The young woman reached out to him. He shot her in the other leg and she collapsed onto the glass coffee table, spread-eagled, like a marionette with the strings cut. Blood was everywhere, on her hands, in her hair where she’d reached up, across her lovely face.
Time to go.
Durković shot her in the head. He heard Dingxiang Lim moan with horror. Durković walked around the coffee table to the end of the couch. He’d thought he might shoot the old woman one more time, perhaps in the leg, to see some agony. He had yet to see any in her eyes. They were defiant. She sat up—where she got the strength from he didn’t know—and spit in his face. He liked that. He shot her twice in the chest and she slid off the couch and lay crumpled like something thrown away.
Durković made eye contact with Dingxiang Lim before he shot him in the head. The force of the bullet sent the Chinese executive back almost behind his desk.
Durković walked into the tiled bathroom to one side of the couch. It was modern and spotless. He put the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm onto the counter beside the sink. He reached into the Adidas bag and took out a small bottle of brown hair dye. He squirted it into his hands and ran it through his hair. It took six or seven applications, but in the end it worked pretty well. He certainly didn’t look blond. He’d wash both dyes out of his hair later. He scrubbed his hands, dried them, then unzipped the overalls and let them drop to the tiled floor. Beneath them he wore a gray tweed jacket, a black turtleneck, and black jeans. He kicked off the white shoes and took out a pair of black moccasins, the kind that were so supple you could fold them into an Adidas bag and they just snapped back into shape. He put them on.
He picked up the Sar Hawk 9 mm and walked out of the bathroom. The four corpses lay with blood spreading. Durković put the Sar Hawk 9 mm into his belt and buttoned the tweed jacket. It was a little awkward with the silencer still on, but if he had to shoot anyone on the way out he didn’t want to make a noise.
He walked back into the reception area and saw a uniformed security officer kneeling beside the fallen cleaner, feeling for a pulse at his throat. The officer’s head snapped up. He had a .38 Taurus Model 85 in his hand with a laser sight. He didn’t have time to aim through it. He just threw up his hand and fired.
Durković knew the bullet had ripped into his right shoulder because he felt the tug and saw the torn fabric of his jacket. He fell to one knee behind a desk, drawing the Sar Hawk 9 mm, aiming, and firing. The silenced bullet missed the officer, hitting the water cooler behind him. The glass exploded and sent a deluge of water spewing over the man. It caused him to stumble to his left and that’s when Durković had a clear shot.
He fired a soft pftt and the bullet hit the officer just above his right eye.
His body crumpled over the inert form of the cleaner.
Durković was on his feet in an instant, running for the door. He had had plenty of time before, but now it was of the essence.
He ran out into the corridor.
Deserted.
He ran to the bank of elevators. He put the red key into the key slot beside one of them. The door opened. He stumbled inside, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, unbuttoned his shirt, and jammed the handkerchief over the bullet wound. His body began to tremble. It felt the pain, even if he didn’t. He put the yellow key into the key slot on the panel and the elevator whisked him down to the ground floor.
Durković walked through a deserted side lobby and out into the street. He was not concerned about the surveillance cameras he could see high up in the walls. He looked nothing like the worker who had entered. Once he got to the airport, he would pick up his suitcase from the locker where he’d left it. Five minutes later he’d walk out of a stall in one of the bathrooms looking completely different to the man who had walked out of One Raffles Place at 6:42 in the morning.
That had been the plan before he got shot.
It would be tougher to execute it now.
He hailed a cab and slid with difficulty into the back.
At Singapore Changi International Airport Durković took his suitcase from the locker and barely made it to a stall in the first bathroom. He took off the sport coat, balled it up, and took off his shirt. The wound in his shoulder was raw and ugly, but by a miracle the bullet had gone right through the soft tissue and out the other side. In his suitcase was a medical kit, the kind U.S. Army medics used in Afghanistan. He ripped open an emergency trauma dressing and put it over the wound. He secured it with surgical tape. The bleeding had already stopped in the taxi, but he took out a SOF tactical tourniquet and wrapped it around the top of his shoulder just above the wound. He didn’t want it to start oozing again.
