James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

“I have them right here,” I lied. “I’ll trade you. You can have your goddamn diamonds — just give Katherine back to me. Untouched. Unharmed.”

“Now you’re getting smart,” Chukov said. “There’s a self-storage warehouse under the Williamsburg Bridge—”

“No. I’ll bring the diamonds to the exact same place where I found them,” I said. “The main concourse of Grand Central.”

“Too crowded,” Chukov said.

“I like a crowd,” I said. “It’s safer. We’ll do it after rush hour. Ten p.m. It’ll be quiet, but there’ll still be people around. If we both behave, this can be a civilized exchange. Nobody gets hurt; everybody’s happy.”

“I’m happy right now, Mr. Bannon,” Chukov said. “You know, your girlfriend has a beautiful ass.” I heard a smack and Katherine screamed.

Chukov belched out a sickening laugh. “Ten o’clock, Bannon.”

I HAD SET the grand finale exchange with Chukov for the main concourse — center stage at Grand Central Terminal.

Chukov wasn’t too happy about it, but he agreed. He probably believed that Matthew Bannon the art student would feel safer surrounded by people walking through the terminal.

But the reality was that Matthew Bannon the Ghost had picked the spot because it offered the best field of fire.

Adam and Zach were already scoping out the building when Ty and I arrived. Then we worked together to map out the best possible combat plan.

Ever since the night I threw those smoke grenades and turned Grand Central into total pandemonium, security had been beefed up. This meant that four strapping ex-Marines standing in the middle of the main concourse on a recon mission would definitely attract cops.

So we opted for aerial surveillance. A table for four at Michael Jordan’s Steak House on the north balcony of the terminal, overlooking the rendezvous spot. It was an excellent vantage point. Plus, we were all starving.

We ordered, then sat there and quietly studied the traffic patterns below. When you’re standing in the middle of the terminal, it seems like people are crisscrossing the concourse without rhyme or reason. But from twenty feet up, the perspective changes, and they begin to look more like a colony of ants, each one racing about with purpose.

Very few people come to Grand Central to stroll through it aimlessly. Everyone is on a mission — headed for a stairwell, a train, a Starbucks, an exit. If the concourse floor were a giant lawn instead of a vast expanse of polished marble, you’d be able to see where the steady stream of travelers had trampled the grass and created distinct pathways.

“Right down there,” I said, pointing at an area where almost no one had walked for fifteen minutes. “That looks like the smartest place to make the exchange.”

Adam nodded slowly. “The exchange, ” he said, a sardonic little smile crossing his lips. “Which exchange are we talking about? The one where Chukov trades us Katherine for the diamonds, or the exchange of bullets that will start flying as soon as he realizes that he just gave up his ace in the hole for a bagful of worthless glass?”

I couldn’t show up completely empty-handed, could I? So in the afternoon, we had found a theatrical prop shop on Twelfth Avenue that sells loose rhinestones for twenty-five dollars a gross. Zelvas’s medical bag was now filled to the brim with them.

“How long do you think it will take Chukov to realize he’s been played?” Ty asked, digging into a bowl of Louisiana Crawfish Chowder. The rest of us were chowing down on the only thing you go to a steak house for: meat.

“They look like the real thing from a distance,” I said. “That’ll help me get close to Katherine, but I guarantee that Chukov will know they’re bogus as soon as he gets his hands on them.”

“And I guarantee you that as soon as he does that,” Adam said, “he and his squad of Russian goons will start shooting up Grand Central Terminal.”

That was our biggest challenge — collateral damage. You do your best to minimize it, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Innocent people getting killed is part of the reality of war. As dangerous as this operation was, it was complicated by the potential for civilian casualties once the bullets started flying. And knowing how desperate Chukov was, that seemed inevitable.

I would be wearing a vest. But some weary advertising executive trudging out of the Graybar Building toward Track 17 hoping to catch the 10:14 to Larchmont wouldn’t have the benefit of Kevlar.

And neither would Katherine.

WE LEFT ZACH behind to patrol the area in and around Grand Central and call us if he saw any sign of Chukov’s men arriving early and taking up positions. The rest of us took the subway back to the Fortress.

There was only one thing more intimidating than facing Chukov and his Russian triggermen. That was facing my father.

He knew what I did to earn a living. Hell, he had gotten me into the business. I think he naturally expected that I would be as good — and as lucky — as he had been.

But this time was different. Going into Grand Central to trade diamonds for my kidnapped girlfriend was a suicide mission. And the fact that I didn’t even have the diamonds made it all the more impossible.

If somebody had tried to hire me to do it, I’d have said no thanks and walked away — I don’t care how much they would have paid me. But this wasn’t about money. This was about Katherine’s life. I didn’t care if I took a bullet. I just had to save her.

I called my father. It was midday in Colorado. My mother picked up.

I spent five minutes answering all her excited questions about my trip to Paris.

“It sounds so romantic,” she said. “I wish your father would take me.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. “Is he around?”

“He’s in his workshop with his harem,” she said, using her favorite expression for Dad’s gun collection. “I’ll buzz him on the intercom and tell him to pick up.”

I could picture my father in his shop with a gun-cleaning kit and a bottle of Hoppe’s solvent, carefully going through the same ritual he taught me, and his father taught him. “A clean gun is a mean gun,” he always said.

It’s a philosophy I had lived by. At least so far.

“Hey, boy,” Dad said, answering the phone. “How you doing?”

I told him the whole story, from the night I found the diamonds to the last phone call from Chukov — everything I hadn’t told him when I called from Milan. As usual, he listened without saying a word.

When I was done, he simply said, “Anything I can do?”

I gave him all the information he’d need to get the money out of the Dutch bank. Then I told him how to divide it. “Half gets split up evenly among Adam, Zach, Ty, and Katherine. The other half goes to you and Mom.”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“I’ll never see a penny of that money,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if anything happens to you, your mom will kill me faster’n look at me,” he said. “So listen up, and listen good, boy. You’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna get through this because you know that not only is your life and Katherine’s life on the line, but so’s your old man’s. Ooooo-rah. ”

“Thanks,” I said. “I love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, boy.”

AT 5:30 ZACH called in. This was it.

“Two guys showed up fifteen minutes ago. Early twenties, dark suits, dark turtlenecks, gold jewelry, Russian accents. They scoped out the drop zone.”

“They’re probably trying to figure out choke points,” I said.