The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  The bodyguard was also gone.

  McCall climbed up to the first level.

  Only shadows.

  He walked past the fat gray pipe and the wall of electrical panels and down the small corridor that led to the front doors of the main pumping station. They were as he’d left them, with the padlock hanging open. He stepped outside.

  The first thing McCall saw was that the helicopter was gone. He ran through the patchy moonlight to where the bodies of the Czech thugs had lain. They were also gone. McCall guessed there’d been a prearranged time when the helicopter pilot should have heard from his guys, and hadn’t. He’d investigated, seen all of the bodies, carried them to the chopper, and taken off. Complete cleanup; no evidence left behind.

  McCall ran down to the fence that surrounded the property. He doubted there was anyone coming for him. Berezovsky would not yet know his mission had failed. A local contact might start to miss the Czech thugs; probably not yet. The helicopter pilot would alert that contact, if he had that intel. He might not. But McCall wasn’t taking any chances. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could.

  He found two big gates at the front, heavily padlocked. He climbed up the fence beside them, hurt and bleeding and still fighting nausea. He jumped down to the other side, half falling to the ground. He stood and waited and listened.

  He heard nothing.

  McCall jogged down the road until he came to the immense tree that completely blocked it. He climbed over it, ran into the trees, and found the Grand Prix parked right where he’d left it. He fired it up and pulled out of the woods and turned left down the road, back toward Prague.

  He walked into the lobby of the Hotel Leonardo just before midnight.

  She was sitting in one of the red chairs beside the grand piano in one corner. She was dressed exactly as she’d been at the tavern across from the Ventana Hotel. She looked as if she’d had more than that one glass of white wine. There was a glow to her face, but she wasn’t drunk. Maybe just needed enough courage to go there. McCall stopped in the center of the lobby, staring at her. She jumped up and came over to him. Her eyes were filled with concern.

  “You’ve been in a fight. What happened?”

  McCall just shook his head.

  “You must tell me.”

  “You have to leave.”

  “I told them at the desk I was your sister. They said I could wait up in your room, but I didn’t want to do that. But I do want to go up to your room with you.”

  “No.”

  “Something terrible has happened to you tonight, and you shouldn’t be alone. I’ll leave the moment you tell me to. You can throw me out or call hotel security. But you’re not going to your room alone.”

  “Andel…”

  “If you do, I’ll just come up and knock on your door.”

  McCall was too hurt and exhausted to argue. He walked across the lobby. She fell into step beside him. They didn’t speak in the elevator to the second floor or along the muted corridor to room 214. McCall put the modern key in the lock, the panel turned green, and he pushed the door open. Andel followed him inside. It was a small room with a queen bed, a dresser, and a stand on which stood his one small carry-on suitcase. Opposite the bed was a flatscreen TV on a stand, a small round table with two chairs, a vase of fresh flowers on the table, a bureau, and a minibar. McCall took off his coat and threw it onto one of the chairs. Then he just sat down on the bed and took a deep breath.

  Andel stood in the semidarkness, moonlight streaming in from a window behind the bed.

  “Do you want me to turn on some lights?”

  McCall shook his head. It hurt him to speak, his throat was so raw from where Durković had grabbed him. Andel kicked off her shoes and disappeared into a small bathroom and came back with a wet washcloth and a small hand towel. She sat on the bed beside him and gently washed the dried blood off the cuts on his face.

  “Some of these may open up again. You need stitches.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. What happened to you?”

  He didn’t want to lie to her, but he wasn’t sure why.

  “Someone tried to kill me. Actually, more than one person.”

  “And you’re alive.”

  “Just about.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence followed that. Andel took the hand towel and dabbed his face dry, gingerly on the cuts. She returned the towel and washcloth to the bathroom, then came back into the pale moonlight and stood looking at him.

  “You’re not a writer named Christian Hynoven.”

  “No.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you. No one you would want to know.”

  She looked at him some more.

  Then she unbuttoned her shirt and took it off and folded it neatly and dropped it onto the chair over his jacket. She unzipped her short black skirt and stepped out of it. All the time her eyes never left his face. She reached back and undid her bra and dropped it on top of the skirt. Her breasts were magnificent. She slid out of her panties and dropped them onto the bra. She was a natural brunette. McCall was transfixed, but not with lust. He was just amazed.

