by Mark Greaney
“I also promise you will suffer no more indignities at the hands of Mr. Lloyd.”
Fitzroy nodded and lifted his chin. “I want my son’s body respected.”
“It goes without saying. I’ll see a proper casket is brought in. We’ll ferry Phillip back to Britain via helicopter. He will be delivered to the place of his wife’s choosing as soon as she returns home.”
Fitzroy nodded slowly. “You do that, and you find a way to keep the girls out of the line of fire when the Gray Man shows up tonight, and I will be in your debt and be no trouble to your mission.”
When the Gray Man shows up tonight. Riegel fought a little smile and won. “You have my word as a gentleman. Anything else I can do for you to make you more comfortable until the battle for the castle?” He could not help a little sarcasm.
“I would very much like to speak with Claire if I could. A bit of a worrier, she is. I hate to think what is going on in her head right now. Just a little chat between a grandfather and his granddaughter in private.”
“Claire is one of the twins? I am sure I can see to that.”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Riegel stood across from Lloyd in the kitchen. They both drank coffee and ignored sandwiches on a platter on the large stone island in front of them.
“Why did you torture Fitzroy?”
“He wasn’t taking the situation seriously.”
“You are insane, Lloyd. I presume this insanity has been formally diagnosed, maybe back in your childhood, and you managed to hide that detail of your psyche from the CIA and Marc Laurent.”
“Sticks and stones, Riegel.”
“Leave Fitzroy alone.”
“You have a bigger problem than me, Kurt. We need an asset in Switzerland to clean up the mess Gentry created.”
“Meaning?”
“The Tech just got word from a watcher in Lausanne. He tells us two of the Venezuelan operators were taken alive by the Swiss. We need assurances that they won’t talk.”
“So you want them killed?”
“How else can we be certain of their silence?”
Riegel shrugged. “Without LaurentGroup, Venezuela’s oil stops flowing. Without LaurentGroup, what oil they have for export doesn’t make it across the sea to the refineries. Chávez needs us as much as we need him. A couple of shooters who could neither manage to succeed in their mission nor die trying will not jeopardize the good relationship we have with that lunatic. I’ll make a call to the director of the General Intelligence Office in Caracas, let him know that even though they failed in their mission, I’ll send him a consolation prize if he sees that his agents keep their mouths shut. When the Swiss allow officials from the Venezuelan embassy to meet with the two surviving operators in jail, I have no doubt the message those two bastards get will be very descriptive in what will happen to their families back home if they don’t take the fall for the operation. One mention by them to the police of a multinational corporation’s recruitment of several third-world intelligence agency’s hit squads to kill a man traversing Europe and… well, those men’s wives, kids, parents, and neighbors will be tossed into the Venezuelan version of a gulag.”
Lloyd was impressed. “That’s one reason you didn’t use mercenaries, isn’t it?”
“Mercenaries don’t have anyone to answer to but themselves. I much prefer using men who are subject to other avenues of influence that I can manipulate.”
Lloyd nodded. “So now we just have to find Gentry.”
“We have LaurentGroup assets at every choke point in Geneva, every location of a known associate, every hospital. We have phones and police radios monitored by the Tech here. We have the South Africans in the city center, ready for deployment. If one of my watchers sees the Gray Man, we will have a hit squad on him in fifteen minutes.”
* * *
Fitzroy had not eaten, though he’d sucked down two brandies and some bottled water. The treatment he’d received from Lloyd had left him worse for wear but unbroken. Knife jabs to the thigh, open-handed strikes to the head. They were the actions of a desperate man, nothing more.
As a young intelligence officer working in Ulster in the seventies, Don was kidnapped from a taxi stand by a carload of hooded Provos. They took him to a warehouse, spent ninety minutes beating him with lengths of pipe. By the time the SAS quick reaction force fast-roped down from the helicopter, killed three of the five IRA men in the ensuing gunfight, and the other two execution-style against the warehouse wall, the twenty-six-year-old spy had suffered six broken bones and permanent reduction in vision in his left eye.
The work-over he’d received from Lloyd was nothing like that. The American had the zeal but not the talent for administering pain. Plus he had no big cause or belief. Just one part personal dementia and two parts anxiety brought on by the desperation of his predicament. In this entire enterprise, Fitzroy decided, perhaps only Court Gentry was more imperiled than young Lloyd. Fitzroy presumed Laurent would likely order this Riegel fellow to kill the American lawyer if the contract was not signed by Julius Abubaker tomorrow morning at eight a.m.
Sir Donald, for his part, was beaten up but certainly not beaten down. He had a plan of sorts; he intended to use his wits and his tradecraft and a lifetime of experience manipulating those around him to achieve that which he could not accomplish alone. Though confined to a bed, Sir Donald Fitzroy planned cruel revenge on those who dared cross him, his family, and his top assassin.
The door to the master bedroom opened slowly. Fitzroy downed the last of his brandy and placed the snifter on the bedside table next to him quickly.
Claire entered warily, unsure. Then she saw him and ran across the room to her grandfather. She hugged him tightly around his thick neck.
“Hullo, darling. How are you?”
