The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  They’d been rewarded five minutes later when he’d seen McCall on Eighth Avenue. He walked down Fiftieth Street to Seventh. A blessing. They could not have followed him down Eighth; traffic was going uptown. McCall was heading downtown. It was still pouring with rain, visibility seriously reduced, and the driver expected him to duck into a doorway until this monsoon got a little lighter, or take the subway, but he didn’t. He just kept walking. The Pontiac followed behind. The driver guided the wheel with a little difficulty, but he was managing just fine, thank you.

  McCall cut over to Broadway at Forty-fourth Street and continued walking. Block after block, past the Village, until he crossed over Broome Street. They nearly lost him there, because a sanitation truck pulled out from an alleyway right in front of them. The driver swerved around it. What the fuck were they doing picking up garbage at this hour? It took him a moment to find his quarry again, but he was still on Broadway. He finally turned left onto Grand Street. Then almost immediately he turned right onto Crosby Street. The driver turned the corner. Ahead, he saw him stop in front of a three-story brownstone. The driver pulled over to the curb and double-parked. He didn’t need to stay long. Through the rain-streaked windshield he saw his quarry use his key to get into the building. It took him a few seconds to climb the stairs—he was sure there was no elevator in there—and a light went on in a third-floor window. Probably the living room. He knew the apartments in these old brownstones had been modernized. Some of them were really nice. He’d be seeing the inside of that third-floor apartment real soon.

  Behind him the two brothers in the backseat shifted uncomfortably. Big Gertie was 350 pounds, folded into a cramped space, and he probably didn’t appreciate the tour of the city at a snail’s pace. But that was okay. The night had been a real success.

  J.T. knew where Bobby Maclain worked.

  Now he knew where he lived.

  * * *

  His office was in a nondescript building in a complex in Herndon, Virginia. It was not listed at Langley as an annex. It was not listed anywhere. Officially “The Company” did not exist. There were six eight-story buildings that all looked alike in carefully landscaped grounds. Control’s building was the last one in the industrial park, nearest the highway. You got to his office by being escorted up to the sixth floor, through cubbyholed small offices. His was one of the only offices on the floor that had a window. Near his office was a war room manned by forty analysts, sitting at computer consoles, two big screens in front of them, one showing hot spots in countries around the world, the other running constant news feeds from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, and other foreign news broadcasts.

  The office was lit by one muted lamp. Otherwise it was in darkness. Control liked it that way. He was tired. They’d taken a 6:30 A.M. Turkish Airlines flight from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow and arrived at Dulles in D.C. at 7:30 P.M. He’d got to his building in Virginia around 8:30 P.M. He sat at his desk, the computer screen of his Mac glowing in the muted shadows. There was a discreet knock on his door and his executive assistant opened it. Her name was Emma Marshall; she was a Brit, late twenties, gorgeous, but chose to hide that fact behind tinted glasses, her blond hair swept back somewhat severely, conservative clothes, always a man’s white shirt and a long skirt to disguise a spectacular figure; she was spectacularly unsuccessful. She had a wicked sense of humor, but right now things were tense around the office.

  “Mr. Kostmayer is here,” she said in her delicious British accent that Control loved.

  “Send him in,” Control said.

  She paused in the doorway. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up for what happened outside Moscow. Elena would hate that.” Control looked up at her. “If you ever want to talk, Brits are good listeners. Except when you talked to us before the Revolutionary War about no taxation without representation. By the way, how is life with no taxation working out for you?” Control smiled in spite of himself. “And if you need a shoulder to cry on, mine is well padded.”

  Control involuntarily looked at her right breast and shoulder, at the mischievous smile that always seemed to be on her lips, and said, “Send Mr. Kostmayer in.”

  Emma disappeared. Kostmayer walked into the shadowy room and closed the door behind him.

  “Take a look at this,” Control said.

