From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (20 page)

“Who is ‘us’?”

“The syndicate.”

“What’s that?”

“A group of people like me.”

“There are more people like you?”

“The world is filled with people like me.”

“And who are you?”

“Someone who will go to any length to get what he wants.”

“When is enough enough?”

“There never is enough.
 
Not for any of us.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not how we work.
 
We want it all, regardless of how we go
about getting it.
 
We’re no better
than any government or political leader, so don’t judge us.”

“Like you did my cheap shoes?”

“Sorry about that.”

“Whatever.”
 
She
paused.
 
“You know, it’s kind of
pathetic that you justify your actions by comparing yourselves to what likely
are corrupt leaders and governments.
 
It’s laughable.
 
You’ve got
to see that.
 
The keyword is
‘corrupt.’”

“What I need to see from you right now is a performance.
 
You’re going to look into this camera,
you’re going to put on your ‘terrified’ face, and you’re going to tell Carmen
that you’ve been abducted, that your life has been threatened, and that if she
doesn’t come in, you’ll be murdered.”

“You’re already going to murder me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then you think I’m a fool.
 
I love Carmen.
 
She means everything to me.
 
And I highly doubt that she’s an
assassin.
 
You’re full of shit.
 
If there was any reason to live, it
would be for her.
 
I won’t sell her out.
 
I won’t do your video.”

“No, actually, you will do it.”

“No, actually, I won’t do it.”

“Sure about that?”

“I’m certain.
 
I’m not
going to be part of this.
 
I won’t
be associated with bringing down a woman who has been there for me unlike any
other.
 
Kill me if you want.
 
As I said, other than Carmen and maybe a
couple of friends, I don’t have much to live for.
 
I’m reminded of that each time I’m
treated like a worthless piece of shit at school, which is pretty much every
day.
 
So, just do it.
 
It’s not like I haven’t thought of
taking my own life in the past.
 
What’s the difference?
 
Either you do it or I’ll eventually do it.
 
So, do it.”

“In time,” he said.
 
He looked up at the man she called Roid Boy and nodded at him.
 
With one swift move, the butt of the
man’s gun slammed against Chloe Philips’ temple and knocked her
unconscious.
 
Her head slumped
toward her chest.
 
Her blonde hair
hung in front of her face, concealing it.
 
Katzev studied her critically and decided that the hair had to move so
it revealed her face.
 
Looking at
her, he felt that they also needed a bit of blood to send home the message that
they meant business.

“Hit her in the mouth,” he said.

The man who struck her in the temple did
so—hard—and a bloody lip revealed itself.
 
From the sheer force of the strike, the
blood splattered onto her chin and then dripped onto her gray sweater.

“Get her hair out of her face.”

The man did so.

Katzev walked over and positioned Chloe’s head so it was tilted
just slightly down and to the right.
 
Now, there could be no mistaking who she was when the video was
viewed.
 

He went behind the camera, turned it on and brought Chloe Philips
into focus.
 
Satisfied, he began to
speak off camera, delivering to Carmen his own message, which was underscored
with the bloody sight of one young woman he knew she loved dearly.
 

When he finished, they compressed the file and sent it in an
encrypted email to Carmen’s cell phone.

CHAPTER FIFTE
EN

Babe McAdoo entered her grand gilded parlor just off the foyer
while Carmen, seated across the room in one of the uncomfortable red Victorian
chairs, looked at Jake, seated across from her.
 

No matter how many times she was told that she could trust this
man, her gut told her she couldn’t.
 
She didn’t like him.
 
She had
a bad feeling about him.
 
She
thought he was duplicitous and, worse, unscrupulous.
 
She didn’t want him here.
 
But she knew that if she was going to
see this through, she couldn’t insult Spocatti or Babe, who urged her to listen
to them and trust him.

So, she would watch him.
 
Closely.
 
If he made a wrong
move, just one step that gave away his true intentions, assuming he had any,
she’d take him out and be vindicated for doing so.

“All right,” Babe said, coming around and taking the seat next
to Carmen.
 
“We know where Katzev
lives.
 
We know that somewhere, he
has Chloe Philips, one of the young girls Carmen takes care of through her philanthropy.”

“Philanthropy?” Jake said.
 
“That’s a bit a stretch.”

