The Equalizer (3 page)

“Elena! You came!”

“I promised I would.”

“Yes, but not everyone keeps their promises, do they?” His voice was almost melodic. “Especially journalists. Are you still covering that gangster Putin?”

“He's a very interesting man.”

“He is a criminal. And his power is waning. Your CNN bosses should have you interviewing someone with more influence on the world.”

“Someone like you?”

He waved off that notion as if she'd been much too flattering. “I no longer work for the government. I am now an art patron and a capitalist, but you know all of this.”

He stepped closer to her. His eyes were on her cleavage, debating whether or not she was wearing a bra. He decided she wasn't.

“How late is this shindig going to go?” Elena asked.

“At least until midnight, I am certain.”

“I can't stay long. I have a conference call with Atlanta in an hour. But I didn't want to disappoint you.”

Berezovsky turned slightly. Someone in the room had caught his eye. Elena followed his gaze. A heavyset man, looking uncomfortable in a dark suit, a thin tie, big brown boots, stood unmoving amid the stream of patrons around him. He looked as though he should be on a factory floor manufacturing cars. He saw Berezovsky and immediately walked up to one of the Arsen Avetisian sculptures. It was a gold creature piggybacked on to the back of a skeletal black-suited figure with no head. Berezovsky turned back to Elena.

“Give me five minutes. Meet me at the entranceway to the next room.”

He walked away, acknowledging more friends and patrons, heading for the Avetisian sculpture. Elena walked through the crowd parallel with him.

“You get all that?” she murmured.

*   *   *

In the panel truck, Control and Kostmayer watched the monitor. Their view of the party was all oblique angles through Elena's glasses as she moved. They caught sight of Berezovsky twice, but the crowd kept swallowing him up.

“Can't keep track of him,” Control said. “Don't let him out of your sight.”

Elena's voice echoed slightly in the cramped space of the truck's interior.

“Don't worry. He wants to get his hands on what's under this dress. Well, you know, you've seen the goods. Can you blame him?”

Kostmayer looked at Control.

He cleared his throat. “Don't ask.”

Kostmayer said: “I don't like this.”

Into his mic Control said to Elena: “Just get what you're there to get. Don't let him put his hands on you.”

“Might be tough to fight him off, boss.”

“Not for you.”

*   *   *

Elena watched Berezovsky walk past the burly worker at the Arsen Avetisian sculpture. The man put something into the ex-FTB agent's hand. Something small that caught a quick flash of light. Berezovsky slipped it into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and moved on.

“They've made the exchange,” Elena murmured.

She walked quickly through the room now. Took an iPhone out of her jewelled bag, put it to her ear, listened as if someone was talking to her, then shut it off and dropped it back into her bag with a sigh of exasperation. She made sure that Berezovsky saw her doing it. She caught up with him at the entrance to the next gallery room.

“My conference call got moved up. I'm going to have to leave, Alexei.”

“Not yet. Please come with me. There's something special I want to show you.”

He took her arm and guided her into the second gallery room.

Paul Masters extricated himself from the clutches of the two Russian matriarchs and followed them.

*   *   *

On the monitor in the panel truck, Control could see the second gallery room was even more crowded than the first one. Then Elena's glasses showed her walking down a corridor, away from the patrons and the music and the noise of the party. Elena looked once over her shoulder. Kostmayer leaned in past Control, his gaze intent on the monitor.

“Masters should be following her.”

“He's there somewhere. Just not in her line of vision.”

“Ask her if she can see him. Tell her to nod her head slightly.”

Control spoke into the mic: “Elena, if you can see Masters, nod your head.”

There was no response. The camera did not bob up and down.

“Elena, if you can still hear me, nod,” Control said.

There was no nod from the camera. Kostmayer fiddled with some levers.

“We've lost contact.”

“She may have taken the earpiece out,” Control said.

“Why the hell would she do that?”

“She has to make split-second decisions. She's in the field.”

“Yeah, well, I could do with some champagne and culture,” Kostmayer said. “I'm going in.”