  She stood naked in the pale light from the window, still looking at his face. Then she walked slowly forward and took his face in her hands and knelt down and kissed him as gently as she could.

  He kissed her back.

  Gingerly she took off his clothes, noting all of the cuts and bruises and the dark discoloration on his rib cage on both sides.

  “I can’t move without breaking something,” McCall murmured.

  “I’ll be very gentle,” she said. “I’ll do all the work. You just enjoy it.”

  It didn’t quite work out that way, and it was a little painful at times, but he did enjoy it.

  Later, as they lay in bed, with that same moonlight cradled across them, McCall leaned up on an elbow and looked at her. Her black hair lay across her face. He pushed it back. Her eyes were moist and she was smiling at him.

  “So was I an angel or a messenger?”

  “Maybe both. For me.”

  “I think, after what we just did, you should break down and tell me your first name.”

  “It’s Robert.”

  “I like it.”

  She leaned up and kissed him. The sheet fell away from her body. He reached over to cover her up.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I want you to look at me. You haven’t been with someone for a long time.”

  “Was it that noticeable?”

  “Of course not. Just a feeling I got. I don’t want to know who you really are or what you did tonight. We probably won’t ever see each other again. But I’m a very good judge of character. You’re a good person.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. You help people.”

  “No, I kill people.”

  “Your enemies. But you help the rest. You take care of the people you love.”

  “There aren’t any of them left.”

  “There’s me now.”

  He smiled at her in the muted darkness. “And you’re someone very special.”

  “Not really. But you are. When I’m gone, who’s going to take care of you?”

  McCall didn’t have an answer to that.

  He pulled the sheet up over her and she snuggled into him. He groaned when her shoulder hit his fractured ribs.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “That’s okay.”

  “You need to sleep, Robert,” she whispered.

  She closed her eyes. She was the one who fell right to sleep. McCall held her close.

  “Maybe a messenger,” he said softly.

  She didn’t hear him.

  McCall slept fitfully for about two hours. When he woke up and turned over he found himself alone in the bed. The clock radio on the bedside table glowed 3:14 A.M. Moonlight still sifted in through the window behind the bed. He looked over at the chair
and only his coat lay there, folded now. He got up and found a note on the small round table. It said: “Please take care of yourself. Your angel—Andel.”

  It struck him that no one had ever said that to him before. Because everyone assumed he could do that.

  He’d found closure for Serena and for Elena.

  But not for himself.

  But he had an idea now of what the solution might be.

  * * *

  McCall took a cab to the Fakultní Nemocnice Motol Hospital in Prague District Five. The ER was virtually deserted at that time. The ER doctor bound up McCall’s fractured ribs. None of them had actually been broken. McCall told him he’d been in a fight outside a bar; three assailants. He was going to say four, but that felt like overkill. The doctor, a lanky Czech who looked like he’d just graduated from med school, stitched and cleaned up all the cuts and advised McCall to stick to the bars around his hotel. Probably good advice.

  McCall got back to the Hotel Leonardo at 4:30 A.M. He allowed himself to hope, just for a moment, that Andel was waiting for him, but the lobby was completely deserted. So was his room. He didn’t bother to try to get any more sleep. He showered and changed clothes and packed up his carry-on bag. He took a cab to the Prague Václav Havel Airport. He booked an early flight to JFK on his Christian Hyvonen passport. He passed through customs with no trouble and made his way to the gate. He had an hour to wait.

  He dialed Kostmayer’s cell phone. It was 5:40 in the morning, but he figured that Kostmayer was already up. If he wasn’t, he should be.

  Kostmayer said, “Where are you, McCall?”

  Either caller ID or he just knew.

  “Need to know,” McCall said into his iPhone. “How many sweeps of the grounds of the chateau have you made?”

  “Four within forty-eight hours. All clear.”

  “Make another one. West side, halfway up the mountain. You’ll see an old gazebo, pretty smashed up.”

  “What else will we find?”

