The Equalizer (2 page)

“You don't know him. He'll track me down. You don't fuck with him like that. Can I stay with you?”

“No. Right now you need to go to a hospital. I'll flag down a cab and come with you. Make sure you get fixed up.”

“Screw you, asshole,” she said, tears burning in her eyes. “You did your hero thing. I hope it made you feel real warm and runny inside.”

She walked away from him, down Broome Street, putting on her jacket and pulling it closed as if she was suddenly very cold.

McCall thought briefly about going after her, forcing her into a cab with him, taking her to the nearest hospital, which was Beth Israel. But that would make him late for Scott. He could just put her into a cab, give her the money to go to the ER, but he knew she'd jump out at the first traffic light. That money was too precious to waste on fixing up her face. She could do that herself.

McCall looked into the alleyway, checking his back. The pimp was gone. There hadn't been time for him to stagger down to the other end. He must've used one of the doorways now on McCall's left. McCall was angry with himself. He'd broken his cardinal rule of the last nine months and stepped into a situation that had absolutely nothing to do with him. He hoped his actions wouldn't come back to haunt him.

Even the cop on the corner looked at him like he was an idiot. McCall gave him a tired smile.
Yeah, well, some habits are hard to break.

At least the girl was still alive.

McCall turned up his collar against the bitter wind that was now blowing down Broome Street, walked past the cop, and headed up Broadway toward the subway station.

*   *   *

At that exact same moment, in the bedroom of a sixth-floor Club Level suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, Elena Petrov stood naked in front of a full-length mirror. She was a brunette, in her late thirties, tall, athletic, Russian born, but an American citizen since the age of nine. She looked at the knife scar that started under her left breast and stretched down to just above the pubic area. There was also the ragged skin tear on her right side where she'd been shot. The bullet had only grazed her, but the reminder was still there. She had an angelic face, big brown laughing eyes, just the girl next door with a slight Russian accent, so she was always amused when an ardent lover finally got “the gear off,” as her British girlfriends would say, and reacted to her battle scars. She would say she'd been mugged in New York—the knife scar—and shot by a boyfriend who was showing off his new Smith & Wesson SD40 pistol while they were taking a romantic stroll in Le Bois de Boulogne Park in Paris.

Neither was true.

She picked up what looked like a long needle from a thin, plastic case on a table. She slid it into her hair and attached it with a small, dark barrette. You'd never know the needle was there unless you were looking for it.

She glanced out of the big picture window overlooking Red Square. Twilight was gathering fast. A light snow was falling. She could see the towers and spires of the Kremlin. Like something out of a dark fairy tale. She looked back into the mirror and noted the intruder's shadow darken at the ajar bedroom door. Behind it was the sitting room and the front door to the suite. She could have made a grab for her jewelled black bag on the ornate table, where her gun was. But she didn't. She pulled on sheer black panties and picked up a short black cocktail dress from the arm of a chair. Dropped the dress over her head, let it fall down her body, open at the back halfway down her shapely ass, clearly seen through the panties. It made her grin.

“You can zip me up,” she said, “if you'd like.”

A tall, elegant man in his fifties stepped into the bedroom. He was impeccably dressed in a Savile Row dark blue suit, a pink-striped shirt, gold crossed golf club cuff links, a red tie with small chess pieces on it, shoes polished until they gleamed. There was a whiff of pungent cologne as he stepped up behind Elena. She looked at his face in the mirror: handsome, a little chiseled, bright blue eyes. Usually those eyes were unreadable, the face a mask, but right now he looked distinctly embarrassed. He was actually
blushing
. Elena knew him only as Control. Everyone at The Company called him Control. She didn't know his real name. She didn't think any of the other agents did either. He was her Control on this mission, unusual for him to actually be
in
the field, but then he'd always been a man of surprises. It was rumored he had a wife and two teenage daughters, lived in a quiet suburb of Washington, D.C., played golf with a four handicap, and drank only very aged whiskey. But that might just be the cover story.

“I guess you didn't hear me come in,” Control murmured, reaching down for the zip at the bottom of her black dress.

