CHAPTER 45

The lounge of the 21 Club was jammed as usual. The maître d’ greeted McCall as warmly as if he came in there every night, not just a few times in ten years. McCall saw Cassie sitting at the same table they’d sat at before, in front of the fireplace, which had a fire roaring in it. It was cold outside and rain threatened. McCall walked across the lounge. The last time he’d been there, Chase Granger had been up at the bar in the Bar Room. McCall looked through the archway, the Goodyear Blimp catching his eye, hanging from the ceiling along with the other toys and sports memorabilia. The small tables and the bar were packed. He didn’t see any of Kirov’s enforcers.

McCall slid into a chair beside Cassie. She was pale and her eyes glittered with anger. This was a Cassie he had not seen in a long time. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“You promised me you were out of your old life. You lied to me.”

“Tell me what happened.”

In answer she slid her iPhone across the table. There was a text message on the LED screen. It said:

WE HAVE YOUR SON. BE WITH MCCALL AT 7:20 TONIGHT. I WILL CALL YOU THEN.

McCall glanced down at his watch.

7:16 P.M.

“Where was Scott?” he asked. “At school?”

“He stayed after classes for orchestra practice, then went to his violin lesson. Every Wednesday evening at five o’clock. He had his lesson, but he never made it home. I got this text message in my office. What do they want?”

“Me.”

“Do you know who’s kidnapped our son?”

“I have a pretty good idea. A Chechen entrepreneur named Alexei Berezovsky. He used to be an FTB agent. Our paths crossed a few times when I was working for The Company. He’s running a new assassination business. There would have been one in Prague a few nights ago.”

“At the Summit Conference?”

“Yes.”

“But there wasn’t. It would have been all over the news.”

“I stopped it.”

“So you are back with The Company.”

“No. It came out of a personal connection with Berezovsky’s wife.”

“So you’re fucking the wife of an old Company enemy and now he wants to take revenge on your family?”

McCall thought she was going to slap his face.

She was fighting back her tears.

“I was helping her,” McCall said. “Nothing more. But Berezovsky won’t believe that.”

“Neither do I.”

She looked away at the big lounge windows. Fat raindrops were streaming down it now. Yellow cabs pulled up outside and disgorged diners for the restaurant. McCall reached over and gripped her hand.

“I had no idea when I met Katia that she was married, or had been married, to Alexei Berezovsky. She comes into Bentleys, the restaurant where I was working as a bartender. She was in trouble. I didn’t know about Berezovsky’s assassination mission and I wasn’t supposed to stop it.”

She looked back at him. The tears fell now.

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

“And this Chechen gangster knows that?”

“He may suspect it, but he doesn’t know for sure. This isn’t about that. He’s also taken his wife and their teenage daughter.”

She had not pulled his hand from hers. Now she squeezed it tighter.

“I didn’t call the police or the FBI.”

“Leave them out of it.”

“So you’ll contact The Company? Someone must be in charge when Control is away. Another Control. Jason Mazer.”

“Oh, yeah, he’d love to hear from me. I can’t bring The Company into this. I don’t work for them any longer.”

“They owe you.”

“Maybe, but this is something I have to do alone.”

“Berezovsky will have armed men with him.”

“They won’t be enough.”

Cassie’s iPhone vibrated on the table. McCall nodded at her. She let go of his hand and picked it up.

“This is Cassandra Blake,” she said into the phone.

McCall could hear Alexei Berezovsky’s voice clearly, even within the noisy clamor of the 21 lounge.

“Is your ex-husband with you?”

“Yes.”

“Please put him on.”

Cassie handed the iPhone to McCall.

“Let me speak to my son,” McCall said immediately.

“He is with me and unharmed, but not able to come to the phone right now. You killed a colleague of mine in Prague.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No one else could have done it. It doesn’t matter. I have several others in my employ. I will be brief, although I don’t believe you have FBI agents sitting with you tracing this call. Put two hundred fifty thousand dollars into a sports bag. I will contact you on your cell phone with more instructions.”

McCall gave Berezovsky his cell phone number. “It’ll take me time to get that amount of cash.”

“I understand. You will deliver it to my location at midnight. I will call you in two hours. No police, no FBI, no Company agents. This is between the two of us. Or I will cut your son’s throat like he was a pig for slaughter.”

