The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  Beside him, McCall could feel Serena stir. She had not been asleep. She had heard the exchange. He put a hand on her arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. Everything’s all right. She did not open her eyes.

  McCall knew the conductor might report the incident, even if nothing was done about it. The authorities would be looking for Vladimir Gredenko. No one at the abandoned automobile factory would for one moment believe he was being impersonated. They had seen the great man in person. It had looked just like him. A face that all of them knew by reputation. A brusque manner. His blond sycophant assistant at his side. Something terrible had happened to the famed Arbon. He had gone out of his mind. He had murdered his dearest friend, shot General Dymtryk, taken the prisoner, and driven out of the facility. McCall was not certain how fast this news would travel. There would be an alert in Moscow. There would be troops watching the arteries into the city. They would be at the airport. They would be at the train station. But that would just be protocol; a precaution. There was no way Gredenko and the prisoner could be on a train. There was no train station within fifty miles of the abandoned automobile factory.

  No one could have foreseen a train stopping on the tracks because of a senseless tragedy.

  But McCall was not going to take any chances.

  Twenty-two minutes later the train began to slow down.

  McCall nudged Serena beside him.

  “We’re getting off,” he told her softly.

  She opened her eyes. Nodded. Handed him the overcoat, which he shrugged on, the Kedr submachine gun still in one of the pockets.

  The next station was Tver Oblast. There was no one on the platform as the train pulled in. The station house was dark. No one else in the train compartment even stirred. McCall got to his feet and moved down the aisle to the back of the car. Serena walked behind him. She stumbled a little and McCall grabbed her hand to steady her. Keep the pretense going that she was unwell. But no one even looked at them.

  The train came to a shuddering stop.

  The conductor who had talked to McCall was at the back of the car. He opened the door and set down the steel stairs. Serena climbed down first. The conductor gave McCall a little formal bow, as might befit an Honorary Russian Marshal. But the man’s eyes betrayed something else. McCall climbed down onto the platform.

  He looked up and down the train. No other doors were opening. No more passengers were getting off at Tver Oblast. It was the middle of the night. Above McCall the conductor pulled up the steps and closed the door. The train started to pull out of the station. McCall caught a glimpse of the conductor’s face looking through the window, eyes boring into his before the train picked up speed and moved out of the station.

  It could have been McCall’s imagination. His credentials were perfect—they were Vladimir Gredenko’s. Not forgeries. Still, McCall had his hand in the pocket of the big overcoat, holding the Kedr sub as he and Serena hurried through the train building.

  There was no one in the building to stop them.

  There was no one out on the street.

  McCall put the overcoat back around Serena’s shoulders and buttoned it up.

  They walked for almost half an hour, along the Volga River, before McCall found a four-story hotel where there was a light burning on the ground floor. A tarnished brass plaque said: HOTEL MEDICI. They entered a shabby lobby. The furniture was heavy and sparse. A carpet had been worn down to the floorboards. A burly innkeeper was behind a small reception desk. The man stared at them, a little startled. Before he could say a word, McCall showed him Gredenko’s ID.

  “I am Colonel General Vladimir Gredenko, Márshal Rossiyskoy Federátsii,” McCall said in urgent Russian. “We were on the train to Moscow, but my companion has taken ill. She must lie down. We need a room for the rest of the night.”

  The innkeeper told McCall they were lucky he had come downstairs at this time of night, he was restless, sometimes he sat in the lobby at this hour and drank strong tea and read a book. He was almost apologetic. He had never had a dignitary of this magnitude in his humble establishment. There were a number of tourists in Tver, his hotel was virtually full, but he did have one room on the fourth floor. The window overlooked the city with a view, albeit some distance away, of the Volga River. But he only had one room. McCall told him that would be fine.

  “I have a doctor friend,” the innkeeper said in Russian. “He lives only a few streets away. I can call him. He would come and attend to your friend, Comrade Colonel.”

  “She does not need medical care,” McCall replied in Russian. “She needs rest. Thank you. The key. Now.”

  The innkeeper turned quickly to a row of keys hanging on rusting hooks that looked as if they’d been forged during the reign of Peter the Great. McCall took a big old key from the innkeeper. It had 412 stenciled on it. Serena was already climbing the threadbare staircase. McCall climbed up after her. He glanced back down at the innkeeper who was smiling and nodding. Not quite bowing. Then they turned the corner.

  There were four rooms on the fourth floor. McCall unlocked the door to the one just to the right of the narrow stairs. The room was furnished a little better than the lobby. There was a big four-poster bed, a dresser, two heavy armchairs, an old rocking chair. There was no bathroom—that was down at the end of the dimly lit corridor.

  McCall shut the hotel room door and locked it. He moved immediately to the window and opened it. There was a roof right there that he could climb out onto. To his left was a series of rooftops, sloping away, four or five of them, like stepping stones from higher buildings down to the hotel. Below them, beyond the roof, was the series of small streets that led down to the walkway along the Volga River. There was not a soul anywhere. Moonlight washed the streets and the rooftops. It glistened off the river.

