The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  There was a corridor that led to the cathedral. McCall stopped short. It was no longer under renovation. A lot of the tourists were moving into it.

  “What’s the matter?” Serena asked.

  “The cathedral is supposed to be closed.”

  “Does it matter? None of these people are going to know you’re delivering a package to your boss.”

  McCall’s lips twisted into a wry smile.

  “I don’t actually think of you that way.”

  “I know that, but Control doesn’t need to know you’ve lost your heart to me.”

  “Who says?”

  “I do. Last kiss for a while.”

  She stood up on tiptoes and kissed him. McCall propelled her gently toward the entrance to the cathedral.

  The cathedral was large, echoing, with gorgeous elaborate frescoes on the walls, lining the archways and in the windows. One of them caught McCall’s attention: Yaroslavl the Wise, sporting a long red beard, standing on the edge of the Kotorsl River, holding a long pole with a blue ax at the top, the body of a bear at his feet, one that legend has it he killed right before he founded the city. Control was standing under it, wearing a gray pinstriped suit, his red tie with the chess pieces on it. Jason Mazer was with him, nervously stroking his beard, looking around. The cathedral was filling up with even more tourists, about forty young people so far, most of them Japanese. More of them were pouring in through the main cathedral doors. Another tourist bus must’ve pulled in. There was subdued chatter and lots of smartphones taking photos.

  Control spotted McCall and Serena and nodded. McCall started the journey across the cathedral with Serena beside him.

  He sensed the danger before he ever saw any of the assassins.

  They came in fast through three separate entrances into the cathedral. They were all wearing long dark overcoats. Each of them had Kedr submachine guns in their hands. No attempt at stealth or secrecy.

  They came in firing.

  Pandemonium seized the crowd. The young Japanese tourists were cut down, falling into each other, clutching on to one another, screaming. Blood spurted from bodies in billowing flowers, long crimson trails that seemed to hang obscenely in the air. Other tourists were diving to the ground or scrambling to get out of the way, but they were caught in the crossfire.

  Bullets erupted around McCall and Serena. Behind them, one of the frescoes in a stained-glass window exploded.

  Serena let go of McCall’s hand.

  McCall dived forward, knocking two teenage German girls to the cathedral floor, smothering them with his body to protect them as more bullets screamed over them.

  Serena stumbled back, then turned and ran toward the front entrance to the cathedral.

  McCall jumped to his feet, his own Kedr submachine gun now in his hands. He fired over the heads of the huddled tourists. Bullets lacerated the body of one of the assassins. He was thrown back into an archway, smashing over a table. Two of the others just kept moving relentlessly forward, firing with what seemed to McCall like indiscriminate aim.

  Like they weren’t interested in their main target.

  McCall cut them down. But there were others behind them. He caught a glimpse of Control and Mazer ducking down behind an exhibit. Neither of them drew weapons. People lay sprawled on the marble floor, whimpering, moaning, some crawling, trying to go somewhere, anywhere, others lying completely still, either dead or feigning death. Cordite burned in the air. The screaming was continuous.

  It was a bloodbath.

  McCall whirled to see Serena reaching the main cathedral door. Three young women, blond, Scandinavian, fell under a hail of bullets around her.

  Serena ran out of the cathedral.

  One of the shooters started up again, aiming at Control and Mazer, but was cut down by gunfire. A Company agent, somewhere in the crowd. McCall opened up on another assassin coming from the back of the cathedral. His body convulsed as the bullets hit him.

  But in the staccato of the Kedr submachine guns, McCall heard something else.

  Isolated gunshots.

  From outside.

  McCall ran for the main entrance. There was more gunfire behind him. He was bent low, zigzagging, a tough moving target, but not if one of the assassins really took aim on him. He expected bullets to slam into his back. They didn’t. There was one last spurt of gunfire from behind him, then an awful silence.

  McCall burst out of the cathedral into the courtyard where the two tourist buses were parked and a third one had pulled in. People were milling around, bewildered and terrified. Some of them were climbing back into the buses, as if they’d be safer there.

  Serena was sprawled in the center of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery courtyard.

  The top of her head had been blown off.

  A sniper’s shot.

  McCall looked up at the bell tower. He saw no one in any of the bell alcoves. He ran to the tower. There were stairs along the west side leading up to a first-floor entrance. McCall took them two at a time. He ran into a whitewashed hallway. Stairs led up to the top. He climbed them fast.

  Halfway to the first set of bell towers he almost tripped over the prone figure of a man. He’d been shot in the back of the head, execution-style. He was a Company agent. McCall recognized him vaguely. Micawber, some Dickensian name like that. McCall didn’t stop. He ran up the rest of the stairs to the three bell towers.

  The first one was deserted.

  So were the other two.

  McCall ran up the last flight of steps to the top-most bell tower turret.

  Also deserted.

  But there were three Sobranie Russian cigarette stubs ground out on the floor.

  McCall looked down into the monastery courtyard. There was a perfect trajectory to where Serena was lying. This was where the sniper had fired from. McCall could feel the man’s presence. It wrapped around him like a stifling blanket. He could smell the noxious odor of the cigarette smoke.