“You have Katia and Natalya.…”

“Oh, yes. I haven’t decided what to do with them yet. Perhaps we can discuss it when you’re here, since you’ve taken it upon yourself to be their white knight.”

Berezovsky disconnected. McCall handed Cassie back her iPhone.

“Did you hear all of that?”

“Yes. Where are you going to get a quarter of a million dollars?”

“Not a problem, but that’s just a smokescreen. A bonus for Berezovsky. Scott isn’t for ransom. Nor are his wife and daughter. They’re pawns being used to get me to him.”

“And then he’ll kill you?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll kill all of them.”

It was not a question.

“That would be his plan. Not going to happen.”

“You have to take backup. What about Mickey Kostmayer? I know this man said no Company agents, but…”

“Mickey is in Prague with Control at the Summit Conference.”

“What about that agent who always scared the shit out of me? The one with the funny name?”

“Granny.”

“Yes, him.”

“Too risky.”

“You have to have some kind of a plan. You can’t just walk alone into the lion’s den. I remember you talking about this man a long time ago. You said he was ruthless and one notch above an animal.”

“Not even a notch. I’m sorry, Cassie. I’m so sorry. You’re right. I should never have come back into your lives. I’ll take care of this.”

He got up from the table. She reached up and caught his hand.

“What will you do?”

“Get Scott,” McCall said simply.

“And Katia and her daughter?”

“No one gets left behind.”

Cassie’s attitude toward him had undergone a significant change. She stood up and moved into his arms. He held her close.

“If anyone can do this, it’s you,” she whispered. “Bring our son home alive.”

“I will.”

McCall left her standing there and walked through the lounge and out past the painted jockeys into the rain. He looked back through one of the lounge windows. Cassie was already talking on her cell phone. Probably to her husband, Tom Blake.

McCall hailed a cab and gave the cabbie an address.

*   *   *

William Littman shook McCall’s hand as he stepped into the deserted Chase Bank building on Madison Avenue just below Central Park. Littman was tall and athletic, probably in his mid-fifties, not a shred of gray in his brown hair, tanned and fit and looking like he spent all of his non-banking hours in the Hamptons. Which he did. McCall was carrying an empty black Adidas sports bag. He and Littman walked across the echoing marble main floor.

“It’s good to see you again, Mr. McCall,” Littman said. “How many years has it been?”

“Probably too many. But I’m living again in Manhattan, so you’ll be seeing more of me.”

“Are you still married to that gorgeous assistant district attorney?”

“No, but she’s still as gorgeous.”

“And how old is your son now?”

“Fifteen. I appreciate your opening up for me after hours, Bill.”

“No problem at all. I was here working late anyway. Do you still work for the government?”

“Retired.”

“Took it early, eh?”

“It seemed like the thing to do.”

They rode an elevator down to the vault and safe-deposit box room. Littman had McCall sign an index card, do a retina scan, which came up positive, then used a master key to turn the lock in one of the big safe-deposit boxes. McCall had the matching key on his key ring. Littman pulled out the box and he and McCall carried it to an oak table in the center of the room.

“Heavy,” Littman commented.

McCall didn’t respond.

“I’ll leave you alone.”

“Do you have security here tonight?”

“Two security officers. Every night. I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

Littman left him alone.

McCall set the empty Adidas sports bag on the table. He opened the safe-deposit box. Inside were envelopes with bank notes in them in series of hundred-dollar bills, ten thousand to a wrapped bundle. He took out $250,000 and put the envelopes into the sports bag. Inside the box were several handguns, wrapped in cloth, with ammo clips. He unwrapped a Sig Sauer P238 Rosewood handgun with a Rosewood custom grip and a stainless-steel slide with a tribal pattern. He slid an ammo magazine into it and put it into the pocket of his jacket. He took three more ammo mags and dropped them into the sports bag. He unwrapped a Beretta Px4 Storm 9 mm sub-compact with ammo magazines and dropped them into the sports bag. He picked up an M16A4 rifle with a Picatinny rail system and Knight’s Armament Company M5 RAS hand guard. He slipped a three-position telescopic sight onto the rail. He put the rifle into the sports bag along with six thirty-round magazines of 5.56 cartridges. He unwrapped a Korean SJ-600 Revolver tear gas shell launcher and six 38 mm tear gas shells and dropped them all into the sports bag. There was a German HK69 40 mm grenade launcher with a retractable shoulder stock, short-range rear sight and various kinds of low-velocity ammo, but he left that in the box. Overkill. Too big a risk of collateral damage.