  McCall kept the window open, even though the wind had strengthened and blew in gusts of arctic air. He wanted a clear escape route.

  Serena had unbuttoned the big overcoat and thrown it onto one of the armchairs. She collapsed at the foot of the bed in her black prison pajamas. She did not lie back. She sat, trembling, pressing her hands together.

  “Do you want me to close the window?” McCall asked her.

  She shook her head.

  He walked from the window to the bed and sat down beside her. She folded into him. He put an arm around her shoulders until the trembling stopped.

  “I don’t know your name,” she said quietly.

  Her voice was stronger than it had been before.

  “It’s Robert McCall.”

  She nodded. “And you’re a Company agent. You work for Control.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you get word to him that you’ve made a successful extraction?”

  “I will.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know that yet.”

  She smiled. “But you have a plan?”

  Now McCall smiled. “Of course.”

  “More of a plan than the one in the woods?”

  “Not much more.”

  “The FTB will find us,” she said, and the trembling came back.

  McCall pressed her tighter into him.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “There’s a manhunt going on right now. We got off that train in the middle of the night.”

  “There was no one else on the platform. The station was closed.”

  “We fit the description of the fugitives.”

  “They won’t know we were able to get on a train. They’ll still believe we’re somewhere in that forest. Maybe we stole a vehicle. We’ll be on a forest road. Maybe we found shelter, some abandoned hut in the woods. They’ll be looking for that. We’re safe here.”

  She nodded. McCall didn’t know if she believed him. He didn’t believe it. That’s why he’d left the window open. They could step right out onto the roof if someone pounded on the door.

  “My mission was a failure,” Serena said. “I’m surprised Control sent anyone for me.”

  �
�Control doesn’t leave his agents twisting in the wind.”

  “But how could you have pulled off this impersonation? It must have taken months of preparation and surveillance.”

  “It was worth it.”

  “You dedicated a great deal of time to a stranger.”

  “I thought we weren’t strangers?”

  “We were before tonight.”

  “We couldn’t let them keep you in that prison.”

  “Because I would betray The Company. It would only have been a matter of time.”

  “Because you’re a human being. We weren’t going to let you rot in a prison cell.”

  “It was terrible,” she whispered. “You know the story of the architect of Kresty Prison, Tomishko, and what happened to him?”

  “No.”

  “They put me into isolation. I know he was buried in that cell somewhere with me. I could smell his bones disintegrating, crumbling to dust.”

  “Darkness is disorientating. Silence is worse.”

  She nodded, reached out for his hand. He gripped her hand tightly. It was small and cold and still trembling.

  “I thought about being rescued. Every day, even though I knew it was impossible. I thought how strong I would be. Look at me! Shaking like a leaf.”

  “You need to get some sleep.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t think I have the strength to even move.”

  McCall swept her up into his arms. She looked up at him with her liquid brown eyes and smiled. “Very Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind.”

  “I can’t believe anyone your age knows who Clark Gable is,” McCall murmured.

  He carried her to the top of the big four-poster and gently laid her down on it. He pulled back the old muslin quilt. Beneath were cotton sheets in a dark blue. He pulled them back and set her down. She slid under the covers. He pulled them over her. He turned to move away, but she reached up and caught his arm. He turned back. She pulled him down toward her. McCall sat on the edge of the bed. She sat up as if it took all the strength she had. She gently rubbed the side of his face, over the close-cropped beard.

  “Do you have a beard when you’re not playing the role of Vladimir Gredenko?”

  “No.”

  “And your hair?”

  “Not this black. And the bald spot is a piece. I’m going to make a phone call. I’m going to take the key with me and lock the door behind me.”

  “You’re calling Control? Can you do that?”

  “I’m calling someone I pray is still alive. Don’t let anyone in unless it’s me.”

  With her hand still cupping his cheek, Serena drew him farther down to her and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she slid back down again and closed her eyes.

  McCall stood up. He crossed back to the window, closed it, and locked it. Then he picked up the overcoat. He shrugged it on and took the Kedr submachine gun out of the big pocket. He set it on the foot of the bed.

  “I’m leaving you the sub.” He walked to the door and unlocked it. “I won’t be more than a few minutes.”

  She didn’t open her eyes.

  “Got it.”

  He opened the door. There was no sound out in the corridor. Just the creaks and low moans of an old building and the rush of the wind grasping to find a way in. He closed the door and locked it. He walked fast down the narrow staircase. Met no one on the stairs. He half expected to find the innkeeper in an armchair with his feet up on the scarred low table drinking hot sweet tea and reading Dostoyevsky. Or maybe Fifty Shades of Grey. But the lobby was deserted. McCall moved through it out into the night.

  He remembered seeing the phone booth in the small square off the promenade along the Volga River. He jogged through the deserted streets. Then he slowed. A dark figure was walking along the promenade. He was tall, wearing dark clothes. He was smoking. He leaned against a railing and looked out. McCall stood still. The man smoked for a moment, then walked on. McCall waited until he was lost to sight.

  He found the small square. There were shops and restaurants, all of them deserted. The phone booth he had seen through the trees was on the east end of the square, outside the Café Teatralovnoye, which McCall remembered meant “Theatrical.”

