“I’m stoned,” I said, “not stupid. If I tell you where they are, you’ll kill me.”
“You’re right, but if you give me the diamonds, it will be quick and painless. One bullet,” she said, pressing the gun directly below my medulla oblongata.
“What happens if I don’t give you the diamonds?”
“You’ll still die fast,” Marta said, and I could sense a note of delight creep into her cold, robotic delivery. “But Katherine Sanborne won’t be so lucky.”
Hearing Katherine’s name was a jolt to my system.
“She had nothing to do with this,” I said. “I took the diamonds. She didn’t even know about them until ten minutes before you showed up. Keep her out of it.”
“And when I say a slow death,” Krall said, “I’m not talking about ten minutes.”
Krall was the Marquis de Sade of assassins. For many of her targets, death was only the beginning. When their hearts stopped, she’d rip the cord out of a lamp, plug it into a wall socket, and jump-start the victims back into consciousness. Then she would slowly torture and kill them again. She was sicker than Zelvas. And now she was threatening to kill Katherine over the course of days, maybe weeks.
My mental faculties had been dulled, but my adrenal gland started firing on all cylinders. I could feel the adrenaline rush as my body went into fight-or-flight mode.
I am invincible, I thought.
My brain shook off the effects of the marijuana and I forced myself to think in straight lines—somewhat straight, anyway. Maybe a little crooked. Marta Krall had a gun, but I had one small advantage. She still had no idea who I really was. If she knew I was the Ghost, I’d be dead already. I’d gotten the best of her in Venice, but she probably figured that was my Marine training. I was an amateur who got lucky. It wouldn’t happen again. I had to convince her she was right.
“I’ll take you to the diamonds,” I said. “Please don’t hurt my girlfriend. You have to promise.”
“You have my word,” she lied through her perfectly white teeth.
“I…I…I hid them.” My body started to tremble and my head shook from side to side. The trick was to look petrified and not to let her catch me scanning the area for a weapon, anything I could use against her.
But she was one step ahead of me. “Pick up the beer bottle,” she said, “and lower it to the ground. Slowly.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I did exactly what she asked.
“Where did you hide them?”
“Bus station. A locker.”
“Give me the key.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I hid that, too. It’s in my hotel room.”
“Take me to it.”
“Promise me you won’t hurt Katherine,” I begged.
“I already promised,” she said, disgusted with me. This was not what she expected from a guy who had thrown her out of a fifth-story window. She relaxed. The gun was no longer pressed to the back of my neck. She stepped around to face me.
I froze just looking at her—a deer in her headlights. My body language told her exactly what I wanted her to think—you won.
“Not so brave now, are you? Are you?”
I shook my head. “No. Not so brave. Not brave at all.”
“You’re nothing but a dickless wonder, Matthew Bannon. Let’s go,” she said.
I started to walk, but then stopped. “My picture. Please.”
“What?” she said.
“My picture. Katherine. I can’t leave it here,” I sniveled, acting stoned. “Can’t leave it.”
By now Krall was sick of me and ready to do whatever it took to get me to the bus station. “Take the fucking picture,” she said.
I turned, teetered unsteadily toward the table. I picked up my sketch of Katherine. Then I let out a moan. “Oh, no. Oh, God.”
“What now?” she said.
I lowered my head. “I pissed my pants.”
“You’re absolutely disgusting,” she said. “Turn around. Let me see you.”
I turned, and her eyes dropped to my crotch for an instant. I grabbed the Rapidograph pen from the table, and plunged the steel tip directly into the gel of Marta Krall’s right eye. She gasped, and I forced it deeper—into her brain. Her long legs went out from under her. She collapsed into me but I let her fall.
I think she was dead before she even hit the ground. Her green eyes looked up at me. No movement. Nothing. Dead killer eyes.
I scanned the patio quickly. It was still empty. There were no witnesses to what had just happened here.
I couldn’t help thinking—I’m damn good at this, killing bad guys. Even stoned.
