Prologue

“Tinker?” the voice emanating from the trench-coated shadow rumbled with menace.

Robert McCall scowled, not at the man in the dark beneath the dripping iron fire escape, but at the way the hair at the back of his own neck prickled. The passing summer thunderstorm had left the air charged with electricity, but he knew that wasn’t the cause.

“Do you know the silver shop on the Via Cusani?” he offered the recognition phrase, keeping his eyes on the entrance to the fetid Milan alley he had selected for their meeting.

“Yes. They are very good at repairing ladles,” the man replied.

“Tailor.” McCall said, acknowledging the man’s correct response.

“You said you had something for me,” the Italian was tainted with a Sicilian accent, but McCall knew it was contrived to cover the remaining Slavic hints.

“A message,” McCall’s own Italian was prep-school perfect with a slight English accent. He let his eyes slide toward the man for an instant, but he could not make him out in the darkness. More importantly, he could not tell whether the man held anything threatening in his hands, which were tucked into his coat pockets.

“Si?” The word was drawn out into several syllables. McCall’s skin crawled again and he clenched his jaw.

“From Colonel Kronskie.”

The man did not react to the name, but McCall had not really expected him to. He had hoped, but he had not expected. None of the previous ones had.

“I am not acquainted with any such person.”

The headlights of a car turning into the street reflected in Taylor’s eyes for an instant. He hunched his shoulders up around his ears and took a step toward the street, lightly shoving McCall with his shoulder as he passed.

“Prepare for the juggernaut,” McCall said a little too quickly. He clamped his mouth shut, praying silently that this time the recognition protocol would generate a response. The identities had been correct so far, but he had yet to get a clear reaction to the juggernaut.

Taylor stopped, head downcast beneath his fedora. McCall’s gaze was riveted on the profile of Roman nose, his whole body tense, ready to respond to whatever the man did next.

Which is why he didn’t see the gloved hand swing up in a lightening fast backhand, knocking into his jaw so hard he reeled back a few steps before regaining his balance.

“Blast it!” he growled as he rubbed at his mouth and checked his hand for blood. That gave Tailor the chance to wrap his big gloved hand around McCall’s throat and carry him gagging three steps to slam him into the filthy brick wall beneath the fire escape. McCall wrapped both hands around the supple black leather, trying to pry the hand away as he felt his windpipe begin to collapse. Too late he remembered his training and reached with one hand for his assailant’s throat.

“Who are you?” Tailor asked, the sharp aroma of basil and anise on his breath.

McCall couldn’t speak. He coughed out the bit of air that could escape through his constricted windpipe, suddenly annoyed that his last breath might very well be tainted with Tailor’s stinking dinner. Emboldened by his anger he clawed at the bigger man’s collar, jabbing his thumb first against a pulsing jugular and then a hard knob of Adam’s apple.

Tailor pulled away, his grip loosening a little. McCall took advantage and knocked at his wrist with one hand while tightening his grip on Tailor’s throat with the other. Another car turning into the street illuminated them both for an instant: Tailor a hulking dark shadow with his back to the street, McCall’s features clearly lit above the hand on his throat.

Tailor pulled back and glanced over his shoulder at the car as it paused, the driver surprised at the tableau in his auto’s twin spotlights. McCall swatted at his wrist again and Tailor let go, wheeling away from the car to take off at a run down the alley.

McCall sagged back against the wall, hands on his damaged throat. He glanced up into the blinding headlights at the sound of the car door opening.

“Are you all right?” a woman asked. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No,” McCall replied, his voice ragged. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Are you sure?” she stepped to the side just enough that he could see her -- blonde hair curling over her shoulders, a woolen coat belted around a slender waist. She looked genuinely concerned.

“Yes,” he replied, thinking of Tara’s big blue eyes. Thinking of the ministry clinic secreted in the back of a hospital not far away. Thinking of how he could explain his injuries if he went there. “No,” he said. “I guess I could use some help. Just a ride to the hospital.”

She nodded, took a step closer and paused as if uncertain whether he was really the victim. He pushed himself away from the wall and raised both hands to show her that they were empty. That seemed to assuage her concern and she reached out to take his arm and guide him to the passenger side of her car. If her grip on his arm was tighter than seemed necessary he chalked it up to the tension of the moment.

He massaged his throat with one hand as he slumped onto the seat and watched her walk around the front of the car. She paused, staring down the alley where Tailor had taken off. She raised one hand as if to shade her eyes, but stopped it part way in a sort of a wave before dropping it and continuing on around the car to get in.

She said nothing as she put the car back in gear and started down the narrow street. McCall rubbed at his throat, breathing shallowly to ease the pain. The car accelerated, the tires squealing a little as she turned onto a broader avenue.

“Thank you. But the hospital is --.” McCall started to point back in the opposite direction.

“Mr. McCall, you are either very foolish, or very smart. Our sources tell us the former,” the woman said, her Italian near-perfect, but with oddly clipped vowels that could not be the sound of a native speaker. Her hands crossed back and forth over one another repeatedly as she turned another corner. A well-trained driver. “If you wish to prove that they are wrong and it is the latter, then you will shut up.”

McCall cringed inwardly. Tailor had a backup. Of course he didn’t come alone. He watched the woman’s expression, which now looked very harsh in the yellow glow of the car instruments and even sharper in the recurring flashes from overhead streetlights. She hit the accelerator and weaved between slower-moving vehicles on the wide avenue. McCall kept his eyes on her as he felt with his right hand for the door handle. He half expected it to have been removed, but he found it and as the avenue made a turn to the left he yanked on it.

The door swung open and McCall rolled out, protecting his head with his forearms so that his elbows slammed hard against the pavement. He kept rolling until his body lost momentum and stopped in a puddle at the curb. His ears were filled with the sound of squealing brakes just down the road. And then there was a resounding crash -- steel on steel, shattering glass. He lifted his head from where he’d come to rest in the gutter and saw the woman’s car wedged halfway under the rear bumper of a delivery lorry. The passenger side door was hanging open, the hinges damaged, but the driver’s side was shut tight. He could see movement inside the car -- she was trapped in the driver’s seat. The rear window had popped out and the woman turned her head to look out at McCall as he climbed painfully to his feet. His whole body hurt, but he did not think anything was broken. Their eyes met, his clouded with pain and fear, hers suffused with rage. Even at this distance he could see it.

And then people and other vehicles closed in around her car and blocked his view. He stepped up onto the curb and joined the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk. He hugged his raincoat around his battered body and tried to walk normally, succeeding only in achieving a stiff-legged shuffle as his knees began to ache. He gently pressed through the growing crowd to get to the clearer passage near the storefronts, hurrying past the car and lorry and making it around the next corner just as the pulsing wail of the ambulance was audible in the distance.