The Equalizer (20 page)

“I know you took her. Bring her home and never go near her again and I will do whatever you ask of me.”

He reached out a hand. There was a long moment, then Katia took her hands out of her lap. She touched Daudov's hand, as if it was something slimy and contagious. He trapped her hand tightly in both of his.

“It is not enough to comply. You must do it willingly.”

“You risk a great deal, Bakar,” she hissed. “If I made one phone call…”

“You will not do that,” Daudov said, although McCall detected the barest hesitation in his voice.

Did Katia have a personal card she could play against him?

Why didn't she play it?

Daudov still held Katia's hand tightly in both of his. “You are a beautiful, passionate young woman. Enjoy your times with these very special men. They will report to me. I will know.”

“I understand.”

She pulled her hand away. Laddie had poured a double shot of Grey Goose into a glass at the bar and was heading back to the table with it.

“I want to speak to my daughter,” Katia said.

Daudov showed some surprise. He looked up as Laddie set the vodka down in front of him.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Are you sure I can't get you anything?” Laddie asked Katia.

She shook her head again. The young bartender walked back toward the bar, but veered over to one of the tables where a young woman was motioning to him as if the restaurant were on fire.

Katia leaned across the table. “I want to speak to Natalya right now. Or we have no deal.”

“I was not aware she spoke at all,” Daudov said. “I have never heard her utter a single word.”

“She speaks to me and to no one else.”

At the bar, McCall touched the putty in his ear, pressing it in tighter.

“You getting this, Brahms?” he asked softly.

In his office at the back of the electronics store, Brahms was hunched over a monitor. On it was a Google Earth map of Manhattan. There was a silver Bluetooth in his ear. Brahms played softly around him. Symphony No. 3 in F. The office door was closed and locked.

“I'm here, McCall,” he said.

In the booth Daudov regarded Katia for a moment, then nodded.

“It is a reasonable request. I would have demanded the same.”

He took a BlackBerry Z10 out of his pocket and punched numbers.

“He's making the call,” McCall murmured.

Brahms's fingers flew over the keyboard. “I'm on it.”

The Google Earth Manhattan map began to shift and change.

Daudov waited, then said into the phone: “Kuzbec.” There was another pause, and then the young man's voice echoed from the phone. McCall could hear it as if the BlackBerry were pressed to his own ear. Brahms had told him this bug would pick up a robin farting in Central Park.

“This is Kuzbec,” the voice said.

“Bring her the phone,” Daudov directed.

There was another pause. McCall thought he could hear movement, like Kuzbec was walking to another room.

“How are you doing, Brahms?” he murmured.

“Working on it,” Brahms snapped, but there was no real irritation in his voice. “The signal's bouncing from one cell tower to another.”

The sound of movement over the BlackBerry stopped. Kuzbec said something, but not into the phone, too muted for clarity. Then: “She is standing beside me.”

Daudov offered the phone to Katia. She took it from his hand. Now her emotions betrayed her. Her voice trembled with anxiety. “Natalya!” she said into the BlackBerry. “Let me know this is you. Say one word to me. Just one.”

There was some heavy, erratic breathing on the phone. No speech.

“Running out of time, Brahms,” McCall muttered.

Brahms was moving through a labyrinth of signals.

“Working on it, McCall,” he said again.

“Work faster. Fifteen seconds was optimistic.”

“Please,
Kotik
,” Katia begged. “Let me know you are not harmed.”

Nothing.

“Brahms…” McCall whispered.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Pause. Then:

“Mama,” a barely audible voice said on the BlackBerry.

The Google Earth map started to plunge down into the canyons of the city.

Katia gasped, as if this one word was a triumph of untold proportions. Daudov snatched the BlackBerry out of her hands.

“Very good,” he said into it.

“Now or never, Brahms,” McCall said.

On the monitor, the Google Earth map zeroed in onto the Sutton Place area of Manhattan near the Roosevelt Island tramway. An address popped up in a black circle.

“Number Five Sutton Square, right below East Fifty-ninth,” Brahms said.