Chapter 65
What happened next proved that I was definitely still stoned. I stood Marta Krall upright and put her arm around my neck. Her head drooped and her right eye socket was still leaking blood. “I wish I had one of those pirate eye patches,” I muttered as I slipped my sunglasses on her.
I sat her down in a chair and picked up my sketches and her gun—a J-frame Smith & Wesson snubnose. Then I lifted her up again.
“Here we go, sweetie,” I said. “I’m going to find a nice place for you to sleep it off.”
The canal was only a few feet away, but I didn’t have anything to weigh her down with. “Besides,” I said to her, “I already had the fun of tossing you in the drink on our first date.”
We started walking along Beursstraat, which was teeming with nightlife.
Three guys in Holy Cross sweatshirts were standing outside an Internet café, saw us, and immediately started laughing their asses off.
“Somebody’s not going to get laid tonight,” one of them called to me.
“Hey, buddy,” the second one yelled. “You’re supposed to get them drunk, not put them in a coma.”
I played along. “She’s a blind date,” I said. “She wasn’t blind when I met her, but she is now.”
That cracked them up, too.
“Where’d you meet her?” the third one asked.
“At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,” I said.
They whooped more laughter, and I kept walking. Marta and I were the entertainment of the moment, and people stopped what they were doing to stare at us. Not everybody said something, but those who did had a wisecrack. Nobody suspected she was dead.
Marta and I turned onto a dark side street that was lined with parked cars on both sides.
“Oh, look, honey, here’s our car,” I said, grabbing the door handle on a silver Vauxhall Corsa. It was locked.
I moved on to a second car. Locked. Same with the third.
The fourth one was a faded red Volkswagen van. I was able to open the door—after I smashed the side window with Marta’s gun.
I laid her flat on the backseat and retrieved my sunglasses. She stared vacantly at the roof of the van, her right eye a whole lot more vacant than the left.
“Thank you for a memorable evening, Marta,” I said, “but I’m afraid this is our last date.”
I shut the car door and headed back to my hotel to sleep off my buzz. I needed my wits about me tomorrow.
I had diamonds to sell.
Chapter 66
I checked out of the Bodburg Hotel at 6 a.m. and relocated to a quiet little bed-and-breakfast on Geldersekade in the heart of Amsterdam’s Chinatown. I had about eight hours to get ready for my face to face with Diederik de Smet.
But first I had to change my face.
Too many people were looking for Matthew Bannon.
The homeless-man disguise I used when I was stalking Zelvas was simple enough to do on my own, but this time I needed a total transformation that would stand up to close scrutiny.
I’ve used the services of a dozen different makeup artists around the world, and one of the best was right here in Amsterdam—a Cuban expatriate named Domingo Famosa.
Domingo had worked for Dirección de Inteligencia, the main intelligence agency of the Castro government. His job was to create special-effects makeup, sometimes for the DI agents, and someti
mes for the face and body doubles who stepped in for Fidel when the assassination threat level on El Jefe was high.
I took a cab to Domingo’s studio on Waalsteeg.
He was in his late sixties and had a severe speech impediment that was reputed to have been caused by having his tongue seared with a red-hot poker. It’s not clear whether the punishment was at the hands of the enemy or his own people, but whoever did it made their point. In the six hours I spent in the makeup chair, Domingo never uttered a word.
He gelled my hair flat, glued on a bald cap, and covered my face with wet plaster bandages. Once it hardened into a mask he removed it from me, added Plasticine, and sculpted fifty years of lines and wrinkles into the face.
He made a second mold and filled it with hot gelatin, creating a flexible prosthetic that he applied to my face with surgical glue.
For the next hour he artfully applied makeup, giving me the uneven skin tone and the telltale age spots of an eighty-year-old man.
Finally, he added contact lenses to create old-man rings around my irises and topped off the look with a gray wig.
