The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Serena pulled off her prison pajama top and dropped it over the alpha dog’s head, which was no mean feat, as it was still thrashing violently. McCall unwrapped the big overcoat a couple of twists and threw it over the alpha’s head. Now it was thrashing completely blind.

  McCall threw the diseased creature off, rolled over onto him, and grabbed the knife from Serena’s shaking hand. He held it, ready to use it, his other arm around the dog’s throat now. He pulled back against the dog’s throat with all of his strength. He didn’t want to kill the animal. The rest of the pack would do that for him if the alpha dog failed in its attack and was lying injured. McCall kept up the pressure, rearing up, like he was fighting a big fish bucking on a fishing line. Slowly the convulsions of the dog diminished. McCall jerked on the wild dog’s throat with one final, vicious twist and the creature slumped forward, unmoving.

  McCall stood up fast. He threw off the overcoat, then grabbed the prison shirt off the dog’s face and tossed it to Serena, who stood half-naked and shivering in the cold. She put it back on. McCall closed the bloody blade on the knife, grabbed the fallen Kedr from the ground, and took Serena’s arm.

  The alpha dog lay motionless, its face bloody.

  The other wild dogs were still, watching, but whimpering now, a low keening sound that was like something from Hell.

  McCall unfurled the overcoat and put it around Serena’s shoulders. They backed up, away from the pack of wild dogs, their eyes never leaving them. They walked behind the ruined building.

  And then they ran.

  There was no sound of the wild dog pack coming after them.

  There were snarls and the awful sound of jaws snapping as they tore the alpha dog apart. One of them would become the new alpha.

  McCall had no desire to stick around for the ceremony.

  He and Serena plunged into the thickest part of the woods. Branches of the trees tore and clawed at them again. Their hands and faces were both cut and bruised, but they kept on running. Then, ahead of them, the trees were not so tightly packed together. They came out of them, not into a clearing, but into a space the size of a prison cell. McCall signaled for them to stop. Serena tried to regulate her breathing. They found a huge fallen log and sat on it. She pulled the overcoat tighter around her. She looked down at the ground. Her voice came out in fitful bursts between breaths.

  “If you had really been Arbon, the Devil, I would have told you everything. About The Company, Control, agents’ names, safe houses. Everything.”

  “Except I wasn’t. And you didn’t.”

  She continued to stare down at the ground. She shook her head. Her voice was a little stronger.

  “I’d have told him.”

  “Me, too.”

  She looked up at him. “No.”

  “Everyone has a breaking point. In fear, in love, in grief. Better not to know what it is until you have to.”

  She looked out into the dark forest. The moon was going in and out of clouds, throwing pale splintered light through the trees and then extinguishing it.

  “Do you have a plan?” she asked.

  “Keep going.”

  “That’s not a plan.”

  “Best I can do on the spur of the moment.”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out again.

  “So wonderful to breathe the night air. To walk … to run … even if it is away from men with guns and rabid dogs. I didn’t remember what all this space around me could feel like.”

  McCall nodded. He didn’t appear to be listening.

  “Is this a good moment to thank you for saving my life?”

  “It’s what I’m paid to do.”

  “I can still thank you. We’re not strangers anymore,” she said softly.

  She kissed him gently on the cheek.

  He stood up.

  “What is it?” she asked, alarmed. “What can you hear? The dogs?”

  “No, it’s in front of us.”

  A sound had been creeping into the heavy silence of the night. A low, slightly shrill thrumming noise. At first he couldn’t place it. Serena tried to get to her feet, but staggered. He steadied her and pulled her up beside him. She listened hard.

  “What is that noise?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are those voices I can hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said there wasn’t a town or a village within thirty miles.”

  “There’s not.”

  “So what is that?”

  “It’s a train,” McCall said, finally recognizing the sound. “Not moving, idling, stopped on the tracks.”

