McCall answered his phone on the second ring. "Robert Mc—"
"Andrew's been shot!" a woman screamed. "You've got to help me!"
There was raw panic in the woman's voice. The hair on the back of McCall's neck stood on end. "Who is this?"
"It's Lily! Robert, you've got to help me!"
"I will," he said quickly. "I will help you. Calm down." His mind whirled feverishly. If this was Lily, then the Andrew who had been shot had to be – had to be – but it had been decades since McCall had heard him called that name. "Where are you?"
"I'm in Dayton," she said, still too fast, "but he's somewhere in New York."
"Then how do you know …"
"We were talking on the phone. I heard the shot. But now he won't answer. No one will answer. Robert, you've got to find him!"
"All right," he said soothingly. "All right. Just tell me where he was …"
"I don't know," Lily screeched. "He had some secret meeting, they were setting the location at the last minute."
"Who was he meeting with?"
"I don't know."
Robert grimaced. "Was he alone?"
"No. Simms was with him, and Walker and Russo. And some muscle, I think."
"And you have no idea where?"
"I just said I didn't. They'd just gotten out of the car, they were about to go in – please, Robert …"
"All right. All right." He spoke with the soothing tone he'd use to a desperate woman on a high ledge. "I'll find him. Just calm down."
She took a breath that even long-distance sounded like a sob. "Robert …"
"I'll find him. Where can I reach you?"
Lily rattled off a phone number. "That's my portable. I'm heading for the airport."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea." McCall knew before he spoke it was hopeless. If Control was wounded, she wanted to be at his side. If he was dead, then it didn't much matter. "Come," he conceded, "but be careful. No more Andrew."
"What?"
"You called him Andrew."
There was a confused pause. "No, I didn't."
"You did, love." He nodded to himself. She wasn't in from the ledge yet, not by any means, but she'd moved back from the brink. "Get here. I'll call you when I've found him."
"Thank you," Lily whispered. The line went dead.
X
The shooter dropped his rifle into a covered trash can as he fled. It had been expensive and hellishly hard to get, but it was too heavy to carry. He was not a young man, and years in a Soviet prison had broken his health.
He had Control to thank for those years.
His eyes narrowed in rage as he ran down the noisy metal stairs. It had been a good shot. But that son of a bitch still had the devil's own luck. Control had turned at the last second, and as far as the shooter could tell, the bullet that should have pierced his heart had left him alive.
His bodyguards and aides had certainly scrambled as if the spymaster was still alive. They'd dumped him back into the limo almost before he hit the ground. The car had sped away, tailed by one of the sedans. But the rest of the party had come looking for him.
They had admirable coordination. They'd be on him at any moment.
He had not survived those many long months in prison to end up dead in a New York gutter. He had nurtured and honed his hatred of Control to a fine edge; he vowed again that he would not die while that bastard still lived.
The would-be assassin stopped at the second floor landing. If he went all the way to the ground and out the side door, Control's men were certain to be waiting for him in the alley. Instead, he took several deep breaths, ran his hand through his hair, straightened his tie, and opened the fire door onto the corridor. It should have been locked, of course, but his contact – the same voice-only contact that had told him precisely when and where to find Control – had arranged for his exit. He walked down the hallway calmly to the elevators and pressed the 'down' arrow. Just a businessman on his way to a meeting.
The door to his left opened. He moved toward it, but was pushed back by a man leaving the elevator. The shooter tried to brush past; the man grabbed his arm. "Not that way, Comrade," he said quietly. "Come with me."
It was the voice of his contact. The shooter looked up at the man's face and almost grinned. Of course it would be one of Control's most trusted associates. "Lead on, friend."
They moved back to the stairwell. "This way. I've got another escape route."
"Control's not dead, is he?"
The man snorted. "Of course not." He eased the stairwell door closed behind them. "Should have known better than to trust an old Commie to get it right."
"I will get him next time, I assure you of that."
"Sure you will." The man turned and the gun fired.