Babe leveled him with a glance.
 
“In my world, Jake, we call the millions
Carmen has given to St Vincent’s Services philanthropy.
 
In your world, and with your public education
and middle-class background, it’s probably called charity.
 
I assure you, with the amount of money
Carmen has given over the years, what she’s done is nothing but
philanthropy.
 
But let’s not get
hung up on words.
 
We have a
situation at hand and we don’t have long to figure out how best to resolve
it.”
 

She turned to Carmen.
 
“Do you have any idea where he might have taken Chloe?”

“None.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Very little.
 
That’s how it’s always been.
 
The same with Laurent, whom I only met briefly.
 
The syndicate is an enigma to me.
 
It’s how they’ve designed it.”

Babe turned to Jake.
 
He was a big man, muscular.
 
Wore jeans, black sweater, black shoes.
 
He was too large for the chair, which
likely is why he was leaning forward now because his broad shoulders wouldn’t
fit easily into the narrow, curving back.
 
His hands were clasped in front of him and Carmen noticed on his right
hand that the top of his third finger was bluntly cut off.
 
She hadn’t caught that before.
 
She stared at it now and wondered how he
lost it.

“And you?” Babe said to him.
 
“Your dealings with the syndicate?”

“Same as Carmen’s.
 
You only speak to them via a secure line or through secure email.
 
You’re offered a job, the details are
spelled out for you, you decide whether you want to take it and then you
negotiate the money.”
 
He looked
over at Carmen.
 
“Whenever she
wouldn’t kill a child, I usually got the job.
 
So, thanks for the business, Carmen.”

“I’m sure you enjoyed the work.”

“A life is a life.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“What would you say to Spocatti?”

“What I’ve already said to him.
 
I don’t kill children.
 
I don’t approve of it.
 
There are other ways to handle a
situation.”

“Anyway,” Babe said, determined to stay focused.
 
“Gelling was able to find out where
Katzev lives.
 
Or, at least one of
the places where he lives.
 
But this
is his Manhattan address and the location is so prime and the apartment so
large, I’m certain that it’s his primary residence in the city.
 
Once, years ago, before I had the good
sense to eschew society once and for all, I think I might have even been at a
party there.”

“Where is it?” Carmen asked.

“He lives in a penthouse on Fifth and Seventy-Seventh Street.”

“Way up in the sky,” Carmen said.
 
“Presumably, more difficult to
reach.
 
But not for me.”

“Or for me,” Jake said.

Carmen ignored him.
 
If this arrogant son of a bitch got in her way when it came to getting
Chloe back, she’d cut off his balls.

“Gelling also did some additional research, which I confirmed
through my own contacts,” Babe said.
 
“Apparently, his real name is Iver Kester.
 
Hails from Aberdeen, where the majority
of his family remains, including his mother, who is in her seventies.
 
Kester has four brothers and one sister,
all of whom live within a mile of their mother.
 
They own a farm in Aberdeen.
 
Most of the family works there,
including several cousins.
 
Their
main source of income comes from the sheep’s milk cheese they produce and sell,
though none have become wealthy from their efforts.
 
It’s sold throughout the UK, even at
Harrods, and it does well enough to allow each a modest living, though not a
significant one.”

“Do we know exactly where they live?”

“We do.
 
But this is
what’s going to make your day, Carmen.
 
I spoke to Spocatti this morning.
 
A friend of his—a fellow assassin based in London—is now on
a plane headed for the airport in Aberdeen.
 
It’s a one-hour trip from London, so he
should be there shortly.
 
There, he
has contacts who will give him the gear he needs should he need to use it.
 
He also will receive various cameras and
video equipment.
 
We’ve asked him to
get surveillance photos to us STAT.
 
What we need to show Katzev, or Kester, or whatever the hell we’re going
to call him—”

“Katzev,” Carmen said.
 
“Easier.”

“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 multi-millionaire.”

“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.
 
Looking at the girl,
whom Carmen had known since Chloe was eight and whom she thought of as 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 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, 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’s something along those
lines.
 
Because we were intimate,
they’re assuming that Alex also shared whatever he had one them with me.
 
If
he had anything.
 
Regardless, they targeted each of us for
it, but only got him.
 
Now, they
want me.”