  “The body of the man who killed Elena Petrov. You’ll also find an AWC M91 breakdown rifle in a copse of trees above the gazebo along with a MARS scope.”

  “You’re something else, McCall. Who was the target?”

  “No idea. But seeing as you’re babysitting the president and the secretary of state, I’d say they might have been high on Berezovsky’s list.”

  “How do you know that? How did you get this intel?”

  “We never had this conversation.”

  McCall hung up. His iPhone vibrated almost immediately. Kostmayer had questions. Who could blame him? But McCall didn’t answer his cell. He sank down onto a leather couch, aching all over, closed his eyes, and waited for the announcement for boarding to commence.

  McCall changed planes in Frankfurt. Then he had to change planes again in Washington, D.C. He had a six-hour layover until the flight to New York’s JFK. McCall found a Firkin & Fox pub and ordered a Glenfiddich and sipped at it. The aching in his ribs was a little diminished, but his head pounded.

  The local D.C. news was playing on a TV set over the bar. The place was packed and no one was paying any attention to the female news anchor. The lead story was that of a rapist who was stalking female joggers in Rock Creek Park. Two young students, both from American University, had been attacked on jogging paths late at night on consecutive nights. They’d both been raped at knife point. They’d described their attacker as a white man in his twenties, with curly brown hair and a nice smile. The knife had been a big Japanese Ginsu steak knife. Behind the anchor an identikit picture flashed onto the screen that a police sketch artist had made from the corroborating descriptions of both victims. Neither of them had been slashed by the razor-sharp Japanese knife, but one of them had received small cuts to her hands as she fought off her attacker. The two attacks had occurred in different areas in Rock Creek Park, both near midnight. The police were asking for tips from the public, if anyone might recognize this man. Obviously they did not know the identity of the rapist.

  But McCall did.

  * * *

  McCall left the airport and checked into the St. Regis Hotel on Sixteenth and K Streets. Then he took the metro to Friendship Heights and met her at Clyde’s Restaurant near American University. Racing cars hung from the ceiling and raced along the walls. The lower restaurant was jammed with AU students. It was a fun place. McCall liked it.

  She was sitting up at the end of the bar. He slid onto the stool beside her. He always thought she looked like that British actress Melissa George, if Melissa George had wanted to look like a 1940s movie librarian. She wore a man’s white shirt, a long skirt, a single half-moon silver necklace at her throat. Her glasses reminded McCall of Mary’s from Brahms’s store, except they were not as expensive and tinted amber. Her blond hair was swept back into a ponytail. On the bar was a padded envelope that she kept one hand on while she drank a frosted glass of Samuel Adams with the other.

  McCall said, “Hello, Moneypenny.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Emma Marshall said. “It gets my knickers in a twist. You look like shit.”

  “Nice to see you again, too.”

  “I brought what you requested,” Control’s executive assistant said. She lowered her voice, although the ambience inside the restaurant was noisy. “Right out of the great man’s safe. If he finds out I’ve done this, I’ll be on the next plane home to Hackney East.”

  “Would that be a bad thing?”

  “Have you ever been to Hackney East in London?”

  “No.”

  “It would not be a good thing.”

  She slid the envelope over to him.

  “Who are you going to kill?” she asked, conversationally.

  “No one.”

  “You could go to a safe house here in D.C. and get all the firepower you need.”

  “Then I’d be back. And I’m not coming back.”

  “He wants you to. He misses you. He’d never admit it, but he does.” McCall didn’t respond. “He’ll be back from Prague in four days.” Emma tapped the envelope. “This has to be back in his safe before then.”

  McCall nodded. “I also need your iPad.”

  “Now you’re going too far.”

  But she fished into a copious green Kipling tote festival bag and came out with her iPad, which she also slid across the bar to him. The bartender came over.

  “Glenfiddich,” Emma said automatically.

  The bartender went away.

  “I was very sorry to hear about Elena Petrov,” she said. “I know you two were close.”

  “She’s at rest now.”

  “Is she? Why’s that?”

  McCall didn’t elaborate. Emma regarded him with frank appraisal.