  There was no train stop in the area, he knew that, but the tracks did run through the forest. McCall looked at her. Okay to move on? She had regulated her breathing. She still shivered violently, even in the big overcoat. It was open at the front. McCall could see her breasts thrusting against her thin pajama top, the nipples hard in the cold. He buttoned up the coat. She smiled at him. Took his hand and held it tightly.

  They ran through the trees. They started to peter out quickly. Through them, McCall could see the train on the tracks, gleaming in the moonlight.

  It had stopped.

  It took them another few strides to reach the edge of the trees and see what had happened. It was a horrific accident. There was an old gray VAZ-2107 that had been flipped thirty yards and landed on its side, upside-down. The front of it was crushed. It must have stalled on the tracks, or the teenagers inside had raced the train. McCall could reenact the tragic scenario in his mind. The train driver slamming on the brakes, sparks flying from the rails—too late. The train had ground to a halt some sixty yards on. There were two bodies lying beside the wrecked vehicle with a blanket thrown over them. Glass was strewn everywhere with a few pieces of twisted metal. Amazingly one headlamp on the wrecked vehicle was still on, throwing a square of bright radiance onto the ground. There was a crowd of spectators around the tragic scene, passengers from the train. A couple of train personnel and the conductor were conferring to one side. Faces were pressed against the windows of the carriages.

  McCall hated to do it, but Serena needed shoes.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He ran across the edge of the forest until he was parallel with the wrecked VAZ and the bodies. Then he walked forward, as if drawn by the tragedy like the others. The people already there looked at him, a little guiltily, as if they had been caught doing something very wrong.

  The blast of the train whistle made all of them jump. Almost as one, they turned back toward the train. The conductor was shouting in Russian, waving an arm, telling them to come back.

  Four rail personnel were pushing through the crowd, two of them carrying stretchers.

  Quickly McCall knelt beside the blanket and removed the shoes from the dead teenage girl’s feet. They were Jive silver yellow cab sneakers. He straightened and lost himself in part of the crowd, all of them with their backs to him. The train guards knelt down and lifted the bodies of the two teenagers onto the stretchers. They carried them back toward the train through the dispersing crowd.

  McCall ran along the edge of the forest. Serena was still in its shadow. He reached her and dropped the yellow cab sneakers onto the ground. She thrust her bare, bleeding feet into them. They were a tight fit, but better than nothing. McCall took her hand and they ran out of the protection of the trees.

  People were climbing back onto the train, moving through the bright windows in the various carriages. Nothing they could do about this sudden tragedy. McCall noted one businessman, in a window, looking down irritated at his watch. The death of two innocents was making him late for whatever awaited him in Moscow.

  McCall and Serena reached the steel steps between two of the carriages. He pushed her up ahead of him and climbed up. They entered the carriage to their right. It was not full. Some people were still standing at the windows looking out into the bloody night.

  They made their way to one of the rows of seats on the sid
e of the carriage not looking out on the tragedy. Serena took the seat by the window. McCall slid into the seat beside her. Across from them sat a heavyset woman in her fifties, folds of flesh making little pigs of her eyes and erasing her chin and neck. She wore an old black coat and a flowered dress beneath it and flat shoes. She reacted to their sudden presence. They had not been sitting there before.

  “It’s crowded in the next carriage,” McCall said, in Russian. “Not so many people in here. We’re not disturbing you, are we?”

  The old woman just shook her head. Whether she believed him or not, she didn’t want to talk to a stranger. She certainly didn’t think they had just boarded the train here in the forest on this desolate section of track.

  McCall waited to see if any of the onlookers turned back and found their seats occupied. They didn’t. The conductor came through, telling them all to take their seats, the train was pulling out. In fact, it had already started to move. He glanced at McCall and Serena and stopped. If he asked them right now for their tickets, and discovered they had none, he would put two-and-two together and realize they’d only just boarded the train.

  The Kedr sub was in the pocket of the overcoat, which Serena had pulled over her body like a blanket.

  The ticket conductor looked down at her scratched face, then looked at McCall.