  Kostmayer walked around the desk and leaned on it, looking over Control’s shoulder. On the computer screen was what they’d found on the flash drive that Elena had stolen from Alexei Berezovsky. It was a diagram of long, undulating snakes that intersected in places, several of them highlighted, a rectangle at the bottom, a square at the top. Some of the passageways—if that’s what they were—were shaded in blue. That was it. No numbers, no letters, no encrypted messages.

  “It looks like a series of subterranean tunnels,” Kostmayer said.

  “Which could be anywhere. Are we looking at a diagram of tunnels in a U.S. city, or one in Europe? In the Middle East? Somewhere in China? And what kind of tunnels? Passageways below ground? We don’t know that. They could be a maze in a cornfield above ground. They could be passageways in some large industrial warehouse. We’ve got a route traced through the labyrinth, leading from a rectangle to a square. Point A to Point B. I need to know what’s at Point A and what’s at Point B.”

  “There was nothing else on the flash drive at all?”

  “The computer techs are going through it, but so far this is all we’ve got.” Control sat back from the pale screen with its series of lines crisscrossing one another. “Not worth much for Elena’s life, is it?”

  “She knew the risks.”

  “I was her Control in the field. I took on the assignment personally because I believed in her. I also wanted to prove something to myself. That I still had the skill to run an agent and not from behind a desk. I screwed up. I didn’t calculate the odds correctly.”

  “Sometimes the odds are just against you. No matter how prepared you are.”

  “Then you need something to better those odds.”

  “Berezovsky was one step ahead of us.”

  “It was more than that. It was a test. He gave his new assassin a rushed assignment. He probably didn’t have more than twenty minutes to initiate a COA. The assassin didn’t retrieve the flash drive, that was the prize, although Berezovsky knew there was nothing on it that would mean anything to anyone but himself. But his killer did pass Berezovsky’s test. His target was eliminated.”

  “Not cleanly.”

  “No. Why didn’t the assassin go for the kill shot? Elena could have told us intel that compromised his boss. Why did he only wound her?”

  Kostmayer ticked them off on his fingers. “Wind factor. Low visibility in the storm. Heard us coming and rushed the shot.”

  “Not if he’s a pro. There’s something else. Something personal. Do we have any intel on this guy?”

  “Could be a code name. Diablo. There was chatter about him from the Bosnia station.”

  “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “No one is. We’re going through Interpol data banks. Might not even be the same guy. But if he’s passed Berezovsky’s test, what happens next?”

  “An assassination. That’s the business Berezovsky is in.”

  “Do we have any idea who?”

  “A high-level politician. Could be the president, or someone in his cabinet, could be an ambassador at one of our foreign embassies. Our intel says it’s an American target. And Berezovsky is one-stop shopping. You’re running a terrorist cell or planning a coup in your country or you’re the CEO of a major corporation with competition you want to see go away. Berezovsky supplies the high-powered rifle, or the bomb components, he hires the assassin or the suicide bombers, the mission is accomplished on schedule, and he ties up all the loose ends.”

  “Do we have a time frame?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Too bad we don’t have McCall. He and Berezovsky have a history.”

  “I want McCall
back.”

  “He’s going to stay off the grid.”

  Control got up and walked to the dark window. There was no moonlight. He looked out at the rain sweeping across the sparkling highway and the parkway. The branches of the trees were black shapes bending in the wind.

  “My daughter Lindsay will be twenty-four in June. That’s four years younger than Elena. Lindsay’s working for the French embassy here in D.C. As far as anyone knows, her old man works in some low-level government bureaucratic office, plays a lot of golf, and drinks forty-year-old Strathisla single malt whiskey at the Capitol Grill. But what if there’s intel out there that linked her to a spymaster? How could I sleep at night knowing I had put her life in danger?”

  “McCall’s been estranged from his family for years. No one knows they even exist.”

  Control took out his iPhone, hit a couple of buttons, and tossed it to Kostmayer. On the LED screen was a photograph of a man sitting at the 21 Club with an attractive blonde in her mid-forties. The man had his back to the camera.

