When Candy Annie awakened it was to the sound of smashing plates and crockery. She pulled out of bed, wearing only a t-shirt, and padded to the door of the bedroom. It was a warm night and she usually kept the windows open. She opened the door. Kostmayer had opened cabinets in the kitchen and hurled the dishware onto the floor. He had smashed a bone-china plate with a rose pattern with gold trim that lay in porcelain splinters. Candy Annie was relieved that he had spared the western candle holders and the turquoise floral Wall Cross that hung on the wall. Kostmayer had given her that as a gift. But a San Juan Great Plains pottery table lamp had been smashed and a black fireplace tool set was strewn in front of the low coffee table.
Kostmayer stood at the window looking out onto Fifty-Fourth Street and Second Avenue. The traffic along the boulevard was reflected off his face. His rage and had been spent. He heard Candy Annie approach him. He wondered briefly what she was wearing to bed these days. It would not be much.
“Go back to bed, Annie,” he said, quietly.
She loved that he called her “Annie” and not “Candy Annie”. Tentatively she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.
“What’s happened?” she asked him.
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Everything you do concerns me.”
She turned him around to face her. He had forgotten how strong she was. She looked into his face and saw the pain in his eyes. She had seen it there before. It had been there ever since he had returned from North Korea. He had left a comrade behind there, that much she knew. It had been eating away at him. She had wanted to reach out to him, but he had put a wall around his emotions. She had seen that happen in the world beneath the Manhattan streets. People kept to themselves. Whatever pain they had experienced that had caused them to dwell in the sub-world of the subway sewers they kept close. But Candy Annie had escaped from that suffering. She had been given a new lease on life. Because Robert McCall had taken a chance on her. It was time to give back.
Candy Annie took a step back from Kostmayer and pulled the t-shirt over her head. She let it fall to the hardwood floor. She moved naked into his arms and kissed him. There was the barest hesitation on Kostmayer’s part, then he kissed her back. When they came up for air, he lifted her and carried her back into the bedroom. He set her down on the bed, all the while kissing her and caressing her body. Her kisses were the sweeting things he had even known. He pulled off his clothes and laid down beside her.
Candy Annie was transported to a world she had never known. It was raw and carnal, at the same time gentle and arousing. She had longed for these moments ever since she had known Kostmayer’s gentle spirit. But when she awoke sometime later, shadows wreathed the room,
Kostmayer had gone.
It had been easy for Granny to find the armory in the prison camp. It was an older brick building set apart from the other corrugated huts with an iron door that was padlocked at all times. Two armed North Korea guards stood outside in three work shifts. Granny had watched two of the guards unlock the padlock on the doors and enter the armory at least twice during his incarceration. There was no way for anyone except the guards to gain access.
At least through the iron door.
Granny was working underground with Walter Coburn. Fredrick Jorgensen had apparently had a seizure in the prison yard brought on by an epilepsy attack. He had been carried into Commandant Jang’s office while the guards had brought the doctor of the camp, such as he was. Jorgensen had only been left alone for a few minutes, his epilepsy attack faked, although he did suffer from a mild form of epilepsy. He had found the blueprint in a bottom drawer of the Commandant’s desk. He had stuffed the blueprints into his shirt and was back on the oversized leather sofa when the so-called doctor came to see him. He protested that he was recovered now. The doctor allowed him to return to the main compound. Jorgensen had passed the blueprint to Granny and Walter Coburn. When night came, Granny and Coburn headed to the third watchtower, carefully timing the sweep of the searchlights there. When it had left them in blackness, they had scrabbled through the bricks and the pieces of sheet metal and accessed the manhole. They had climbed down the metal ladder and had lifted the manhole back into place. Their Hurricane Lamps had illuminated their way into the first black tunnel.
It had taken most of the night, but they had managed to build a crude scaffolding from scrap metal and discarded bricks up to a height of ten feet. It was a precarious affair, but it would do the job. Granny sat at one end of the makeshift platform and Coburn at the other, a foot separating them. They dug up into the earth roof of the tunnel. Again Granny felt like he was channeling Steve McQueen, whom he bore a striking resemblance to, digging one the tunnels below the Nazi prison camp in The Great Escape. Fredrik Jorgensen’s stolen blueprint was only a rough guide, but Granny thought that the earthen floor was about two or three feet above their heads. The chances of them breaking through and climbing up into the armory into the waiting arms of the Korean prison guards were slim. But they would have to be quiet.
Granny looked above his head where the earth had crumbled around them. Maybe another two feet up. They did not have much time. Fredrik Jorgensen had heard the North Korean guards talking. They did not know he spoke Korean and so did Granny. The prison camp was going to be closed any day now and the prisoners would be moved to a new facility.
