The Gray Man cg-1

by Mark Greaney

  If she could just get out of the house, maybe she could run across the huge back lawn, through the apple orchard, make her way through the woods and to Bayeux in the cold distance. Once there, she could find the police station and tell them what was happening. They could come help, make the men with the leather coats and the ugly foreign language let her family go.

  Mummy and Daddy would be so happy.

  It was a long way away, but she knew she could make it. She was the fastest winger on her football team. She could slip down to the cellar and out the little open window she and her sister chased the cat through the previous evening.

  Resolute, eight-year-old Claire Fitzroy buttoned up her coat, pulled on her mittens, and cracked open the door to the bedroom. As soon as she stepped into the long and dimly lit hallway, she heard voices at the stairwell, but they came from upstairs. She scurried down the corridor and onto the staircase. Lowering her weight on each step, her little feet moved delicately to avoid making noise.

  She heard a sudden cry above her. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked up. There was another shout. It came from the third floor. She started to descend again but looked back up to the source of the noise and heard a low, guttural sound.

  It was Grandpa Donald. He sounded as if he was sobbing.

  Quickly now she made her way to the first floor, bypassing the kitchen and the dining hall carefully, because her parents and sister were having lunch just now. If they saw her, her father would be angry, and he would just tell her to return to her room.

  The hall turned ahead to the right on the way to the stone steps that led down to the wine cellar. Claire moved quickly but took care to avoid any noise that would give her away.

  She turned the corner at a run and nearly crashed into the rear of a huge guard.

  Claire stopped cold. The man wore a brown turtle-neck, and from behind she could see the black strap of the rifle that hung in front of him on his chest. A handgun and a radio were attached to his belt. He patrolled down the hall, away from her, perfectly silent in his movements. Little Claire did not dare back up or turn and run away. She just stood there, silently, in the middle of the hallway behind him. He walked slowly. Five feet away at first. Then ten. Then twenty.

  The guard opened a door to his left. Claire knew from her explorations with her sister the evening before that it was a small bathroom.

  He pulled the door shut behind him.

  Behind her she heard more men talking to one another. Quickly she hurried past the bathroom door and to the stone steps of the cellar.

  One minute later she climbed up onto the shelf, pushed her little body through the window, and squeezed out onto the back lawn. She rose to a crouch, looked to her left and right, and saw a man walking a big dog on a leash in the distance. Just like the man in the hallway, he was moving in the opposite direction. Claire looked out past the white stone fountain, past the apple trees to the horizon line.

  There they were: the steeples of Bayeux Cathedral.

  One more look around satisfied her, and then she was off. She rose and sprinted as fast as her little legs would take her. It was cold, and her breath steamed as she tore past the fountain, reached the other side, and then ran as she had never run in her life.

  Just weeks ago she scored a goal in a match against Walnut Tree Walk Primary School. She was on the left flank when the ball popped free from a bad clearance. She scooped it back towards the goal mouth at a dead run, dribbled close, and fired low, her first goal of the season.

  Daddy had been so happy he’d taken the girls out for pizza on the way home. He’d spoken of it every day since.

  Claire ran across the green grass of the manicured lawn like she was running for the ball in front of the goal. She just had to ignore the burning cold air in her chest and the little daggers of pain in her legs. She just had to make it into the orchard where the bad men could not catch her. She just had to get to the steeple so she could find the police station. She just had to tell someone what was going on at the château. She just had to rescue her family.

  She was only a few yards from the start of the orchard, could already smell the sweet apples, when the earsplitting crack of a rifle snapped across the huge lawn from behind her, echoed off the tree line in front of her, and she stumbled and fell head over heels into the low shrubbery at the orchard’s edge.

  * * *

  “What the fuck was that?” shouted Lloyd in surprise, but he knew a rifle shot when he heard one. He poked his head out of the command center. The guard at the end of the hall on the third floor was clearly as clueless as the questioner.

