Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [61]
I guess you’d say I was rich. Mr. Schoningh did not seem overly impressed, though. “Do you want to deposit the entire amount?” he asked.
“Everything but eighty thousand euros.”
Katje counted out the money and put it in a pale yellow bank envelope for me. We spent another twenty minutes filling out papers, and then Schoningh escorted me to the front door.
Kino was still parked outside.
He rolled down the window and called out to me. “Hey, Matthew, you need a ride to the airport?”
“You didn’t have to wait. I could’ve caught a cab.”
“Cabs are expensive,” he said. “Get in, kiddo. I’m damn happy to do it.”
And he was. I think the only thing that would have made Kino happier was if Marta Krall had still been around, taking shots at us.
Chapter 72
THE NEXT AVAILABLE flight to New York wasn’t until two o’clock the next afternoon. That left me with seventeen hours to cool my jets at the airport.
But life changes when you have money. Maybe it can’t buy happiness, but it sure as hell can get you where you want to go in a hurry.
Kino dropped me at the General Aviation Center. Two minutes later I was walking across the tarmac with Captain Dan Fennessy, pilot of the Falcon 900EX jet I had chartered.
By the time we got to the plane, I knew everything I needed to know about him. He’d been a pilot for thirty years, got laid off by Delta two years ago, and was happy to give me a bargain rate of only seven thousand dollars an hour so he wouldn’t have to deadhead back to the States.
I paid cash.
The copilot was in the cockpit. “Where would you like to land?” he asked. “JFK, Newark, or Teterboro?”
“For forty-nine thousand bucks, I’d like to land on the corner of Bleecker and Perry in the West Village,” I said.
The two flyboys laughed, and I opted for Teterboro, a small general aviation airport in New Jersey used mostly by corporate jets and small private planes.
“Good choice,” Fennessy said. “Much less hassle with customs.”
He gave me a short tour of the aircraft, pointing out the amenities and explaining emergency procedures.
“You have fourteen seats to choose from, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “Too bad there’s only one of you.”
I’m sure it was his standard icebreaker. I didn’t correct him, but as far as I was concerned, he had two passengers—Matthew Bannon and the Ghost. And Vadim Chukov was determined to kill us both.
I sat down in a window seat and buckled myself in. Five minutes later we were wheels up.
If the Ghost had been calling the shots, we’d have been heading anywhere but New York. The Ghost was hardwired to be as emotionally detached as humanly possible. With the Russian mob after him, and seven million dollars in the bank, he would gladly disappear and start a new life elsewhere.
On the other hand, there was Matthew Bannon, the passionate, caring, wannabe artist, whose mission would be to fly home, win back Katherine’s heart, and live happily ever after.
But there was a third choice. And after a lot of soul-searching, that’s the one I finally made.
I was going back because I had screwed up the best relationship I’d ever had and I needed to apologize.
I was going back because, even though Chukov would be gunning for Matthew Bannon, I had put Katherine’s life in danger, and I had to make sure that she was okay and that she stayed that way.
The old me never would have been on that plane. I was always so careful, so self-involved. But something had changed me. Actually, someone had changed me. Katherine. I loved her desperately. I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted to set things right, and then maybe, just maybe, start my life over again.
Was that too much to ask? Probably, yeah.
Chapter 73
THE FALCON TOUCHED down at Teterboro at a few minutes after 10 p.m.
The customs and immigration agent who met our plane checked my passport and asked me why I went to Paris, Venice, and Amsterdam.
“I’m an artist on tour,” I said.
He stifled a yawn. My name wasn’t on his watch list, so he stamped my passport and sent me on my way.
A customs agent asked