Granny did not believe any of the western prisoners would make it out alive.
Sam Kinney had built the Library Bar in the Liberty Belle Hotel in an annex off the main lobby. It had gilt fixtures with rose panels where the bottles were stacked. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on either side of the marble bar with leather-bound books. Classic editions, including Charles Dickens, Lord Jim, War and Peace, Don Quixote, Faust, The Three Musketeers and Moby Dick. Robert McCall approved of the annex’s collection. He had been meaning to starting his own library of classics, but something always happened to delay that. Usually when an assassin came at him with a gun. He suspected Sam Kinney had slipped a couple of thrillers on the shelves: Tom Clancy and Lee Child and James Rollins. Deep leather armchairs were placed in front of the bar. A fire roared constantly in the brick fireplace. Chloe was the bartender tonight, mixing cocktails the way Sam taught her, serving the few patrons who ventured in. She was in the uniform of the Liberty Belle Hotel with its name stitched on the breast pocket. Sam Kinney kept the Library Bar as one of his little secrets. For old spymasters like himself. He looked older to McCall these days, his hair getting greyer, his hands shaking ever so slightly. McCall had thought it was an affectation, but the palsy had worsened in the time he had been staying at the hotel. Sam was drinking a brandy sifter of Armagnac, plum brandy, sweet vermouth and a dash of black Strap Rum. McCall sipped at a Glenfiddich scotch.
“I heard from Brahms in Jerusalem,” Sam was saying. “Did you know the city was besieged twenty-three times and captured and recaptured forty-four times since the days of the Canaanites? I think Brahms was there during all of that time,” he added, dryly. “He did all the tourist things like visiting the Wailing Wall, the Old City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Bethlehem. Then he took the cable car over the Snake path where King Herod built his palaces and visited the caves at Qumran where the two-thousand-year old Dead Seas Scrolls were discovered. But long do you have to stay in the Holy Land before the weight of history makes you crazy?”
“He’s missing Helga,” McCall said.
“Sure he is. We all miss her. She centered Brahms. She was his muse. Now it is time for him to come back and rejoin the living. Too much antiquity and grieving are not good for his soul.”
“I think Brahms’ soul is doing just fine,” McCall said, wryly.
“Which is more than be said for mine, tarnished as it may be,” Sam said. “I hear that Isaac Warnowski is going to be indicted in court Monday for setting that apartment fire and nearly killing everyone in there. We still got Norman Rosemont here, holding court with his apartment pals, the Weinbergers, nice folks, Miguel Vasquez, Linda Hathaway and her rugrat Gemma. I detected a romance brewing between Linda and Norman. I think there are going to move out to another hotel pretty soon, closer to Norman’s office building. More customers I will lose to the Plaza.”
“I’m just glad you’re all okay.”
“Warnowski was one sick puppy.”
McCall took another sip of the Glenfiddich and waited.
“You’re going to North Korea,” Sam said.
“What gave you that idea?”
“An old Spook’s instincts. And Kostmayer was here looking for you at the hotel. I sent him over to the Dead Rabbit Grocery & Grog in the Financial District. He probably wanted to tag along.”
“He did.”
“You told him no?”
“I did.”
“I’m told it’s a suicide mission,” the old spy said. “Might have been good to have a backup with you.”
‘Not this time.”
“No way I can stalk you out of this?”
McCall just smiled. Sam Kinney nodded as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “Do you have a plan?”
“I won’t know until I get there.”
“In that case, I’ll drink to that.”
Sam finished off his sweet cocktail.
Jimmy Murphy entered the Library Bar. He was a slight man, tipping the scales at five-ten, green eyes in a sharp face. He was wearing a dark green track suit and orange Nikes. He had long since retired from the covert spy organization known as the Company at the insistence of his wife Sarah who had not wanted to identify him in some back alley in Chetna or Berlin where he had been found shot to death. Enough already! Jimmy had gone into the security business and was doing very well from it. He ran — well, truth be told, he jogged — every day, came home to a loving wife and two precious children and did not miss the cloak-and-dagger traumas in the slightest.
But that did not include Robert McCall.
Jimmy had known McCall for years at the Company and after that he had resigned and gone off the radar. But Jimmy had known that would not last. He knew people would seek him out because he helped people. That was just the way it was. When McCall called him to do a job for him, Jimmy never refused. Robert McCall had saved Jimmy’s life at least three times while he was a spook for the Spy Organization. McCall had got out after that, and so had Jimmy, but he was always there for Robert McCall. It was an unwritten law in Jimmy’s mind. His wife Sarah did not like it, and she was always worrying that McCall would still find a way to get her husband killed, but that had not happened yet. McCall had also declined Sarah’s many invitations to come over to their house in Brooklyn for dinner. Secretly, Sarah was glad. It was dangerous just knowing Robert McCall and she did not want Jimmy pulled back into his old way of life. She had long ago stopped arguing with her husband about this association that he would not let go. In the end she just told her husband to be careful.