  McCall climbed back down the steps.

  The body of The Company agent was gone.

  By the time McCall reached the bottom of the bell tower, exiting through the main entrance, Serena’s body had also been removed.

  The aftermath of the shootings was more shock than hysteria. People were standing in small groups, families sticking together, monastery personnel trying to restore order and assure everyone that the terrorists—what else could they be?—were no longer a threat. Police sirens echoed faintly.

  McCall walked slowly to the place where Serena’s body had lain.

  Granny ran up to him. His hair was disheveled and streaked with blood. There was the graze of a bullet across his forehead. He was out of breath and as disoriented as McCall had ever seen him.

  “You’ve got to get out of here, McCall.”

  “Damage report?”

  “Eight hostiles. All down. All removed. Three Company agents down. Removed.”

  “I saw one of them on the stairs of the bell tower.”

  “That was supposed to be me. At the last minute Control switched me to the back of the monastery. Sent Micawber to the bell tower. You can’t stay out here.”

  The sounds of the sirens were louder, as if punctuating Granny’s breathless words.

  “The sniper was up in the top turret of the bell tower.”

  “Yeah. He was a backup.”

  “No. The FTB agents in the cathedral were firing indiscriminately. They were driving Serena outside. Where the sniper would have a clear shot. They didn’t care about the collateral damage. Neither did Control.”

  “Not true. Our intel was that the cathedral was still closed for renovation. No tourists would be in there. McCall, don’t make me drag you out of here.”

  McCall turned and looked at him.

  Granny backed off. “Getting detained by the Yaroslavl poltisya will compromise the mission even further.”

  “How did the sniper get out?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t go out the back of the bell towe
r. I was there. He didn’t go out the front. Control had run out of the cathedral by that time. He had to make the extraction decision. You need to come with me. Right now.”

  McCall allowed his rage to govern his reason for one moment longer, then he ran with Granny along the west side of the bell tower. Behind it was a gold Lada Priora with both doors open, engine running. McCall slid into the passenger seat, Granny got behind the wheel and pulled away. They could hear the sound of the poltisya arriving in the main courtyard of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky.

  McCall closed his eyes in agony.

  Serena was dead. All of it had been for nothing. He had failed her.

  McCall looked down at his hands.

  They were trembling.

  CHAPTER 38

  They met in Yaroslavl’s Red Square, outside the three-story building on the north side that had once been Yaroslavl’s Aristocrat’s House, but was now the main building for the city’s Demidov State University. Control had changed his clothes, which may have been blood splattered. He was in another Savile Row blue suit with thin red pinstripes, his red tie with the chess pieces, gold golf cuff links, and a camel-hair coat. McCall had not changed except to shed Gredenko’s overcoat and, along with it, the Kedr submachine gun, which Granny had taken off him. McCall noted that Jason Mazer was at the other end of the square, near a parked car. The square itself was filled with tourists, standing in groups, taking pictures. Control started to walk, as if restless, unable to stand still. McCall fell into step beside him.

  “Who was the sniper?”

  McCall’s voice was soft, no ragged emotion in it, no hint of anger or betrayal.

  But Control knew this man as well as anyone could know him.

  He felt the tension coiled within him.

  “We don’t know.”

  “How did he escape out of the monastery compound?”

  “We believe he ran through a connecting corridor into the monastery itself. There are dungeons in the basement. We think he made his way along one of those passageways and entered the Gatehouse Church.”

  “Which was not under surveillance.”

  “No.”

  “And then he just walked away.”

  “We think so.”

  “You don’t have an ID on the sniper?”

  “No.”

  “How did the FTB know about the recovery location?”

  “They must have followed you there.”

  “Not a chance,” McCall said. “We didn’t take the bus from Moscow. We had to detour and pick up a bus in Kostroma.”

  “Then they picked you up here in Yaroslavl.”

  “How did they even know we were coming here? Unless there was a tap on Granny’s cell phone when he called me in Tver Oblast.”

  “No, that was a clean conversation over a secure line.”

  “Then how did they know?”

  “Someone must have recognized you as Gredenko when you got off that bus. He’s a striking figure and well known through the intelligence community in Russia.”

  “Bullshit.”

  McCall stopped and so did Control, in the middle of the square. McCall looked around it. He was pretty sure there were at least two Company agents with sniper rifles pointed at his head. In case he turned out to be rogue and had called the meeting with Control to kill him.

  “What are you saying?” Control asked. “That there’s a leak within The Company? That we have a mole?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m telling you the target wasn’t compromised by me.”

  “But you can’t be sure of that.”

  McCall paused, then shook his head. “No, I can’t. What was the collateral damage?”

  “Six civilians killed, including a girl of fourteen, twenty-two injured, two critically.”

  “Did you know tourists would be there?”

  “Inside the museum.”

  “And you thought that would be good cover. That’s why you chose the monastery.”

  Control looked away, across the square. “The cathedral was supposed to be under renovation. There should have been no tourists in there. They reopened it two days ago.”

  “And your intel didn’t disclose that?”