  “There was an incident at the Summit Conference in Prague. You won’t hear about it on the news. A sniper was apprehended on the grounds of the chateau before he could fire a shot. Maybe the president was his target, maybe someone else. When I say ‘apprehended,’ I mean he was found with a knife sticking out of his forehead. Where did you just fly in from?”

  “Vacation,” McCall said. “I’ll call you.”

  The bartender came back with the Scotch. McCall got off the bar stool. Emma took the Glenfiddich.

  “I’ll drink it,” she said. “It’ll wash down the anaemic taste of your American beer. You could always give me a hug good-bye.”

  “My ribs hurt.”

  “I’ll be gentle.”

  McCall gave her a hug.

  Both of them were gentle.

  “If you’re hurt, you’d better shoot straight,” Emma murmured.

  “Thanks for this,” McCall said.

  He walked away from her carrying the envelope and the iPad.

  To find Jeff Carlson.

  CHAPTER 44

  McCall sat in a corner of the St. Regis Hotel bar with Emma’s iPad and illegally tapped into the records of all of the Washington, D.C., car rental companies. It took him forty minutes to find out that Jeff Carlson had rent
ed a blue Hyundai Accent a week before. He had given a local address as the Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue, NW.

  McCall rented a black Kia Rio from Hertz through the hotel. They delivered it by 8:00 P.M. McCall put the rental car on Christian Hyvonen’s credit card, just like he had the flight from Prague and the hotel. The credit card account was good for another year before The Company would cancel it. They might need the bogus identity for another agent.

  McCall drove to the Georgetown Inn. He cruised through the parking lot until he found Carlson’s blue Hyundai parked in one of the back slots. He pulled into an empty space a dozen slots away and waited.

  Carlson walked out of the Georgetown Inn at 9:00 P.M. He didn’t walk to his rental car. He strolled down Wisconsin Avenue. McCall followed him on foot. Carlson didn’t once look back. He arrived at the Blues Alley jazz supper club on Wisconsin and was shown to a table. The place was cramped and boisterous, with small tables, but the ambiance was terrific. There was a traditional jazz group up on the raised stage called The Midnight Follies, whom McCall had never heard of, but they were good. The bearded pianist, whose name, he saw from the program on each table, was Keith Nichols, was the best jazz piano player McCall had ever heard. His hands flew over the piano keys like a blur.

  McCall took a seat at the back. Carlson ordered the Nancy Wilson Barbecue Chicken Creole. McCall ordered the Tony Bennett Shrimp and Artichoke Hearts. Both of them listened to great traditional jazz and never once made eye contact. McCall followed Carlson back to the Georgetown Inn and settled into the driver’s seat of the Kia and waited to see if he would come out again.

  He didn’t.

  McCall waited another two nights. Both times Carlson went to the Blues Alley for supper. The first night McCall did also. The second night he let Carlson eat on his own, and just waited for him to return to the Georgetown Inn from behind the wheel of his rented Kia. Carlson strolled back and went into the hotel. But tonight he came back out again at about 11:00 P.M. He had changed clothes and was dressed in black. He had on a backpack. He got into the Hyundai Accent and pulled out of the slot.

  McCall followed him in the Kia.

  Carlson drove through Georgetown and into Rock Creek Park. McCall stayed six car lengths behind him. A rust-red sign greeted them with: WELCOME TO ROCK CREEK PARK—NATIONAL PARK SERVICE—U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR. Carlson drove onto Rock Creek Parkway. McCall had to drop back even farther as the traffic in the park was light. They drove past the National Zoological Park. Then Carlson took a route that wound down to Grant Road NW. He pulled over into a small parking lot for six cars. McCall pulled up on the side of the road and waited. Carlson got out, locked the Hyundai, and hiked into the woods. McCall pulled the Kia into the spot next to the Hyundai. He took the envelope that Emma had given him out of the glove compartment and opened it. He took out a Glock 17 9 mm pistol with fixed sights, a 4.49-inch barrel, weighing twenty-two ounces. It had a full magazine, 17 + 1. McCall took an AAC Evolution 9 mm Suppressor from the envelope and twisted the silencer onto the end of the Glock. He put the gun with its silencer into the pocket of his coat, then got out of the Kia fast.