He had several dress shirts in the suitcase and two other jackets. He carefully put on a new blue shirt, buttoned it over the bandage, shrugged on the new jacket, a black tweed this time. The blood hadn’t dripped onto his pants, so he didn’t need to change them. But his shoes were splattered. He kicked them off, took black dress shoes out of the suitcase, and put them on.
He wrapped the bloodstained clothes and shoes in a big beach towel with a bright sun on it that he’d picked up in San Diego. Then he packed up the suitcase. He left the Adidas bag stuffed behind the toilet. When he walked out of the stall, there were four young men pissing into the urinals. He waited for each of them to leave. Then he washed the blond hair coloring and the brown streaks out of his long hair. It was returned to its natural black color.
Durković shoved the towel with the bloodstained clothes far down into a big round trash bin. He got rid of the Sar Hawk 9 mm and the Wraith QD Suppressor Silencer in the Cathay Pacific flight lounge. Then he walked, dizzy and nauseous, to his gate area. He found a leather chair away from the mob of people and sat back. His breathing was shallow. He had just closed his eyes when his iPhone vibrated. He took it out of his coat pocket and looked at the LED screen. A text from Berezovsky. Durković had already texted him that the mission was accomplished. He had not mentioned getting shot. He didn’t want the man to think his number-one assassin was continuing to make missteps.
Berezovsky’s text read:
TIMETABLE MOVED UP. MEET IN VIENNA TOMORROW.
Durković had no intention of changing his flight to go to Vienna. He needed a doctor to dress the wound who would not ask questions. There was only one place Durković could do that. If Berezovsky was having a problem with a new schedule, he would have to come to him.
Durković texted back a terse message that read:
HOME TOWN.
He put the iPhone back in his pocket. He closed his eyes and shut out the airport ambience.
He felt no pain.
He thought about the agony in the young Asian woman’s eyes as she writhed in the corner glass office.
It had been exquisite.
* * *
Karen Armstrong walked through the swinging doors from the back of the health club into the reception area, hefting her backpack a little more comfortably on her shoulders. She was exhausted. Her workout had been tough. She was certain that someone had switched the weights. They said ten pounds but she knew they were really twenty pounds. The treadmill had been ratcheted up so the LED screen read just short of the calories you needed to burn off to give you added incentive. Boy, was she going to ache tomorrow!
Then she turned her head.
He was standing in the reception area at the counter. Signing some kind of form. The shock of seeing him shot a pain right to the center of her chest. Hypertension. She fought for breath. She was suddenly acutely aware that her T-shirt was wringing wet and clung to her breasts.
Jeff Carlson turned and saw her. His eyes lit up with recognition and he smiled.
“Hey! Hi, there!”
And now the anger came, although it was more than that. It was an unstoppable rage that flashed through her like a fire.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she said, starting to breathe in gulps to get air into her lungs.
Carlson looked startled. So did the reception
ist behind the counter, an attractive African American girl named Stefanie, who Karen had decided worked out every day for three hours a day and never broke a sweat. Two young women Karen knew vaguely to say hi to were walking through the front door from the street. They glanced at each other like, wow, paranoia time. A health club worker, in sweats, turned from pinning some flyers onto a bulletin board.
Carlson looked around at them all, playing the room.
“I just came by to renew my subscription. Maybe you’re mixing me up with someone else.”
“Stop stalking me!” Karen shouted.
Carlson threw up his hands, his smile now embarrassed. “Hey, look, this is nuts. I see you in the street sometimes. So we go to the same gym? It’s the best one in the neighborhood.”
Karen was trembling now. She kept facing Carlson as she moved toward the front door to the club. “I swear to God, if you come anywhere near me again I’ll kill you!”
Now Carlson retreated, his hands still held in front of him, as if protectively.
