The third assassin was right on top of McCall. The silencer on the Glock 17 in his gloved hand touched McCall’s forehead. The man was heavyset and grunted, as if the run across the roofs had been tougher than he’d anticipated.
One moment the cold barrel of the silencer was against McCall’s right temple.
Then it wasn’t.
The gun and silencer were skittering down the roof.
It slid into the second assassin hanging on the edge.
McCall and the third assassin went after it, sliding down the slate roof. McCall couldn’t stop the slide. They both hit the second assassin hanging on the edge and sent him over. McCall slammed the side of his open hand into the third assassin’s throat. Heard the sickening thud as the second assassin hit the ground below.
The third assassin kneed McCall in the balls. The pain was excruciating. McCall folded in on himself. The assassin grabbed McCall’s hair and dragged his body right to the edge of the precipice.
McCall felt himself going over.
Then part of the hair the third assassin was holding came away in his hand.
The Gredenko hairpiece with the balding spot.
The third assassin looked comically startled.
McCall broke his hold on him, grabbed the third assassin’s head, and slammed it down onto the slate. Out of the corner of his eye McCall saw the shape of the fourth assassin reach the open hotel room window. He completely ignored the fight going on at the edge of the roof. He had his own silenced Glock 17 raised in his hand.
McCall surged up with adrenaline propelling him. He slammed the third assassin’s head against the slate a second time. He slumped down. He might have been unconscious. McCall wasn’t sure and didn’t care.
He kicked him and sent him over the roof to the ground below.
Then McCall was crawling on hands and knees toward the top of the slanted roof.
Too late.
The fourth assassin was already through the open window.
There was a burst of gunfire from the room.
Then silence.
McCall crawled up to the window and climbed through into the hotel room.
The fourth assassin lay sprawled on the floor in front of the window. The silenced Glock 17 was still in his right gloved hand. Serena was kneeling on the bed, holding the PP-91 Kedr in her hands. The fourth assassin didn’t move, the blood pool growing larger on the hardwood floor.
McCall jumped down. The sound of the gunshots still reverberated through the room. Serena was already climbing out of the bed.
“How many more?”
McCall held up three fingers as he moved, turned his thumb down three times. He picked up the overcoat from the rocking chair, took the Kedr sub from her trembling hands, shoved it into one of the big pockets, unlocked the door, and threw it open. He could hear stirring from the other rooms on the floor. Some movement on the floor below.
The gunshots had been very loud.
McCall and Serena ran down the narrow staircase to the lobby. It was deserted, but McCall noted a light on at the end of a short corridor to one side of the reception desk.
They ran through the lobby out into the night.
McCall led the way around to the side of the hotel. The bodies of the three assassins lay sprawled there. McCall threw the overcoat around Serena’s shoulders and they plunged into a rabbit-warren of small streets that led away from the Volga River.
“We have to get off the streets,” McCall said.
“Where can we go?”
“Somewhere no one will look for us at this hour.”
There were no streetlamps. The only illumination was the moonlight, and streaming clouds were beginning to take that away. McCall tried to keep his bearings straight, so he knew where the small square was in front of the Volga River. They ran farther into the heart of the small town. Then McCall saw what he was looking for.
It was a one-story building, painted white with small wooden windows and a heavy wooden door below an arched doorway. It didn’t even look like a church, but McCall had seen the sign: CHURCH OF OUR LADY DERZHAVNAYA. There was a concrete path in front of it and a short wooden fence, about four feet high, separating it from a two-story white house with high trees in a front yard.
McCall and Serena ran up to the church door. McCall tried it. Unlocked. Most church doors were. He pulled it open, creaking on rusty hinges. The sound was grating and explosive in the silence of the night. McCall stopped, putting a hand on Serena’s shoulder to stop her moving. They listened. There was no movement inside the church. McCall stepped outside and looked at the house separated by the wooden fence. No lights came on. He looked back down the street. No shadows moved. He heard a distant clock tower chime three times.
