The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Dymtryk knew the man’s real name was Vladimir Gredenko, but he was probably the only Russian soldier in the abandoned automobile factory who did. The interrogator was known throughout the intelligence world as “Arbon,” which meant “devil” in Russian, or rather, an English bastardization of the Russian word. It was said he got the nickname because his victims would scream and scream while he tortured them and the terrifying wails were like those of the Tasmanian devil’s nocturnal cry.

  From the front passenger seat a younger man emerged. He was blond and slight and wore his own trademark dark brown leather flying jacket, black jeans, and boots. General Dymtryk knew his name was Josif Volsky, an ex-FTB officer, Arbon’s bodyguard, assistant, and constant companion. It was whispered they were lovers, but no one dared voice the suspicion aloud. The driver got out, lit a cigarette, and waited.

  Volsky’s eyes darted everywhere, sweeping the area ahead of them, looking for the smallest anomalies in security. He would find none. General Dymtryk looked at his face. It was said that Volsky was even more of a sadist than his boss.

  The two men strode up to the Russian general. Arbon’s eyes looked up at the camouflage nets covering the old brick building. He nodded. Up close, the man gave off a charisma that was chilling. General Dymtryk suddenly felt ill at ease, almost sick to his stomach. He knew everything was in order. It always was with Dymtryk. But the presence of the interrogator made him queasy.

  “Is the prisoner here?” Arbon asked in Russian.

  He spoke in a deep, guttural cadence. His voice was a little hoarse. It was rumored he had lung cancer. That he smoked three packages of Belomorkanal cigarettes a day.

  “She is, Arbon,” General Dymtryk said.

  He knew the great man liked to be called by his nickname. He nodded curtly and waited. A cold wind blew through the courtyard of the derelict plant. General Dymtryk suddenly wanted to get his famous visitor inside as quickly as possible.

  “Follow me, please.”

  The general strode across the broken cement of the courtyard. There were forty soldiers in position around it. They were not expecting any trouble, of course, but General Dymtryk wanted to assure Arbon that he was well protected.

  It was even colder inside the old factory. The three men walked down echoing steel catwalks over a large area, past abandoned shapes cloaked in darkness, rusting metal frames, pieces of fractured cars rotting along with the building. There were armed soldiers stationed every few feet who stood at attention. General Dymtryk could tell they were in awe of the great man who swept past them, his black coat swirling around his ankles. They actually saw him in person! It would be something to tell their grandchildren. The general wondered if they would also describe the screams that he had no doubt would emanate from the room in which the young woman waited.

  Their illustrious visitor did not speak as they walked down the catwalks and then along one last corridor to the room. There were two soldiers stationed outside it. They stood aside, unable to take their eyes off the interrogator’s face, which by reputation was as familiar to them as any movie star. General Dymtryk unlocked the door. Josif Volsky went in first. The folklore had it that he tasted Arbon’s food before he did, drank the first sip of wine or vodka, undressed the women before he would allow his mentor to proceed. Volsky returned to the doorway and said something softly to Arbon that the general could not hear. He thought he saw the ghost of a smile on Volsky’s face. The interrogator just nodded. They all moved inside.

  The girl sat at the table, her hands on it. As she looked up with lackluster eyes, she started to tremble. She couldn’t help it. She knew who this man was. Control had burned his description into the minds of all of his agents. She knew his real name and his nickname: the Devil. Terror burned in her eyes. She swore to herself this monster would learn nothing from her. And wondered how many other intelligence agents had vowed the same thing silently to themselves before their unbearable agony began.

  General Dymtryk stood at the ajar door, the two guards outside in the corridor behind him. He was unsure whether he was invited in or not, but he had his orders.

  The interrogator set his steel briefcase down on one of the chairs at the blank wall. Volsky took up a position on one side of the table. He smiled at Serena, small, white even teeth, his tongue wetting his lips. He looked her up and down as if undressing her, examining her body, then going deeper, peeling back her skin, looking at her organs and her bones. His breath came a little faster. His long slender fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides, but slowly, not in frustration or anticipation, but like he was flexing them.