And then the map on the monitor disappeared.

At the booth, Daudov had disconnected the line. He dropped the BlackBerry back into his jacket pocket.

“I will see you at the club tonight,” he said matter-of-factly, as if they'd just finished a pleasant lunch.

He started to rise. Katia grabbed his hand.

“You will bring her home to me today?”

“Not today. We will see how charming you can be to a special customer tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow night. Natalya will not be harmed in any way. You have my word. Come to my office before 4:00
A.M
. We will have a glass of brandy together. We will talk. I might even allow you to speak to her again. If you keep your word, your Natalya will be home with you very soon.”

He had to actually wrench his hand away from hers to free it. He stood up, drained the glass of Grey Goose, set the empty glass down on the table, put money beside it, and walked out of the restaurant.

He had not once looked in the direction of the bar.

Through the window, McCall saw Sully hop out of the Lexus and open the back door for Daudov. He slid inside. Sully closed the door, got into the driver's seat, and pulled out into the traffic.

Katia waited until the Lexus had turned the corner of West Broadway. Then she jumped up. Laddie moved away from the bar with a tray of drinks for one of the big tables. Katia ran up to the bar. There were tears brimming in her eyes.

“I know where she is,” McCall told her.

The tears spilled down her face. “Maybe we should call the police.”

“Too dangerous. Go home. Try and get some sleep. Go to the club tonight and put on that black dress and dance with the customers.
Only
dance. I'll call you on your cell.
Before
4:00
A.M.
I'll bring Natalya home. You have my word, Katia.”

She nodded. Let go of his hand and walked past the hostess station and out of the restaurant.

“I got it, Brahms,” McCall said softly.

“Enjoy your night,” Brahms said, and took the Bluetooth out of his ear. He sat for a moment listening to the Brahms symphony No. 3 in F. After the daring modulations in the inter-relations building up to the climax, the finale had a decidedly subdued coda.

Brahms picked up his cell phone from amid the glittering computer fragments on the desk and dialed.

McCall walked to the first booth and glanced around. Laddie was serving drinks to the boisterous table. The two servers, Amanda and Gina, were picking up more orders. Sherry was ushering a couple to a booth at the back. McCall leaned down, felt under the table at the first booth, and removed the silver bug. He slipped it into his pocket and looked out the window. He could just make out Katia's figure striding down West Broadway. He didn't have to see her face to know she was crying. Isolated, disoriented, afraid.

There were too many like her.

McCall's shift was up. He shed his black Bentleys apron, put on his sports coat, and gave Laddie, who was back behind the bar, a wave. He kissed Sherry on the cheek—another ritual—and walked out of the restaurant.

McCall picked up the tail on Broome Street. Chase Granger was about two hundred yards behind him. A raucous crowd spilled out of the Broadway Tavern. McCall mingled among them, stepped into the lobby of a fleapit hotel called The Excelsior, came out a side entrance onto Mercer Street, cut across to Broadway, and by the time he reached Grand Street there was no sign of the gregarious would-be Realtor.

They needed to brush up on their shadowing skills at The Company.

When McCall put the key into his apartment door the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. This time he had the Sig Sauer 227 in his jacket. He took it out, opened the door, closed it silently behind him, and stepped into the muted darkness of the living room.

Kostmayer sat in the armchair waiting for him.

McCall lowered the Sig Sauer.

“You want a key?” he asked ironically.

Kostmayer shook his head. “I don't think you'd be a fun roommate. Brahms called me. He said you were going to rescue a damsel in distress tonight. He worries about you.”

McCall crossed to the wet bar and poured himself a Glenfiddich.

“This isn't Company business.”

“I know. But I've got your back, McCall. Just like always.”

McCall nodded. He'd been alone for a long time and didn't like bringing someone else into his careful world, not even Mickey Kostmayer. But hadn't he already involved old Sam Kinney and Brahms? It was difficult to operate in a vacuum.

“This has to be a single mission,” McCall said. “With no deadly force.”

