by Mark Greaney
Carl had been quietly piloting the Sky Shark, but he answered now, his face remaining a mask of concentration as he spoke. “It’s a little trick. You fly about four stories up, moving along as close to the wall of the buildings as possible. During the day the gray and black UAV isn’t silhouetted in front of the sky, it just blends in with all the concrete and glass and metal. But at night you are above the streetlights, so it’s even more invisible.”
Lucas swiveled his chair quickly over to another laptop on the rack, and he began feverishly manipulating the mouse and clicking keys.
“What are you doing?” Ruth asked.
“I’m setting the computer to record his gait so we can track him. The human gait is actually quite unique. Once it has a good reading of Gentry’s particular walking pattern, we can find him and track him automatically when he’s on foot. It’s not the best biometric identifier, but if it’s him, it will be a cinch to get a usable reading to narrow him down in a crowd later.”
“If it’s him,” Ruth added.
Just then the figure moved out of the flow of foot traffic and closer to the building on his right. He slowed and looked into a shop window. He stopped fully now, people passed by, and he turned and looked back up the street.
On the computer in front of Ruth the image zoomed automatically on the man’s face. The resolution was surprisingly good, though the face was green because of the night vision optics.
Ruth said, “It might be him. I still can’t—”
Just then Lucas, who was in front of the other laptop, said, “Recog has bumped probability up to 90 percent.”
“Well, then,” said Ruth. “I guess we’ve got the bastard!”
Ruth and Aron quickly rushed back into the bedroom to dress for the cold. Sixty seconds later they rushed back into the living room.
“Where is he?” Ruth asked Lucas as she pulled her boots on.
“He’s on . . . shit.” Lucas struggled to read the Swedish name on the moving map display on the laptop. “Drottningatten? However you pronounce it, it’s about twenty minutes from here on foot. He’s headed north, away from us.”
“We’ll take the car.” She put her phone’s receiver in her ear. “Call us with updates.”
Ruth put her hood up on her coat and followed Aron out the door.
Ten minutes later Ruth parked the embassy Skoda next to Tegnerlunden Park, and she and Aron began walking briskly through the snow shower, following Lucas’s instructions coming through their earpieces. They’d also called in Laureen and Mike, who would soon approach on foot from the south.
“Listen up,” Lucas said over the team comms. “He’s a couple minutes ahead of you on . . . Radmansgatan, if I’m saying that right.”
“Understood,” Ruth said. “We can track him. You make sure your drone is out of sight.”
“No worries.”
“I worry, Lucas. Tell your partner to keep the Sky Shark back.”
After a quick pause he replied. “Lady, how ’bout you do your job and you let us do ours? He won’t see the Sky Shark, but he might see you guys.”
Ruth sighed, expelling a long plume of vapor from her body.
Before she could say anything else, the American sensor operator spoke again. “Bingo! He just went inside a building. Made a beeline right for it; I think he knew exactly where he was heading.”
“What building?”
“Wait one.” There was a pause while Lucas waited for Carl to get his drone in position to see the address and any signage. While they waited, Ruth and Aron picked up the pace even more. If he was inside now, he wouldn’t see them unless they got too close to the building.
As they walked, Mike Dillman and Laureen Tattersal folded in behind them on the sidewalk. The two couples did not acknowledge each other at all. They just walked on in the same direction, some hundred feet or so apart.
“He’s on the southwest corner of Radmansgatan and . . . shit, how the fuck do you pronounce this?”
Ruth barked at him. “Sound it out, Lucas! Hurry!”
Slowly he said, “Sveavagen, or something like that. Just two blocks west of the intersection is an outdoor pedestrian space that’s higher than the road below. There is a staircase with a pretty good overlook on the building the target entered. There’s no cover there, but you should be able to see the entrance without having to get any closer.”
Ruth and her team arrived at the overlook as he finished describing it.
“Got it,” she said.
“All right. He’s in the building down there on your right. Forty yards away.”
“What is that place?”