Silencer, Durkin thought, and yet in the concrete tower full of metal stairs it was loud, echoing. The pain spread like a red flower over his chest, but it seemed distant. Someone else's pain. Someone else collapsed against the wall, his knees buckling and his hands surprised on his open chest. Someone else had been fool enough to trust a man who could betray Control. Someone else was dying there on the cold metal stairs, with a curse unspoken on his lips.
"I said I had an escape plan," the man over him said. "I didn't say it was for you."
X
Robert paused for one moment, considering his options and his assets. The direct approach was sometimes best, especially in times of great confusion. He dialed Control's office number.
"Webster Expediting," a female voice chirped briskly.
It wasn't Sue's voice. McCall swore under his breath. It would have been much easier with Control's regular secretary. He tried anyhow. "This is Robert McCall," he announced grandly. "I need to know Control's condition and location."
"One moment, sir." There was a muffled voice in the background. "I'm sorry, sir, you must have the wrong number."
Robert growled as she hung up on him. But at least he had partial confirmation of Lily's story. If someone was sitting in Control's office, listening in on his direct line, it meant that he was in no condition to stop them.
Alive or dead? Or somewhere in between? It sounded like the office didn't know yet.
In any case, his full frontal bluff hadn't worked. He was already moving on to his next approach, his fingers numbly following his mental list.
He called Control's cell phone. It was out of service.
He would have called next any of the foot soldiers on Control's security detail, but he didn't know them any more. All the agents who had been muscle in his time had moved up in the ranks and been sent overseas – or killed.
Robert cast his net wider. He called Jonah, who would only speak for twenty seconds at a time in a vain attempt to keep his calls from being bugged. The computer tech promised to take a look. Then McCall called several contacts in the police department. The Company had its own means of dealing with incidents, of course, but if Control had been shot in the open, on a city street, there was some chance the local authorities had become involved before the curtain of secrecy had been drawn over the scene.
No one knew anything about a shooting, or at least not one that was out of the ordinary.
McCall hung up on his last hope, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes impatiently, trying to hold off a gathering headache. He would go to the office in person, he decided. Someone there would probably tell him something; in any case, he could tell by their faces and their postures how bad it really was. One step inside that building would be enough to tell him if his old friend was dead or alive.
But it would take time. And he had caught Lily's sense of terrible urgency.
There was nothing else to be done. Robert got his jacket and loaded his pockets. Wallet, keys, clean handkerchief – he hesitated over the gun only a moment. He could always leave it in the car.
As he tucked it away, one more option occurred to him. He dialed the phone quickly.
It rang only once before a brisk, pleasant male voice said, "Mailroom."
"Munchie," Robert said with forced calm, "it's Robert McCall."
"Hey, McCall, how's it goin'? How's that grandbaby of yours?"
Robert bit back his impatience. He was sure this line was monitored; the conversation would require finesse. "He's fine," he answered cheerfully. "Growing like a little weed already."
"They do that. Mom and Dad doing okay?"
"For people who never sleep, they're well, yes."
"You give 'em my best, will you?"
"I will do that, Munchie." McCall chose his next words carefully. "I wondered if you knew where I might find Control."
There was a split-second of hesitance. Then Munchie said, "Nope, sorry. You know how it is, me in the basement in my little cave. If he's not up in his office or standing right in front of me, I got no idea."
Robert nodded to himself, disappointed but not surprised. "Well, I thought I'd give it a try."
"Sorry. I'd help you if I could."
"I understand."
"Hey," Munchie said, before McCall could hang up, "I hear Scott's wife and the baby got to stay in that new penthouse suite at the hospital. How'd she like it?"
This time Robert hesitated. "It's lovely," he answered carefully. "Very spacious, comfortable. Becky even complimented the food."
"Huh. That's good to hear. My wife, she's supposed to have some surgery end of the month. Gall bladder. And I was thinking I'd try to get her in there. To that hospital, you know? The penthouse would be sweet, but Control must have pulled some major strings to get you in, huh?"