McCall zipped up the sports bag. He closed the lid on the safe-deposit box and rang the bell on the side of the steel door leading to the room. Three minutes later William Littman appeared. They returned the large box to its slot and McCall put his key in the lock and then Littman did the same. McCall picked up the Adidas sports bag. It was heavy. He shook Littman’s hand.

The banker smiled an enigmatic smile.

“Good hunting,” Littman said.

McCall was never sure whether the banker was just guessing at the kind of work he did—or used to do—or if he knew and found it all very exciting.

McCall just nodded.

He walked out of the bank and got the call on his iPhone as he walked down Madison Avenue, heading toward the Plaza Hotel. There was no caller ID.

McCall said, “Yes.”

Berezovsky’s voice echoed over the iPhone. “City Hall train station. Not in use for a decade. The number six Lexington Avenue local subway train goes to Brooklyn Bridge, which is the last stop, then uses a loop through the old City Hall station to go back. The train doesn’t stop. Sometimes the driver will open the doors so passengers can look out at the old station. Rather magnificent architecture. A few steps from City Hall on the street is an old entrance to the station, no longer in use, except for maintenance. There’s a gate across it. Tonight it is not locked. You can enter there. Go down the stairs and you’ll be in the old station. At midnight. Come alone, McCall.”

“I’ll be there.”

McCall broke the connection.

He would be there, but he wouldn’t be using the old City Hall entrance.

*   *   *

She was in some kind of a storage room. There was a strong smell of disinfectant. She’d seen a mop in a metal bucket against a corner and metal shelves stocked with cleaning items and paint cans and paper towels. There was no light. The darkness pressed in on her from all sides and made her want to scream. She suppressed the urge, but she couldn’t control her anxiety attacks. They shuddered through her; she was acutely aware of her breathing. The isolation didn’t bother her; she was used to being alone. It was the thought that no one would ever come back for her. That she would die alone in this black hole. Pretty soon she would start to scream, she knew that.

She heard a key turn in a lock and a blast of colder air reached her as the door to the storage room was opened. A swathe of light fell across her. She was sitting cross-legged with her back up against one of the sets of shelves. She had on a sweatshirt with Lea Michele and the late Cory Monteith on it, singing a duet. She wore pale blue jeans ripped in several places and a pair of Nike pink and gray Dual Fusion shoes. One of the men who’d grabbed her outside of school, far enough away from the other students and their parents for no one to see, came in with a plastic Starbucks venti cup. He was the man who’d sat in her attic prison room after they’d abducted her from Washington Park. He was about five-eight, kind of cute, with curly black hair. He was wearing a dark suit with a gold watch chain protruding from a pocket. She’d seen him at the Dolls club a few times. She thought his name was Kuzbec. She remembered a man calling to him from an alcove just beside the dance floor. A man she despised, because she knew he was the one who had wanted her mother to become a prostitute. She wasn’t certain of his name, but he was arrogant and his eyes hooded like a snake’s and she had always stayed away from him at the club.

Kuzbec came over and crouched down in front of her. She almost recoiled from the stench of his body odor. He had never been this close to her before. Even when he’d been her watcher in the attic room he had always kept his distance. At least when she’d been awake. But now he was up close and she nearly gagged.

It triggered a sense memory buried deep in her mind.

Cold air, her breath pluming in the night. Walking along a deserted New York street. Someone grabbing her, throwing her to the ground, pinning her to the cement with one hand across her breasts. The assailant had unbuckled her jeans and pulled them down, pulled down her panties, dragged her over onto her stomach, and entered her from behind. She could feel the thrust of him inside her, the nausea it had caused, one hand on her back holding her down, the other over her mouth to stop her screaming. He’d raped her, then turned her over and hit her in the face. She’d rolled onto her side and vomited and heard running footsteps and people shouting. She’d gulped in air and then arms were lifting her up. She had pulled up her panties and jeans and buckled her belt with shaking fingers.

She didn’t know who had come along to rescue her. Some good Samaritans who’d seen the assault from far off. A couple, in their thirties, the man white, the girl black. One of them had called 911 on their cell phone. They’d told her she was in the wrong neighborhood. She should not have been walking on her own. The police said the same thing when they arrived. She had been inviting an assault. It was her fault.

She couldn’t give them a description. She hadn’t seen her attacker’s face. He hadn’t been heavyset or tall. But he’d been very strong.

