AT MY DIRECTION, the driver stops a half block away from the Emporio Building on Jakobikirchhof. The day is overcast in Hamburg, there’s a mild bite in the air. Pistol in my rear waistline, I exit the back of the Mercedes and head for the property.
Being unfamiliar with this building absolutely has me feeling at a disadvantage. It also has me essentially plan-less. I decide my best bet is to hide behind my sunglasses while pretending to be deep in conversation on my phone, and stroll around the exterior of the structure. The goal is to blend into the city, another businessman headed from one part of the Neustadt neighborhood of Hamburg to another, all the while finding and surveying the situation with the property’s service area and loading bays. When I see what’s going on, I can devise a plan from there.
Once I round the corner toward the rear of the building, the loading bays are within eyeshot immediately on my right. There are all the usual suspects for this area of a commercial building—trucks backed into place, loud noises, and the expected building personnel all in their required uniforms. Only there seems to be an unusual amount of security today. Up high on the platform, near the entrance to the building, are three guys all in dark suits. Three guys dressed exactly like those I’d encountered in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
I look back over my left shoulder, keeping my nerves in check while pulling my face out of their sight line, to see if any traffic is coming along my left. When I’m clear, I continue on a forty-five degree angle from the direction I’d just been moving once having turned the corner. The property is now at my back as I walk away.
Fuck.
What now.
Rhodium. Iridium. How? Why? What does it all mean? Are these elements where it all ends, or begins? The only way to truly gauge the danger I’m in, or the danger I’ve put my partners and possibly other members of the New York City commercial real estate community in, is to find out as much as I can. I’m so close. Just one more glimpse in one of these basements may be all I need. A glimpse I know may be a costly one.
I’m so close.
I remember words from my father.
“Without the battles, no wars can be won.”
Once I’m about a block away from the property I make a left and circle back around. I lift my chin, clench my teeth, and decide there’s one last hand to be played. During my surveillance walk I noticed an entrance to a parking garage underneath the building. It’s manned with a lone dude in a booth, but he’s barely paying attention. Tenants have a magnetic sticker in their windshield that lifts the parking control barrier arm. Guests push a button, which gives them a ticket that lifts the same arm.
Look the part. Be the part. Always. If you need to belong, then belong.
Sunglasses in place, cell to my ear, purpose in my stride, I enter the mouth of the garage as if it’s just another day walking to my car. The attendant never looks my way. Then, twenty feet in, a voice from behind stops me dead in my tracks.
“A little far from Manhattan, aren’t we?”
A chill shoots up my spine. I turn around. Cobus. Dressed as always from head to toe in his usual black suit, shirt, tie, and shoes, his five o’clock shadow and dark hair perfectly manicured as if he’s just come from the salon.
Cobus.
“I mean, is this a coincidence, or what?” he goes on, moving toward me. “Or—wait—is it really true there are no coincidences? Meaning, is this actually any less of a coincidence than, say, that perfume prototype going missing the same night that overnight cleaning crew worker died in one of your properties?”
Whoa.
How the hell does he know that?
“I would have been here sooner, and met you in Amsterdam, had my jet not been behind yours,” he continues. “Amazing. Few people realize how much opportunity there is in South American cities like São Paulo—but it all comes down to what we each see value in, Jonah. Isn’t that right?”
“South America, now. You in the market for larger than usual basements there as well?”
“I figured my security team is . . . equipped to handle any type of outsider who tries to infiltrate our properties,” he continues, brushing off my response, “and that I could finish up with my affairs. Unfortunately, I forgot just how crafty you can be. Deducing you’d still be saved within our facial recognition security systems? Becoming a DHL delivery man in Rotterdam? Impressive as usual. The error is mine, as I should have expected as much.”
I don’t speak. My eyes dart this way and that to see if we’re alone, but if anything is clear at this point, it’s that I’m not even close to alone whether I see others or not. My eyes settle back on his.
“You do realize, Jonah,” he continues, “I could have you thrown in jail in either Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and now Hamburg with one simple phone call. Trespassing, assault—I mean, what’s gotten into you?”
“We both know you won’t do that,” I respond.
“Oh, no?”
“No.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The one reason you came to me. I don’t have the option of failure—as you’ve made quite clear—in the game of commercial real estate where failure is always on the table. We both know I can’t deliver from a jail cell any more than I can dead. But don’t you think our history deserves more respect than what you’ve given me?”
He stops once he reaches me. We’re face to face.
“Respect?”