"I believe he did," Robert agreed. Everyone assumed that he had done so out of friendship for McCall; only a very few knew that Becky Baker McCall was Control's secret psychic.
"Well, I know it must be a good place, if it's good enough for Control's … friends."
Robert nodded firmly. That little pause had been all the confirmation he needed. "Yes. Yes, it is. Good luck to your wife, Munchie. I'll talk to you soon."
McCall patted his pockets once more and strode from his apartment.
X
Lily Romanov glared at her watch again. The second hand moved sluggishly. Time had slowed to a crawl.
Around her, people bustled through the airport. They were in a hurry; they had a destination. She didn't know yet if she did or not. She was going to New York; she just didn't know if she cared if she ever arrived.
Why the hell hadn't McCall called? How damn long could it take to track down one man?
In a city the size of New York. When the man was likely trying to remain unseen.
She was being unreasonable. Robert had barely had time to get his shoes on, much less track down Control.
He wouldn't tell her over the phone that Control was dead. She was certain of that. If he called at all, it would be with good news. Or with a lie. If Control was dead, she wouldn't hear about it until she stepped off the plane and Robert was there to meet her.
Lily thought very seriously about throwing up.
She looked at her watch again. The seconds crawled.
Twenty minutes, roughly, until her plane boarded. Nearly two hours in the air. But delays on the ground, at either end, could easily double that time. Then a taxi into the city, in traffic.
She stopped trying to calculate how long it would take to reach him.
At least she wasn't on the far side of the world.
A teenager strode past, eating an enormous slice of pizza. The greasy burnt cheese smell brought the spy to her feet, her stomach roiling. But the teen kept moving, and her stomach settled uneasily as the smell faded.
She was cold.
The morning session of the peace talks had been deathly dull. The major players weren't coming in for another week; their delegates were arguing about tidbits of language. Romanov and a dozen other advisors/observers had been drowsing through it. No one asked them for advice or observations.
They took a break at mid-morning. The gathering strode towards the exit with the grim determination of men and women in dire need of cigarettes. Lily stayed behind. She was trying to quit, and she needed to report in. As the room cleared, she brought out her portable phone.
She knew from an earlier call that he had a meeting. Assuming he was on his way, she called his portable. One of the benefits of being Control's personal observer at the peace talks was that she was able to call him directly without raising eyebrows.
"Control," he barked. The connection was full of static.
"Romanov," she barked back.
"Any progress?"
"Always one for small talk, aren't you?"
"On my way in to a meeting."
"So you're not alone," Lily guessed
"No."
"And you can't really talk."
"No."
"Do you want me to keep babbling at you?"
"Yes, please."
She grinned. His single-syllable answers were all he could make, but that didn't have to stop her from having an entertaining conversation. "Walker is with you?"
"Yes."
"Is he wearing that god-awful yellow tie again?"
"No."
"Let's see. Who else? Russo?"
"Yes,"
"Hmmm … Simms?"
"Yes. Very good."
"And you're all crammed into the limo together."
"Yes. Well, not any more."
"The Company does have vans, you know."
"We need to make an impression."
"Ahh." Lily nodded. "Meeting with a big wig, then."
"Perhaps."
"I can't wait to hear the other half of this conversation. Can I come home this weekend?"
"Yes. Please."
She glimmered with mischief. "Ah, good. I'll start planning now. It'll give me something to do."
"No progress?"
"Semantics," Lily answered. "Formatting. The order of the names on the documents."
"Unfortunate." He knew she hated the trivial details of diplomacy; he was expressing as much sympathy as he could with his lieutenants at his elbow.
"I have an idea, but I'm going to need about five hundred dollars from petty cash."
"Why?"
"Hookers."
There was a distinct pause. "Explain," he said cautiously.
"To make any progress, we're going to have to give these diplomats what they need. And what they all need, desperately, is a good professional blow job."
He started to laugh. She heard it clearly, though the static, a surprised, startled laugh.
And then a bang. Might have been a trash can lid falling, or a car backfiring, or someone hitting a dumpster with a stick. But Lily knew the instant she heard it that it wasn't any of those things.
