I hadn’t smoked grass since I got out of the Marines, and this stuff was powerful. It sneaked up on me, and before I knew it, I was half-baked.
I desperately wanted to call Katherine, but I knew I’d regret it in the morning. So I did what any lovesick, stoned-out artist would do.
I took a pen out of my pocket and began sketching her face on a place mat.
Chapter 63
I HAD ROUGHED out the portrait of Katherine when a group of about a dozen college kids piled in. They were loud, American, and drunk. A few of them pushed tables together while one guy with a wispy blond beard and a Duke University Blue Devils T-shirt leaned over my shoulder.
“Whatcha drawing, dude?” he said.
“Looks like I’m drawing a crowd,” I said.
My cannabis-infused wit escaped him. “How much to do a picture of me?” he said.
“No charge if you’ll pose nude,” I said.
He gave me the finger and joined his friends.
The waitress brought me another double espresso and a bottle of beer.
“I didn’t order these,” I said.
“They’re my treat,” she said. “Would you like to drink them outside, where you don’t have to put up with these dickheads?”
“Thanks,” I said and took a swig of the beer. It was definitely the better of the two beverages.
“We artists have to stick together,” she said. “My name is Anna.”
“Matthew.”
She picked up my coffee and carried it outside. The entire three-story building was bathed in an eerie green light. “The owner loves it,” Anna said, “because it’s the color of grasshoppers. Pretty ugly, right?”
“Not to another grasshopper,” I said.
There were at least forty tables, all empty. Anna set me up in the corner farthest from the noise and only ten feet from the canal. A street lamp cast a soft yellow light on the table. Anna excused herself, then returned a few seconds later with about twenty clean white paper placemats.
“We’re all out of sketch pads,” she said.
“Thanks again.”
She looked at my drawing of Katherine. “She’s pretty. Who is she?”
“Nobody,” I said. “I’m over her.”
“I get off work in an hour. You want to come up to my apartment, look at some of my paintings, drink some wine?”
Anna had a lithe, athletic body, blue eyes, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a heavenly smile. So it took me a solid five seconds to answer the question. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m kind of tired.”
Anna was not the kind of woman men say no to, so she looked a little surprised when I turned her down. But she shrugged and laughed it off.
She took another look at the sketch of Katherine. “You’re not as over her as you might think.” She turned around and walked back inside to deal with the rowdy college guys.
I took a long pull on the beer, picked up my pen, and started to work on a second drawing.
“I guess that’s the last I’ll be seeing of table service tonight,” I said as Katherine’s face began to emerge from the page. “I know you don’t approve of my job, but at least give me some credit for not jumping into some other woman’s bed.”
The sketch came to life quickly. I don’t know if it was the pot or the pain I felt from losing her, but it was the best drawing of Katherine I’d ever done.
Sometimes the difference between a piece of art and a piece of crap is the artist’s ability to know when to stop. I worked furiously. And then I set my pen down. I had labored over hundreds of sketches of Katherine since we met, but this one had poured out of me in minutes. It was not only finished, it was inspired.
I sat back and stared at her face. I wanted her in my life forever. I promised myself I would do whatever it took to get her back.
And then I felt the cold steel on the back of my neck.
“It looks like Ms. Sanborne doesn’t like this life you lead, does she, Mr. Bannon?” a female voice with a thick German accent said. “Don’t worry, you still have me.”
I sat there frozen.
“The party is over, pretty boy,” Krall said. “Now, tell me, where are Mr. Chukov’s diamonds?”
My assassin’s playbook of options ran through my head. I’d been in life-or-death situations before. There’s always a way out.
But at the moment I couldn’t come up with a single one. I was that stoned.
Chapter 64
“I’LL REPEAT THE QUESTION,” Marta said, digging the muzzle of the gun into the back of my neck. “Where are the diamonds?”
“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.
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.
