Melody looked back at him and smiled. It would have warmed McCall’s heart, assuming he had one, and Kostmayer had once said the jury was still out on that.
“It was tough sometimes,” Melody admitted, “watching the avarice and sexual intensity in the club. But that’s all changed now. Thanks to you.”
“What happens at Dolls nightclub has nothing to do with me.”
“Sure it does. Katia told me how you came to her rescue. And mine, too. Between Mr. Clemens being the new owner and Barney, our gentle giant who protects the door, it’s a great place to be. It’s when I leave the club that the cynicism of the city seeps into my soul. If I let it.”
“Tell me about your dates with Blake Cunningham.”
“He’s funny, gentlemanly, very smart, and absolutely the predator you warned me about. But he hasn’t made a single move on me that I couldn’t handle.”
“When are you seeing him next?”
“Today for lunch. But it won’t be here at the skating rink. Blake likes to go to the really ritzy places. And I have my new BFF, Tara, shadowing me whenever we go out.”
“She’ll stick close to you. You’ll be safe with her.”
That gave Melody pause. “Where will you be?”
“I have to go out of the city for a while.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Maybe a few days. Will you be all right until I get back?”
“Sure, I’m a big girl, despite the Lake Geneva naïveté. You don’t need to worry about me.” She reached over and took his hand. “But I’m glad you do.”
“Don’t underestimate Blake. That girl I told you about, Emily Masden, is still missing.”
Melody had not relinquished McCall’s hand, but it was a warming touch, not fearful. “I’ll be careful, Mr. McCall. I promise.”
“You can probably break down and call me Robert.”
“Okay.”
Melody leaned across the table and kissed McCall gently on the lips. Then she leaned back, as if suddenly embarrassed. “I really wasn’t going to do that.”
“I’m glad you did. Where are you meeting Blake?”
“At my apartment.”
“Don’t let him talk you into going up there for a drink before lunch.”
She scoffed. “Lake Geneva girls don’t do that. Strong values are instilled in daughters from a young age. But you’re invited for a drink whenever you want.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He stood up.
“Just come back soon.”
“I will. Can I take you somewhere?”
“No. I’ll just watch the skaters. It’s very zen.” Melody looked up at him with a smile that was still in her eyes. “You won’t forget that kiss, will you?”
“Probably not.”
“Conversation to be continued.”
Melody looked back out at the skaters. McCall hesitated a moment, but there was nothing more to say. He didn’t like leaving Melody alone, but he had another client. He had a sense memory of Helen Coleman in Times Square, also clutching his hand, talking about her son Josh, saying, Find him for me, Mr. McCall. Please. The odds were long, but McCall had to take the shot. Melody had a handle on Blake. And Tara was keeping a close watch on her.
McCall moved away from Melody’s table.
* * *
Blake Cunningham stood at the bar area at the back of the Rock Café, a crush of tourists waiting for tables blocking him from sight. Blake watched McCall walk out a side door, skirting the skating rink. Blake gave him a few minutes. He was amazed that Emily Masden’s dad was still in New York looking for his daughter. If this man was her father? Two of Blake’s college buddies had been killed after the rave party, thrown off a scaffolding on an old run-down theater. Two others had been beaten up, but they had survived. The ones who survived hadn’t been able to describe their assailant. Could it really be this old guy?
Blake looked at the place where he’d lost McCall in the crowd. He thought he might have been some friend of Melody’s, maybe even a sexual partner. But how did he know Melody? Or Emily? Too much of a coincidence, but it didn’t matter. He was someone Blake could handle. Maybe he was a regular at Dolls nightclub. One of Melody’s low-life dance partners who might be obsessed with her. Maybe she had agreed to meet him at the Rockefeller Rink to get rid of him. Blake carried the fantasy a little further. If this creep didn’t leave Melody alone, Blake would take care of him.
Blake had plans for Melody.
He pushed through the crowd to Melody’s table. She looked up, a little startled.
“Hey! Hi, there! I thought we were going to meet outside my apartment building?”
