Robert McCall knew they were coming for him.
He had just driven through Middleburg, Virginia, a quaint New England town where the country road meandered down to the G.W. Parkway through heavily wooded areas. The trees were like glowing sentinels in the moonlight. A rainstorm lashed the forest and the ribbon of road made it treacherous. McCall had taken a short cut through the trees and to his right was a steep ravine that fell right down to a serene lake. He had just turned a corner on the country road, watching his speed in the driving downpour, keeping it down to forty-five miles an hour.
It had been the flare of a match.
It had caught his attention for just a moment, which meant that the assailants were sitting right at the edge of the woods. They had been no more than eight to ten feet back in the shelter of the oaks. So they had been tracking him on their GPS screen for some time. Certainly through Middleburg and then onto this side road which would eventually lead back onto the main thoroughfare.
They had been waiting for him to make this detour.
McCall had already made the turn in the road, which left him with two choices. He could slam on the brakes which might be even more hazardous in the driving rainstorm. Or he could accelerate to a spot in the woods where the assailants were waiting for him. That would be the best option, but he only had a second to make the decision and he would still be in danger of sliding across the road to the edge of the precipice. Clearly, the intention was to ram his Jaguar head on. There would be no start up time because the other car was already gunning forward. It would clear the densely packed trees in three seconds, allowing for its own acceleration. It would have come out of the forest like a bat of hell, slamming right into the Jaguar, sending McCall careening across the rain-slicked road. He could not tell for sure what kind of vehicle the assailants were driving, but the shape looked to be a Mercedes.
McCall accelerated past the woods where the Mercedes rocketed out to ram him. The occupants in the vehicle had not been anticipating that the Jaguar would suddenly stop in the driving rainstorm that was lacerating the woods. Two seconds to get ahead of them. Another second to execute a tight one-hundred-and-thirty degree turn so that the Jaguar was facing back down the country road with the steep incline now on McCall’s left.
The Mercedes flashed past where the Jaguar had been a second before, expecting to ram it. The car swerved with its added momentum, finding traction on the road, turning back to find McCall’s Jaguar now facing them. McCall had already slammed on his brakes. At the same time, he reached into the glove compartment for his Glock 19 pistol and then jumped out, using the door for cover.
Time eclipsed down for him as it always did at moments like this. The slow-motion effect was subliminal. It gave McCall the time to aim and fire the Glock before the Mercedes had even straightened out. He noted the Mercedes was a C280, probably a 1995 model, which meant that the windshield had OEE glass, which was thinner than the new models. McCall put six bullets into the windshield of the car. The assailants swerved violently. He had not been able to see anyone in the back seats, but this felt like an assassination attempt and it would have made more sense for the assailants not to have brought along any witnesses.
At least four of the rounds had hit their targets. The Mercedes careered across the country road, bounced up the curb and then slid down the steep ravine through the trees. McCall slammed the door of the Jaguar and sprinted across to the ditch on the other side. There was still no traffic on the country road. McCall stared down in the deluge and saw where the Mercedes had plunged through some trees and had come to a halt just before the shimmering lake. He slid down the steep slope, finding his way through the copse of trees until he was at the lakeshore. The Mercedes had crashed, the fender crumpled, glass shattered through it.
McCall slowly approached the wrecked car, still holding onto the Glock 19. There was no movement from within the Mercedes. He opened the driver’s side door. One of the assassins lay impaled by the steering wheel where it had smashed into his chest. His companion had taken two bullets to the head. Both would-be assassins were dead. Hampered by the torrent of driving rain, McCall climbed into the wrecked Mercedes and searched the assailants. They carried nothing with them. No folding money, no change, no wallets, no passports.
But both of them were wearing silver rings on their right hands. One was a demon-claws silver skull. Beside it was a slim silver ring. McCall knew what was engraved onto them: Remember that you must die.
Memento Mori.
