I was met in the lobby of the Residences by a slim, elegant, silver-haired man of around sixty. He wore an expensive navy pinstriped suit with a gold pocket square, perfectly folded.
He introduced himself as Eugene, no last name: an “associate” of Mr. Navrozov.
He reminded me of an English butler. Even though it was after midnight, and he knew I had just kidnapped his boss’s son, his demeanor was cordial. He knew I was here to transact business.
As he led me toward Navrozov’s private elevator, I said, “I’m afraid there’s been a slight change in plans.”
He turned around, arched his brows.
“We won’t be meeting in his condo. I’ve reserved a room in the hotel, a few floors below.”
“I’m quite sure Mr. Navrozov will not agree to that…”
“If he ever wants to see his son again, he might want to be flexible,” I said. “But it’s up to him.”
74.
Fifteen minutes later, the elevator on the thirty-eighth floor opened, and five men emerged.
Roman Navrozov and his small army of bodyguards moved with a military precision: one in front, one behind, and two on either side. These bodyguards seemed to be of a higher caliber than the cretins he assigned to his son. They wore good suits and curly earpieces like Secret Service agents wear. They were all armed and appeared to be wearing body armor. Their eyes briskly surveyed all angles of approach as they escorted their boss down the hallway.
Roman Navrozov was a portly man, not tall, but he exuded authority. He could have been a Vatican cardinal emerging on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to proclaim, “Habemus papam.” He had hawkish eyebrows and an unnaturally black fringe of hair around a great bald dome. He reminded me a little of the actor who played Hercule Poirot on the British TV series.
His thin lips were cruelly pursed in a regal glower. He wore a black blazer with one tail of his crisp white shirt untucked, as if he’d just thrown it on and was annoyed to be skulking around the halls of the hotel in the middle of the night.
When they were halfway down the corridor, the lead guard made a quick hand gesture, and Navrozov stopped, flanked by the rest of his entourage. Meanwhile, the first guard approached the door, weapon out.
He saw at once that the door was ajar, propped open on the latch of the security lock.
He flicked his hand again, and a second guard joined him, then the two moved swiftly into position on either side of the door. The first one kicked the door open, and they burst in, weapons drawn, in classic “slicing the pie” formation.
Maybe they were expecting an ambush. But since I was watching through the peephole in the room across the hall, they didn’t find anyone inside.
Then I hit a number on my phone. “Moving into position one,” I said when it was picked up.
“Roger that,” a voice replied.
The voice belonged to a member of my Special Forces detachment named Darryl Amos. While I was in flight, Darryl had driven into the city from Fort Dix, New Jersey, where he worked as a convoy operations instructor. He’d checked into a true fleabag on West Forty-third called the Hotel Conroy. If you look it up on one of the travel websites, you’ll find it described as the filthiest hotel in the city. Not long ago a maid had discovered a body under a bed wrapped in a bedsheet. The sheet was reused, though they did launder it first.
Then he waited for me, and Arkady Navrozov, in the alley behind the strip club.
Right now Darryl was babysitting Roman Navrozov’s son at the Hotel Conroy. I was fairly certain the oligarch’s son had never seen its likes before.
Satisfied that Navrozov’s men were simply doing their job-making sure their boss didn’t walk into a trap and not attempting anything more-I opened the door and crossed the hall.
75.
A minute later I was standing at the window a few feet away from the man who had masterminded Alexa Marcus’s kidnapping.
We were alone in the room. He sat in a chair, legs crossed, looking imperious. “You’re a very trusting man,” he said.
“Because I’m unarmed?”
We both were. He rarely carried a weapon, and I’d surrendered mine. His guards were stationed in the hall right outside the door, which had been left propped open, by mutual agreement. I was sure they were prepared to burst in if their boss so much as coughed.
He replied without even looking at me. “You say you have my son. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. In any case, now we have you.” He shrugged. Very matter-of-fact; very casual. “Now we have all the leverage we need.” He grinned. “So you see: You haven’t played this very well.”
“You see that building?” I said.
Directly across the street, looming like a great gleaming black monolith, was the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
“A fine hotel, the Trump Tower,” Navrozov said. “I wanted to invest in Mr. Trump’s SoHo project, but your government blocked me.”
“See that row of rooms right there?”
I pointed again, this time to a line of dark windows. Offices, not hotel rooms, though he probably didn’t know that.
Then I raised my hand, as if to wave, and a single window in the long dark row lit up.
“Hello,” I said. “We’re right here.”
I raised my hand again, and the window across the street went dark.
“My friend over there is a world-class sniper,” I said.
Navrozov shifted his body to one side, away from what he probably thought was the line of fire.
“An army buddy?”
“Actually, no. He’s from Newfoundland. Did you know some of the best sharpshooters in the world are Canadian?”
“Perhaps, but at this distance-”
“My Canadian friend holds the record for the longest confirmed combat sniper-shot kill. He hit a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan from two and a half kilometers away. Now, do you think we’re even one kilometer away from the Trump Tower?”
He smiled uncomfortably.
“Try four hundred feet. You might as well have a bull’s-eye painted on your forehead. To my Canadian friend, you’re such a big fat easy target it’s not even fun.”
His smile faded.
“He’s using an American Tac-50 sniper rifle made in Phoenix. And fifty-caliber rounds made in Nebraska. It’s a hot round-ultra-low-drag tip and a flat trajectory.”
“Your point?” he snapped.
“The second any of your men approaches me, my friend across the street will drop you without a second’s hesitation. And did you know that this room connects with the two on either side? Yep. The doors between them are unlocked. The hotel management really couldn’t have been more accommodating to a group of old college buddies in town for a reunion.”
He just stared. His eyelids drooped.
“So am I trusting?” I said. “Not so much.”
To my surprise, Navrozov laughed. “Well done, Mr. Heller.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you ever read O. Henry?”
“It’s been a while.”
“O. Henry was very popular in the Soviet Union when I was a child. My favorite was his story ‘The Ransom of Red Chief.’”
“And I thought we were here to discuss your son.”
“We are. In O. Henry’s story, a rich man’s son is kidnapped and held for ransom. But the boy is such a little terror that the kidnappers, who can’t stand him, keep dropping their ransom price. Until finally the father offers to take him off their hands if they pay him.”
“Maybe you’d like to tell your son you don’t care what happens to him.” I turned to the laptop I’d set up on the desk and tapped at the keys to open a video chat window.
“Here’s Red Chief,” I said.
On the laptop screen was a live video feed of Arkady Navrozov, hair matted, against a grimy white plaster wall, a wide strip of duct tape over his mouth.