“Just observe,” Control warned him. “Take no action. She has the situation under control. Tell me what you see.”

Kostmayer nodded, fitted an earpiece into his ear, and climbed out of the panel truck.

*   *   *

In the second gallery room, Masters moved to the short corridor down which Berezovsky and Elena had disappeared. A young man in a dark suit, looking a little drunk, stumbled into him and murmured an apology. Masters steadied him.

“Might be time to get some fresh air there, son,” Masters told him in Russian.

Another young man stepped up to Masters's left side and plunged a long stiletto through Masters's ribs, right into his heart. Masters staggered and the first man held him up. They helped Masters down the corridor as if he were ill and turned a corner out of sight.

Elena did not see this. Berezovsky led her to a door at the end of the corridor. He unlocked and opened it.

“This is my sanctuary here at the gallery,” he said.

Elena stepped into a small wood-paneled office. There were heavy drapes at a window. A closet door was to Elena's right and some crates of paintings stacked up against the wall on her left. The furniture consisted of a big desk, an armchair, a desk chair. Over the desk was a large oil painting of a naked girl, sitting with her back to the artist, with what looked like translucent white flowers glowing across her back and behind. She had Titian-colored hair. Her face was not visible. Berezovsky gestured to the painting like she was the Mona Lisa's sister.

“It is a Bruni, from my private collection,” he said. “They wanted me to hang it for the exhibition tonight, but some treasures are not for the public.”

He closed the office door.

And locked it.

He took Elena's black jewelled bag and dropped it onto the armchair. Gently he took off her glasses and tossed them onto the desk.

“Your eyes are too beautiful to hide.”

Elena thought, for a second, of Control sitting at his monitor in the panel truck watching a still view of the office ceiling.

Berezovsky took off his tuxedo jacket and hung it carefully over the back of the armchair. Then he pulled Elena to him and kissed her. She yielded to him. Their tongues explored each other's mouths. He squeezed her right breast, pulled up her dress, and put his hand down her panties, grabbing her ass. She groped his crotch. They kept kissing, hungry for each other. He removed his hand from her ass as they came up for air.

Then he backhanded her.

A trickle of blood seeped from where one of his rings had cut her cheek. Before she could do more than gasp, he grabbed her shoulders again, gripping her tightly. His voice was almost guttural now.

“You really thought you could fool me, you little cunt? You thought I wouldn't check up on you?”

Elena let fear show in her eyes, but also her lust, as if she was caught up in the sexual violence between them.

“What are you talking about, Alexei? I'm a reporter for CNN. You know that. Let me make a call to my boss in Atlanta, he'll confirm it.”

“You mean to your
Control
?”

“I don't know what you mean. I don't know who you think I am, but you're wrong, Alexei. My name is Elena Petrov. I'm here in Moscow for CNN to interview your president. What is going on?”

He let go of her shoulders and shoved his index fingers into both of her ears. She recoiled.

“What are you doing? There's nothing in my ears.”

She put her hand up to her right ear, as if reflexively, and removed the long, thin needle from her hair. She concealed it in her right hand. She moved up close to Berezovsky, her eyes shining, as if this was turning her on.

“You want it rough, Alexei. I like it rough. But let me take my dress off. It's a thousand dollars' worth of reporting and I don't want it ripped.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You can slap me. But do it with the palm of your hand. You cut my cheek with one of your rings.”

He slapped her face. Hard. Tears sprang to her eyes. She smiled and her breath came out in short pants, like she was running.

“That's good. Do it again.”

He slapped her face again. She reached up and back, undoing the clasp at the top of her dress, unzipping it. The dress slipped off to the floor. Berezovsky looked down at her breasts. As she knew he would. All she needed was a second. Robert McCall had taught her that. Divert your enemy's attention for just a second. If you know what you're doing, that's all the time you'll need.

