Kill Me If You Can

He laughed. He didn’t care. Soon he’d be home, and Natalia would draw him a hot bath, and then they would sit down to their traditional Sunday-night meal: borscht, golubtsy smothered in sour cream, and his favorite — sweetbrier berry kissel.

A jog, a bath, a home-cooked dinner, and then a few hours of mindless Russian television before bed. Life was simpler now. Nathaniel found it impossible to comprehend, but for the first time since he was a boy, he was happy. More than happy. He was at peace.

It had come at great expense. His power, his home, and his wealth were all gone. In exchange, he and Natalia had been allowed to live.

That night at the Atlantis Hotel in Nassau, he still held out hope that Chukov would recover the diamonds and he could humble himself to Arnoff and the other members of the Syndicate. But within hours of the meeting, Chukov and five of his men were dead and the diamonds were lost forever.

Nathaniel sold the house in Park Slope, raped his bank accounts, and with Arnoff’s guarantee of amnesty without forgiveness, he and Natalia moved back to Moscow.

Even after forking over the ten million, they were far from poor, and Natalia had found a beautiful apartment in a vintage Stalin-era building on the Frunzenskaya embankment. Six spacious rooms, high ceilings, and a wide terrace with sweeping views of the Moskva River.

It was a family neighborhood, and in another three months, he and Natalia would be pushing a baby pram through the tree-lined streets, over the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park and the Neskuchny Gardens on the opposite riverbank.

A father again at the age of sixty. Three months ago, he thought the Syndicate would have him killed. Now he had everything to live for. Who knows? he thought as he reached the front door of his apartment building. Maybe that bastard Zelvas did us all a favor.

He stretched his calves and his hamstrings and took the elevator to the tenth floor.

Even before he opened the door, the heady aroma of meat and onions wrapped in cabbage and simmering in a pot of creamy tomato sauce welcomed him home.

He entered the apartment and saw the intruders. Instinctively he reached for his gun. But of course he didn’t have one in his wet jogging suit.

The men in the apartment had guns. All four of them.

Natalia was sitting in the middle of the living room, tied to a dining room chair. Her eyes were red and puffy, her mouth taped shut.

“How dare you!” Nathaniel screamed. “What is the meaning of this? Do you muzhiks know who I am?” He charged forward to untie his daughter.

One of the men slammed him in the face with a gun barrel, and Nathaniel reeled backward, spitting blood and teeth.

Nathaniel studied his attacker. One side of the man’s face was covered with scars and skin grafts. It was a face that was difficult to look at, but Nathaniel knew that if he had ever seen it before, he would surely remember it now. But this man was a stranger.

“Sit,” the man said.

A second dining room chair was pushed under him, and Nathaniel was shoved into it.

“Who authorized this? Who sent you?” Nathaniel demanded as one of the other men tied him to the chair.

The man with the scarred face seemed to be in charge. “Nobody sent us,” he said, winking at the others. “We heard there was a party tonight, so we came on our own — no invitation.”

The other three laughed.

But Prince didn’t see the humor. He was incensed. “I gave those Syndicate assholes ten million dollars, and they agreed to let me live in peace as long as I never returned to the United States again,” he said. “We had a deal. Ironclad. Bound by the Vorovskoy Zakon.”

“I see,” the leader said. “A deal. An agreement between the Diamond Syndicate and the illustrious Mr. Nathaniel Prince. Or should I call you Mr. Nikita Primakov?”

It had been decades since Nathaniel had heard his real name.

“I don’t care what you call me. Just untie me and get out. You’ve made a big mistake. None of the senior members of the Syndicate would ever choose to violate the Vorovskoy Zakon.”

“That may be true,” the gunman said, punching Nathaniel in the mouth and shattering more teeth. “But we are not from the Diamond Syndicate.”

Chapter 102

AS SOON AS Natalia’s father took the blow, muffled screams erupted from under the duct tape that covered her mouth.

One of the men slapped her face. “Shut up, bitch.”

Prince strained against the ropes the men had tied around him. “I’ll kill you,” he screamed.

“Your killing days are over,” the leader said, driving a fist into Prince’s left ear.

Nathaniel could feel the vital tiny bones in his ear splinter. But he couldn’t hear them break. His left ear could no longer hear anything.

The punch perforated his eardrum. Fluid leaked from his inner ear and he became dizzy and nauseated. He tried to focus.

Not from the Diamond Syndicate?

For a moment he felt a flash of justified anger. His gut feeling had been right — the Syndicate would never do this to him. But who would?

“Who are you?” he asked, the bloody shards of his two front teeth flying out as he spoke.

The leader pointed to his men and each one answered in turn.

“Fyodor Dmitriov.”

“Kostya Dmitriov.”

“Leonid Dmitriov.”

“And I am Maxim Dmitriov,” the leader said. “We are what remains of the Dmitriov Cab Company. You murdered my father and my uncles, you killed our brothers, our cousins—”

“And my son,” Kostya growled. “My only son, Alexei. He was eighteen, and he died in the fire that morning in the garage.”

“I was late for work that day,” Maxim said. “By the time I arrived, the garage was an inferno. Twenty-seven of my friends and family were locked in a storeroom. I tried to get to them, and this is all I got for my efforts.”

He rolled up his shirtsleeves. Covered in skin grafts, his arms looked even more gruesome than his face.

“My bride-to-be was locked in that storeroom,” Maxim said. “She didn’t even work there. She came to show me photos of our wedding cake. We were going to be married in two more days. You killed her.”

“Not me,” Nathaniel said. “It was Chukov. Vadim Chukov—”

A swift cuff to the right eye silenced him.

“Chukov was your puppet,” Maxim said. “You pulled the strings. You lit the match.”

“What happened was not my fault,” Nathaniel said. “I swear. I was in the hospital. My own family had just been run down by one of your drivers.”

“One!” Maxim screamed. “Not twenty-seven. Not three generations of an entire family.”

“I know your pain,” Nathaniel said. “We were both injured parties. Let me try to make it up to you. I have money — not a lot, but some. I could make restitution for Chukov’s evil deeds.”

“Money? You think we’re here for money?”

“Everybody needs money,” Nathaniel reasoned. “Tell me what you want.”

“You took what we want. You murdered what we need. Now, like they say in America, you have to face