The Equalizer (7 page)

He
had
no fingerprints.

There was some kind of a panel truck parked beside the crashed jetliner. There was another car behind it. Two agents stood there. Another figure was running from the edge of the back wasteland of the park toward the train carriages. There was a figure at the back of the derailed train, kneeling beside the victim's body. This would be her Control in the field. His was the
real
failure of the night. The man could not have botched his job more completely. He was lucky his Company agent had anything to hand over to him.

But he shared in that failure. He should have taken the flash drive off her cold, limp body.

Jovan Durković cursed softly again. He slid shut the door on the KA-32A11BC chopper and it headed over the barren wasteland, then above the ribbons of jewelled roads toward his own safe house.

*   *   *

Control had turned Elena over onto her back in the tangle of weeds behind the train carriage. The snow was bright red with her blood. He could see how bad her leg wound was. The bullet had torn into the vastus lateralis muscle and had exited at the top of the adductor longus. It had also smashed the head of the fibula. If she survived, he doubted she would ever walk again. He took hold of her black cocktail dress, up on her thighs, hesitated. Elena was looking up at him, her breathing shallow, her words a husky rasp.

“Not the time for modesty.”

He pulled up her dress, above her black panties, exposing a hole the size of a golf ball in her right side. Blood was pumping out of it. He took the silk handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against the wound, holding it tight. Elena looked up at him with pain-filled eyes.

Something else in them.

Pity.

“Not your fault,” she whispered.

Mickey Kostmayer ran up. “Sergei's dead. Shooter took off in a small Russian car. Might have been a Volga. I didn't get a license number. I chased it in the van, but it disappeared. There's a labyrinth of small roads back there. I've called it into the
poltisya
. I talked to Anatoly Yakunin himself. We'll have a police net around the park in ten minutes.”

“He won't stay in his vehicle for long,” Control said. “He'll be extracted.”

They hadn't heard the noise of a helicopter above the cacophony of the storm.

Kostmayer sank to one knee beside Elena. He reached out and took her hand.

“Hey. You remember that morning in Serbia when I hustled you out of that hotel? You were so pissed at me.”

“I was mad at Robert McCall, not you. You were following orders.” She pointed behind her. “In my black bag. Over there in the snow.”

Kostmayer jumped up, ran to where she had dropped her bag, picked it up, brought it back. He could have opened it himself, but he knew Control wanted her to do it. Kostmayer knelt again and handed the jewelled bag to her. With trembling fingers, Elena unlatched it, rummaged inside, and came out with the silver flash drive. She turned it over in numb fingers.

“Not much to show for a night's work.” She handed it to Control. “But it's what you wanted.”

“Yes, it is. Did you see the shooter?”

Elena's body was going into shock. Her eyes reflected it. Her words came out in short bursts.

“One quick glimpse. In the train window. Compact, not too tall. Angular face. Holding a sniper rifle in one hand. No hat, no gloves. He should have been very cold, but he wasn't even shivering. That's…” She faltered. “That's all I saw of him.” She turned her head so she could look up at Kostmayer. “You tell Robert what happened to me.” She didn't seem to be able to get her voice above a whisper. “No one else.”

“There won't be anything to tell. We're getting you to a hospital.”

“
You
tell him, Mickey,” she insisted.

Kostmayer nodded. “I will. I give you my word. When I find him.”

“You'll find him. He's your friend.”

She closed her eyes with the pain.

The wind had kicked up in volumn.

“Get the ETA on that ambulance!” Control shouted at Kostmayer.

Kostmayer got to his feet, looking down at Elena one last time. Then he ran around the first wrecked train car, putting a walkie to his lips.

There was nothing around them now, just darkness and wind and the cushion of the bloodied snow. Control gently pulled Elena's black dress down to her thighs. He lifted her up into his arms. Her eyes cleared for a moment and held that amusement in them he'd always loved.

“You gonna carry me to safety, big guy?”

“I'm sorry, Elena,” he said, his voice thick with suppressed emotion. “I'm no Robert McCall. I couldn't protect you.”

“Alexei brought in the best,” she whispered. “I never saw him, never even heard him until it was too late. Let Robert know.”

“He resigned. He's not a part of The Company any longer.” He was talking to keep her mind from slipping into shock along with her body. Keep her alert. Keep her focused. “I can't tell Robert McCall anything, even if I could find him.”

She reached up and gripped the sleeve of his jacket. Her eyes blazed with final life.