  “Terrible thing,” the conductor said in Russian.

  “Da,” McCall said.

  “The driver did not see them in time. He was not going fast through this stretch of forest. He braked, but it was too late. You could hear those brakes yeah? Screaming in the night. There was nothing he could do.”

  “It is a tragedy,” McCall said in Russian, and then shrugged. Like these things happen, so what? He looked down at the watch on his wrist—Gredenko’s watch. “What time will we get into Moscow now?”

  “Just over three hours.”

  McCall nodded curtly, then indicated Serena beside him, wrapped in the overcoat, shoes on her feet.

  “My friend wants to sleep,” he said in Russian.

  The conductor shook his head at such disregard for human tragedy and the loss of innocent life and moved on. The train picked up speed. McCall caught one last fleeting glimpse of the wrecked VAZ through the far window before it was replaced by forest glowing in the moonlight.

  He didn’t know how many stops there were before the train pulled into Moscow. He knew that he and Serena would get off at the next one.

  Because there might be another conductor, and he might not be so easily fooled, if he was fooled at all. Word of their escape, and the manhunt going on for them in the forest, would be reaching new ears by now.

  McCall closed his eyes.

  The ping was like a gunshot in the silence.

  CHAPTER 32

  Jeff Carlson was sitting on a bench in the little park opposite Karen Armstrong’s apartment building. Her doorman was named Harry and he was the last of a dying breed. A man who had a strict work ethic. But his apartment building wasn’t Buckingham Palace, where the Beefeaters, or whatever the fuck they were called, had to stand at attention and not move a muscle. Not even when bratty little girls kicked their shins or American tourists tried to engage them in witty conversation. Carlson had a mental image of a gorgeous American student visiting London, standing outside Buckingham Palace in a summer dress, looking up at the Beefeater standing there stalwart and unmoving, no expression on his face. She’d say: “Hey!” and lift up her skirt, till it was above her panties, then pull them down, revealing a triangle of pubic hair. Sometimes it was blond and sometimes it was brunette, depending on who was on Carlson’s mind at the time. What would the Beefeater do? Would his eyes flick down to that treasure between her legs? Or would he keep that stiff British upper lip, along with a stiff cock hidden beneath his formal robes, and stare straight ahead?

  Carlson knew what Harry would do. He’d look right at the money in a New York second, never mind a minute. Carlson had watched his favorite new doorman for nine hours. He took a lot of breaks. Carlson knew exactly when to return to get into the building without Harry standing outside.

  He just had to pick the right night.

  * * *

  The laptop pinged again. McCall turned from looking out the kitchen window at the rooftops to his laptop on the kitchen table. He closed out his memory of Serena and went through Borislav Kirov’s documents. A lot of accounting, a mass of information about the Dolls Club opening in Manhattan. A great many business investments all over the world. None of it told him anything more than Kirov was meticulous and his personal empire was far-reaching. About 1:00 A.M. McCall started on the e-mails and text messages. There were a number of them from a phone address with the initials AB. The tone of the texts were deferential from Kirov, demanding and dismissive from AB. But the final text message, dated two nights before, caught McCall’s attention.

  It said:

  YOU WILL PERSONALLY SUPERVISE DIABLO IN THE FIELD. DATE MOVED UP. YOUR OWN PASSPORT OK. AB.

  McCall started going through Kirov’s pictures. It took him ten minutes to find the one he wanted. He isolated it, sent it, then picked up his iPhone and dialed.

  It took Brahms two rings to pick up. McCall could hear nothing in the background, just the old man’s soft breathing.

  “No Brahms tonight?” McCall asked.

  “Silence can sometimes be just as soothing. How is Sam Kinney doing? That robbery at the Liberty Belle Hotel is all over the news. I tried calling the hospital, but they won’t release any information unless I’m family.”

  “His condition has been upgraded to stable.”

  “Was it really a robbery?”

  “No. The gunmen were after me.”

  Brahms let the silence linger for a moment. He knew McCall would feel guilty about Sam, so he didn’t comment.