  The big man took off his fedora and tossed it onto the second chair at the wall. His hair was jet black and combed across to hide a balding patch. He did not remove his long black overcoat. He stood towering over Serena. He did not move. Just stared down at her with eyes so fathomless they appeared dead.

  “Your name is Serena Johanssen.”

  A soft, guttural drawl, emotionless.

  She didn’t bother to confirm or deny it. She stared up at him with as much defiance as she could muster, which was about as much as a sick mouse. She was nauseous. She did not want to retch in front of this looming creature. She fought back the urge to vomit and continued looking up at him. Her world telescoped down to his face, his cruel eyes.

  He peeled off his black gloves. His hands looked soft and pliant, like a surgeon’s hands. He handed the gloves to the blond sycophant who took them like he’d guard them with his life. The Devil had an economy of movement that was frightening. He would do whatever was necessary and nothing more.

  “You will talk to me,” he said, his voice a little hoarse, she noticed. “At first, it will be very little. A few words. Denials. Lies. Then you will tell me everything I want to know.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered.

  He leaned forward and his breath was hot on her face. It stunk of vodka and cigarettes. His voice was still coarse and soft. “Then you will start to tell me things I don’t want to know. Special things. Personal details. About your life. Your family. Those you love. People you will never see again.”

  She spit in his face.

  He leaned back. Blondie slapped her hard across the face. It stung and brought a trickle of blood from her nose. But the interrogator seemed completely at ease. He took out a linen handkerchief, wiped away the spittle from his cheek, and smiled.

  It was the most awful thing she’d ever seen.

  He nodded to the blond, who picked up the steel briefcase from the chair, opened it, and removed some items wrapped up in plastic sheeting. He brought them to the table and unwrapped them. There were gleaming surgical instruments in narrow sleeves in the plastic. The big man took out just one, a thin steel instrument, and laid it all alone on the table.

  “This is a number-eleven scalpel,” the interrogator said in his soft, guttural tone. “Triangular blade with a sharp point, flat cutting edge parallel to the handle and flat back. Excellent for precision stripping and sharp angle cuts. When I gouge out your right eye you won’t feel a thing.”

  Terror took hold of her. She began to shake.

  The man turned to General Dymtryk still standing in the doorway.

  “You may leave now,” he said.

  “My orders are to stay with you at all times,” General Dymtryk said.

  There was no anxiety in his voice, only an ease of command.

  He was enjoying this.

  The interrogator nodded. Flicked a hand at the open door behind the general. No need for his soldiers to receive a first-hand education. General Dymtryk closed the door. Then he moved closer to the table. His heart was pounding. This interrogation repulsed him, but also excited him. He wanted to watch the master at work.

  Serena tried to stop her body from shaking. It was no use. She looked around her. The Russian general was on one side of the small metal table on her right. The little blond creep stood on the other side of the table on her left.

  The monster sto
od unmoving in front of her.

  Then he moved.

  He picked up the scalpel from the table and stabbed the blond man in the neck. Blood gushed from his carotid artery. At the same time, the man pulled a Russian GSh-18 pistol from the blond man’s belt, turned, and fired twice at the general. Two head shots. He slumped to the ground, dead before he hit it. The man swung back to Volsky, who was on his knees, trying to stem the blood that was pouring through his fingers like someone had turned on a faucet. He stared up at his benefactor with total disbelief in his eyes.

  In one last, swift move the man sliced the scalpel across Volsky’s throat. He slumped over and did not move, a lake of blood forming around him.

  Serena caught her breath, staring up at the man with disbelief in her own eyes.

  McCall said: “Company,” and then there was no time for more.