She knew that Robert McCall had his back.
Sam Kinney was fond of Jimmy, but he knew he would not be visiting the Liberty Bar here in the hotel unless he was here to see Robert McCall.
“What brings you out of the shadows, Jimmy?” Sam asked him. “This isn’t your usual jogging route.”
“I sometimes go home to my wife and children, Sam,” Jimmy said, dryly. “You might try it sometime.”
“Twice married, twice divorced,” Sam Kinney murmured. “But give Sarah my love.”
Jimmy nodded. “I’ll do that.”
McCall could feel his tension in the bar. He finished off his glass of Glenfiddich. “What’s happened?”
Jimmy looked at him and sighed. “Mickey Kostmayer is in trouble.”
Jimmy pulled his Lexus up to a one-story biker bar in Prospect Heights. A neon sign above the two glass-fronted doors said: HOG HEAVEN. There were at least two dozen Harley-Davidson motorcycles and some Buells parked outside. Loud music echoed from inside. McCall got out with Jimmy and moved to the front door.
“Going anywhere with you is an adventure, McCall,” Jimmy remarked.
McCall did not respond. He was anxious to make this trip to North Korea and did not have the time to make a pit stop in Brooklyn to nursemaid Mickey Kostmayer. He opened the door and was greeted with a cacophony of sound. A jukebox was playing old 50’s hits at ear-splitting levels. Some bikers were crowded inside wearing their signature insignias of a skull on a white background with the name Hell’s Angels on their jackets. Above the bar there was a painting of a demon holding a pitchfork with white horns and wings crouched over three skulls of fire with the words: New York City at the bottom. Another sign in black and white said: God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t. The numbers “81” were placed at intervals. The bikers were sitting at tables and booths or shooting pool. A biker with sleeves rolled up her arms and myriad tattoos was dispensing drinks at the bar as fast she could make them. Cigarette smoke hazed through the interior.
Kostmayer was standing at one of the pool tables, making a tricky shot, taunting a group of Hell’s Angels who had moved from one of the tables. McCall could see he was pretty drunk and spoiling for a fight. McCall turned to Jimmy.
“Stay outside,” he advised.
He moved further into the bar. Jimmy did not retreat, but he gauged the distance McCall would have to travel with Kostmayer to get to the front door. A biker chick turned from the bar as McCall passed her, drinking an Anchor Brewery Steam Beer. She was clad in black and red leather with a ring through her nose and diamond studs embedded in her face in several places. Her breasts spilled almost out of the leather shirt she was wearing. Her long red hair was splayed down her back. She caught McCall’s eye and obviously liked from she saw. She toasted him with the bottle.
McCall kept going until he was at Kostmayer’s pool table. The Company agent still held onto his pool cue, but it was more like a weapon now in his hands. McCall could not hear what he had said to the four Hells Angels who surrounded him, but it was already too late. Kostmayer had thrown the first punch. One of the bikers, a monster in leather, staggered back. McCall caught Kostmayer’s arm in a vice-like grip.
“Time to go, Mickey.”
But the other three Hells Angels who had been crowding Kostmayer now turned their attention to McCall. One of them lunged. McCall avoided the blow and brought the biker to his knees. The second biker threw a punch that connected with McCall’s jaw, sending him into the pool tables. The third biker grabbed McCall’s leather coat, but at that point Jimmy got into the fray with a couple of shots to the third biker’s solar plexus. McCall blocked the second biker’s fist, picked him up and hurled him over his shoulder, slamming him onto the pool table. His opponent missed his shot and the balls careened around the table. Another of the Hells Angels slammed a fist into Kostmayer’s face that would have brought him down if McCall had not been holding onto him. McCall kicked out the legs out of the bruiser, who outweighed Kostmayer by two hundred pounds. Kostmayer went slack in McCall’s arms as he dragged him away from the action toward the front door.
The fight had reached into the bar area where the bikers were throwing punches with no idea who they were fighting with. The Bartender came over the bar hefting a baseball bat and wielded it with some precision. She had obviously broken up frights in this bar before. McCall turned in the melee to see that Jimmy was heading toward the front door.
A massive biker came at McCall with murderous intent.
The gorgeous redhead at the bar swung a bottle at his head. It connected and sent him down to the sawdust floor. McCall had noted her long raven hair, the ring in her nose and the studs that were etched on both sides of her face.
“Thanks.”
The babe grinned. “Just another quiet night at Hog Heaven.”