“Tell Robert. Get the bastard. For me.”

She slumped back down. The light went out of her eyes.

She was gone.

Kostmayer ran around the train car. Control stood up. His body language told Kostmayer all he needed to know. Control slipped the silver flash drive into the pocket of his coat.

“
Do
you know where Robert McCall is?” Control asked.

There was the briefest pause, then Kostmayer said, “No.”

Behind them a Trans Care ambulance pulled into the Disaster Park, red lights flashing, no siren.

Too late.

*   *   *

Robert McCall sat down on a high-backed chair in his kitchen and looked out the window at the rooftops across the street. There were two tiers of them, flat roofs, like steps coming toward his narrow kitchen window. Moonlight hazed across them. He sipped a cup of strong Irish coffee. He had ripped open the package of M&M's and tipped them into the empty glass bowl on the coffee table in the living room. He had unloaded the groceries onto the kitchen counter, put the milk and Diet Pepsi in the refrigerator, which held eggs, butter, bottled water, vegetables, a bottle of 2005 Domaine Ramonet Chardonnay. In the cabinet over the stove were two dishes, two side plates, one serving plate, two bowls. There was a juicer on the counter. A toaster. A wooden knife rack. Nothing else. The apartment was deathly quiet. He stared out of the kitchen window at the roofs. In his mind's eye, he saw them coming for him, stark, silhouetted figures against a crescent moon.

Coming to kill him.

To kill them both.

He hadn't thought of it in a long time, and he often looked out this window.

He had felt a chill.

He got up, opened the microwave, and took out a Smith & Wesson five-shot, double-action large caliber 500 revolver. It had a stainless steel 10.5-inch barrel, gray grip handle, and fired a .500 caliber bullet weighing 350 grams at 1975 feet per second with a high recoil. It was the most powerful handgun in the world.

McCall sat down again at the kitchen table and remained very still.

He waited for the figures on the roofs to reach him.

But there was no one out there.

 

CHAPTER 6

The night was warm for Saint Petersburg, probably forty degrees. They walked down the Nevsky Prospect to where the magnificent Dom Knigi book building stood on a corner, its windows ablaze with light.

“This used to be the headquarters for the Singer Sewing Machine Company,” Control remarked.

“Why is there so little traffic?” McCall asked.

The wide boulevard was almost empty. This wasn't right. It bothered him.

“It's late,” Control said. “You'll find the brief at your hotel. Her name is Serena Johanssen. She infiltrated a terrorist cell operating here in Saint Petersburg. But she was compromised.”

“How?”

“You don't need to know that. They're going to take her from the Kresty Prison outside the city to another location where she'll be interrogated. We don't know where. We don't know when this will happen, but sometime in the next six months. Her interrogation will be brutal. She may be buried very deep. We need her extracted.”

“I looked up the word ‘ferret' in the dictionary,” McCall said. “It's an animal that lives in the dark. You throw me down a hole to find someone, take something, destroy somewhere, then hope I find my way out of the dirt back up into the light.”

“You're the best we've got.”

“The sky isn't dark,” McCall said.

“Of course it is.”

“No, it's a very deep blue,
almost
black, but not quite.”

“It's predawn.”

“But when we started walking there were lights in the stores and the buildings.”

McCall looked down the attractive boulevard. Now there was no traffic at all. He looked up. There was a figure standing on the terrace of a building a hundred yards away. He was silhouetted—but against
what
? There was no moon. McCall turned back to Control. He was facing away from him, looking up at the Dom Knigi building. There was a thin trickle of dark blood oozing down the back of his neck. McCall reached for the Sig Sauer P227 pistol on his right hip.

The holster was empty.

“Control!”

“What is it?” Control asked. “What's wrong?”

He turned back to McCall. His face was streaming blood, out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He had a twisted smile on his lips. Then he pitched forward. McCall caught him, bringing him gently down to the sidewalk, looking up.

He caught a glimpse of the assassin standing on the terrace, holding a high-powered rifle. But now there was a red sunset behind him, bathing him in blood. He couldn't see the man's face. He wasn't tall, but when you hold a sniper rifle with a MARS scope you don't need to be tall or strong or fast. You only need to be accurate. The assassin disappeared into the crimson smear of light behind him. McCall looked down at the dying man in his arms.

He wasn't there. There was a child's doll in his arms, stringy brunette hair stained with blood, painted eyes in a ceramic face. The face was cracked and fractured and the little fissures kept on growing, splitting the face wider apart.