Blake slid into the chair that McCall had vacated. “I got out of Morgan Stanley early. Some crisis meeting I don’t need to be at. I know you like to come to Rockefeller Center and watch the skaters. Not that it’s any of my business, but who was the guy you were with?”
Melody shrugged, like it was no big deal. “Some guy who comes into Dolls. I have coffee with him sometimes. He’s harmless.” She dazzled Blake with a smile. “I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you too, babe.”
Yeah, Blake thought, I have great plans for this little cunt.
CHAPTER 20
Norman Rosemont strode through his office complex two hours late, clutching a Starbucks Caffè Americano and a blueberry scone in a bag.
His assistant, Mark, jumped to his feet. “I tried reaching you all evening, sir!”
“I wasn’t reachable.” Then Rosemont decided to spin that into a night’s conquest. “I got lucky. What the hell’s being done about this hacker?”
“I’ve got two more technicians from Cyber Solutions working on it in your office right now, sir. And Jerry Chandler is waiting for you.”
Jerry Chandler was Rosemont’s CFO, a compact man in his fifties, a bundle of energy who paced even when there was nothing to pace about. A young tech was sitting at Rosemont’s desk working on his computer, a second tech working on another laptop. They barely glanced up when Rosemont entered.
Jerry Chandler stopped pacing. “This is serious shit, Norman. I called you half the night.”
“Found myself in a strange apartment.” Rosemont winked. It wasn’t a lie. He looked at the tech at his desk. “You got a solution yet?”
“I’ve never seen firewalls like it.”
“Can you kick this virus off my system?” Rosemont demanded.
The second tech glanced up from his laptop. “It’s an algorithm we’ve never encountered before.”
“Then you’re no good to me.” Rosemont wanted Dumb and Dumber out of his office. “Come back with an answer.”
The two young techs left. Rosemont collapsed at his desk. His headache was hammering even worse.
Jerry Chandler continued to pace. “Every one of our systems is down at every company worldwide. I just got off the phone with Mr. Ling in Hong Kong, who was screaming at me. We can’t do business. We’re losing millions of dollars a day, and that’s conservative. We’ve got to get back online.”
“I’m open to suggestions, Jerry.”
From outside the office there was a small commotion. For a moment Rosemont’s spirits soared. Maybe the two tech guys had had a sudden eureka! moment and were coming back. But it was an elegant African-American who walked into Rosemont’s office.
Jackson T. Foozelman was dressed in a Kenneth Cole gray suit with a silver watch chain and wearing a pair of Cole Haan wingtip oxfords. His face was scrubbed clean, his eyes bright, and a waft of Armani Di Gio aftershave filled the office.
“Who the hell are you?” Rosemont demanded.
Mark appeared in the doorway. “He just walked right past me, Mr. Rosemont!”
Rosemont waved Mark away with a disdainful hand. He looked at the visitor. “I’m not taking any meetings this morning, sir.”
“I think you’ll want to meet with me, Mr. Rosemont.” Fooz stuck out his hand. “Jackson T. Foozelman. At your service, sir.”
Rosemont did not shake hands.
He thought the man looked a little like Morgan Freeman.
“And what service are you offering me, Mr. Foozelman, before I call security and have you thrown out of the building?”
“I represent the person responsible for hacking into your computer systems. I understand they’re off-line at all of your company offices around the world. That can’t be good for business. But my client is prepared to remove the virus from your systems on the following condition.”
Rosemont took out his checkbook and tossed it onto the desk.
“Norman, you’re not going to give in to this blackmail!” Chandler exclaimed. The CFO looked as if he were going to burst a blood vessel.
“How much?” Rosemont demanded.
“It’s not a monetary transaction, sir. I understand you own a number of apartment buildings in the tristate area.”
“What of it?”
“I believe you woke up this morning in an apartment in one of those buildings in the East Village. My client wants you to live in that building, in that apartment, for two weeks. You can bring whatever personal belongings you want from your penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, but no furniture. Once you’ve moved into your new digs, you can’t return to your own apartment for anything at all. That’s the one hard-and-fast rule.”