  “We were working under pressure, Robert!” Control flared, showing uncharacteristic emotion. “We put the handover rendezvous together in four hours. It seemed like the best place. Don’t you think those lives weigh heavily on my conscience?”

  “They might, if you had one. You know where the World War Two memorials are in the city?”

  “I can find them.”

  “Meet me there in one hour. Come alone.”

  McCall walked away from him.

  * * *

  McCall found out much later that Control had brought one person to their private rendezvous, and that was Granny. He stayed back in some trees; just an observer. There were fresh-cut flowers in front of the two memorials, and eternal flames alight. McCall and Control walked down the grassy knoll in the park from them. Granny had been instructed to take a silenced weapon with a magnified sight with him, but he hadn’t done that. He had his Steyr SR45 9 mm in his pocket, but he didn’t intend to use it, no matter what happened.

  Granny could not hear what was being said from his position in the trees. But for once McCall was doing all of the talking and Control was listening. McCall was as animated as Granny had ever seen him. He punctuated his angry comments with his hands. In the end he was yelling at Control. Control walked with his hands dug deep in the pockets of his camel-hair coat and looked down at the ground. As if he were carefully walking through a minefield and had to pay attention. McCall did some more shouting. Then he stopped, as if the anger and emotion had taken every ounce of strength he had left. McCall said one more thing to Control. Granny wasn’t much on reading lips, but he was sure he said, “I resign.” Control said something to that. McCall didn’t answer. He just walked away from him, down the path toward where the Volga River could be seen sparkling through the trees. Granny followed him to make sure he wasn’t going to do something stupid. If not to himself, to someone else.

  McCall walked down to the Volga and along it until he stopped in a Yarmarka at a dock. He looked at the various stalls, merchants selling local goods, most of them souvenirs. Granny didn’t think he saw any of them. Finally McCall just stood on the edge of the dock and looked out at the boats and barges on the river. He stayed that way for a long time. When it was clear he wasn’t going to throw himself in, or anyone else in, Granny walked away.

  When he talked to Control at the debriefing that night he learned that McCall had, indeed, resigned from The Company.

  And no one knew where he was.

  He had disappeared off the radar.

  * * *

  In his quiet living room McCall scrolled down Serena Johanssen’s file on his laptop screen. It was very detailed and complete until it got to her removal from Kresty Prison and transfer to the abandoned automobile factory. McCall had not been at the Yaroslavl debriefing. He had not given a detailed report as to what had happened after he’d rescued Serena from the factory. He had fallen off the face of the Earth as far as The Company was concerned. There were his two phone conversations with Granny from Tver Oblast and the preparations to make the rendezvous at the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Yaroslavl. There was virtually nothing on how McCall and Serena escaped from the automobile factory, got to Tver Oblast, got to Yaroslavl, except the assumption they had taken the bus from Kostroma because McCall had mentioned that to Control in Yaroslavl Red Square. There’d been eight Company agents in place at the Transfiguration of the Savior. They hadn’t been enough. Because the sniper in the bell tower had been the wild card, someone The Company had no intel on. Not how and when he entered the bell tower, nor how he’d escaped from the compound, although it was conjectured that he had used the tunnel connecting the old monastery dungeons with the Gatehouse Church and had simply walked away, carrying his briefcase with the broken-down sniper’s rifle in it. He certain
ly hadn’t left it behind.

  McCall scrolled down a little more. The Company had worked overtime to discover the identity of the assassin. They had only been successful in hearing a name, and that was not verified.

  The name leaped out at McCall from the screen.

  Diablo.

  Now the elusive memory from within the horror of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral came rushing back to him with absolute clarity. There had been the staccato chatter of the Kedr submachine guns in the assassins’ hands. But in a momentary lull, McCall had heard distinctive shots fired from outside. The sounds had been muffled, like a finger tapping on a kettle drum.

  Four taps.

  Four shots.

  When McCall had rushed outside, and seen Serena’s body slumped on the ground, with the top of her head blown away right above her eyes, he hadn’t looked for other wounds. It had clearly been a sniper’s shot. From a high position judging by the trajectory of the bullet. He had raced to the stairs and entered the bell tower with his mind reeling and rage coursing through him. By the time he had climbed back down the stairs and reentered the courtyard, Serena’s body had been removed before the poltisya could arrive. McCall had never seen her again. But now he read the autopsy report in the top secret document. She had been shot three times before the fatal bullet through the head. Once in the leg to bring her down … once in the chest, just above her right breast … once in her left arm. She had been lying in the courtyard, in excruciating pain, for at least forty seconds. Why hadn’t the sniper just executed a clean kill shot?

  McCall knew the answer. Because the assassin had wanted her to suffer first. He had wanted to watch her through his magnified rifle scope, writhing in agony, before he finished her off with the fourth bullet to her forehead. Danil Gershon had talked about Borislav Kirov being part of a worldwide elite assassination group.

  “How many assassins?”

  “Maybe three or four, but a new one recently, with a signature. Code name Diablo.”

  “Got a real name for him?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of signature?”

  “He wants his targets to suffer pain before he puts them out of their misery.”