He knew he had not seen the last of the Memento Mori mercenaries when he had killed Matthew Goddard in his suite at the Liberty Belle Hotel in New York City. Goddard had said: “There are a hundred of us.” McCall had thought after what had happened in San Antonio and at the United Nations building he had not thought they would have regrouped this quickly. Who was organizing them now that Matthew Goddard was out of the picture? Mercenaries like these did not fight for ideologies. They fought for money. So why come back to try to kill McCall now? What was their new purpose?
He was certain that someone else was pulling the strings.
McCall noted that the Mercedes had finished up at a steep angle to the lake, caught between some shrubbery. He leaned forward, put the car into neutral, crawled back out and slammed the car door. He ran around the car and started to push the vehicle forward. It did not take much coaxing. The Mercedes rolled down the gradient, gathering speed. Then McCall stepped away. The car rolled off the bank into the lake. It took a few seconds for the car to sink. Then moonlight covered its surface like a gleaming shroud, lacerated by the unrelenting power of the storm.
McCall climbed through the deluge back up to the road. No cars or trucks were coming in either direction. It was a lonely spot, he thought, far from the nearest houses with the penetrable forest hiding its secrets. He ran back to his Jaguar. He dropped the Memento Mori silver rings into the pocket of his leather jacket. Then he turned around and headed back toward Maryland.
McCall felt like the specter of Matthew Goddard was breathing down the back of his neck.
He found Control in Easton, Maryland in an old-world tavern called Bannings. The place was packed with a raucous, lunchtime crowd. McCall’s boss at The Company was already seated at a table overlooking the historic main street of the quaint Colonial town. His full name was James Thurgood Cameron. He looked in good condition after being incarcerated in a house deep in the Virginia woods. McCall had rescued him from the two-story, cedar-sided log cabin surrounded by maple trees. Three of the Memento Mori mercenaries had been guarding him. McCall had found Control by accessing an old abandoned fairground. He had come across some white marble stairs that were just sitting there in the middle of the forest. That had led him to the cabin. McCall had carried the barely conscious Control through the woods and drove him back to New York City. That had been a month ago. Control was back in his element now, living in a Colonial town near Washington D.C., back at The Company on his own terms.
Matthew Goddard had been responsible for kidnapping Control. But he had done more than that. He had erased Control’s entire identity. Which McCall had thought had been a pretty neat conjuring trick. Once Control had been terminated, there would have been no evidence that he had ever existed.
But that was in the past now.
McCall glanced up, perhaps unconsciously, at a stained-glass mural of Blind Justice in the décor of the restaurant with the scales holding a sword in her hand. That seemed fitting to McCall. Control had always strived to find justice in the shadowy netherworld that he operated in. A world that McCall knew all too well and which he avoided now at all costs.
Yet he had the feeling that he was about to plunge back into that world again.
Control was wearing a Saville Row suit, a pink striped shirt, a red tie with small, chess pieces on it and gold cufflinks with the initials JTC. The cologne he wore was pungent. McCall knew he purchased it from a small shop in Mayfair in London. He held out his hand when McCall joined him at the table.
“Good to see you again, Robert.”
McCall shook hands. “You didn’t move far from your old place in Virginia.”
“I guess I didn’t. Easton is a quiet, rustic place far away from Washington D.C. for Jenny to have some peace of mind. We found a house right on the Chesapeake Bay.”
He picked up his iPhone 7 cellphone, tapped an icon and turned it around for McCall. It showed a picture of an historic four-bedroom house on half acre of grounds with wide porches at the front and the side where a fenced-in backyard and redwood deck could be seen. It looked lovely, but it was not a home McCall could live in. Too much space, too lonely, too isolated. Too many memories to come to terms with.
“How do your daughters like the new house?” he asked.
“Kerry and Megan are very happy there,” Control said. “Good school, surrounded by woods, the Chesapeake Bay a stone’s throw away. Jenny has gone back to Georgetown University and she is loving it there. We’re settling in nicely.”
“What has happened at the Company?”