I looked in the mirror. Young Matthew Bannon was gone. I was staring at my grandfather.
“That’s frightening,” I said.
He nodded, then led me to a walk-in closet and pulled out a three-piece charcoal-gray suit.
“Prosperous, but conservative,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
He finished off my wardrobe with a white shirt, a conservative blue-and-gray-striped tie, and black-leather wingtips.
I got dressed and stood in front of a full-length mirror, adjusting my posture by dropping my shoulders and bending my head and upper back forward.
Domingo was behind me. I turned around. “I want to thank you, young fellow,” I said in my new gravelly voice. “You are a true artist and I am grateful for your services.”
He grinned.
I stood there for a beat and made little sucking noises through my teeth—my grandfather’s trademark. “So, Señor Famosa, what do you think?” I said.
The grin got wider. He raised his right hand, made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger, aimed it straight at me, and pulled the imaginary trigger.
I took it as a sign of approval. Still, it was unnerving coming from someone who had spent his career disguising guys to take a bullet for Castro.
Chapter 67
Diederik de Smet had been charming over the phone. “If the quality is good, and you’re selling at a reasonable price,” he said, “I’d be happy to buy your merchandise.”
From what I had heard about the Snake, I knew he’d be even happier to steal my merchandise. And he had the organization to do it.
De Smet set the meeting for 2 p.m. at the Café Karpershoek, the oldest bar in Amsterdam. It’s directly across from Centraal Station, so it’s usually crowded with tourists who are eager to drink down the Heineken and soak up the atmosphere.
It’s also a big draw for the locals, because the café has a hard-and-fast no-music policy, which makes it a perfect place for anyone interested in a pint, a snack, and a serious conversation.
I walked through the door at exactly 2 p.m. and took a red silk pocket square from my jacket and mopped my brow. A man at a corner table stood up. I recognized him immediately. His face had been on the front page of the papers many times, but his ass had never been in jail.
I walked over and shook his hand. “I’m Yitzchak Ziffer,” I said, adding an Eastern European Jewish accent to my aged voice.
“Diederik de Smet. A pleasure to meet you.”
“What a charming place,” I said, scanning the room. “The dark wood, the brass fixtures, the artwork…”
Two men at a far table and two more at the bar were watching my every move.
“What a rich history this establishment must have,” I continued.
“It was built in sixteen oh six,” he said.
“Ah, it’s good to find something that’s older than I am,” I said.
We laughed and sat down, and he poured two beers from a pitcher on the table.
“How come we’ve never done business before, Mr. Ziffer?” he said.
“I’m from New York,” I said. “I worked in the Diamond District. I retired fifteen years ago, but I’m helping a friend. He came into some lovely stones unexpectedly, and he doesn’t know anything about the art of negotiating.”
De Smet smiled. He was about forty-five and had a hawk nose, thin lips, perfect teeth, and enough gel in his thick black hair to wax a bowling alley.
“I heard something about a young man who recently came into quite a few lovely stones,” he said. “Can I see them?”
“These are but a small sample,” I said, handing him a velvet pouch that held about thirty diamonds.
He rolled them through his fingers, then put a jeweler’s loupe in his eye and studied about ten of them.
“Lovely, indeed,” he said. “Good color, slightly included. Where are the rest?”
I handed him photos I had taken before leaving New York. All the diamonds sat in a glass container on a scale.
“Very impressive,” de Smet said. “There are rumors circulating that these might have belonged to my competitor.”
“They belong to my client,” I said. “Would you rather I sell them to your competitor?”
“You couldn’t,” he said, his toothy grin turning into a sneer. “And if you tried, they would kill you. Word travels, Mr. Ziffer. The Russians are looking for some stolen diamonds.”
I stood up. “I came to Amsterdam looking for a buyer, Mr. de Smet. Obviously you’re not him.”
“Sit,” he said.
I didn’t. “I’ve wasted enough time as it is,” I said.
“Please,” he said. “Sit.”