  He was taking a chance the phone had not been vandalized. In the era of cell phones, most pay phones in Russia, like in every other country, had been either removed or destroyed.

  McCall lifted the receiver. There was a dial tone. He took Gredenko’s gold AMEX card out of the interrogator’s wallet. It was a risk, but he didn’t have enough change.

  He knew the number by heart and dialed it.

  A hundred and twelve kilometers away, Granny was walking out of the International Clinic MEDSI, moving between two of the white posts out into the street. The white building was lit up behind him. His cell phone rang. He took a Samsung Galaxy S 4 Red Aurora out of his pocket. There was no caller ID. But only three people in the world had the number of a secure second line he had had installed in the phone. Control was one and his teenage daughter no one knew about was the second.

  “Hey, McCall,” he said into the phone. “Where are you?”

  McCall shivered a little in the intense cold and stepped farther inside the phone booth. Its swinging door had long since been ripped off its hinges.

  “In a little town called Tver Oblast on the Volga.”

  “How the hell did you get that far?”

  “By train. Too long a story for this call. What happened to you?”

  “I had to land the AH-64 in a field about fifteen miles from the automobile plant. It was touch and go. I blew it up. I had my orders.”

  “I know that.”

  “Half an hour later I got extracted by another chopper. Took it to the International Clinic MEDSI, used to be the American Medical Center, in Grokholsky Pereulok, outskirts of Moscow.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah, but my copilot took a bullet. Kid named Hastings? I don’t think you ever met him. He’s looking forward to shaving. But he did good. Can you stay at this location?”

  “I can come back to it.”

  “Give me half an hour to reach Control. I have to find him. What kind of a phone is it?”

  “Pay phone in a square by the river.”

  “They still have those?”

  “You can still get a cup of coffee in the Café Teatralovnoye for a dollar and change.”

  “I’ll call you back in one hour. Give you a meet point. How is she?”

  “Psychologically damaged, physically abused.”

  “No, I meant before you got to her.”

  McCall smiled. “She’s okay. She’s going to be just fine if I can get her somewhere safe.”

  “It’s not safe where you are?”

  “I don’t know. A bad feeling.”

  “One hour. I don’t call you, call me.”

  “Copy that.”

  “And McCall,” Granny said. “Good to hear your voice, dude.”

  “Yours too.”

  McCall hung up and stepped out of the phone booth.

  The square was still deserted and layered with moonlight. McCall walked to the river end of it. The stroller had disappeared. No one had taken his place. McCall jogged back to the Hotel Medici. The lobby door was still unlocked. The lobby was as he’d left it.

  Something was wrong.

  McCall climbed the stairs two at a time. His heart started to hammer in his chest. He reached the door to Room 412 and thrust the key in the lock.

  He opened the door.

  Serena was asleep, still under the covers of the bed. She was so exhausted she did not hear him enter. The Kedr submachine gun was still at the foot of the bed. McCall shrugged off the big coat and laid it over the rocking chair. He walked over to the window, unlocked it, and opened it. He sat on the edge of the open window and looked out at the Volga River sparkling with scattered pinpoints of moonlight.

  He waited.

  C
HAPTER 33

  They came for them forty minutes later.

  McCall saw the silhouetted figures running low over the roofs, jumping lightly from one to the other, making no sound, like wraiths. He climbed up above the open window and lay flat. He could not be seen there. He waited until the first assassin was within six feet of the window. He was carrying a silenced Glock 17. McCall inched forward. The assassin’s full attention was on the open window.

  McCall leaped down onto him, both of them sprawling onto the roof. The Glock 17 went flying out of the man’s hand, skittering down the slanted roof to a stop a few inches from the edge. The assassin got his hands around McCall’s throat. McCall viciously head-butted him. Ripped the hands from his throat. Saw in his peripheral vision the second assassin running fast, over the hotel roof, raising another silenced Glock 17. McCall heaved the first assassin’s body around. There was a soft cough in the night. McCall felt the bullet hit the first assassin in the back. The man shuddered and went slack in his arms. McCall used him as a shield, dragging his body down the sloping roof to the edge. He reached for the fallen Glock 17, fingers scrabbling on the rust-red slates, finding the gun, turning it over in his hand. The second assassin was aiming again, trying to get a shot at McCall’s head.

  He fired.

  The bullet was so close to McCall’s face he felt the sting of it on his cheek.

  McCall fired the Glock 17, at an awkward angle on the roof with the body of the first assassin crushing him, but hit his target. The second assassin slid down the roof and plunged over the edge. McCall heard him crash down below into the street outside the side entrance to the hotel.

  The third assassin jumped onto the roof next to the hotel roof.

  McCall was maneuvering to get out from under the first assassin when the man suddenly came alive, jabbing two fingers into McCall’s left eye. He was momentarily blinded. The assassin’s hands clawed at McCall’s face, drawing blood.

  McCall smashed a fist into the assassin’s face. Shattered his cheekbone. He heaved and the first assassin went sliding down the slanted roof. He hit the edge and hung, not falling off yet, balancing there.