“You’re a crazy lady,” he said. “You stay away from me, or I’m going to call the cops and tell them you’ve threatened my life.”
“Stay away from me!” Karen screamed at him.
She pushed through the health club door out into the street.
Through the glass door she could see Carlson talking to Stefanie, shrugging expansively, like: What the hell was all that about? Stefanie was shaking her head. Her eyes flicked to the front door. Karen suddenly felt very foolish and embarrassed. She wondered if Stefanie was going to cancel her subscription to the club.
Karen was angry with herself. Could she have handled that situation any worse? She had played right into the creep’s hands. She had come off like a crazy person.
Resolve steeled her. Okay. Now she knew what she had to do.
She had to get a gun.
CHAPTER 17
When McCall walked up to the Dolls nightclub entrance he was unarmed. He knew he’d be frisked and he didn’t want Borislav Kirov to think he was anything other than a misguided private citizen. The heavyset bouncer outside was in all black again. McCall had a mental image of twenty identical black outfits hanging in the closet of his Bronx apartment.
McCall moved to the front of the line. This time Sully was feeling lucky. Or he was trying to impress the two girls at the head of the line. They were made up to look like they were eighteen, but were probably barely sixteen and dressed for a porn audition. Sully jerked his head at McCall.
“Back of the line, pal.”
McCall didn’t move.
“Are you deaf as well as stupid?”
“You have three choices,” McCall said. “I can put you in the hospital for forty-eight hours. I can put you in the hospital for six weeks. I can walk inside.”
There was a palpable electricity that sparked back down the line. This could alleviate some boredom. The two teenage girls nudged each other, as if the confrontation was being played out for their benefit. One of them giggled nervously. The other unbuttoned another shirt button, in case this guy was being macho just for her. McCall looked relaxed, hands at his sides, not an ounce of tension emanating from him. His eyes never left Sully’s face.
But Sully was smart. He swallowed something that appeared to be constricting his throat.
“You’re good to go in,” he said casually.
McCall walked inside. Behind him, he heard Sully say, “V.I.P., knows the owner. Pain in the ass.”
Now McCall heard muttering from the crowd. If they were going to be deprived of their entertainment, they wanted to get in.
The music inside Dolls was blasting. In his DJ station adjacent to the silver bar, Abuse was basically counting down the Billboard 100. The silver ball over the dance floor spun fractured colors over the gyrating dancers. The nightclub was packed, even though it was only 6:00 P.M.
McCall paused on the level above the cocktail tables, taking in every detail of the big room. He noted Kuzbec standing to one side of the dance floor in his three-piece dark blue suit with the gold watch chain. Instead of a shirt and tie he wore a black turtleneck, no doubt to cover up the searing red mark across his throat where McCall had practically strangled him. But he didn’t seem particularly the worse for wear. More hurt pride, probably. McCall figured he’d get over it.
McCall’s gaze shifted across the dance floor to the bar area. He picked out another of the Chechen enforcers who had been at Moses’s antique store. His name was Rachid, although McCall didn’t know that. He was sitting quietly at a table, sipping a glass of wine, watching everything. McCall didn’t think he’d be a problem, but more of one than Kuzbec.
McCall stepped down into the cocktail area. One of the cocktail waitresses in their shimmering silver outfits came over to him, but he waved her off. He walked over to where six of the dancers were sitting. The one at the first table stood up. She was in her early twenties, he figured. She had blond hair that floated down her back to below her knees. It was quite beautiful. So was her face, brilliant blue eyes, porcelain skin. She wore a powder blue dress that showed off her figure. She smiled at McCall.
“Do you want to dance?”
McCall shook his head. “I’m looking for…”
“Yes, you do,” she said, and lowered her voice. “Give me a hundred-dollar bill. Make a show of it. I’ll give it back to you. Come out onto the dance floor, we can’t talk to customers unless we’re dancing.”