And he’d smelled.

She hadn’t told the police that, because she hadn’t remembered. It had all happened so fast. But now that memory flooded over her in disgusting waves as she breathed in the air around Kuzbec’s body. Her eyes opened wide as she looked into his kind face. She had not been mugged by some gang member in a New York street.

It had been him, from the club, one of the enforcers.

He offered her the plastic cup again, as if she didn’t quite understand that he was bringing her coffee.

“Cold in here,” Kuzbec said, his voice concerned. “Sorry I can’t give you any light. This will warm you up. Okay?”

She took the cup from him. He sat back on his haunches and waited, as if wanting to make sure she drank her coffee and appreciated his good deed for the night.

Natalya struggled a little, trying to remove the lid.

“You can drink it through the little hole there,” Kuzbec said with a patient smile, as if she were four years old, and pointed out the place on the lid where she could sip.

Natalya managed to remove the lid of the plastic cup, took a swallow of the hot coffee, then threw the rest of it in his face.

Kuzbec screamed and fell back.

Natalya jumped to her feet to bolt past him.

Kuzbec had the presence of mind to stick out his leg. She tripped over it and fell headlong onto the floor. He kicked her in the ribs. Pain rocketed through her body. Then she heard the sound of someone else coming into the storage room. There was a scuffle of violent movement. She rolled over and looked up. In a haze, she saw one of the other enforcers—she thought his name was Salam—pulling Kuzbec away to the open door. She heard the words “Leave her!” but they were echoing and faint and sounded like they were coming from down a long tunnel. She gasped to get her breath back after the kick to her ribs. She saw the second enforcer push Kuzbec through the open doorway. Subway tracks gleamed in the light beyond them. Then Salam closed the door to the storage room and she heard the key turn again in the lock.

Natalya crawled to the shelves, avoiding the spilled coffee. She sat up and put her back against the shelves and drew her knees up and hugged them.

She was going to die in this darkness.

*   *   *

She hadn’t seen him when the men had come for her at the apartment. She hadn’t even known they were there. She’d been late leaving to pick up Natalya from school and was in the kitchen, stuffing a tuna sandwich into a plastic container with a juice box to bring to her. She’d forgotten to give her her lunch that morning. She might be hungry on the walk back to the Dakota. She had heard some muffled sounds coming from somewhere—one of the guest bedrooms. She hadn’t thought anything about it. The nice young man McCall had sent to look after them was in there. She’d started to turn around, and then someone had grabbed her from behind and pinned her arms to her sides. Someone else had grabbed her hair. A third man had thrust a chloroformed rag over her nose and mouth. The sickly stench of it had been overpowering. The man holding her by the hair had dragged her away, even as the sweet aroma had brought oblivion.

She’d swum up from dark depths to consciousness to find herself on a concrete staircase. Her wrists were bound behind her back with duct tape. Her ankles were also tightly bound. There was a piece of tape across her mouth. Above her head was an iron railing going down the staircase. There was a mosaic on the tiled wall in brilliant colors. Below the staircase was a platform. She could just see the edge of it. She could hear vague footfalls that echoed hollowly in what had to be a subway station.

Then one set of footsteps grew louder.

Katia watched as the shape of the man climbing the stairs came into focus. She shook off the last effects of the chloroform. She recognized the figure immediately. Someone she knew as well as she knew herself or her own daughter.

Alexei Berezovsky stopped a foot away and smiled down at her. He was wearing all black and had a pistol in a holster on his right hip. He looked like he’d just stepped out of some Western movie, the bad guy, all in black, all he needed was the black hat. His smile chilled her blood. She wondered how she could ever have loved this man. But he had been charismatic in the beginning. She had seen no vicious side of him. She had seen the persona others saw at the art exhibitions and the Dolls nightclubs and the charity fund-raisers where he used his charm as a weapon and a disguise. She had seen the ugly side of him for the first time right after she’d become pregnant with Natalya, when she hadn’t wanted to wear a ruby bracelet he had given to her to a ballet opening night. She had said she preferred to wear an emerald bracelet her mother had given her for her eighteenth birthday. He had knocked the emerald bracelet out of her hand, thrown her onto the bed, slapped her face until she thought she would pass out, then told her she would wear what he told her to wear when he told her to wear it.

From that night on she had been terrified of him.

