The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  There were voices downstairs. Either Jimmy’s chemical anaesthetics needed more testing in lab analysis, or reinforcements had arrived. Probably the latter. A guard shift change.

  McCall turned back. “Change of plan. We’ll use the window.”

  He threw aside the cane chair. Natalya snatched up her Windbreaker, which had been at the foot of the bed, and put it on. McCall unlocked the window and pulled on it.

  It didn’t move.

  He heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  McCall put more weight behind the pull. This time the window creaked up a couple of inches.

  The footsteps reached the second floor.

  McCall pulled up.

  Another inch.

  Stopped.

  The footsteps pounded closer.

  One more inch.

  No good.

  McCall gritted his teeth and heaved one more time.

  The window went up just high enough. He helped Natalya through it and followed her out onto the roof. He turned back, took the Sig Sauer from his pocket, and fired it through the open window into the room. The bullets hit the ajar door. Footsteps that had been on the attic steps retreated fast.

  Out on the roof the wind was fierce. McCall grabbed Natalya’s hand, but it was the girl who guided him down the slope of the attic room onto the flat part of the second-floor roof. They ran across to the edge where wooden latticework clung all the way down to the ground. Natalya climbed over and started down the latticework.

  McCall turned.

  No one followed them out the attic window.

  They were waiting for more shots to be fired at them.

  Just for an instant, McCall stood in another time and place, with the wind howling, while silhouetted figures ran across the roof toward him.

  Then he shook off the memory, turned, and climbed onto the latticework.

  Natalya was already on the ground. McCall climbed down fast and jumped the last few feet to the pathway. He didn’t wait for anyone to run out of the front door of the house. He grabbed the girl’s hand and propelled her through the trees toward the west side of the house.

  Now came the sound of pursuit. They reached the high wrought-iron fence. Natalya climbed up it like a monkey. Behind her, McCall was a little slower, but not by much. They jumped down on the other side.

  Kostmayer pulled up in the black Chrysler. McCall threw open the back door, pushed Natalya into the back, slid into the passenger side where the door was already open. He slammed it and Kostmayer drove away fast.

  McCall looked at his Chronograph and hit the timer button.

  Kostmayer did the same on his watch. “Twelve minutes, four seconds. Good thing I decided to move the car,” he said wryly. “A Lincoln town car pulled onto the grounds five minutes ago with more guards. If we’d been in radio contact, I could have warned you.”

  “You did good, Mickey.”

  McCall reached out a hand to the backseat. Natalya gripped it firmly. Her own hand was trembling, but her eyes were shining. McCall looked back at Kostmayer.

  “Do we have a safe house in the city where she can stay for a few hours?”

  “What’s this we, Kemo Sabe? You resigned, remember?” But Kostmayer nodded. “There’s a basement apartment on Ninth near Chelsea Park. If Control finds out I’m moonlighting, taking a rescued hostage to a secure Company location, he’ll have me shot.”

  “Keep it a secret.”

  McCall let go of Natalya’s hand, took out his cell phone, dialed. When Katia answered he knew she was on the dance floor. The music was thundering. Madonna was saying she was a material girl.

  “I’ve got Natalya,” McCall said into the phone. “Tell your dance partner you have to take this call. It’s an urgent personal matter. Then walk outside.”

  McCall head a murmur of voices, but not the words. The loud music diminished and then it was very faint—but not gone altogether—as Katia had obviously stepped outside the club. He could hear muted traffic.

  “Is there anyone around you?” he asked her.

  “No one who matters. Is she with you, Robert?”

  “She is. I’m taking her somewhere safe. Get word to Daudov that you’re not feeling well. You have to go home. He’ll understand that. You’re worried sick about your daughter. Go to your apartment. What’s the address? Wait.” He opened the glove compartment, took out the Hertz rental agreement. “Go ahead.” He wrote her address on it and handed it to Kostmayer. “A friend of mine will pick you up there. You can trust him as you’d trust me. He’ll be driving a black Chrysler. He’ll bring you to Natalya.”