“They're going to be shooting to kill.
Whoever
they are. They're not going to give up their hostage without a fight.”

“The odds against a friend of mine, Katia Rossovkaya, have to be evened up. But no one can die, or they'll have no choice but to kill her. I can't protect her or her daughter twenty-four-seven. Her situation has to go back to what it was. Without her having to perform some favors she'd rather not perform.”

“How bad are these bad guys?”

“Sexual intimidation, extortion, probably murder.”

“Oh,
really
bad guys. Even if you can make an extraction tonight, what makes you think they won't try again to get what they want?”

“I'm going to talk to them about it.”

Kostmayer nodded. “That should do the trick.” He got to his feet. “I'll get you some weaponry. Jimmy's still around. Works for a security company. When do I need to be back here?”

“Before midnight.”

“That doesn't give me a lot of time.”

“Be creative.”

Kostmayer walked to the short hallway leading to the apartment door, then turned back.

“I'm sorry about Elena.”

McCall nodded.

Kostmayer opened the apartment door.

“Have you got a car?” McCall asked.

“I can get one.”

“Meet me outside the apartment building at 11:30
P.M
. Don't let anyone know what you're doing. Jimmy will have a limited need to know. If Brahms calls again, tell him you talked me out of a rescue attempt.”

“Oh, yeah, he'll believe that. Maybe I'll tell him to carefully watch the chimney on Christmas Eve. Later, McCall.”

Kostmayer left the apartment.

McCall took a swallow of Glenfiddich. It tasted of warm spice and honey.

“Yes, later,” he said softly.

 

CHAPTER 15

Kostmayer pulled his black Chrysler Delta rental to the back of the Kore 58 Hotel on East Fifty-eighth Street. It was almost 1:00
A.M.
in the morning and there was no traffic on the Street and no pedestrians. A huddled figure lay sleeping in a doorway—could have been a man or a woman—but he or she did not stir. That would have taken an earthquake. Kostmayer got out of the driver's side, McCall the passenger's side. Both of them were dressed in black. Kostmayer opened the trunk and picked up a Yankees sports bag, which he rested on the edge. He took a package wrapped in a plastic sheet from the bag and unwrapped a tranquilizer gun and a plastic container with three darts nestled in it.

“This tranquilizer gun is state of the art, according to Jimmy,” Kostmayer said. “Experimental model. It delivers one of these ballistic hypodermic needles filled with a chemical compound. He gave me three options: paralytic, anaesthetic, or sedative. Personally I'd have gone for lethal, but he didn't give me that choice, so I took anaesthetic. When it comes into contact with flesh the steel ball located above the plunger is slammed forward to deliver the dose.”

“What's in them?” McCall asked.

“Curare. You know, that stuff the natives in Africa dipped their spears into before they threw them at Stanley and Livingstone. Curare is an alkaloid and is not actually toxic, but mix it with certain tree barks of the genus Strychnos and it becomes a virulent poison.”

“Strychnos as in strychnine.”

“Right. So we got some of that in these hypos, some nicotine, I swear Jimmy just crushed one of his cigarettes into each one, and some other ingredient that Jimmy wouldn't tell me. This is a top-secret, illegal substance that would get Jimmy—and us—twenty years in a Federal penitentiary if anyone finds out we've taken them. There's also a pinch of, and Jimmy insisted I write this down, because he knew you'd want to know…” He took a crumpled piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his shirt. “Phenyl-1-cyclohexyl-Piperidine.”

“And that would be?”

“Monkey tranquilizer.”

“But it works on human beings?”

“He says it will knock 'em out for an hour and a half if the dart isn't pulled out of their skin right away. If it is, who knows? Use them judiciously. Jimmy could only get three.”

“Good enough.”

McCall put the tranquilizer gun in his belt and the package of three bloated tranquilizer darts into the pocket of his black jacket. Kostmayer handed him what looked like a pair of swimming goggles.

“Night glasses, green background, three-times magnification, thiry-seven-millimeter objective lens up to a hundred yards.”

McCall took them, slipped them into another pocket.