And yet, when she’d told him she was leaving him, fully expecting to be beaten, he had smiled sadly and nodded and said it would be a good thing for her and Natalya to come to the United States. He had opened a Dolls nightclub in Manhattan and she would have a job there. Natalya could go to an American high school. It would do them both good to be out of Moscow. Two days later they had flown to New York.

There had never been any talk about divorce. But she knew it was not a trial separation. It was forever. She understood the reason behind the magnanimous gesture. Berezovsky had simply tired of her. Tired of her company, tired of making love to her, if you could call their violent fucking anything so tender, tired of parading his wife out at charity functions. He’d had numerous affairs that he had never tried to hide from her or anyone else.

She had never been so relieved in her life when that airplane took off from Sheremetyevo International Airport and she had clutched her daughter’s hand tightly and thought of the new life they would have away from their abusive husband and father.

She stared up at him.

He leaned down and ripped off the gray duct tape from across her mouth. She gasped in breath.

All he said to her was: “We are waiting for your guardian angel,” and then hit her in the face.

He beat her the way he had always beaten her during their marriage, careful not to break her cheekbones or scar her. Blood spilled out of her mouth. Her left eye closed almost completely. He used his open palm to slap her face, again and again, like he was going to smack her head right off her shoulders. His signet ring gouged out little bits of flesh. When he stopped her face was bright red in the pale light drifting up from the platform below.

She tried to say: “Natalya…” but he slapped the word out of her mouth.

Then he punched her in the stomach. The pain was agony and she thought she would throw up on the stairs. He slapped her head back and it hit the iron railing. She shut her eyes, waiting for more blows, but none came.

She opened her eyes to see Berezovsky walking back down the stairs to the subway platform below. He disappeared from sight. One of the young men from Dolls passed through her line of vision, not looking up at her, carrying a submachine gun over his shoulder. There were occasional shuffling movements and the murmur of men talking softly.

They were waiting for her “guardian angel.”

For Robert McCall.

With submachine guns and handguns.

He didn’t have a chance.

*   *   *

Scott McCall was handcuffed to a railing beside the boarded-up ticket booth in the main station of the old City Hall subway station. They’d grabbed him as he’d walked down the street from his violin lesson. Bundled him into the backseat of a black Lincoln town car. A black sack had been pulled down over his head and he’d been handcuffed right there. He’d had no idea where they’d driven to, but it hadn’t been that far. He thought they were still in the city. When they’d handcuffed him to the railing and taken the sack off his head, he’d known where he was. City Hall was right beside the Brooklyn Bridge. Obviously the subway station was no longer an operating part of the system, although he could faintly hear trains occasionally down below. They came and went very quickly. Maybe the trains went through the station and then looped around to return to the city. Certainly there were no passengers getting off and ascending the marble staircases up to the station building. This main area was derelict and badly in need of repairs.

Scott was scared. Watching movies he’d always fantasized what he would do in a situation like this. He would figure out a way to escape. He would be a hero. But it wasn’t like that in real life. He felt alone and afraid and angry that he’d been taken. What did they want with him? He’d heard them talking about other prisoners. Were they somewhere in the deserted station?

His mother and stepfather were well off, but not rich. They could scrape together a decent ransom, but why him? There were really rich kids who would bring in a lot more money for the kidnappers.

But he knew.

This was about his real father.

His mom had let something slip about his dad being back in New York City. They’d met for a drink somewhere. But she swore he was not coming back into their lives. Scott would not be seeing him, which was a good thing. He had no desire to talk to the man who had abandoned him when he was five years old. He’d broken his mother’s heart. Even though Scott knew she loved his stepdad Tom Blake—and he was a great guy—Scott had always known his mom still carried a torch for Robert McCall. He couldn’t fathom why. The guy was basically a criminal working for some shadowy splinter unit of the government that no one would even admit existed. Doing their dirty work. Killing people.

Scott hated him.

And now this killer was back in their lives and his son had been kidnapped. Was this some kind of retribution? Some old enemy of his dad’s? Scott didn’t know and didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of there.

He wrenched uselessly on the handcuffs that held him to the iron railing. He looked around the deserted station room. There was nothing at all that could help him escape. He didn’t want to hope that his real father was on his way there right now to rescue him. He didn’t want to owe him anything.

He also didn’t want to die.

Scott laid his head back against the boarded-up ticket booth and shivered in the cold.

And realized that he was hoping against hope that his father would come for him.