  McCall disconnected and looked out the window at the dark streets sliding past.

  Kostmayer shook his head.

  “Four seconds late. You’ve lost it, McCall.”

  * * *

  The basement apartment on Ninth Avenue was furnished in sandalwood, low modern couches, Chinese screens, Warhols on the walls. There was a living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office area. It looked like something from an Ikea catalogue.

  Katia and Natalya stood in the pale living room hugging each other. Both of them were crying. Tears of joy and relief. McCall walked outside. There was traffic on Ninth Avenue streaming past. Even at this hour of the morning, the city hummed and vibrated with life. Kostmayer joined him.

  “Mother and daughter reunion. Kind of warms your heart.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  McCall looked at some people walking past on the other side of the street.

  “I took a subway to Dolls nightclub last night. It wasn’t that late. There was a young woman waiting for the next train. No one else on the platform. When I walked up behind her, she was spooked. No threatening body language, but that didn’t matter. It’s not like it was after 9/11. People aren’t continuously looking over their shoulders, but you can still sense the dread out there. Monsters in the dark.”

  “Yeah, like I said, I’ve got your back—but who’s got theirs?”

  McCall didn’t respond. Kostmayer shrugged.

  “Hey, we got Natalya back tonight. You can’t save everyone, McCall.”

  “What was Katia’s apartment like?”

  “I’ve been in walk-in closets that were bigger.”

  “Unfurnished?”

  “Yeah, I’d say she brought what furniture she had from Chechnya. Old and heavy. There are a couple of nice paintings. A few mementos, some photos, some books.”

  “What kind of a view does she have from her living-room window?”

  “A dark narrow street. The bedroom windows look out onto a brick wall. Cosy if you’re into prisons.”

  McCall nodded. “I want you to take Katia home, let her get some clothes and whatever the two of them will need. They’re going to stay here for twenty-four hours.”

  “Sure. When you go to that nightclub, are you going alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happens after that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean if no one comes after you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t lock yourself away from the world.”

  “At some point I have to face my demons, is that it, Mickey?”

  “You’ve got to do something. Bartending isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Neither is returning to The Company.”

  “Maybe something else?”

  “I like to fish.”

  Kostmayer sighed. “I’ll take care of the girls.”

  He walked back inside.

  Now all McCall had to do was take care of Borislav Kirov.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was early Friday morning in Singapore. When he walked out of the Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Square, he was not worried about any of the surveillance cameras picking him up. He looked completely different from the man who had checked in the night before. He wore beige overalls, white shoes, his hair was a bright blond. He carried a small Adidas bag in one hand. He limped a little on his left leg. The te
mperature was already eighty degrees and stifling. He walked along the Marina Bay. The thrusting skyscrapers were impressive. Several ships were at anchor. He looked at the grotesque (at least to him) huge Merlion fountain. Water spouted out of the statue’s stone mouth. He knew the name meant mermaid, but it looked to him like a lion’s head with the snout of a pig. Beyond it was the HSBC building, behind that the Hitachi building. Great monoliths, impersonal and cold. There was beauty in them, but he rarely recognized beauty in anything.

  He walked all the way to the Overseas Union Bank Center. There weren’t many people out on the streets yet. He hoped Berezovsky’s intel was accurate. It would be early for the man to be at work in his office. The new building built next to the OUB Center was named One Raffles Place. He skirted the main entrance and walked down the street along the east side. There he found the entrance that Berezovsky had indicated. Sure enough, the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and walked into the skyscraper.