  Lloyd rushed past him down the stairs. The young American’s suit coat was off, his tie was untied and draped around his neck, and his collar hung wide open. His sleeves had been rolled up, and his armpits, face, and hair were covered in sweat. A mixture of perspiration and blood had streaked across his shirt where he’d recently brushed across a fresh wound.

  At the second-floor landing he nearly crashed into a Belarusian coming up to get him.

  “What’s happening? Who’s shooting?” Lloyd asked.

  “Come, please to hurry!”

  Lloyd followed the man down to the first floor. There was screaming from the living area. It was Elise Fitzroy’s voice, coming from the kitchen. Men from Minsk yelled back at her. Mr. Felix appeared, asked Lloyd what had happened, and was curtly instructed to return to the library and shut the door. Lloyd started to enter the kitchen, but the guard who’d been leading the way turned back and took him by the arm. He said something, but his English was poor. Lloyd brushed the man’s hand off him but followed him out the back door.

  At first the American lawyer saw nothing but the white stone fountain, the green lawn, the distant apple orchard, and the clear blue sky. He followed the guard, moved sideways around the fountain, and found three Belarusians and a dog standing over a form on the grass.

  “Gentry?” Lloyd could not believe it. How had he made it so quickly to—

  The man with the dog stepped aside, giving Lloyd a clean view of the body facedown on the lawn.

  Lloyd’s jaw tensed. “Shit. Shit! This is the last thing I needed today!”

  Just then another security man appeared from the orchard, another one hundred fifty yards away. He held the leash of a large black hunting dog in his right hand, across his chest was a shotgun, and the firm grip of his left hand was cinched around the wrist of a little girl with brown hair.

  One of the twins. Lloyd hadn’t taken the time to learn their names, much less tell them apart.

  Lloyd yanked the radio off the hip of the Belarusian who had led him out to the yard. He pressed the transmit button. “You. Take her around to the front entrance. We don’t need a hysterical brat on our hands.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man in the distance through his walkie-talkie. He yanked hard on the girl, pulled her along the edge of the orchard, well out of view of the body of her father that lay facedown in the thick grass, a small hole drilled into the back of his head and his face blown off.

  * * *

  Gentry pulled out onto the highway, heading south to Lausanne and then past to round Lake Geneva to the west. His green panel truck had a few nine-millimeter holes in it, but the oil pressure and gas needles remained steady in the center of each gauge. Behind him at the train station at least four South Americans lay dead in the snow. The rest were pinned down by the eight men from the four police cruisers that had just arrived on the scene. Court had made it across the tracks just as the large intercity train passed. He’d then doubled back up the hill and climbed into the green truck with the keys in it and the engine running.

  And now he was hauling ass. Fifteen minutes earlier, he’d been the most wanted man in Switzerland. Though that mantle had surely been handed off to the Latin gunners shooting it out back at the train station, Court knew he was still in second place, and the local authorities would soon enough put the word out that a highly wanted man was driving around in a bullet-po
cked green panel truck.

  TWENTY-TWO

  No one told the Belarusians at Château Laurent about the helicopter. Consequently, pandemonium ensued when a Sikorsky S76 appeared over the woods to the south, banked hard, and landed at the helipad next to the gravel car park.

  Lloyd alone had been informed of the impending arrival of the helicopter from Paris. He sat in the control room, listened to the rotor wash beat against the leaded glass window next to him. He’d sent the Tech downstairs for a lunch break, and he’d pushed Fitzroy’s chair, with Sir Donald chained to it, into an adjoining bathroom.

  Lloyd just sat there alone and stared at the stone wall in front of him.

  Three minutes later, the door behind him opened. Lloyd did not turn around immediately.

  “Lloyd? Lloyd?”