“What the hell is this crap? I wouldn’t even consider your outrageous proposition.”
“Not my proposition, sir,” Fooz said patiently. “I’s just the messenger here, boss.”
“Who is this client of yours?” Rosemont demanded as his blood pressure rose and the little man with the big hammer started pounding in his head again.
“He likes to stay anonymous.” Then Fooz added ironically to himself, “’Course, puttin’ an ad in the paper and on the internet don’t help that none.”
“Who put your client up to this? Jim Sterling at Webstar Telecommunications?” Maybe he wants to sweeten the merger deal, Rosemont thought bitterly.
“Don’t know that name. My client kinda made this up all by his lonesome. I understand it’s not such a bad building if you don’t mind the rats and the cockroaches. At the end of two weeks, if you’ve stayed in your new apartment, the virus on your computers will be lifted.”
“How do I know if I went through with this insane charade the virus will be taken away?”
“My client always keeps his word, sir,” Fooz said with dignity.
Jerry Chandler fretted over to Rosemont’s desk. “Maybe you should consider this, Norman. Better than the company going under.”
Rosemont looked at Mark, who was still hovering in the doorway. “Call security!” he snapped. “I want this man arrested.”
“Time for me to go,” Fooz murmured. Then his voice lost its soft, mocking tone. “You spend a couple of weeks in that apartment building like the rest of the folks there, Mr. Rosemont. See how that works for you.”
Fooz turned on his heel.
“Tell security to follow him!” Rosemont shouted at his assistant. “Find out where he goes!”
Mark jumped to his desk and picked up the phone.
Outside the Fifth Avenue skyscraper, Fooz was still smiling to himself. That security detail might find it a little tough to follow him where he was going.
Three minutes later he had disappeared down the iron ladder from the manhole cover on Fifty-Third Street into the labyrinth of subway and sewer tunnels beneath the Manhattan streets that he’d called home for over forty years.
* * *
Hayden Vallance had only needed twenty-four hours to set up McCall’s clandestine trip. McCall took a flight from LaGuardia to Washington, DC, then took a cab to Wakefield Municipal Airport in Virginia. This time Vallance was standing on the tarmac beside a Global 6000 VistaJet.
“Does just under six thousand nautical miles,” the mercenary said. “Max speed five hundred and ninety mph. Fifteen-passenger capacity, so it’ll be a little lonely in there, but plush. Galley is stocked with chilled champagne and gourmet food.”
“No copilot?”
“If I have a heart attack, you can take over, right?”
McCall nodded. “Where do we refuel?”
“Budapest, then Somalia. Then I’ll land at the Aleppo airport in Syria.”
“Your flight plan has been approved?”
“ARTCC confirmed with Washington Center. All but the Aleppo part. HCMK, that’s the airport in Somalia, is supposed to be my destination. I got all of the equipment you asked for on board. Last chance to change your mind.”
“Let’s do this.”
* * *
McCall slept fitfully while the Bombardier Global 6000 Vista 9H-VJJ climbed to forty-one thousand feet and leveled off to an average speed of 860 kph. The Vista had been configured for night travel, and McCall could vaguely smell the smoky ambience of Santal on the leather seats. His dream was fragmented, but the face of Matthew Goddard swam into and out of focus. His aquiline features and his deep-set eyes had murder in them. McCall knew that Goddard was somehow responsible for Control’s kidnapping. If he had been kidnapped and wasn’t lying in a grave in the Virginia countryside. Control had warned McCall when he’d quit that a high-stakes game was being played at The Company. Control had hinted of the identity of a mole. McCall saw himself walking down the grassy knoll from the World War II memorials in Yaroslavl shouting at Control about Serena Johanssen’s death, the wind whipping at them from the Volga River. McCall had said, I resign. Then men were hacking at Control with knives. One of them was Goddard. Something glittered on his right hand. Something sinister. Then Goddard pushed McCall into the wind and the darkness and it was a long way down.
McCall felt a touch on his shoulder and then a knife blade was in his hand.