McCall crumpled up some bills and dropped them onto the bar. The redhead leaned closer to him, whispering: “You better get your friend out of before he gets hurt.”
“Good thinking,” he said.
McCall hauled Kostmayer over his shoulder as if he was a sack of potatoes. The redhead staggered against him and McCall steadied her. “You all right?”
“I’m doing fine and dandy. When your friend sobers up, come back and buy me a drink.”
“It will have to be another night.”
“Sure.” She smiled at him. “It’s a date.”
McCall carried Kostmayer over his shoulder through the brawl to where Jimmy had the bar door open. Jimmy’s antagonists had lost interest in him and had turned their attention to some other bikers who used this excuse to break a few heads. McCall carried Kostmayer through the open doorway and Jimmy slammed it shut behind them. McCall dropped a barely conscious Kostmayer onto the back seat of Jimmy’s Lexus and climbed in. Jimmy slid behind the wheel, fired it up and hauled ass out of there.
Inside Hog Heaven the fight stopped as quickly as he had started. A couples of the Hells Angels picked up some chairs. The players at the pool tables resumed their games. The Bartender deftly hauled herself back over the bar and dropped the baseball bat at her feet. Business as usual. The redheaded biker had rescued her Anchor Beer from the bar, toasted McCall’s memory and took a swallow.
McCall gently dropped Kostmayer onto the couch in his Manhattan apartment. He had come to briefly in Jimmy’s Lexus, but then had passed out again. Candy Annie had hurriedly put on some clothes when she heard Kostmayer’s key in the lock. Which meant she was wearing panties and a Buffy The Vampire Slayer T-shirt two sizes too small for her. Jimmy lingered in the doorway, a little embarrassed by Candy Annie’s state of undress. Candy Annie knelt down solicitously beside Kostmayer. Her expression was a mixture of exasperation and concern.
“What happened, Mr. McCall?”
“He got into a fight.”
“Where?”
“It’s not important. He is banged up, but he will live. Let him sleep it off.”
Jimmy cleared his throat. “Okay if I go home now, McCall? I want to rehearse my story for Sarah when she finds out I have been brawling in a biker bar in Brooklyn.”
“Blame it on me.”
“That thought had occurred to me. At the hotel, Sam told me you were planning a trip to sunny North Korea?”
“Need to know, Jimmy.”
“I don’t need to know. But I don’t like it and neither does Sam.”
“Thanks for your help, Jimmy.”
“I live to please. Take care of yourself, McCall.” He turned to Candy Annie. “I didn’t get your name?”
Candy Annie straightened. It was only then that she glanced down at herself and realized that she was wearing practically no clothes. She blushed. “It’s Candy Annie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jimmy said. “Don’t be too hard on Kostmayer. He’s been through a lot.”
Jimmie closed the apartment door. Candy Annie glanced back down at Kostmayer, who was sleeping. She gripped McCall’s arm. “Please let me know what is going on with Mickey.”
“You know what Mickey does for a living.”
“I do. It sounds very dangerous.”
“It can be. He left a friend behind in enemy territory.”
Candy Annie nodded, as if McCall had lifted a great weight off her shoulders. “You will bring Mickey’s friend back, Mr. McCall. I know you will.” She looked back down at Kostmayer. “I will look after him until you return.”
There was no doubt in McCall’s mind that the girl loved him with all of her heart.
“I know you will, Candy Annie,” he told her, gently.
He gave her a kiss on the cheek and let himself out of the apartment.
The redheaded biker let herself into her apartment in SoHo which was about the size of a closet she had once rented when she had lived in Washington D.C. A bed, a table and an unravelling cane chair, a kitchen counter, a bathroom. She unpinned her hair and shook off the red wig and dropped it onto the bed. She stripped off her leather outfit, stepped naked out of it and just let it fall to the floor. It had served its purpose. She moved into the kitchen and lifted a brandy glass filled to the brim with Hennessy XO Cognac and walked to the narrow window that overlooked the street six floors below. She savored the raw sensation of the brandy. It had been worth the wait of many days. She knew that eventually McCall would follow Mickey Kostmayer out to Hog Heaven. It had been a favorite haunt of his for years. It all been a ruse to get McCall there. She cast her mind back to the bar. McCall had practically stumbled into her in the midst of the melee. It had given her the perfect opportunity to plant the tracking device on him. He had not even felt it when the tiny blade had severed his skin. She took another swallow of the brandy and walked to where the neon splashed across the window. She picked up her cell phone from the decarded leather and tapped out a number. When the man answered she had said five words.
The first words were: Memento Mori.
Her next words were: “It is done.”
She hung up the cell phone and fished out the small receiver out of her leather jacket. She pressed a button and the little receiver turned on.
She would have no trouble tracking Robert McCall wherever he went.