  Slowly, the American attorney rotated his swivel chair to face the newest guest to the château. Riegel was a big man, six five at least. He had swept-back blond hair with flecks of gray and bushy blond eyebrows. He wore thick khaki pants and a casual suede sport coat. His shirt was open at the collar. He was twenty years or so older than Lloyd, but he’d not let his body soften, and already his powerful voice and overbearing countenance told Lloyd the afternoon would be difficult and taxing.

  Lloyd did not get up. “Mr. Riegel. Welcome to Château Laurent.”

  Riegel was angry. “Did it not occur to you to mention to the guards I would be arriving? I’ve had three Belarusians just tell me they almost fired on my transport.”

  “That would have been unfortunate.”

  Riegel looked like he was going to continue the argument, but instead he let it go.

  “Where is Abubaker’s representative?”

  “Mr. Felix is downstairs. We’ve put him up in a room adjacent to the library. I told him I’d call down if I had news.”

  “You heard Gentry slipped through the noose again.”

  “I heard.”

  “We have Geneva covered, though. If he turns up there, we will get him.”

  “So you continue to say.”

  “We may not have dropped him dead in a street with one shot, but we are beating him down with simple wear and tear. He will run out of weapons, ammunition, escape routes, time, and blood before long.”

  “Hope you’re right. I’m running out of hostages.”

  Riegel sat down in the Tech’s chair. “As I told you on the phone en route, Marc Laurent has ordered me here to provide on-site consultation. Don’t look at me like that. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me. This fucking mess you’ve created and exacerbated will not help my career, regardless of the outcome. I am just the cleaner, the man to keep a terrible situation from becoming even worse. When Laurent heard about the hostage being shot by a guard… well, he just said, ‘Kurt, get over there. Do what you have to do.’ ”

  Lloyd’s response was tinged with tired sarcasm. “Monsieur Laurent needn’t worry. I doubt it will happen again. No more daddies to die here.”

  “Where is the Fitzroy family now?”

  “Locked in a room downstairs on the second floor.”

  “Do they know about the shooting?”

  “Kids don’t. Mom does.”

  “What is her demeanor?”

  “One of my close-protection detail injected her with enough sedative to keep her docile for a while.”

  Riegel just nodded. “And where is Sir Donald?”

  Lloyd motioned to a door across the room. “In there.”

  “How did the shooting occur?”

  Lloyd shrugged. He seemed momentarily disinterested in the entire operation. “One of the little shits made a run for it. Sniper on the roof saw her and radioed down. I was busy at the time; my radio was off. When the guards took off after her, Phil went nuts, thought they were going to hurt her, I guess. He barreled over two armed Minsk boys in the hallway, shot out the back door to get his daughter.”

  “And?”

  “And the sniper took him out.”

  Riegel looked out the window to the back lawn. “The poor son of a bitch was just trying to protect his family. He’d have brought her back; he wouldn’t have run out on the others. No father would ever leave his family behind.”

  “I don’t suppose our sniper is much of a family man.”

  “Sir Donald knows?”

  “Yeah. I told him.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “No emotion at all. Just sat there.”

  “All right. I am going to speak to him, try to explain this was an accident.”

  “Lots of luck.”

  “Why don’t you take a break, Lloyd? You look like shit.”

  Lloyd stood up. Riegel saw the blood on his dress shirt but said nothing.

  Lloyd said, “I am still in charge.”

  Kurt Riegel shook his head in disbelief. “Fine by me. I don’t want responsibility for any more of this disaster than I have to take on. I am just here to consult. Maybe offer helpful suggestions. Like not losing track of eight-year-old girls, and not shooting hostages who pose no danger nor threat of escape, and not forgetting to tell your security that a friendly helicopter will be landing in their midst. Suggestions of that sort.”

  Lloyd stood and headed for the staircase to the kitchen without a word.

