by Mark Greaney
“Yeah. Girl with the braids.”
“Good boy. She’s pretty good, dressed like a tourist. We get a lot of tourists here in the Old Town. I hate tourists.”
“Transitory faces.”
“That’s right. Do yourself a favor, Court. If you make it to retirement, move someplace so damn god-forsaken no tourist would set foot there.”
“Will do.”
Maurice coughed. Cleared his throat. “There’s news floating about. Not connected yet, just bouncing around in the ether, waiting for dots to be connected. Prague, Budapest, and then this morning up by the Austrian border. I knew something big was going down, didn’t figure I knew any of the players until the coverage on my house started about eleven thirty. ’Bout an hour after she showed up, all the local stations began broadcasting the news of the gunfight just north of Lausanne. At that point, I knew you were heading this way.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I connected the dots. A hunted man who just kept on living. Death and destruction in his wake. As the bodies got closer, I told myself, ‘Here comes Court.’ ”
“Here I am,” Gentry confirmed distantly, looking at the bottle in his hand.
“Tell me you didn’t shoot those poor cops.”
“You know me. I wouldn’t kill a cop.”
“I knew you. People change.”
“I didn’t change. The police were holding me when a wet team showed up. I tried to convince them I was no longer their biggest problem. They wouldn’t listen.”
“A lot of people want you dead, Court.”
“You aren’t exactly the flavor of the month yourself. The CIA burned you, too.”
“There’s no shoot-on-sight directive against me. You were the one they really fucked over.”
“Still, how they framed you was wrong, Maurice. You were one of the honest ones. They should have left your reputation intact.”
Maurice said nothing.
“What are you doing these days?” Court asked.
“Finance. Private sector stuff. No more spook work.”
Court’s eyes scanned the expensive real estate around him. “You look like you are doing okay.”
“There is money in money, or haven’t you heard?”
Court detected a little defensiveness. He swigged his beer and rotated his arm to spread the cold around his swollen wrist. “You remember a guy at Langley named Lloyd?”
“Sure. Sharp-dressed little fag, law degree from London. King’s College, I think. He got in the way of a finance operation I worked in the Caymans not long before I got shit-canned. Smart kid, but a prick.”
“He’s at the center of all this stuff I’m dealing with now.”
“No kidding? He was like twenty-eight at the time. Must be only thirty-two or so now. He left Langley about a year ago, I heard.”
“What happened to all the good guys?” asked Court rhetorically.
“Before 9/11, we were a basket with a few bad apples. After 9/11, we grew into an orchard. Now there are enough bad apples to fill baskets. Same shit, different scale. No surprise.”
They both sipped beer for a minute in silence, relaxing in each other’s company, as if they spent every Saturday afternoon together. Maurice started to cough, and his coughing morphed into a violent hack.
When it ended, Gentry asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Maurice looked away a moment, answered without emotion. “Lungs and liver, take your pick.”
“Bad?”
“The good news is I may not die from the lung cancer because the liver disease may get me first. Conversely, I may be buried with a working liver if I can only die from lung cancer. Drinking and smoking fifty-some-odd years.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” He laughed, and this turned into a raspy coughing fit as well.
“How much time do you have?”
“There’s an old Henny Youngman bit. Doc says I’ve got six months to live. I tell him, ‘I can’t pay your bill.’ He tells me he’ll give me another six months.” Maurice’s laugh turned into a wheeze and then a violent hack.
“So six months, then?”
“That’s what they said. Seven months ago.”
“Don’t pay ’em,” quipped Court. It was gallows humor, though Gentry wasn’t comfortable joking with his mentor about impending death.
“Let’s get back to you. What have you gotten yourself mixed up in?”
“It’s related to a job I did last week. I pissed someone off, I guess.”
“The colored guy who got it in Syria. Ali Baba, whatever his name was. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Abubaker,” Court corrected, but he neither confirmed nor denied his involvement.
Maurice just shrugged. “He needed to go. I’ve followed your career as a private. Your ops are always white on black. Not just nicely performed, but moral, just.”
“Tell that to Lloyd.”
“A lot of people say that thing in Kiev was you.”
“That’s what they say.”
“So?”
Maurice’s phone rang. The old man reached a reed-thin hand to the handset on the wall and answered it. His gray eyes widened slightly as he looked up at his young guest.
“It’s for you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Shit.” Gentry took it. “Yeah?”
“Court? It’s Don.”
“What do you want?”
“They don’t know I’m calling. I got Claire to pinch a phone from one of the chaps guarding the château. She’s a right chip off the old block, is she not?”
Gentry gritted his teeth. Maurice handed him a fresh bottle of cold beer. “What the fuck is your problem, Don? Claire is not some Belfast tout! You can’t run her like one of your agents! She’s a little girl! She’s your family!”
“Desperate measures for desperate times, mate. She was brilliant.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Do you want the intel I have, or not?”
“How can I use anything you’ve got? How do I know you still don’t—”
“They killed Phillip, Court. Claire did a runner. The bastards shot my boy as he went to look after his child.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“We can only hope.”