  “That was taken on a smartphone at the 21 Club in New York City tonight. You can’t see the man’s face from this angle. The woman he’s sitting with is an ADA named Cassandra Blake. She’s McCall’s ex-wife.”

  “So she’s having cocktails with her new husband.”

  “Her husband is a criminal attorney named Tom Blake who’s deposing a wise guy informant in Philadelphia. Comes home at the weekend.”

  “Okay, it’s a colleague from work.”

  “Or it’s Robert McCall.”

  “Reaching out for what he’s lost all these years? I don’t see McCall doing that.”

  “You don’t know what he’d do or wouldn’t do. You think you got close to McCall? Think again. No one does. I want you to fly to New York tomorrow morning. If he’s starting to reach out to people, I don’t want him finding out about Elena Petrov from someone else. You gave her your word.”

  “He’s not involved in this life any longer.”

  Control turned from the window. “You don’t walk away. The past is never over. It harmonizes with the present. It becomes part of your future.”

  “So he finds out. From me or from someone else. There’s nothing he can do about it.”

  “This is Robert McCall.”

  There was silence, then Kostmayer nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “If we have found McCall, I want you to reach out to him. Bring him in from the cold. Before he goes after this assassin, or the killer sets up his sniper rifle on a roof overlooking McCall’s New York apartment. Wherever the hell that is.”

  “Why would the shooter go after McCall?”

  “Elena Petrov had a relationship with him. Berezovsky ties up loose ends. And he knows what McCall is capable of.”

  Kostmayer nodded and walked to the door.

  “And Mickey…”

  Kostmayer opened the door, turning back. It was late, only a couple of analysts working in their cubicles outside Control’s office. It felt hushed and expectant. Like when you smell thunder in the air, but the storm hasn’t hit yet.

  “Tell him I’m very sorry she died in my arms,” Control said, and sat back down at his desk, staring at the labyrinth of tunnels or passageways that led nowhere.

  Kostmayer gently closed the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  Carlson caught up with her just outside the Earl of Sandwich shop. Four skyscrapers hemmed in the big concourse. Office workers poured out of the entrances. Sun bathed the marble columns and tiled walkways. The torrential rain of the night before was forgotten. The temperature was probably in the low sixties, but men were sitting with their coats folded beside them and most of the women were bare armed and letting their cleavage show. The office workers sat at white wrought-iron tables, or on benches and ledges that closed off rectangles of very green grass. She was wearing a green blouse, a darker green miniskirt, nice shoes, a tweed jacket that looked expensive. She had a Louis Vuitton Monogram Raspail PM handbag over her shoulder. Way out of her price range. Carlson figured it for a knockoff she probably got in Chinatown. In the Earl of Sandwich she had ordered a three-cheese melt, house-smoked ham, and grated Parmesan on toasted whole wheat. He already had his turkey club with avocado, horseradish, and lettuce on Vienna toast. She had a Starbucks Double Wall Ceramic Traveler of coffee in one hand. She was heading for a ledge along one of the strips of grass that was unoccupied.

  He hustled to catch up with her.

  “Hey, there!” he called.

  Karen Armstrong turned, a little startled.

  What she saw was a good-looking guy in his late twenties, probably six-one, powerfully built, a guy who worked out. He had long unruly brown hair. His eyes were brown and he had an easy smile. He jogged up to her.

  “I didn’t want to lose you in the crowd! You dropped this in the sandwich shop.”

  He held up her wallet in one hand, balancing his wrapped turkey club and cup of latte in the other. Reflexively she looked into her bag, saw it was gone.

  “Oh, my God! Thank you! You’re a lifesaver!”

  She took the wallet from him, rifled through the credit cards in their slots—all there—saw some folded bills were still in place.

  “If I was going to rob you, I wouldn’t be handing your wallet back to you,” he said, still smiling.

  “No, of course not! Just a reflex action.”

  “That’s all right, Karen,” he said. “I’d have checked it, too.”