“I heard you. Next time you could clear your throat.”

“I could have been an enemy agent sneaking up on you.”

“Not wearing that cologne. It's very distinctive. You buy it from a tiny shop in Mayfair in London, the only place it's sold. If you're done looking at my cute ass, you can zip me up now.”

Her eyes were twinkling. He zipped her up.

“Where'd you get the knife scar? The gunshot wound I know about.”

“I was mugged in Central Park. Not every single incident in my life is in my file. So, you've had the grand tour of my body.” She turned to face him. “How will I look to everyone else?”

“Very beautiful,” Control said. “And you'd never let a mugger get close enough to attack you in Central Park.”

She smiled and picked up the small jewelled bag that matched the dress. Took out her Beretta 21 Bobcat, checked again that it was loaded, put it back, and snapped the bag shut. Control fitted a tiny receiver in her left ear, completely undetectable.

“I'll be able to hear every word.”

“That's a scary thought.”

He took out a pair of slim, black-framed glasses from a metal case and handed them to her. She put them on.

“Are you going to escort me to the party?”

“Only to near the gallery. I won't be going inside. But I won't be far away.”

“Who's got my back?”

“Masters. He's a bona fide art collector and speaks fluent Russian. Got into Moscow this afternoon. There wasn't time to brief you.”

She stepped into elegant Dolce Gabbana black lace pumps.

“Masters is good. I'm ready. Let's go.”

Control took her hand.

“Elena…”

“Be aware, don't take risks, get what I came for, get out. And try not to drop this dress on the floor of one of Alexei Berezovsky's private conference rooms.” The lightness left her voice, replaced by a quiet toughness. “I know what to do, Control. That's why you brought me to Moscow.”

“Yes, it is.”

They walked to the door of the bedroom. Elena's eyes flicked to a small framed photograph on the bedside table. It was of Elena, who looked just the same, with a younger Robert McCall, on the deck of a sailboat with the backdrop of an old city glistening in the dying sun behind them. They were holding glasses of wine, laughing about something. On the photo was written in a neat hand:
To my darling Elena—All My Love—Robert
.

Control had noted the photograph. “Where was that taken?”

“Croatia. Off the coast of Split on the Adriatic Sea. A four-day vacation also not in my file. And before you ask, no I haven't heard from him. Not in over three years.”

“But you still carry his picture everywhere you go.”

“He doesn't need to know that.”

Control opened the bedroom door wider. “It's better he's out of your life, Elena.”

“What happened? Why did he go into hiding? No one at The Company will talk about it.”

“Need to know.”

“But
you
know where he is. You know where
all
of us are, at all times.”

“I don't know where Robert McCall is.”

“But you don't believe he's dead.”

It was a statement. Control shook his head.

“He's a tough man to kill,” he said. “I should take that photo. We don't have many pictures at all of Robert McCall.”

“Not even in his file?”

“They were removed. Probably by him.”

“Well, you can't have that one.” She moved out into the sitting room of the suite. “Let's not be late for our Chechen host.”

 

CHAPTER 2

McCall sat down at an outdoor table at Starbucks on West Sixty-second Street. He ordered his usual Sumatra Asia/Pacific extra-bold coffee. Stirred in three packets of sugar. He
was
a little late, but recess wasn't over yet. Across the street, in the high school playground, teenagers were moving in groups, talking, roughhousing, throwing footballs, a couple of basketball games going on. Scott was dribbling as McCall sat down, faked left, turned right, back left, completely fooling his opponent who was waving his arms like he was on an aircraft carrier bringing in a plane. Scott stretched up to his full six-foot-one and took the shot. It hit the rim and sailed off. Close. McCall watched his son hustle away, guarding a tall black kid who had taken the rebound. Scott was lean, blond hair, not a jock, but he knew how to move with a kind of fluidity that McCall admired. He was a friendly kid, obviously well liked. Fifteen years old. McCall hadn't spoken to him since he was eight. That had been at Grand Central Station in June of whatever year when he'd met Scott and his ex-wife Cassie for five minutes.