Hayden Vallance didn’t flinch. McCall focused on him, then slid the tactical six-inch Black Tiger throwing knife back into its sheath and swung his feet to the jet’s floor.
“Where are we?”
“I refueled in HCMK Kisimayu Airport. We’re in Syria, twenty minutes from the coordinates.”
“What’s the visibility?”
“Low cloud cover. Sporadic moonlight. You’re going to free-fall into darkness.”
McCall rose and moved to where Vallance had spread McCall’s gear out across two of the couches. He was carrying a commercial tandem skydiving rig designed to hold the weight of two people, but he would be jumping alone. He would be taking weapons and first-aid gear, a timetable of the trains in the region, a radio, and the two six-inch Black Tiger throwing knives. He had a modified Aquatimer automatic chronometer tuned to the coordinates.
Vallance helped McCall into the chute. “I see the tandem includes a little drogue chute. Pretty sporty.”
“Ensures stability in free fall until I push the rip cord. Then it’ll deploy a large canopy about double the size of the small one. Check the backpack.”
“Radio check, sheaf of maps check, trauma kit with a small amount of pain drugs, including Toradol and a small amount of morphine with an IV drip and antinausea medication. Canadian passport, stamped, the paperwork shows you’re an NG volunteer. Not sure that’s going to fly.”
“It explains why I’m carrying a med bag and a drug kit with me.”
“You’re driving a 2006 Hyundai Avante sedan that would not even make it to the outskirts of Aleppo. You were hit by an Insurgent patrol and your vehicle was shot up. I’ll buy that. Until a Jihadist patrol surrounds and searches you, wanting to know why you are out this far.”
“I’ll improvise. Check the weapons.”
“M70 ABM milled AK-47 underfolding rifle. Original Yugo parts kits and a US-milled receiver and barrel for increased accuracy. Yugo grenade-launching ladder sight and bayonet lug. Nice touch. Two four-pack thirty-round AK-47 mags, 762-by-39, AK fixed-stock modification. AK-47 bullet button and mag lock. Ti-rant 9mm silencer suppressor. Bulgarian Makarov 9-by-18 MAK PM semi pistol with a leather brown holster. Two Black Tiger throwing knives.
You’re carrying two pairs of EES Profile NVG Foliage Green, three-times magnification, 37 mm objective up to 100 yards. Steiner 10-by-50 M50 LRF binoculars. Also two packs of four signal flares. You’re set.”
McCall hoisted the backpack into a more comfortable position. The skydiving rig was a little snug, but it was the best Vallance could come up with in time.
“In the zippered pocket you’ll find a SanDisk Cruzer Glide USB flash drive,” McCall said. “Take it out.” Vallance unzipped the pocket and took out the small flash drive. “When you plug it into your laptop, it will transfer fifty thousand into your personal account. If you want to verify the transaction, you’ve got time to do it before we get to the drop point.”
“I’ll get around to it. Once you’re airborne, we’re done. I’m not coming back for you.”
“That’s our deal. How long?”
“Less than eight minutes.”
Vallance climbed back into the cockpit. McCall sat on the forward couch and waited. The Global VistaJet started a descent, but it was so gradual McCall was hardly aware of it. He was running on epinephrine in massive doses. His adrenaline had been enhanced to increase his heart rate, pulse rate, blood circulation, breathing, and carbohydrate metabolism, and it raised his blood levels of glucose and lipids. Every emotional response he was feeling had a behavioral component.
He was keenly aware that he was jumping to nowhere.
Vallance came out of the cockpit.
“We’re below the ceiling of the clouds, light gusting winds, the moon is out, but it’s retreating into and out of shadow. I’ve got you about one mile from the target area. I’m going to open the cockpit door. We’re at three thousand feet.”
McCall and Vallance moved to the cockpit door. Now Vallance hesitated. McCall had been expecting it.
“This is a mistake, McCall. When did Helen Coleman hear from her son? Forty-eight hours ago? She has no idea if he’s even at these coordinates. He could have moved his location. He may be wounded. The Insurgents have been searching for him. Maybe they found him. Maybe they cut his throat. There are atrocities we can’t rectify.”
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