“I’m all right, Grandpa Donald. You’re hurt!”
“A little spill on the stairs, love. No worries. How is your sister?”
“Kate’s fine. She likes it here.”
“You don’t like it here?”
“No. I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of all the men. They are mean to us. Mean to Mummy and Daddy.”
“Are you behaving yourself?”
“Yes, Grandpa Donald.”
“That’s a good girl.” Fitzroy looked out the window for a moment. Then he said, “Claire, my dear, I’d like to play a little game. Would you like that?”
“A game?”
“Yes. One of the men here… watching over us. He came with me in the helicopter this morning. I’ve heard his mates call him by the name Leary. An Irishman. Do you know which one I am talking about?”
“With the red hair?”
“That’s my girl.”
“Yes, Grandpa. He sits in a chair down at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Does he now? Well, Claire, I noticed Mr. Leary has a telephone clipped onto the pocket of his big blue jacket. I don’t suppose he wears his jacket in the house. It’s probably in a closet, on a floor, maybe lying on a sofa downstairs. I was thinking that maybe we can have a bit of fun with Mr. Red Hair, and you can sneak around like a little kitty cat and slip the phone out of his jacket. Do you think you can do that?”
“I saw his jacket on the coatrack. I saw the phone. When he goes into the kitchen for tea, maybe I can take it.”
“That’s a good girl. Please try to do that for Grandpa Donald. After you get it, I want you to hide it in your pocket or in your sweater, and then tell the guards you want to come see me.”
“What if they won’t let me?”
“You could tell them you are Kate. Can you pretend to be Kate? Tell them your sister got to come see me, so it’s only fair.”
“I don’t look like Kate, Grandpa.”
“Trust me, my dear, to these men you look exactly alike. Just change your clothes, tell them you’re Kate, and you’d fancy a chat with your dear old grandpa.”
&n
bsp; “All right. I will try to steal a phone for you and sneak it back.”
“It’s not stealing. It’s just a game, love.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not a game. I’m not a little kid. I know what is going on.”
“Yes, of course you do. I thought you might. Please don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
Fitzroy’s pause was short, his countenance unfazed. Sir Donald had been lying to his agents for nearly a half century. He found it no big trick to lie to his kin. “He’s in London, love. You’ll be home soon, as well. Run along now, and go carefully.”
TWENTY-THREE
Court parked the van at the main train station in Geneva, the Gare de Cornavin, located on the seedier north side of the city. Parking at train stations was simple tradecraft. When the vehicle was found, which Court had little doubt would take no time at all, his followers would have to entertain the possibility that he’d just jumped on the first set of wheels rolling out of town, causing them time and manpower to investigate where he might have gone.
It wasn’t much, but parking at the train station at least avoided the obvious “tell” of pulling his stolen vehicle up to the front door of his true objective.
The weather was cold but bright, and the last of the late autumn leaves blew across the wide streets of the city. From the station he walked south, past the afternoon street whores and the sex shops of the red-light district, over the bridge crossing the canal into huge Lake Geneva, passing middle-aged bankers and diplomats heading towards all those street whores and sex shops behind him. Five minutes south of the bridge the wide and modern streets gave way to uneven cobblestone passageways and the chic shops lining the roads morphed suddenly into medieval stone walls as a steep hill rose away from the modernity and towards the ancient, picturesque buildings of the Old Town.
Gentry consulted a tourist map hanging on the wall of a hotel lobby, hid his scraped and swollen left wrist from the Japanese couple next to him, and then returned to the chilly street. Another minute or two of climbing an alley brought him to the square in front of the Cathédrale St-Pierre. There Saturday afternoon tourists stood, heads and eyes and cameras all pointed to the thousand-year-old cathedral’s impressive facade. Court walked behind the two dozen or so sightseers, then melted down a side street that ran along the south side of the church. On his left was a white wall six feet high with a large iron gate in the center. As he walked past the gate, he glanced inside. There was a white house with a small front garden, a large chestnut tree on either side of a narrow walkway to the front door. The trees strained for light in the shadow of the Cathédrale St-Pierre that loomed high in front of them. Court walked on down a cobblestone passage that ran off the little one-lane street, followed the winding footpath through a narrow tunnel that led him down and around to the back of the white house.
Here the wall was two stories high. Modern structures stood alongside it: an apartment building with a nail salon on one side, a nursery school on the other. A few tourists wandered towards a narrow shopping street that ran farther down the hill behind.
Gentry saw the watcher immediately. An attractive woman with long, braided blond hair, she sat at a picnic table in a little playground alongside the shopping street. Court was twenty-five yards from her, but her eyes were on the white house to his right.
Gentry turned, walked back through the foot tunnel, followed it up and around towards the white wall of the white house. There was an iron handrail built into the wall to aid pedestrians with the steep incline of the passageway. Court stepped up on this and, with his good right arm, pulled himself up on the top of the wall. He kicked one leg and then the other over and dropped down, letting his good left leg take the majority of the impact with the ground.
Still, the one-handed climb and the drop hurt like hell.