I sat.
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Ziffer,” he said, “but you know what they say—let the buyer beware.”
“Beware of what?” I said. “Have I given you reason not to trust me?”
“Mr. Ziffer, I wouldn’t trust you if you were my Dutch uncle. But if all your diamonds are as good as they look, I’ll take them off your hands for five million American dollars.”
“I’m an inadequate photographer, Mr. de Smet. These diamonds are better than they look, and they’re worth thirteen.”
He didn’t blink.
I sipped my beer. “But in the interest of a quick sale, I will accept ten.”
“Six,” he snapped back.
I shook my head. “My client won’t be happy with anything less than nine.”
“Your client will be happy if the Russians don’t find him and connect his balls to a car battery. Final offer—seven million dollars.”
“I’m at nine, you’re at seven,” I said. “Let’s meet at eight million.”
“Let’s not. Seven million. Take it or leave it. Either way, the beer is on me.”
“You’re practically stealing them,” I said. “But I never had a problem with stealing. I’ll take it. Can we do the transfer tonight? You can pay me in euro banknotes. I don’t know what the equivalent of seven million American weighs, but at my age I don’t think I’ll be able to lift it.”
Actually I knew exactly what it weighed. Seven million in hundred-dollar bills would tip the scales at one hundred and fifty-four pounds—too much to carry at any age. The same amount in five-hundred-euro notes was only twenty-six pounds.
De Smet shrugged. Dollars, euros—he didn’t care. He was probably planning to hand over the money, take the diamonds, and then take the money back.
“Tonight is fine with me,” he said. “There’s a bar on Rembrandtplein where we can do business in total privacy.”
I shook my head. “It’s not only the buyer who must beware,” I said. “I’d rather go somewhere not so private. How about the two of us take a nice romantic moonlight dinner cruise along the canal. I’ll be on the boat that leaves the Prins Hendrikkade dock at seven-thirty. Bring the money. And come alone.”
“Of course,”
he said. “You as well.”
“The cruise lasts two hours. When we get back to the dock, I will be at the front of the queue and get off first. You, my friend, will be at the very back of the line. By the time you will get off, I’ll be gone, and you won’t be tempted to follow me. Is that condition acceptable?”
“No problem,” de Smet answered. “All I want are the diamonds.”
Chapter 68
I stepped outside the Café Karpershoek, and the two men who were watching me from the bar followed. The Ghost could have lost them in half a minute, but it wouldn’t have been smart for old Mr. Ziffer to shake them like a pro. I’d have to make them think they lost me.
I walked across the street to the cab stand at Centraal Station. I got into the first taxi and told the driver to take me to the InterContinental Amstel Hotel.
“Drive slowly,” I said. “I want to enjoy the view.”
De Smet’s boys caught the cab behind me and had no trouble keeping up.
I knew the Amstel well. I had stayed there the last time I had a job in Amsterdam. It’s a beautifully restored landmark building—a grand old palace that sits majestically in the heart of the city, overlooking the Amstel River. It’s the essence of Dutch charm, elegance, and efficiency.
The cab stopped at the entrance, and a burly uniformed doorman with a handlebar mustache opened the door. I recognized him immediately.
“Rutger,” I said as he helped me out of the taxi. “My favorite doorman. Do you remember me from last summer? Yitzchak Ziffer. You took excellent care of me. Good to see you again.”
I put a hundred-euro note in his hand, and his eyes popped. He had no idea who I was, but that didn’t slow him down.
“So excellent to see you again, Mr. Ziffer,” he said. “Welcome back. Do you have bags?”
“No, I checked in last night. But if it’s not too much trouble, I need one small favor.”
He slipped the money deftly into his pocket as he helped me to the red-carpeted stairs. “Mr. Ziffer, whatever you need.”
“As you know, I’m an author, and I’m here for another book signing,” I said. “But some of my fans are more like stalkers. Do you see those two men who just got out of that taxi?”