James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

“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.

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.

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 sometimes for the face and body doubles who stepped in for Fidel when the assassination threat level on El Jefe was high.