Inside the small garden, Gentry saw the security system through the glass. He knew how to circumvent all sorts of countermeasures, but this looked too sophisticated for him. He’d need schematics and tools and time.
Court moved low below a window, rose again at a side door. He drew a Beretta pistol he’d picked up on the platform shortly before fleeing the scene, left there by a dead Swiss municipal policeman. He held it low by his side as he tried a side door.
It was unlocked.
He entered a hallway and then a well-appointed kitchen. The lights were off, and he could easily make out the sounds of a television in the next room. The glowing set reflected off a mirror in a hallway on the other side of the kitchen, and Court used the flickering light to make his way.
He saw a pistol sitting on the kitchen counter: a full-sized 1911 forty-five caliber.
An American’s gun.
Gentry crossed the long kitchen carefully. He hefted the weapon and slid it into the back of his pants. His swollen wrist rewarded the movement with a hot jolt of electricity up to his elbow. Court moved into the hallway, rose confidently now, and entered a wide living room.
A plasma screen hung above a large fireplace that crackled with pine logs.
A lone man sat on a leather sofa with his back to Court. His eyes were trained on the television. The language coming from the TV was French, but the images were clear enough to Gentry. Less than two hours earlier he’d stood on that same train platform. He’d spoken to that young policeman who now lay facedown and dead on the snowy cement, the video images catching the moment when a yellow tarp was draped over his still form.
Court holstered his gun. There was no one else around.
“Hello, Maurice.”
The man stood and turned. He was pale and wrinkled, easily seventy and unhealthy looking. If Gentry’s appearance in his flat was a surprise to the old man, he made no sign of it. He stood on thin legs.
“Hello, Court.” American English.
“Don’t waste your time looking around,” Gentry said. “I have your gun.”
Maurice smiled. “No. You have one of my guns.” The old man pulled a small revolver from under his shirt and leveled it at Gentry’s chest. “You don’t have this one.”
“I didn’t figure you for the paranoid type. You weren’t so careful in the old days.”
“Even so, you should have kept your weapon trained on me till you knew I was unarmed.”
“Apparently so.”
The old man hesitated several seconds. The revolver did not waver. “Damn, boy. I taught you better.”
“You did. I’m sorry, sir,” Gentry said sheepishly.
“You look like shit.”
“I’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“I’ve seen you after rough days. You’ve never looked this bad.”
Court shrugged. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
The old man regarded Gentry for a long moment. “You never were.”
Maurice turned his revolver around in his hand, tossed it underhanded across the room to the younger American. Court caught it, looked it over.
“Thirty-eight police special snubby. The other one’s a 1911. You do know, Maurice, that there is no law that says that just because you are old, your guns have to be, too.”
“Kiss my ass. Want a beer?”
Gentry tossed the revolver underhanded onto the leather sofa. “More than anything else in the world.”
Two minutes later Court sat on the kitchen counter. He held a fat bag of frozen blueberries over his left wrist. The cold burned his skin, but it reduced the swelling. He could still move his fingers, though, so the hand was functional, if barely.
His host was Maurice, just Maurice. Court didn’t know his real name, could only be certain that it was not Maurice. He was an old agency man, Gentry’s primary instructor at the Special Activities Division’s Autonomous Asset Development Program training center at Harvey Point, North Carolina. Court only knew tidbits about the man and his history. He knew he’d cut his teeth in Vietnam, performed targeted killings in the Phoenix Program, then spent the next twenty years as a Cold War spook i
n Moscow and Berlin.
He’d been demobilized for years, working as a trainer for the CIA when a twenty-year-old convicted murderer was brought into his prefabricated aluminum classroom within sight of the Atlantic Ocean. Gentry was both cocky and quiet, raw beyond belief, but in possession of intelligence, discipline, and zeal. Maurice turned him out in under two years and announced to Operation’s leadership that this kid was the best hard asset he’d ever built.
That was fourteen years ago, and their paths had seldom crossed since. Maurice had been lured back into the game after 9/11, as were most high-level retired assets still in possession of a pulse. Because of his age and uncertain health, he was sent to Geneva to work in the finance end of the CIA’s Directorate of Clandestine Services. His knowledge of Swiss banking and bankers, accrued through forty years of utilizing numbered accounts for CIA shell corporations in his operations, made him an effective paymaster for operatives and operations around the globe.
It was easy work — clean, compared to some of the jobs he’d done as a younger man — but it was not without danger or controversy. Shortly after Court had been drummed out of the agency, Maurice himself was cashiered by the brass. Something about misappropriated funds, though Court did not believe the official story for a minute.
The word from Langley was that Maurice was now completely retired from the CIA. Court did not know that for sure, wasn’t 100 percent certain Maurice wouldn’t turn on him, which explained the pupil’s initial suspicion of his teacher.
* * *
Maurice handed Gentry a bottle of French beer, so the younger man cradled the frozen bag of blueberries in his lap and let his wrist rest upon it. The stinging cold slowly numbed the ache. The old man asked, “You hurt bad?”
“Not really.”
“You always were a tough bastard.”
“I learned from the best not to whine. It never worked around you.”
“I haven’t seen you in six years. Cyprus, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You saw the watcher outside?”