McCall stepped back inside the church. They moved down the center aisle toward the altar. McCall could smell fragrances in the air. They were quite potent. They reached the altar where a statue of the Virgin Mary stood beside a large crucifix. McCall sat Serena down in the first wooden row before the altar.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
She reached up and took his hand.
“Don’t leave me.”
“If they come for you, just run. I’ll find you. Stay quiet and use the sub if you have to.”
She nodded, let go of his hand. She was wrapped up in the big overcoat again.
McCall ran down the center aisle and out of the church.
He looked at Gredenko’s Rolex Yacht-Master II on his left wrist.
His hour was almost up.
He ran through the tangle of narrow streets, keeping the location of the small square in his mind. He made one wrong turn, corrected it, squeezing into a passageway between two houses, ran out onto the next street, and smelled the river. He made two more running turns and the square was in front of him. It was still deserted. No lights were on in the Café Teatralovnoye.
The phone in the booth was ringing.
McCall ran to the booth and lifted the receiver.
At the other end, Granny said, “I was just about to hang up. Thought you’d be waiting for the call. What delayed you?”
“Had to change accommodations.”
“Bad guys with guns?”
“Four of them. I took three of them out, but Serena shot the fourth and it could have awakened the dead.”
“You’ve got to get out of there. Get to Moscow. Then take a bus to Yaroslavl. They might be expecting you to take a train, but probably not a bus. Here’s the intel on the station and the bus times.”
McCall listened and committed them to memory.
“The oldest monastery in Yaroslavl is the Spaso-Preobrazhensky,” Granny said.
“Transfiguration of the Savior.”
“If you say so. It’s on Bogoyavlenskaya Place, number twenty-five, you can’t miss it, the belfry tower could be seen from Istanbul. Get there by noon for the exchange. It’ll take place in the cathedral, which is closed down for renovations. Control will personally take charge of her.”
“Good enough.”
“Tough night.”
“There was no way you could have landed that chopper to pick us up. You’re lucky you got it down at all.”
“You think I was agonizing over abandoning you to the Russian army and the wolves in the forest?”
“Actually they were wild dogs. Wolves wouldn’t have attacked. I think you agonize over more than anyone realizes.”
“Keep that to yourself.”
“Will you be at the monastery?”
“I’ll be there.”
Granny hung up. McCall ripped the receiver out and dropped it onto the floor of the booth. Better for someone coming on the booth to believe it had been vandalized a long time ago. No calls could have been made from it that night.
There was a clothing store on the corner of the square called Lilies. McCall knew it sold low-cost lines for women by prominent Russian designers. There were two of them in Moscow. He walked up to the front door, then prowled around t
o the back and found a narrow back door looking like something from Alice in Wonderland. It was small and narrow and thin and warped. There appeared to be no alarm system connected to it. McCall knelt down, took the knife out of his pocket, and jimmied the lock. He took a breath, then pushed the back door open. No alarm. People were still trusting in rural Russian communities.
McCall scavenged through the small store. He found a dress that he thought would fit Serena, simple black, coming probably down to just below her knees. He found some underwear and a pair of black shoes that would’ve cost plenty on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive, but here were about 650 rubles, or under twenty bucks. He found a dark brown leather jacket he decided was the right size. It was unlined, but would help keep out the cold. McCall put the dress, jacket, underwear, and shoes into a carrier bag with LILIES on it in purple and left 2500 rubles on the counter by an old cash register, which would more than cover what he’d taken. He also took the Gredenko diamond earring out of his ear and dropped it onto the counter beside the cash register. A bonus.
He left by the back door, letting it click into place. Locked again. He stood still and listened. There was a wind rising off the Volga, which stirred the branches of the trees in the square. He heard no sharp sounds. No footsteps, no car tires, no snatches of conversations getting closer. Nothing at all.