“I’m sorry.” Court paused. “How did you know I was here?”
“Lloyd knows you’re in Geneva.”
“Figured the shoot-out on the way from Zurich might tip him off.”
“Quite. I racked my brain as to what you were doing there. Knew you were too smart to approach somebody in my Network. Then I remembered there was an old agency banker in Geneva, used to be SAD, ran hard asset training. Figured you must have had dealings with him in your former life. I called a few contacts and got a number.”
“How are you able to make phone calls without them knowing about it?”
“They think I’ve given up. I’m lying in a bed with stab wounds and busted teeth from that fucking poof Lloyd. He tried to rough me up, did a cock-up job of it. Can’t even torture a man respectably. They have me pegged as a half vegetable, a compliant old shell-shocked nutter in bed upstairs. But I haven’t given up, Court. When I thought the only hope for my family was to make you dead, that was my intent. I’ll admit that to you. Now I know bloody well the only hope for my family is to get you here. To help you in any way I can to hit this place as hard as you can with everything you’ve got.”
“Just keep the girls out of it from now on. Can you do that? They’re just kids.”
“You have my word.”
“Lloyd really does have the documents he says he does?”
“He has your CIA personnel file, a couple dozen others, too. Papers and computer disks. He brought us down from London to add another enticement, to make sure you’d come.”
“Why is he doing this?”
Fitzroy told Court all about LaurentGroup. About Abubaker’s demands. Abo
ut Riegel and the Minsk guard force and the pavement artists. About the gauntlet of a dozen hit squads from a dozen intelligence agencies in a dozen third-world countries, all sent after him for the twenty-million-dollar bounty.
As Sir Donald relayed all the information he had about the operation against Gentry, Maurice pulled a blue box from a cabinet and brought it to the kitchen table where Court was seated. The aged financier and former Clandestine Services operator cleaned the cuts on his young protégé’s wrist with antiseptic, then squeezed bags of cold gel to force a chemical reaction, turning the compresses frosty white in seconds. These he wrapped around Gentry’s swollen left wrist, followed by a compression bandage to hold everything in place and prevent further swelling. It was a tight, neat job, executed by someone who had obviously been trained to tend to the wounded.
When Fitzroy finished his report, Court said, “I can’t believe they’d go through all this just for the contract. I get it, ten billion dollars is a lot of cheese, but for Abubaker to confidently make a demand like this, I’ve got to think there is some other motive in play here.”
“I agree. The shoot-out with the Swiss cops — that’s an incredible risk for a company like LaurentGroup to take, even if they did it by proxy with Venezuelan shooters.”
Gentry said, “There is more than just a contract at stake. Look into that, okay, Don?”
“I’ll talk to Riegel. He’s a bit more lucid than Lloyd.”
“Good. Keep that phone with you. Ringer off.”
“Any way I can contact you while you’re on the move?”
Gentry looked up to Maurice. “You wouldn’t have a spare sat phone just lying around I could buy off of you?” The older man laughed, disappeared down a long hallway, a fresh coughing fit almost doubling him over at one point. Moments later he returned with a satellite phone; it was a high-tech Motorola Iridium, a model Gentry knew well. Used by spies and soldiers and high-risk adventurers, it was not much larger than a regular cell phone, housed in a clear plastic case that was shockproof, waterproof, practically bombproof. Court nodded appreciatively as he took it. The number was written on tape on the back, and Court read it off to Donald before slipping the device into his front pocket.
After he recited the number back, Fitzroy paused a moment, then said, “Court, my boy, one other thing. When this is all over, when you’ve killed every last living thing that is a threat to you, I am going to contact you and give you an address. It will be a tiny out-of-the-way place that will be easy for you to slip into and out of without worry. You will find a little one-room cottage, and I will be in that cottage, sitting in a chair, stripped to my undershirt with my hands flat on a table, and I will be waiting for you. My neck will be bare. For what I have put you through, for what you have done for me, I will give you my life in recompense. It will give you little comfort, but maybe it will help you. I am sorry for what I have done to you in the last forty-eight hours. I was desperate. I didn’t do it for me; I did it for my family. Save them, and I will go to my death to give you a measure of peace.
“Court? You still there?”
“Keep the girls safe, Don. Do that one thing for me. We’ll settle up the rest when this is over.” Gentry hung up.
* * *
After Court handed the phone back to Maurice, he finished his second beer. Wiping his fingerprints from the bottle with a rag from the counter, he walked to the rear of the home and looked through the long curtains.
“When I leave, can you handle the watcher?”
“She’s just sitting there. I think I can manage that. I’m not dead yet.”
“You’ll outlive us all.”
“Coming from you, son, that’s not particularly comforting.” He changed his tone. More fatherly, now, he asked “How can I help you?”
“I’ve got to do a… ‘thing’ in northern France. Have to get up there and engage by first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You’re in no condition to—”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to go.”
“You need some money?”
“A little, if you can spare it.”
“Of course, I can float you some cash. What else do you need?”
“I’ll take the forty-five, if you’ve got a few more mags.”