  CHAPTER 28

  McCall had been keeping Vladimir Gredenko under surveillance for over five months. He had traveled to Pushkin from Saint Petersburg by train and had checked into the Hotel Natalie on Malaya Ulitsa as a Finnish writer named Christian Hyvonen. He was writing a book for a Finnish publisher on the reconstruction of the Catherine Palace after a devastating fire destroyed much of it in 1820. The reconstruction had been supervised by architect Vasily Stasov. Between 1811 and 1843 a wing of the Catherine Palace hosted the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum where Alexander Pushkin studied between 1811 and 1817. The other spectacular palace in Pushkin was the Alexander Palace, built in the northwest corner of a new park, later named Alexander Park, just west of the Catherine Palace. It had been constructed for the future Emperor Alexander I by architect Giacomo Quarenghi. It became the main royal residence of Nicholas II in 1905 and, after the October Revolution of 1917, the members of the royal family were kept there under house arrest. That was the end of the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire. The thrust of Christian Hyvonen’s book was the contrast between Alexander Pushkin studying and writing in one palace and, across the way and several years later, the Russian royal family exiled in the other. The book had several fantasy scenes where Alexander Pushkin would visit Alexander Palace and walk on the grounds with Nicholas II, discussing the changes in Mother Russia. McCall thought it might actually be an interesting fictional exercise, if it was ever written, which it would never be. Control had had a Russian scholar write two sample chapters, in case McCall ever had to show his “work-in-progress,” but beyond that it existed only in McCall’s mind.

  McCall spent a lot of time in cafés on Sadovaya Street in the northeastern part of Pushkin, in what the residents called Old Tsarskoye Selo, some of the oldest streets in the city. He wanted the residents to get to know him, to understand that he wasn’t a tourist, he was there to research his fictional book. He wore dark trousers at all times, because he didn’t want to have to hastily change them later, and black boots. He wore a dark gray overcoat. His hair had been dyed black. He had a beard, but it was not close-cropped like Gredenko’s, but kind of shaggy and shot through with streaks of gray. He carried a dark red backpack with him everywhere he went. He became a familiar figure who also spent time at the Catherine Palace, the Alexander Palace, and took long walks through Alexander Park, in case anyone followed him to check out his story. He thought the chance of that was unlikely, but he went through the motions frequently. Besides, he liked walking through Alexander Park. There was a kind of tranquility there he enjoyed. He did think of Nicholas II walking through it, with his family, watched closely by guards, although he doubted they’d ever let him set foot outside Alexander Palace.

  Gredenko lived in a beautiful house at the end of Sadovaya Street. He lived alone, although Josif Volsky was his constant companion and often stayed late after dinner, usually until midnight. He never stayed the night. They were discreet. Several young women did spend the night, all of them prostitutes, so Arbon was certainly bisexual. McCall had located several motion detectors at the front and the back of Gredenko’s two-story house. Not that he couldn’t have circumvented them, but he didn’t want to grab Gredenko at his home. It was too dangerous. McCall had no idea how many guards were inside, besides his blond bodyguard, and there was no intel from The Company on it. McCall had never seen any of them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Gredenko took long walks with his bodyguard around the Old Tsarskoye Selo area, stopping at various cafés, where everyone knew him. None of them knew his reputation as an interrogator, of Arbon, the Devil, a monster feared throughout intelligence circles. He was on the cool side, but courteous and friendly and enjoyed his meals and his vodka. Volsky always accompanied him. In the more than five months McCall had Gredenko under surveillance, there was not a single instance when Gredenko went to a restaurant or bar or café alone, or even walked alone.

  McCall had, in those months, only seen the great man a dozen times. But it was enough to have taken a lot of pictures. McCall studied them on his walks in Alexander Park. Their faces were similar, high forehead, long nose, prominent chin. The eyes were completely different. Gredenko had very dark eyes, almost black. The interrogator’s hair was much blacker than McCall’s, and thinning. He combed it over a bald spot in the center of his head. McCall had been able to buy an identical black silk shirt of the kind that Gredenko usually wore. The black gloves would be no problem. They would be in one of Gredenko’s overcoat pockets.

  The restaurant that Gredenko frequented most was the Stroganoff Pushkin on Srednyaya Street in his neighborhood. They knew him well. Greeted him like family. It was in the file that Control had given to McCall. This was the restaurant the interrogator visited before going out on an assignment. Gredenko was a creature of habit, or superstitious, or both. He always went to this particular restaurant, drank six Beluga vodkas, and ordered a chicken Kiev meal before leaving Pushkin. It was ritualistic.