“I’m not a fucking moron, Cobus. Extra huge basements to handle the affairs of a growing restaurant chain? Really?”
“You’re saying this isn’t true?”
“I’m saying this isn’t true.”
He pauses.
“So, then, answer me this. One way or the other—does it matter?”
“It might.”
“In what way?
The situation has truly become a scary one. How the fuck does he even know I’m here? Right here, in this garage, in Hamburg, Germany, at this very fucking moment? I’ve literally only been communicating with Carolyn about this itinerary, and have been doing so offline.
Jennie? The pilot, Ken? The people who manage the jet? The drivers Carolyn has been setting up to meet me at each destination?
Fuck!
“I don’t want to be involved with anything that hurts others,” I go on.
“You’re handling my affairs in Manhattan. A hired gun. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“Our history, Cobus—the aboveboard part of our history—is widely known because of my story. I’m far from just a hired gun. This shit ever gets out—what you’re really involved with, and that I helped you bring your bullshit to New York City—I’ll be fucking ruined. Perry, Jake, everyone who works with and for me will be done.”
“Well, then, I guess you’d better make sure not only you get this done, but you do so quietly. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I try to reason with him; return us to a different time when we worked, built his real estate empire, together.
“Cobus, if you just tell me what it is you’re really trying to—”
He puts his hand up.
“Jonah. Stop.”
Our faces are eighteen inches apart.
He takes a deep breath.
“When you look at me, Jonah, what do you see?”
Monster. Criminal. Psycho.
Ally. Savior. Confidant.
My past. My present. My future?
“I see a man who gave me the opportunity to rebuild my life. A man I helped build a real estate empire he can use as a legit cover for a criminal existence. A man with whom I’m even.”
“Let me refresh your memory,” Cobus comes back without a second’s hesitation. “You and me? We’re nothing more than two men who from the moment we met one another lied through our teeth about who each of us really is. You had a lot to hide. I had even more to hide. And, as far as you seeming surprised that I walked into this garage behind you, have you so quickly forgotten that I monitored your every goddamn step for six years in Europe, as a favor to Gaston? That I was there to save your skin on multiple occasions? Literally keep you from ending up six feet under because my people were there—watching—when you didn’t even know it?”
“I never asked for your help.”
“But Gaston Picard—believing in your innocence as a favor to your father—did. So you received it. Without it, you would have been killed three times over, not given the opportunity to clear your name and rebuild your life. But you know what, Jonah? Do you realize what all of this means?”
“What?”
“None of it means a thing. All of our past—everything that has happened between us right up to this very moment—none of it matters one bit. You’re a more—”
Cobus looks away for a second, as if to catch the right word from thin air, then back to me.
“—emotional person than I am. I helped you, and I appreciate how you helped me. Yet, if I’m being truthful, I feel you pledging yourself to me, and my growing business, the way you did was payment of a debt due me whether you knew it at the time or not. But beyond that? Beyond a certain amount of respect I may have for you? I don’t care much beyond that, about you, anyone, or anything. Outside of my wife, my kids, and my affairs, everything is downright irrelevant. This way life remains simple, and I can focus on exactly what I need to without distraction. Much the same as why I dress the same every day. You say we’re even? We’ll never be even. But, again, this doesn’t matter. None of it does. What matters is everything that happens from this moment forward.”
Cobus steps even closer to me. He holds up his iPhone.
“All you need to keep in mind, Jonah, is one thing,” he goes on, “that you worked for me then, and you work for me now.”
A video begins playing. As the contents of the footage unfold before me, I can feel all the blood rushing from my head like it’s in a race to my feet. Shane’s thick, burly, decapitated body, in a suit like he wore every day just as the last time I saw him, is lying on a steel gurney.
“If I’m not happy with the fruits of your labor, this body ends up wherever I see fit. With evidence of contact of this body with you, or whomever I see fit. Do we understand one another?”
I nod. He puts his phone away.
“Stop wasting time, Jonah. You should be in Manhattan right now landing me those buildings, not flying overseas to make things your business that aren’t. You’ve got a jet to catch. And that creepy-little-freaky-thing Minnie right where you want her. Which means you’re dismissed.”
My instinct is to spread his nose across his face with my forehead, then drive my fist through his chest so hard it comes out his back. Instead I keep my inner gladiator in check. Holding so much in—so much I want to say, to do—I clench my teeth and walk out the way I came in. There’s no doubt I’m in a world of shit. But there’s also no doubt about something else.
I don’t care if you’re Cobus de Bont, the President, or anyone else.
No one “dismisses” Jonah Gray.