Control put the iPhone 7 on the table. “Jason Mazur is my second-in-command now. My secretary Emma — who insists she be called that and not an assistant — says he still has a ‘hard on’ for you, but you are yesterday’s news.”
“Not anymore,” McCall said.
Control looked at him. He knew that McCall had met him for lunch for a reason. A waiter came over to their table. Control ordered oysters dredged in seasoned flour, dripped in light butter, then fried. He followed it with a stuffed half-chicken with Risotto. McCall ordered fried Chesapeake Bay oysters and the beef and Guinness stew flavored with stout.
While they waited for the oysters, McCall said: “There was talk of a mission in North Korea.”
“It wasn’t sanctioned by the Company,” Control said. “A black Ops operation organized by Granny and Mickey Kostmayer, supported by a handful of handpicked mercenaries. They destroyed a North Korean prison camp and liberated over one hundred prisoners. They were flown in four AVIC AC 392 helicopters over the Chinese border. The North Korean troops moved their location and captives to an older prison camp. That was when Kostmayer escaped. He was close to the Yalu River at the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge and managed to get into Dandong. Kostmayer briefed me back at the Company after I had returned there. Granny was killed in the initial prisoner breakout. All the other mercenaries he and Kostmayer had enlisted to their cause were all killed in the ensuring firefight. But you already know this from Mickey.”
“I wanted to hear it from you.”
Their oysters arrived. Control ate a couple of them before he said: “Why don’t you tell me why you want to go to North Korea?”
“Who says I am thinking of doing that?”
“Call it instinct. A gut feeling. Am I wrong?”
“You never are far from the truth,” McCall said..
He took his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and turned it around for Control to see the text he had received from Granny.
Odds against me. Still a prisoner in N.K. Come and get me and others. Granny.
McCall tapped an app to return the text back into memory and returned the cell phone to his jacket pocket. He ate his oysters. Control merely nodded. The ambience in the tavern was noisy and raucous, but it did not reach their quiet oasis.
“This communication doesn’t mean that Granny is still alive,” Control said. “The text could be spurious. Could have been written by one of the North Korean guards.”
“Who communicated in English?”
“Unlikely, but not impossible.”
“Read it again.” McCall handed his one-time boss the cell phone. “It’s phrased like Granny. If it had been written by the Commandant of the North Korean prison camp, I need to go there myself and find out the truth.”
“This mission will not be sanctioned by the Company,” Control objected.
“It doesn’t have to be. I am not asking for permission. I do not work for the Company any longer. But I can’t do this without your intel.”
Control’s half-chicken with Risotto and McCall’s beef and Guinness stew were served. While they ate, McCall surveyed the boisterous tavern. Unconsciously he was looking for men who might be wearing silver demon-claws skulls on their right hands with a slim plain silver band beside them. He did not see any.
Across from him, Control said: “You know Mickey Kostmayer will want to accompany you on this mission.”
“He barely made it out of that North Korean prison camp alive,” McCall said. “He’s been running on adrenalin and nervous energy ever since he got back to New York. Sitting down in that underground parking facility beneath the United Nations building with a homemade bomb of C4 explosives in his hands while the bomb squad was on their way would have taken a toll on anybody. Even Mickey Kostmayer, whose nerves are wound tight at the best of times. He was lucky that Colonel Michael Ralston — Gunner — disabled the bomb. Kostmayer sat with it on his lap until the bomb squad made sure there was not a second detonator rigged up to explode. Which there certainly could have been. The wiring on the device was faulty and it did not function. I won’t allow Kostmayer to go back into a life-and-death situation.”
“Shouldn’t you let Kostmayer decide that for himself?” Control said. mildly.
“Not this time,” McCall said. “I know Mickey. Too much trauma will put his psyche into overload. I told you on the phone. This is a solo mission. There is one person I can reach out to, but it’s a long shot and his help may not be viable.”
“Who is this person?
“No one you know.”
“But he could get you into North Korea?” Control asked.