McCall walked back to the Church of Our Lady Derzhavnaya. He got there quicker this time, no detours. No one followed him. He saw no one in the streets. There were some lights burning on the ground floors of houses. People up late, maybe students burning the midnight oil, working on their laptops, maybe older folks like the innkeeper of the Medici Hotel wrestling with whatever inner demons that were keeping them from sleep.
There was no one on the street in front of the Church of Our Lady Derzhavnaya. McCall looked over at the house behind the wooden fence. Trees obscured the windows as their branches moved restlessly in the wind, but he could see no lights. He pushed open the door of the church and closed it behind him.
Immediately his sense of smell was assailed again by the fragrant odors inside. He walked down the center aisle, looking to his left and right. Nothing moved in the shadows. Serena was no longer in the first wooden row. She was sitting on the floor near the statue of the Virgin Mary, beside the large crucifix that glowed above her. McCall noted there were beads and icons and religious books placed at the feet of the statue. They were the ones saturated with fragrance. Serena had taken off the big overcoat and it was draped over her legs. Moonlight just touched them from the ground-floor windows at the front of the church.
He set the Lilies carrier bag on the floor beside the altar.
“I got you some clothes. It’s just a simple dress, but I think it will fit. Underwear and shoes. A short leather jacket. We’ll get you a whole new wardrobe when you reach the safe house.”
“Thank you.”
He sat down beside her.
“Are we set?” she asked.
“We have an exchange point. In Yaroslavl. We’ll have to steal a car to get to Moscow. To the bus station.”
“Are we going now?”
“I don’t want us out in the streets. They’ll believe we’ve already stolen a car to get out of the city, but they’ll be looking anyway. Half an hour. Then we’ll make our move.”
Serena nodded. She shivered again. McCall put an arm around her. He felt her warm and soft and yielding beside him.
“Are we going to die tonight?” she asked softly.
“No.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do.”
“I’ve heard of this church,” she whispered. “It was consecrated to the new Russian martyrs. That statue of the Rosa Mystica was a gift from someone in Germany. From Essen, I think. It has been weeping fragrant tears since July 1998.”
McCall looked up at the beautiful face of the Virgin Mary, shimmering in the semidarkness. It was dry. He nodded.
Serena whispered, “O my Lady All-Merciful, O Mistress All-Holy, All Immaculate Virgin, O God-bearer Mary, Mother of God, Thou art my Only Hope beyond doubt. Despise me not, reject me not, Forsake me not, depart not from me. Defend me, plead for me, hear me, see me, Help me, pardon me, forgive me, O All-Blameless One.”
“Sometimes we need to be forgiven,” McCall said.
“And not rejected.”
“Where did you see that inscription?”
“Here. In the church. We’re lost souls, but we still have a chance for redemption.”
“For one of us, anyway.”
She looked up at him. Her breathing was quiet and a little labored. She brought her hand up to the top of her black prison top. Unbuttoned three buttons. Took his hand and guided it inside the top, across the softness of her right breast. She rubbed his fingers over the roughness of her nipple. With her other hand she caught him around the neck and brought his face down to hers. They kissed. At first very gently, then with more passion. She took off his shirt and shoes. He took off the rest. He slipped her prison top off her shoulders, slid off the black prison pants.
When their naked bodies came together it seemed like the most natural thing in the universe. He caressed her glowing skin, at first cold to the touch, but their proximity warmed them both up. The passion was brief, fierce, not desperate, but it had been a long time since either of them had felt so much sheer longing for another’s body. There were no words between them. Just the touch and the feel and the explosions of ecstasy. And then the stillness between them was even sweeter, locked together, holding on to the tender moments for as long as they could. She nuzzled her head into his shoulder. Her hair tickled him. He brushed it away from his face and held her very tightly.
He hoped it wasn’t sacrilege to make love to her in this church.
He looked over at the statue of the Virgin Mary, the Rosa Mystica.
Tears sparkled on its painted cheeks.
McCall hugged Serena a little tighter.
He couldn’t remember a time he’d felt so close to anyone else.