  Riegel crossed the room and opened the door behind which Lloyd said he’d find Sir Donald. The German was surprised to be looking into a large, tiled bathroom. Fitzroy was seated in a chair in the middle of the candlelit chamber. He looked up at Riegel with wet and bloodshot eyes. His head and hands and ankles were secured to the chair with thick iron chains, his dress shirt was shredded on the floor next to him, he sat in a sweat- and bloodstained undershirt. His face had been beaten, and there were fat splotches of blood on his torn tweed trousers. Kurt Riegel took them for puncture marks.

  “Scheisse,” Riegel said. He stepped out of the room, leaned out into the hall, and called out to the two Scottish guards near the stairs. “I want the prisoner’s bindings removed; I want him cleaned up. Bandage his legs. And someone find him fresh clothing! Dammit, man, move!”

  Fifteen minutes later, Riegel sat on a stool by the edge of a canopied bed in the master quarters on the second floor. Sir Donald lay on the bed and stared back at him. The Englishman had been unshackled and cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. A wet bandage hung on his left temple where an ineffective blow had cut his skin. The bruises on his chin and eyes had received little attention.

  Neither man spoke at first, although Fitzroy had declined coffee with a shake of his head. His eyes hung low and malevolent.

  Finally Riegel found a starting place. “Sir Donald. My name is Herr Riegel. First allow me to sincerely apologize for your treatment. I had no idea Lloyd was going to… Well, no excuses. I take responsibility for this. I will make it right.”

  Fitzroy said nothing, though his glare indicated no show of appreciation would be forthcoming.

  “I have food and water on the way to you. Something heavier perhaps? A brandy, maybe? You Englishmen often enjoy an afternoon nip. Am I right?”

  Still no response from the aged prisoner.

  “Further. My deepest condolences for your son. Nothing I can say or do can—”

  “Then don’t bloody bother.” Don’s voice was sandpaper, gravel.

  “Understood. I just want you to know… no one intended for this to happen. Again, no excuses. I should have been here on site all along. As soon as I heard about the accident, I was on the way. Your son did what any father would have done. He should not have been shot.” Then he said again, “He only did what any father would have done in such circumstances.”

  Fitzroy seemed to think about this, but he did not respond.

  “From now on I will be overseeing your care and the care of your family. Mr. Lloyd will coordinate the initiative to find and neutralize the Gray Man. I will also be in charge of the defenses here, to make things ready in the unlikely event Mr. Gentry manages to slip past the hunters we have out
in the field looking for him.”

  “He’ll be here soon enough, Fritz.”

  Riegel smiled a little and sat up. “He has managed to neutralize or effect the neutralization of the Albanians, the Indonesians, and the Venezuelans, and the Libyans suffered one inadvertent casualty during his escape from them. Meaning he has brought about the complete destruction of three kill squads and depleted the manpower of a fourth. Still, there are nine teams between him and ourselves. Forty men or so. Plus one hundred pavement artists searching for him. Plus a fourteen-man security detail in cordon here around the château. Plus a technician here monitoring the phones and computers of all Gentry’s known associates along his probable route. And there is word he is injured. Surely he is tired. His resources are thinning.”

  “He’ll be here.” Fitzroy’s voice was matter-of-fact.

  The German smiled obligingly. “We’ll see.” Then his eyes turned darker. “Sir Donald, you are a professional. Surely you understand your situation. I would only insult your intelligence by telling you we will let you go when this matter with the Gray Man is resolved. You know as well as I that we cannot merely open the gates and let you walk out. Not to be dramatic but… as they say in the movies, you simply know too much. No. Regardless of the outcome with Gentry and the Lagos contract, you will not be leaving Château Laurent with your life. Ah, you knew that; I am glad to see this in your eyes.

  “But I will make this promise between two professionals. The twins and your daughter-in-law will not be harmed. They have gone through enough. I just need to keep them here until Mr. Gentry’s arrival. Then they are free. As long as the Gray Man does not contact others, bring police or military down upon our little château here, there will be no danger to the woman and her daughters, regardless of whether or not President Abubaker signs the contract.