“Maybe.”
“You’ll need help once you get there.”
“That’s why you’re going to give me the intel I need,” McCall said. “Unless you’re not.”
“In which case you’ll just go to N.K. anyway.”
McCall sat back and smiled. “That’s the general idea.”
Control shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” McCall said, evenly. “Just make the arrangements.”
Control finished his meal and said: “What aren’t you telling me?”
McCall paused for a moment, then reached into his jacket pocket, brought out the demon-claws silver skull and the silver band and placed them both on the table. Control picked up the demon-claws skull and turned it over in the light streaming through the picture window from the street.
“This was what you lifted from Matthew Goddard’s hand when he tried to kill you at the Liberty Belle Hotel,” he said. “The mercenaries at the Valencia Hotel in San Antonio were wearing these same silver demon-claws skulls.”
“So was the assassin I took out at the West Texas Reginal Water Plant in Boerne, Texas,” McCall said. “Matthew Goddard told me there were a hundred mercenaries working for him.”
Control looked at his one-time agent in alarm. “But Matthew Goddard is dead. These mercenaries would have disbanded.”
“Two men tried to run me off a country road outside D.C last night,” McCall said. “It was only a fluke that I saw them coming out of the trees. I put six bullets into their windshield which them sent them down into a ravine.”
“What did you do with their bodies?”
“I pushed their Mercedes into one of the lakes. It sank without a trace. There was no one on the road in that monsoon we had last night.”
“You left no trace of them?” Control asked.
McCall looked at him. Control nodded and handed the silver rings back to McCall who put them into his jacket pocket. He glanced around to make sure they had not been overhead, but no one in the boisterous room was paying any attention to their quiet oasis.
“So, these mercenaries are regrouping,” Control said. “But to what purpose?”
“I don’t know,” McCall said. “But they’re reporting to someone.”
“Who?”
McCall shrugged. “That is a very good question.”
Control waved off the waitress who wanted to serve them dessert and coffee, paid the bill and stood. “Take a walk with me.”
McCall get to his feet and followed Control out of the restaurant.
The elegant Spymaster stopped at McCall’s black jaguar that was parked outside the Banning Tavern. “I see you’ve got your Jaguar back.”
“I didn’t really need it living in New York City, but it was time to get it back on the road.”
Control turned to look at his old friend. “You remember when we walked through the Old Church at Sleepy Hollow to look at Elena Petrov’s grave and I asked you to make sure the odds you weren’t equalizing weren’t too high?”
“I remember.”
“Is there anything I can say to talk you out of this mission to North Korea?”
McCall shook his head. “Not a thing.”
Control nodded. “I didn’t think so. Meet me at the Company in the boardroom at 09:00 A.M. tomorrow. I will get you that intel on North Korea. I promised Kerry and Megan I would buy them something here in Banning at the Pottery Barn in Easton Square Place.”
“You’re a good Dad.”
“I try my best. Do you still stop in the churchyard at Sleepy Hollow and put yellow sunflowers on Elena’s grave?”
“Not as often as I should,” McCall admitted.
Control nodded, as if he understood. “Time goes by.”
“Not for me,” McCall said, quietly
“See you tomorrow, Robert.”
Control strode off down the street. He was clearly unnerved by what McCall had told him and McCall understood why.
This was a suicide mission he was going on in North Korea.
Across from them in a little park, the young woman set down her Nikon Monarch 3 10X43 binoculars on the table and picked up her iced tea. She knew when her two mercenaries had not reported in from Washington D.C. that they had been killed. She did not care how it had happened. She figured that Robert McCall had spotted them and killed them. He would have disposed of their bodies in the woods outside Middleburg, Virginia, somewhere on the road to Washington D.C. The mercenaries were expendable. But she would not tolerate any more failures. She wanted revenge for her lover Matthew Goddard, but she would wait until the right moment to exact it.
McCall pulled his Jaguar away from the Banning Tavern.
Ironically, the young woman toasted him.