The phone at the other end dropped with a clatter. There was a crunching sound. Then silence.
Lily pressed her icy fingertips against her eyes. The cold was soothing. She looked at her watch. Nineteen minute until the plane boarded. Roughly.
Either he was alive, or he was dead. If he was alive, he might still be alive when she got there, hours from now. If he was dead …
If he was dead, there were a few things she needed to take care of before sunrise.
X
The elevator door opened, and a hard, barking voice filled the corridor around him. Robert McCall began to breath normally again.
Control was not dead. He wasn't even close.
The hallway was wide and white. The open door to the treatment room was flanked by clean-cut young men, well-muscled and heavily armed. They looked at him warily, but he'd already been cleared at the front door by Markland; Control's flunky was obviously in charge of guest relations at the moment.
Through the doorway, he could see Russo inside the treatment room, visibly flinching under the verbal lashing he was getting. McCall nodded to the watchful men and stepped into the corner, out of the way. Casually, aware that they had nothing to look at but him, he drew out his portable phone and dialed it.
"Robert?" Lily asked urgently. "Did you find him? What's …"
"Shhh," McCall answered. "Just listen for a moment." He held the phone out in front of him and pretended, for the benefit of the guards, that he was looking for something in his pocket.
Control, still unseen, was bellowing, " … and I want the name of every man on the security detail, now. There is no excuse for this. It was supposed to be a secured area. I want this shooter found and I want him in front of me. Do you understand?"
There was quiet murmuring, and then Control again, "I don't want your damn excuses, I want results! In front of me, dead or alive. Clear?"
Robert brought the phone back to his ear. "Feel better, love?"
There was only the sound of quiet weeping.
"Come home" he said quietly. "I'll do what I can to save the underlings until you get here."
"Thank you, Robert," Lily said, very softly.
"It is my great pleasure. But promise me, best face when you arrive, right?"
"Absolutely."
"Good girl." McCall tucked his phone away, squared his shoulders, and approached the open door as he would the jaws of a tiger.
Lily put her phone away and rubbed her eyes roughly. She looked at her watch. Ten minutes until the plane boarded. Time to find a bathroom and blow her nose. Maybe grab a cup of coffee. No time for pizza, sadly, unless the flight got delayed. She was hungry.
X
James Simms looked down at the dead man in the stairwell. He was an older man, gray-haired, thin. Perhaps prematurely gray; his wrinkles looked somehow out of place, as if they were caused more by hardship than by time, and his hair was still thick. His suit was expensive and nicely tailored, probably quite attractive before he'd bled all over it. If he'd gotten into the lobby of the office building, he would have vanished into the crowd. The bullet wound was directly over his heart. He'd still had the gun in his hand when they'd found him.
Simms knew the faces of all the top spies and terrorists the Company was tracking at the moment. This man wasn't one of them. They'd checked his pockets, but of course the shooter carried no identification.
"Somebody get me a Polaroid," Simms ordered. Behind him, one of the men clattered away.
They were going to have to move the body quickly. They'd been lucky no one had reported the shot that had dropped Control. There was a silencer on the handgun, so likely no one had heard it either, but a body in the stairwell in the middle of a business day wouldn't stay secret for long. Civilian witnesses were not something Simms cared to deal with.
He'd already screwed up enough for one year.
They could roll him in a tarp, he mused. Roll a dumpster right up to the door in the alley, carry him down that last flight of stairs. Yes. Get a single cleaner up here to deal with the blood. One hour, everybody out clean. Stick some wet paint signs up outside. It would work.
But first a picture. Because it was highly likely that Control would recognize the man who had tried to kill him.
"That him?" Walker asked at his shoulder.
"Looks like," Simms answered quietly.
"Who is he?"
"No idea."
"You shoot him?"
Simms shook his head. "He was dead when we got here." He gestured to one of Control's security detail. "Dixon found him."
"Looks like he shot himself," Walker said after a moment. "Control wanted him alive."
"People in Hell want ice water," Simms answered grimly.
XX