CHAPTER 34
McCall’s iPhone vibrated insistently on the kitchen table. It startled him out of his intimate memory. He picked it up, looked at the caller ID, said into the iPhone, “Got my name, Brahms?”
“Kirov sent the picture to an iPhone registered to someone named Alexei Berezovsky,” Brahms said.
AB, McCall thought. Kirov’s boss is Alexei Berezovsky.
A name McCall knew well, but had not heard of or thought about in years.
An old enemy.
Berezovsky would have leaped to the wrong conclusion. The Robert McCall he knew would not go out of his way to save some innocent woman from sexual harassment. The Robert McCall he knew was a ruthless professional. And obviously still in the game. Now it made sense to McCall why Kirov had sent Daudov and his enforcers to the Liberty Belle Hotel to kill him. Berezovsky considered him a threat to whatever mission he was running.
“The suspense is killing me,” Brahms said. “You recognize that name?”
“Yes. From my past.”
“Ah,” Brahms said, as if that explained everything. “The past is a specter that casts a shadow. You can’t step out from under it. It’s always with you. Threatening your future.”
“Thanks for cheering me up.”
“I’m not here to hold your hand, McCall.”
McCall thought of holding Serena’s hand.
Of her hand slipping out of his.
Of her running out of the church into the watery sunlight.
And the imagery that had been on the edge of McCall’s consciousness drifted in from a dark shore, just for a moment catching a streak of sunlight. McCall saw it with pain and clarity.
“One more favor, Brahms,” he said into the phone.
McCall told him what he wanted.
There was a long silence.
For the first time McCall wished that a piece of a Brahms concerto was filling it.
Brahms said, “I do this for you, our debt is settle
d.”
McCall said, “I know that.”
Another silence.
Then Brahms’s soft voice: “I get caught, I think they still give you a blindfold and a cigarette before they execute you for treason. What are you looking for?”
“Just do this for me. I could try and break in myself, but that’s riskier and I’m running out of time.”
“You’ll be the death of me, McCall.”
“So far you’re one of the lucky ones.”
That produced another silence, then Brahms said, “I’ll get back to you. Are you going to Danil Gershon’s funeral tomorrow?”
“Yes. Before I do, I’ll be at your store at noon.”
“I won’t have the intel for you that fast.”
“There’s something else I need.”
Brahms sighed like the weight of the world was pushing down his shoulders just a little harder.
“You want me to hand over my Brahms collection?”
“You can keep that.”
McCall told him what he needed.
“See you tomorrow at noon,” Brahms said.
“One last thing. Where is Jimmy these days?”
“Ask Kostmayer. They’re still tight. Anything more you need at three in the morning? I’m making a list.”
“That’s it. Go home and give Hilda a big hug.”
“It’s not her birthday. Get some sleep, McCall. But no dreaming.”
Brahms hung up.
McCall disconnected and jumped up.
He had a lot to do before dawn.
* * *
McCall waited for him at one of the red tables in the island in the center of Times Square. It was still about half an hour before the first lightening of the sky would happen. He was amazed at how many people were in Times Square at this hour. The outside tables under the red awnings across the street from him were a third full. Yellow cabs cruised by him on one side, most of them empty. McCall looked over at the Forever 21 store and the big pink Barbie sign across from it, towering stories high. He watched the advertisements that rolled all day and night on the giant screens: AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS and BANK OF AMERICA and the BLACKBERRY Z10. The city’s pulse was never dormant. McCall was alone at the island tables except for a middle-aged man dressed in a rumpled silk Armani suit, black with thin gray stripes, with a yellow cravat at his throat. He looked like he’d just come from having tea with Noël Coward at the St. Regis Hotel. He had an iPod in his belt, the pods in his ears, listening to something that was making him happy. He was smiling. Predawn in Times Square and all was right with the world. He had an old-fashioned black-and-white notebook in front of him and was scribbling furiously. McCall couldn’t decide if he was homeless or a Harvard professor. He looked down at his shoes. Adidas Energy Boost in pink with black stripes. Could have been either.
The Equalizer Page 36
