The Equalizer (45 page)

“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 man 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.

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.”