The sound was barely audible.

McCall awoke in an instant, senses alert. He was bathed in perspiration. His breathing was erratic and he quieted it and remained very still. He heard nothing. What had the sound been? A creak on the hardwood floor of his living room? An elbow inadvertently nudging an ornament on a shelf? A hand picking up some of the M&M's from the glass bowl? It had been insignificant, but that small noise had risen up through the layers of his nightmare like a swimmer desperate to reach the surface.

McCall's left arm ached. He touched the old bullet wound just above the shoulder bone, where the bullet had gone through the fleshy part. It had left a ragged scar, because it hadn't been stitched up properly. He looked at the bedroom window. It was gray outside and threatening rain. The bullet wound usually ached in wet weather.

He threw off the covers, reaching under the bedside table. The Sig Sauer 227 that had been in the dream—or
hadn't
been in his holster in the dream—was clipped to the bottom of the bedside table. He unlatched it with no sound, the weapon falling gently into the palm of his hand. He got up, wearing dark boxers, watching the open bedroom doorway for shadows. Nothing moved. He padded over to the doorway, moved into the living room, gun outstretched in both hands.

The austere living space was deserted. His eyes swept over the bookshelves, lots of leather-bound books, a few thriller paperbacks. An annotated
Sherlock Holmes Volume I
was open on a bottom shelf, with a slim heavy dagger bookmark at a page in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. There was a Tiffany lamp on a middle shelf and a few ornaments on the shelves purchased from flea markets in different parts of the world. There was a large glass ashtray; a gift from a foreign president from the days when McCall smoked. There was a wet bar with some bottles and glasses set up on it. Next to the wet bar was a table on which stood a magnificent Mark Newman bronze sculpture, a naked sea nymph looking as if she had just arisen from the ocean walking a long eel on a leash with its tail flowing out behind her. A little surreal and probably not to everyone's taste, but McCall liked it. There was a leather couch with a wooden top and leather armchairs, a big-screen TV, the low coffee table with its bowl of M&M's and a large book about Venice, his favorite place. Next to that was a yellow writing pad. At the end of the coffee table was a laptop with a pile of stacked DVDs beside it and some headphones. Splash of color from an easy chair—a bright orange Frisbee sitting on it. There was a chess table in a corner with two straight back chairs where the defenders of the Alamo faced their blue-uniformed Mexican opponents across the black-and-white glass chess squares. They were all beautifully painted.

None of the Alamo defenders or their Mexican attackers had been disturbed.

Nothing
had been disturbed.

McCall moved on silently into the kitchen. Deserted. For the hell of it, he opened the microwave. The Smith & Wesson 500 revolver was in there.

There was the sound of faint traffic from outside. A siren echoed from a distant tragedy, but nothing else. In the silence McCall sat down at the kitchen table. He looked out the kitchen window. The sloped roofs were washed with sunlight.

He set the Sig Sauer P227 on the table.

He was alone.

But he
knew
that someone had been in his apartment.

*   *   *

The antiques store was two blocks from Luigi's, on West Broadway just below Broome. The sign above the green doors read:
ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES, MOSES RABINOVICH, PROPRIETOR.
When you stepped inside it was like stepping into another world. There were large statues everywhere, some elegant, naked porcelain women, some grotesque, gargoyles and dragons with lolling stone tongues, lamps with male and female figurines on them. Colonial rocking chairs rocked in all of the corners. There were antique pieces of furniture, and one exquisite coffee table inlaid with a battle scene of gray-and-black knights fighting red-and-black knights across a green mosaic battlefield. There were exquisitely painted horses on various shelves, including an Indian warrior on a Palomino sitting outside a porcelain Indian village with sand-colored tepees. A brass plaque above it read:
Don't be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thought.—
Hopi
. There were vases on tables that looked like they'd been stolen right out of Tutankhamun's tomb and others that looked like they'd been won at Coney Island. There were at least a hundred clocks on bureaus and desks, on shelves, mounted on walls. All of them read different times and few of them were ticking, the treasure being a grandfather clock with the sun chasing moons across its face, which had a deep, sonorous pendulum. There were glass cabinets of knives and bayonets from World War I and II and tarnished medals with faded ribbons on them. Flintlock rifles stood in glass cabinets along one wall. There were delicate pill boxes and snuff boxes in varying colors on a cascade of small shelves. The store smelled of musk and damp and sawdust, although there was none on the hardwood floor.