  He found a bank of service elevators in a small hallway near the back. He took the ring of skeletal keys that had been waiting for him in a small box at the Ritz-Carlton reception desk. There had also been a Sar Arms Hawk 9 mm pistol in the box, a 9 mm Wraith QD suppressor silencer, and two boxes of ammo. He found the key with a red tag on it and turned it in the silver key lock beside the elevator. The elevator door opened. He stepped inside, flicked to the key with the yellow tab, and turned that in the key lock on the steel bank of floor buttons. A green light glowed. He punched the button for the thirty-seventh floor. The elevator whisked him up with no sound at all. He might have been in some kind of futuristic capsule being shot through space. There wasn’t even the smallest of shudders when the elevator reached the thirty-seventh floor. The door opened. He stepped out into a glimmering steel-and-gray hallway. He had studied the blueprints Berezovsky had sent to his iPhone. The man’s office was at the end of the corridor to his right through a reception area. The glass doors of the reception area were closed, but not locked.

  He pushed one of them open. There was a Chinese cleaner inside, pushing a steel cart. He was probably in his sixties, in a gray uniform with the name ONE RAFFLES PLACE stitched onto the breast pocket. He turned at the faint sound of the reception door opening and Jovan Durković shot him through the left eye with the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm. He fell behind a desk, making as little sound as the elevator had.

  Durković walked through the empty desks to the corner office. The door had the kind of beveled glass you could not see through, like cascades of water gleaming down its surface. The man’s name glittered on the door: DINGXIANG LIM. He remembered that Dingxiang meant “stability and fortune” in Chinese. It was prophetic. The notes Berezovsky had sent to his phone had said the businessman was worth at least fifty million.

  Durković pushed open the door to the office and was surprised.

  He had expected to find Dingxiang Lim working at his desk, maybe a cup of coffee beside him, probably from Starbucks, they were everywhere, wasn’t there one just in front of the Giza Pyramids? The executive was at his desk, and did indeed have a cup of coffee at his right hand, but it was a large white mug of bone china, with the faint aroma of a fine Arabic blend. Durković could tell the businessman was tall even though he was sitting behind the desk. He had a crewcut of steel gray hair. He wore glasses that made his eyes almost completely disappear, the lenses were so thick. He was dressed in a gray suit with a dark blue tie. The cuff links on his white shirt were gold and looked expensive. He wore a gold wedding ring on his left hand and a gold signet ring with some kind of design on it on his right. Probably his family symbol. There was a manila folder open on the desk with business reports strewn across it.

  The executive looked up, frowning, faintly irritated. He had not expected some workman to invade his privacy at this hour. All of that Durković had anticipated.

  But Dingxiang Lim was not alone.

  What must have been his family were seated on a white leather couch against one wall. There was a young man, who looked exactly like his father, except his hair was black and wavy. The young woman was probably in her early twenties, very attractive, dressed in a business suit. She didn’t resemble Dingxiang Lim as much, but it was either his daughter or the young man’s wife. Durković glanced at his left hand. No wedding ring. So perhaps his girlfriend. At the end of the couch was a very old woman, must’ve been in her eighties, her skin stretched so tightly over her face it made her appear desiccated. Dingxiang Lim’s mother. All three of them looked at Durković, not with fear, but with irritation. He guessed he must’ve interrupted some intense family discussion. Perhaps they were trying to persuade the rich executive to part with some of his fortune.

  Berezovsky’s intel had said nothing about the man’s family visiting him. What were they doing there so early? Perhaps it had been a surprise visit? They had wanted to talk to the great man before his day started. They’d wanted to cajole him before his phone started ringing and his colleagues came in and out with files and demands and concerns.

  It didn’t matter, but Durković felt a flicker of irritation himself. Berezovsky had not briefed him about the intelligence officers following Elena Petrov in Moscow, although, to be fair, that had been a last-minute crisis assignment and Berezovsky had just been lucky that Durković was in the city. Now Berezovsky had not factored this executive’s family into his intel. It’s probable that he could not have known they were going to be there, but Durković was still pissed off. These were loose ends that he was expected to tie up. He was not doing this assignment for his usual fee. Berezovsky was punishing him for not retrieving the flash drive from Elena Petrov’s body, and that was fair enough. He would only receive a million dollars transferred into his Cayman’s account for this Singapore job. It would pay off some gambling debts. He should charge Berezovsky by the body count, but Durković was a professional, and he was not petty.