Twenty missions ago for McCall.

He watched the shifting pattern of students in the school yard and the color bled into black-and-white in his mind. He remembered six football jocks coming to beat the crap out of him in the pouring rain in that same school yard.

Across the street, Scott stole the basketball from his opponent, started dribbling down the court. McCall watched him twist, fake, shoot. This time the ball swooshed through the basket. McCall gave him a thumbs-up sign. Not that Scott had any idea that his father was sitting across the street at a Starbucks watching him.

*   *   *

Elena stepped out of a cab in front of the Alla Bulyanskaya Gallery at 10, Krymsky Val, part of the Central House of Artists. She and Control had parted company four blocks east. Snow was still falling. Elegantly dressed men and women, most of them young, were moving inside the modern building. Elena joined them.

Inside, the art patrons were guided to the Alla Bulyanskaya Gallery, which consisted of seven large rooms of paintings and sculptures. Waiters in tuxedos passed among the guests with silver trays of champagne. Waitresses in black silk blouses and very long black skirts handed out hors d'oeuvres. A girl who looked like an older Lady Gaga with spiky blond hair and a revealing red gown was playing a harp on a raised platform. Elena adjusted her glasses as she took a proffered glass of champagne from one of the waiters and moved among the crush of people.

*   *   *

In his black panel truck in the Park Iskusstv across the street from the gallery, parked just to one side of the Yakov Sverdlov monument, Control sat hunched over a monitor nestled amid sophisticated electronic equipment. The tiny digital camera in Elena's glasses was fitted into the top of the frames connecting the lenses. The moving images Control was receiving were pretty good, even if the field of vision was narrow. Control looked for his agent Paul Masters in the crowd. Couldn't see him yet.

Control was nervous. He hadn't sat in a truck like this, actually
controlling
an agent in the field, in twelve years. His driver, a local Company operative named Sergei, stayed behind the wheel, ready to move the truck if necessary. Behind Control was Mickey Kostmayer, a boyish-looking Company agent in his late twenties, dressed in a tux. Kostmayer had brown hair and pale green eyes that could look a little crazy at times. Control could feel his bottled up energy like a palpable force.

“I can go in,” Kostmayer said. “I don't need an invitation.”

“Give her some space,” Control said.

*   *   *

In the Alla Bulyanskaya Gallery, Elena was also looking for agent Paul Masters. She spotted him in a corner, talking animatedly to a couple of Russian matriarchs who looked as if they'd raised Stalin. Masters would be tough to miss. He was a bear of a man, wearing a black tux as if it were a tent he'd wrapped around himself. There was a glass of champagne in his big fist. He glanced across the crowd as one of the matriarchs shook her head vigorously to dispute what he'd been saying about the Wassily Kandinsky painting they were looking at. It was called “Moonrise.” Masters's eyes locked for a split second on Elena, then he turned back to the painting with a dismissive gesture, commenting that the painting looked like a black angry cloud of a man with fists raised over the tiny figures of a man and a woman standing on a lake that had iced over and that the moon was nowhere to be seen. The matriarchs looked mildly scandalized.

A tall, imposing Chechen, in his late forties, pushed through the crowd, shaking hands, smiling, courteous, dressed in a tuxedo. This was Alexei Berezovsky, a onetime FTB agent, now a patron of the arts, owner of three of the trendiest nightclubs in Moscow, two more in Saint Petersburg. He looked powerful, like an aging athlete. Elena saw him coming.

“Got him,” she murmured, for Control. “Alexei Berezovsky, very elegant, a reptile in a tux. He's looking for me.”

Berezovsky's hair was dark, not a streak of gray anywhere. Several rings sparkled on his fingers. His face was handsome, but the eyes were glacial. He exuded strength and power and a raw sexual energy. Elena watched him work the room, using that energy, that charm, just the way he'd used it on her. She hadn't slept with him—they'd only met for drinks three times—but she'd made sure the sexual promise was there between them. He finally spotted her. Excused himself from a young couple and crossed the busy room to her. He smiled and took her hands.