  She almost put the wallet back into her bag, then decided to slip it into the pocket of her coat instead.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “From your driver’s license. The wallet fell open on the floor. I saw it when I picked it up.”

  “Oh, if I’d had to cancel all of those credit cards and spend five hours waiting at the DMV for a new license I’d have gone out of my mind! Thanks so much.”

  He held out a hand, still juggling his lunch and a plastic cup of coffee in the other.

  “Jeff Carlson.”

  They shook hands.

  “You work in one of these buildings, right? I’ve seen you in the sandwich shop before. You’re pretty hard to miss.”

  She smiled at the compliment. “Yeah, I work at 221, right there.” She pointed at the glass monolith behind them. “Well, thanks again.”

  She headed on toward the spot on the ledge. He fell into step beside her.

  “What’s it like, being a paralegal?”

  That stopped her.

  “How would you know that?”

  “It’s not too tough a guess. Mostly attorneys in that building. I don’t figure you for a lawyer yet, too young, but you’re not a secretary—I’m sorry, they’re assistants now, I need to be more politically correct—so I thought ‘paralegal.’”

  “Well, it’s a good guess.”

  She started again for her spot, but he kept pace with her.

  “Mind if I join you? The tables look pretty full.”

  “Actually, I’m not in the mood to talk to strangers. I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound rude, after you just proved to me I should continue to believe in New Yorkers having honesty and integrity—”

  “Oh, I’m not a New Yorker. Born and bred in Milwaukee. I’ve only been in the city for a couple of months. I’m working on a construction site. That high-rise condo they’re building over on Fourteenth and Lex? Just signed on. Hey! There’s a table right over there, see where that big fat guy’s waddling away? He should lay off the pizza and get a house-smoked ham like you. Maybe not a lot healthier, but better than pepperoni.”

  Now the alarm signals were going off in her head.

  “You know what my sandwich is?”

  “I heard you order. It’s usually the same every day, although yesterday you had that glazed buffalo chicken breast with ranch salad and sweet onions. How was that?”

  Completely unnerved now, Karen turned away.

  “Thanks again, Jeff.”

  She started to walk faster.
Carlson stayed beside her, effortlessly, still smiling, like they were really getting on famously together.

  “Come on, Karen, lighten up a bit. I could’ve just walked off with your wallet.”

  Ahead, Karen spotted a heavyset girl, in her mid-twenties, auburn hair in ringlets, in a business suit, sitting down at a recently vacated table. She changed course.

  “Hey, Megan!” she called.

  The redhead turned, smiled, and waved her over. Karen stopped, turning to Carlson.

  “That’s a friend of mine from work. She’s going through some tough stuff right now. Boyfriend trouble. I know she wants to talk to me about it. Thanks again, about the wallet.”

  “Sure.”

  Karen strode off toward the table where her colleague waited.

  “Don’t let Peter Jamison give you a tough time!” he called. “I hear he’s a terrific criminal attorney, but a real prick.”

  She didn’t slow her pace. She thought, He knows the name of my boss! He knew I was a paralegal. He knew my name before he ever picked up my wallet! If he really did just pick it up! In that instant she knew he had lifted it out of her bag in order to hand it magnanimously back to her.

  Now she was really pissed off.

  He watched her sit down at the table with her friend Megan. They started to talk immediately. He wondered if the redhead—who was pretty attractive, too, breasts not as big as Karen’s, but a dynamite ass, he’d noticed that before she sat down—would look in his direction. He hoped so. It would mean he was the very first thing that Karen had told her. But she didn’t even glance up at him. Maybe Karen had cautioned her not to.

  It didn’t matter. He could find her outside here any lunchtime. He’d looked into her eyes and saw the spark of interest. More than that. Lust. They all tried to hide it; it was an instinctive reaction, they couldn’t help it. He knew women looked at his eyes first, then down at his crotch to see how big the swell was. Never failed. Karen hadn’t disappointed him.