She stabbed the pin into the left side of Berezovsky's neck. His body stiffened, then shuddered. The paralysis was not exactly instantaneous, but it worked within a two-to-three-second time frame. Before he could even register what she'd done, Berezovsky couldn't move. She stepped back and kicked his legs out from under him. He toppled over onto the thick carpet. Elena put her dress back on, managing to zip it up. Berezovsky, as if held by invisible bonds, stared up at her with wide eyes. She picked up his discarded tuxedo jacket, reached into his pocket, and came out with a silver flash drive. She dropped it into her bag.

“That audio bug you were looking for in my ear?” she said. “I took it out. Didn't want one of your clumsy caresses to find it.”

She crossed to the closet door and opened it. There was a dark suit hung up in there, a couple of shirts, a full-length dark wool coat. Some small paintings were stacked along one wall. Elena picked Berezovsky up by the shoulders and dragged him inside the closet. He wasn't as heavy as she had feared.

“The paralysis will last at least twelve hours. You'll be nauseous, so try not to throw up on your shoes. That would be very unpleasant for you.”

She dropped him into the closet, walked to the armchair, took out the Beretta 21 Bobcat from her jewelled bag, walked back, and pointed it at his head. His eyes were calm now as he looked up at her. The only thing he could move were his eyelids.

“I probably should kill you,” Elena said. “But I got what I came for. If our paths ever cross again, and I mean if we happen to find ourselves on opposite sides of a street in some foreign city, I will kill you. Because you put your hands on me. You think of yourself as an art lover and a man of culture. You know what I see? A filthy pig stinking of Russian tobacco and gin with a cock the size of a little boy's.”

His eyes flared.

She kicked him in the balls.

If he could have moved, he would have folded into himself. Then she kicked him in the head, her high heel smashing his temple. He slumped over, unconscious.

Elena closed the closet door. She grabbed her glasses from the desk, but he'd broken them. She dropped them into her bag. There was a scuff of sound from outside. Someone was at the door. She quickly unlocked it. A uniformed security officer stood there, a ring of keys in his hand.

“Sorry, looking for the bathroom,” Elena said in Russian, and pushed out of the office past him.

*   *   *

Kostmayer couldn't find Elena in any of the gallery rooms. He headed toward the back of the gallery to the loading dock. It was in shadows. Nothing moved. Then he found Masters's body dumped behind some large, wrapped-up sculptures, ready for the next exhibition. He knelt and felt for a pulse at the big man's throat. There wasn't one.

“Masters is dead,” Kostmayer said for Control's ears. “Elena's been compromised.”

*   *   *

The bell at the high school rang. The kids started to empty out of the school yard. McCall watched Scott heading across the concrete with his friends. He was talking animatedly to the tall black kid. Both of them laughed. His server, whose nameplate said
DANA
, brought McCall another cup of Sumatra Asia/Pacific extra-bold blend.

“Three cups today,” she said. “You must have a lot to think about.”

“I knew they'd come for me,” he said.

“Who would come for you?”

“The football jocks. They waited for me in that school yard. In the pouring rain. I wanted to run away. I was scared.”

“Did you run away?”

“No.”

Dana looked over at the school yard. The last stragglers disappeared into the school building.

“You went to that high school?”

“A long time ago.”

“And some jocks beat you up in the school yard?”

“Not exactly.”

“I'm sorry, I'm not following your story.”

McCall shook his head. “No story. Just some memories,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

She smiled and nodded and moved to another table to pick up discarded cups and plates.

McCall looked at the doorway through which the kids had disappeared. He felt a sudden overwhelming sadness at all of the pickup basketball games he had missed with his son.

*   *   *

Elena walked quickly through the crowded gallery rooms, liberating a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. She looked for Masters but didn't see him. Up on her small podium, the harpist started another haunting melody. No one took any notice of Elena. She reached the main entrance.

Outside, the two ex-FTB officers who'd murdered Masters were waiting for her. She recognized them immediately from the party. She knew who they were. There was no way for her to cross the street into Park Iskusstv. And she didn't dare wait for Control or Kostmayer in the crowd outside the gallery. If the thugs moved to either side of her, she was dead.