considered a whore, then certainly they’d be rewarded for their efforts when
their time came to enter heaven’s gates.”
 
He waved his hand.
 
“Or
something like that.
 
They were
horrific to him.
 
They did
unspeakable things to him.
 
It
wasn’t until Neron Gragera was sixteen that he managed to free himself by
stabbing them to death while they slept.
 
He disappeared for years.
 
No
one knew where he went.
 
It was
during that time that he fell in with the right people—at least as far as
he was concerned—and was trained to become an assassin.”

“So, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Bates
said.
 
“Fantastic.
 
But what does this have to do with why
we’re here now?”

“Carmen Gragera is a wealthy woman,” Katzev said.
 
“She and her father were close.
 
It’s no coincidence that a great deal of
her money goes to one particular orphanage in Madrid and also to St. Vincent’s
Services’ seven group homes in Queens and Staten Island.
 
Each caters to troubled children, all
emotionally scarred.
 
She gives
millions each year to make certain each organization gives its charges the best
care, from living quarters to schools to access to doctors, including
psychiatrists trained to deal specifically with troubled children and
teens.
 
When she can, she visits the
children.
 
She has grown attached to
many of them, especially those here in New York because here is where Carmen
often finds herself.
 
I think she
gives so much because she wants to honor what her father endured.
 
She took his experience, dipped deep
into her own money, and is actively supporting two organizations that need her
to succeed.
 
I think Carmen takes
care of these children because she knows that by doing so, they will be
properly cared for and won’t suffer her father’s fate.”

“How did you find this out?” Hera Hallas said.

“There’s nothing I can’t find out, Hera.
 
If you read between the lines, much of
it is here in the files.
 
Some of it
is investigative work I did on my part.
 
With it, I started to piece everything together.
 
Whatever I couldn’t fill in on my own
was a few phone calls away.”

“But to what end?” Bates asked.

“Can’t you figure it out?”
 
The person who spoke was the Parisian, Marius Aubert.
 
Katzev looked up at him and saw that he
was looking down at Bates, his impatience with the man as high as the tension
in the room.
 
“Obviously, Illarion
plans to target one of the organizations.
 
I’m assuming St. Vincent’s because of its close proximity to him and
because Carmen is now in New York.
 
He’ll threaten Carmen with those children.
 
He’ll tell her that if she doesn’t come
in, he’ll kill them one-by-one until she does.”
 
Aubert’s eyes lifted to Katzev’s.
 
“Am I right, Illarion?
 
Is that what you plan to do?
 
Exchange their lives for hers?”