She took McCall’s hand and led him out onto the dance floor. The Village People came on singing “YMCA.” Abuse’s idea of throwing the crowd a curve. Or he just loved that song, forget the get-ups and the lyrics. McCall moved the girl around the dancing couples, and threesomes, in some cases four girls grooving together, his eyes continuing to survey the battleground.
His partner said, “I’m Melody. You’re a good dancer.”
“I trained with Baryshnikov.”
She smiled again. In other circumstances it would have warmed McCall’s heart.
“Not going to tell me your name?” she asked.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re dancing with me?”
She lowered her voice again, although no one could have possibly eavesdropped on their conversation with the Village People saying the clientele could hang out with all the boys at earsplitting decibel levels.
“You were with Katia two nights ago,” Melody said. “There was something about the way you two danced. None of us thought you were a stranger to her. Are you her boyfriend?”
“No.”
Melody nodded. “Just a friend.”
“Not even that.”
“If you’re looking for her, she…”
“I’m not,” McCall said.
“She didn’t come in tonight.” Now Melody’s voice sounded urgent. “She never misses a night. None of us do. There are another twenty girls waiting somewhere to take our place. So we’re worried about her.”
“She’s popular with the other dancers?”
“She’s the best. She doesn’t take crap from…”
Reflexively she looked over at one of the cocktail tables on the other side of the dance floor. McCall followed her gaze. Bakar Daudov sat there, immaculately dressed in a dark suit, drinking a double shot of Grey Goose. He was very still. He was searching the crowd. Maybe he was also waiting for Katia to show up for work.
“He’s your handler?” McCall asked.
“He’s like the manager here,” Melody said. “He’s in charge of the dancers and the cocktail waitresses. He’s…”
She bit her lip and didn’t continue.
McCall nodded. “I know who he is.”
“You know him?”
“Men like him.”
“I’m frightened for Katia.”
“She’s fine,” McCall told her.
Then he silenced her with his eyes as he danced her away from the side of the dance floor where Bakar Daudov sat.
“Where is she?” Melody asked, when his eyes told he
r she could. “I’ve called her apartment ten times. And her cell. It all just goes to voice mail.”
“She’s somewhere safe.”
Melody looked at him in silence for a moment as the Village People finished and Pitbull started feeling the moment with Christina Aguilera.
“Because you took her somewhere safe?” she asked.
McCall ignored that. “I need to speak to Borislav Kirov. Where’s his office?”
“Upstairs, first door on the left, but you won’t find him there. He’s hardly ever in his office. He likes being down on the floor. He holds court at a table over there.” She pointed. “In that alcove.”
McCall spun her around so that he could see the alcove. The angle was bad, and the alcove was in shadow. He could make out the dark figures of men at a long table. They could certainly see out into the club.
McCall nodded. “So Mr. Kirov is watching us now?”
“Oh, yeah,” Melody said. “He likes my hair. When I turn on the dance floor he says it’s like a curtain of soft rainbows floating through the lights behind me.”
“Very poetic. He that kind of a man?”
“He’s very private. None of us know much about him. He’s married, a couple of teenage sons. He’s surrounded at all times by an entourage. He’s at that table most every night, talking to customers, taking phone calls, working on his iPad. He’s a little scary. When is Katia coming back?”
“You’ll know when she walks in.”
“But she is coming back to the club, right? That would be very important to her.”
She said it as if it was life-and-death. With enough emphasis, albeit ambiguity, for McCall to stop dancing.
“Why is that?”
Melody shrugged. “She’s a stranger here in New York. She has a teenage daughter to raise. She needs this job. We all do.”
It wasn’t really an answer, but McCall wasn’t going to press it. A new number started. Demi Lovato having a heart attack. He escorted Melody back to the cocktail tables, making a show of handing her a hundred-dollar bill.
“I’ll give it back to you,” she whispered.
“Keep it,” McCall said. “If the snake in the dark suit watching us asks you questions, tell him exactly what was said between us. Which is nothing that can hurt Katia. You don’t know where she is because I haven’t told you. Understand?”
The Equalizer Page 18