  McCall also frequented Stroganoff Pushkin. He ate lunch and dinner there, sometimes in the same day. He purposely put on weight. Gredenko had about thirty pounds on him, but he quickly caught up. No diet drinks or carrot sticks.

  Their intel had been that Serena Johanssen would be moved from Kresty Prison to an unknown location. No more than an hour’s drive from the prison. They did not know when, but within six months. The interrogator would be brought in to question her. She would resist and she was courageous, but in the end he would torture her, break her, then walk away and give the order for her to be put out of her misery.

  McCall had to be patient. He got far into his cover. He became that Finnish author and actually wrote some chapters of the nonexistent book. A few of the Pushkin–Nicholas II conversations he decided were quite good. Pithy, a little ironic, heartfelt. Of course, McCall had no editor to censor him and no one would ever read the pages, which was probably a good thing, but it gave him a focus. He wanted the locals to see him writing in his green notebook in the cafés. If one of them happened to stroll by his table, he wanted them to see words on the pages. Words they could even read, if they lingered, which would make sense as dialogue in the novel.

  One young Russian had looked up from the pages he’d glimpsed as he’d paused beside McCall’s table, smiled sympathetically, and walked on.

  Everyone was a critic.

  Then McCall had got the word from Control. He was 168 days into his deep cover. Control would take the train up from Saint Petersburg. They met at the center of one of the four quadrants of the New Garden in Alexander Park at the ruins of a Chinese theater. Built in 1778, it had once been a full-size opera house with an incredibly sumptuous interior. But it had been gutted during the Nazi invasion and the shelling of Pushkin in 1941. McCall and Control, writer and publisher, walked around it, then strolled toward the Grand Chinese Bridge with its lurid sculpture of a Chinese man sitting cross-legged on it, holding an immense lantern. Control had told McCall the extraction phase of the mission had been initiated. The Russians were moving Serena Johanssen from Kresty Prison the next night. Gredenko would leave Pushkin on that same night. Control was not convi
nced McCall could pull off this daring impersonation, but McCall had argued there was no other way. They still didn’t know exactly where Serena would be interrogated. There were a number of possible locations within a fifty-mile radius.

  They had to get to Gredenko on his own turf. Control gave his agent a final briefing. Told McCall that Granny and another Company agent would be in an AH-64 helicopter on the banks of the Volga, waiting for a signal. They had coordinates of the area that they believed housed the interrogation location, that was all. But Granny would find it. Control wished McCall good luck. Shook his hand. Then had walked away through the trees toward where McCall could see the high tower of the Chapelle Pavilion in the distance.

  McCall hadn’t waited for Gredenko outside his home. He’d gone directly to Srednyaya Street. He’d checked the burned-out building at the back of the street, about halfway down. The coal cellar still had the new padlock on it. McCall had the key. Then he walked down the narrow space between buildings, you couldn’t even call it an alleyway, and walked into the front of the Stroganoff Pushkin restaurant. He’d been greeted warmly by the proprietor who asked how the book was coming along. McCall’s persona was diffident and self-effacing. He said it was slow and difficult, but words were appearing on the page. He wrote out everything in long hand in his green notebook. Later, back at his hotel, he typed the pages onto his iPad. McCall sat at a table at the back of the restaurant. It did not attract any attention. It was the table where he usually sat. He was five steps away from the short dark corridor that led to the restrooms.

  McCall waited. His heart was beating fast. His mouth was dry. He had everything ready, but if he’d miscalculated, Serena Johanssen was dead.

  Arbon walked into the Stroganoff Pushkin restaurant at 7:14 P.M. Josif Volsky was with him. Gredenko was dressed in his usual outfit, the long black coat, the gray fedora on his head. Volsky was in a brown leather flying jacket. McCall noted the Russian GSh-18 pistol in his belt, which he didn’t bother to hide. He always carried it and no one took any notice of it. Volsky carried a slim, steel briefcase for his boss. McCall knew it was filled with instruments of torture. The two of them were greeted warmly by the proprietor, with a lot more reverence than McCall had been greeted, and sat at a window table. Volsky set the steel briefcase down at his feet. He looked relaxed and happy. McCall was glad to see that Gredenko kept on his gray fedora.