  McCall said, “You’re working late.”

  “How do you know I’m not at home?”

  “I’d hear Hilda. She’d want to know who in the world was calling you in the middle of the night and what did they want.”

  “That’s why I don’t work at home. What do you want? You get the intel you needed?”

  “Mostly. Borislav Kirov’s firewalls and protection screens all came crashing down. How did you know his password was ‘Sardolov’?”

  “I took a stroll around the Dolls nightclub a couple of nights ago. I had on a rumpled suit and looked like Warren Buffett. I said I was from the city planning commission. There was talk of rezoning the street. I didn’t speak to Mr. Kirov, but I did admire his taste in art. It was a guess.”

  “A good one. There’s a surveillance picture he took off one of his security cameras of me. I’ve just sent it to you.”

  “I’ve got it,” Brahms said.

  “Kirov sent the picture to someone. I need to know who it was. A full name.”

  “Call you back,” Brahms said, and hung up.

  There was something in Brahms’s voice McCall didn’t like.

  A heaviness. A loneliness. He recognized it in his own voice.

  McCall sat down again by the window and looked out at the series of roofs washed with moonlight.

  * * *

  The train was out of Saint Petersburg going to Moscow. It was not a Sapsan high-speed electric train, or there would have been nothing left of the VAZ-2107 or its two victims. It was a local and made frequent stops. Serena had her legs tucked up under her with the overcoat around her. Her eyes were closed. If she was sleeping, McCall knew it was fitfully. But she didn’t open her eyes.

  McCall waited. The train slowed in the night. There was nothing out the window beyond Serena’s curled-up figure except blackness. McCall tried to remember his Russian train timetables. He believed the next station was Uglovka. He was one off. It was Bologoe Moskovskoe. He and Serena had traveled farther than he’d thought. The train pulled sluggishly into the station. No one in the compartment got off. There was some activity on the platform. Railway guards had jumped down and were talking to a ma
n in an overcoat and fur hat, stamping in the cold on the platform. A railway official. A further report on the fatal accident. There were too many railway officials for McCall and Serena to disembark; their departure would be noted. McCall would wait for the next stop. A heavyset man, in a train uniform, passed the small knot of concerned railway personnel and climbed up the steel steps. Another conductor.

  He’d be looking for tickets.

  No one else got onto the train. The anxious group of train personnel broke up and reboarded. The train started to pull out from the station. The new conductor strode down the center aisle.

  McCall closed his eyes. Let him disturb him.

  A few moments later McCall felt a shadow darken over him. He opened his eyes and looked up. The conductor had a bland face, small deep-set eyes that were so pale they almost disappeared, and a thin mouth. He motioned for tickets without a word.

  McCall sat up a little straighter. Just that one move was like a physical blow. The conductor took a pace back. The train picked up speed, starting to rocket through the dark countryside. The conductor placed a hand on the top of the seat in front of McCall to help his balance.

  McCall reached into the pocket of his jacket and came out with Gredenko’s ID. He opened it and showed it to the conductor.

  “I do not need a ticket,” McCall said in Russian.

  He said it in Gredenko’s soft guttural drawl. The conductor took the wallet and examined it. He stood unconsciously a little taller. His piggy eyes opened to almost a normal aperture. He was impressed. Gredenko’s rank in the Sovietskaya was Márshal Rossiyskoy Federátsii, or Marshal of the Russian Army. It was an honorary rank, but you couldn’t get any higher. The conductor handed the ID back, gesturing, a little more deferentially, toward Serena’s sleeping figure.

  “My companion is asleep. I do not want her disturbed,” McCall said in Russian. “She is not well. I will vouch for her.”

  There was a moment’s pause as the conductor weighed the pros and cons of informing Vladimir Gredenko, Marshal of the Russian Army, that this was not protocol. He obviously decided the backlash that might accompany fastidious insistence could land him in a Siberian penal colony. He nodded and moved on.