Maurice chuckled, hacked. The sickness in his lungs seemed to grow with the conversation. “You’d probably just hurt yourself with a big manly weapon like that. They don’t make them like they used to. That’s my baby. I’ll get you something a little more contemporary.”
“I was hoping you might have a bug-out bag that you’d staged for a rainy day. I’ve got nothing, so any gear you could spare would be much appreciated.”
“I’ve got a SHTF cache a couple of blocks from here. In case the shit ever hit the fan. From what you’re telling me, I’d say your situation qualifies.”
“I really appreciate it.”
“Anything for my best student.” Maurice disappeared down a back hallway. He returned a minute later with a sheaf of euros in an envelope and a key on a chain. He wrote an address down on the envelope and handed it to his protégé. “I think you’ll be pleased with the gear.”
Court pocketed the items.
“Another beer?”
“I’d love one, but I’d better get moving.”
“Understood.” Maurice poured several antiinflammatory pain pills from a bottle in a cabinet into Gentry’s hand. Court downed them with the last swig from his bottle. Then they walked together towards the back door.
Court said, “I wish I could say I’d see you again. If I make it through tomorrow, I’ll have to drop off the face of the earth for a while. Maybe if you don’t pay your doctor’s bill, we can have another beer someday.”
Maurice smiled, but this time he did not laugh. “I’m dying, Court. No sense in putting lipstick on a pig. I can’t make it any prettier than it is.”
“Is there anything I can do for you? Anybody you need me to see? Look in on after you’re gone?”
“There’s nobody. No family. No friends. There was just the Agency.”
“I know the feeling,” Court said. Spending time with his mentor was good in that Gentry had so few opportunities to talk to someone who’d gone through some of the same things in life as he had. But it was also bad. Depressing, because Court saw a measure of himself in the tired old cynical eyes of the man facing him in the living room and knew that, though no one likes to get old, in Gentry’s profession, mere survival was the absolute best one could hope for.
And this was success?
“You can do one thing for me.” Maurice smiled as he spoke. “When you get yourself extracted from this mess you’re in, I want you to get away to some tropical island somewhere. When you read in the paper about an older-than-dirt disgraced American banker dying in Switzerland, I want you to go out to your favorite can tina, find yourself a pretty girl, and drink the night away with her. I’m serious. Get through this and get out of this life. There are still corners of the world where no one gives a shit what you’ve done. Go there. Meet somebody. Live like a human. Do that for me, kid.”
“I’ll try.”
“Someday you will learn. All the things you’ve done, all the things in the past you thought were dead and buried — you think you’ve put them behind you, but you haven’t. You’ve just stored them away. Stored for the time when there is only you and a quiet room and your memories and the goddamned demons of those you killed.”
“I’ve got to go, Maurice.”
“I know I can’t stop you from doing what you have to do. But think about what I am saying. All the shit I taught you back at Harvey Point. Sooner you forget what I taught you then, sooner you follow what I’m telling you now, the sooner the killing and the death will be dealt with. End of sermon, kid.”
They shook hands.
Court’s game face reappeared in a flash. He crammed the wad of cash into his pants pocket and the sat phone into his jacket and headed for the back door. He peered through the
blinds out the front window, into the medieval passageway.
Instantly he sensed that something wasn’t right.
“What is it?” asked Maurice, picking up on his protégé’s unease.
“Check the back. See if the girl is still there.”
Maurice walked down the hall to the back living room and called out to Court, “She’s gone.”
“They pulled her.”
“Who pulled her?”
“Hitters.”
“Because they want her out of the way when it goes loud?”
“Exactly.”
“They’re here?” asked Maurice as he returned to Gentry’s side.
“Not here, but close,” confirmed the Gray Man. “I can fucking smell them.” Gentry’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me you didn’t set me up, Maurice.”
“Not on your life, Court.”
A moment’s pause. “I believe you. Sorry.”
“Who’s out there? Any idea?”
Court and Maurice barricaded the doors with an armoire and a bookcase. “God only knows. In the past three days I’ve had everyone but killer Martians on my ass.”
“This must be the killer Martians, then. I hear they’re real bastards. You can get out through the ceiling. There are boards in the crawl space laid out to a vent. Push the vent out, and you should just about fit through. This will drop you into the attic of the preschool behind my house. They are closed on Saturdays. They have a basement that leads into the nail salon next door. You look like you could do with a manicure, but try to fight the urge. Slip out their front door to the Rue du Purgatoire, then down the little alleyway, Rue d’Enfer. That should get you clear.”
“What about cops?”
“The closest station is at the Palais de Justice, but we aren’t talking frontline troops. Better we don’t call them at all lest a bloodbath ensues.”
Gentry stood motionless and just stared at Maurice.
The elderly man laughed heartily, fought his wheezing. “I set the escape route up long ago. For me, back when I could have managed. I had a neighborhood boy test the crawl space just a few months back. No problem. Go on then.”
“Come with me.”
“You aren’t getting my feeble ass into that crawl space. I’m not running from anyone. Now go.”