  Dingxiang Lim stood and came around his desk to throw the workman out.

  Durković took the silenced Sar Hawk 9 mm out of his overalls’ pocket and shot him in both knees. He collapsed to the thick carpet with a shuddering cry. His body went into shock. He trembled as he stared up at Durković, almost uncomprehendingly.

  The executive’s son leaped off the couch, picking up a heavy ashtray to hurl. Durković had to shoot him dead, between the eyes, there was no time for finesse. The attack had been very sudden and stupid. But the man’s sister, or girlfriend, just sat frozen on the couch, her eyes wide with terror.

  Durković shot her in the right arm and the left leg. Blood spurted across her suit and the pale couch. She gasped and fell to her knees, clutching on to the glass coffee table, which had a big book on it extolling the wonders of Singapore. He shot the old woman in the neck. Her mummified hands trembled up to try and stem the blood pumping from the carotid artery.

  Durković looked down at Dingxiang Lim on his knees, both of them shattered. Even if he survived, he would never be able to walk again. Right now he could not move forward. He could fall backward, but he would not be able to get up again, and he knew that. So he just knelt there, as if he was a spectator at a macabre cabaret show.

  Durković turned back to watch the young woman writhe in agony. He wondered what it felt like? He suffered from sensory autonomic neuropathy—more specifically, CIPA—congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. He had always been getting hurt as a child and not realizing it. He’d once fallen off his bicycle and his parents hadn’t taken him to hospital for days because they hadn’t realized he’d broken two ribs. He could not sweat. He had once gone on the Internet to see what it had to say on his rare condition. It was an autosomal-recessive disorder. Only a very few people in the world suffered from it, and most of them did not live past the age of twenty-five. Durković was thirty-six, so he had already beaten those odds. He lacked unmyelinated fibers and the amount of small myelinated fibers he did have were decreased—or some shit like that. He’d got bored and found some porn. At first doctors had thou
ght it was a disorder he had got from his father, hereditary sensory neuropathy, although they never had the chance to examine his father. Durković had killed him when he was twelve. Taken an ax to his head. If not hereditary, Durković had what the doctors called a developmental defect. There was no cure. It didn’t bother Durković any longer. He just had to be careful not to get too badly hurt. Or rather, if he was hurt, to realize it. He had felt the tug on his left ankle when the bullet in the Disaster Park had hit him. He’d felt no pain, but at least he’d been aware that something had torn through his flesh. He had dealt with it later.

  Dingxiang Lim’s daughter—he decided that’s who she was, there was a resemblance—cried out now. Her body convulsed. Tears burned down her face. Durković savored her pain. What must that sweet agony feel like? It gave him a thrill to watch her squirm and shudder. He could see that pain etched in her eyes, through the tears. He was envious. She could experience something he never could.

  Dingxiang Lim made a sound like coughing. Durković looked at him. The executive was spitting Chinese at him, angry, vengeful words, probably the lowest curses that his language could provide. Durković did not understand Cantonese. The words would have meant nothing even if he had been able to translate them. He would not kill the executive yet. He wanted him to watch his family die.

  The daughter was speaking now. The words were also Cantonese, and meaningless, but it was the look in her eyes. He realized she was pleading for her life. For the life of her grandmother. It was too late for her brother. Durković almost smiled. Did she really think he was going to show her mercy? What made her even hold out such a shred of hope? He supposed it was human nature. There was always hope.

  She continued to shudder, gasping. Durković was enjoying it, but glanced at his watch. He could not allow his pleasure to compromise his job. Anyway, once he had watched the first sensations of pain and agony on his victims’ faces, the thrill diminished. It was always the same. Then it became a little tedious.