Lucas typed the address into a computer, then said, “There is a steakhouse on the ground floor, but he did not go in that entrance. He took the staircase next to it up to the second floor. It’s cheap rental apartments. Immigrants. Families. That’s Gentry’s MO. He likes staying in low-rent tenements. I’ll wager that’s where he’s living while here in town.”
Mike Dillman put his hand over his earpiece so he could not be heard by the Townsend men. “Let’s call in Metsada and we can get on the next plane home before I freeze my dick off.”
Aron and Laureen laughed.
Ruth looked at him with annoyance. She covered her own mic. “We don’t even know what he’s up to. Metsada won’t be targeting anyone on this operation unless we know the man is a threat. I don’t want to hear any more talk like that.”
Mike said, “It was a joke, boss.”
Aron looked at Ruth for a moment. “What’s wrong, Ruth? Why can’t we just let Townsend put him down and be done with it?”
“This one feels different. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Lucas transmitted over their headsets now, “We’re pulling the Sky Shark back home and calling it a night. We’ll get back on him in the A.M. You guys can stay out there if you want, but we’re low on juice.”
The four Israelis remained at the top of the staircase looking down to Radmansgatan Street for several minutes, surveilling the urban area from this high ground to find the best place to watch the building. As people passed, heading up and down the staircase next to them, the four operatives discussed softly among themselves where they would post their overnight watch on the building.
As they stood there, a family of seven passed the Mossad team, then trudged through the snow to the stairs to the second-floor property. The youngest in the family could not have been more than two years old, and she bobbed along in the line, her thick boots kicking up snow almost to her eye level.
Laureen said, “Kids. That complicates things.”
Ruth nodded. “Immigrant tenements like this are usually full of children. We will need visibility inside that building. Aron, tomorrow I want you to see if they have a vacancy. We’ll pull up the schematics of the building and run fiber optics through the wall into Gentry’s room.”
While they talked it over, Aron looked around at the raised area they were standing on. “You know, right here is the best place to watch the building tonight. You don’t even need to rent an apartment in the neighborhood. It’s not a perfect sight line, but it’s not bad.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not bad at all.” She looked back over her shoulder, then down again toward the street and Gentry’s building.
She said, “He’s made something of a mistake, tactically speaking, hasn’t he?”
The question was to herself, but Aron responded.
“You mean hiding out in that tenement? With this overwatch covering the entrance just up the road?”
“Yes,” she answered, even more distracted now.
Laureen offered, “He has a lot to think about, I guess. Only so many places in the area he can rent.”
“But why this one? Why here?”
Mike answered. “It’s convenient. Close to the tram. Close enough to the river if he wants to jump on a vessel to get out of town. Our file on him says he’s used urban waterways in a pinch. Plus there are good options for food in the neighborh
ood.”
Ruth shook her head. “That’s not how this man thinks.”
“Then what?” Laureen asked. “He just screwed up? Got lazy?”
Ruth shook her head again. Slowly at first, but then more emphatically. “No. No, that’s not what’s going on.”
“What’s going on, then?”
She turned away from the stairs down to the street, away from the narrow view of the windows leading to the second-floor apartments. Her movement was slow and unconcerned, but her words to the others were severe. Demanding. “Turn around and walk with me. Now, dammit!”
“What’s wrong with you?” Laureen asked, but she did as she was told.
“He knows where to look.”
“What?”
“He saw the vulnerability this overwatch created; there is no way he would miss that. But he chose that location anyway. He did that because he knew staying there would funnel any surveillance of his safe house into that one spot. Every time he comes out of the front door of that building, he’ll look right up here, first thing. All he has to do is keep his eyes on this overwatch; as soon as he sees someone here he doesn’t buy, someone who doesn’t fit, someone like the four of us idiots standing in the snow watching his door, for instance, he will know he’s been compromised and he will disappear.”
Together the four of them left the overwatch, heading in the other direction. They wandered up the street, back up a slight rise on Radmansgatan Street.
“That’s fucking brilliant,” Aron said. “If you’re right, that is. Maybe you are giving him too—”
“I’m not giving him too much credit. He’s that good.”
“So, did he see us, then?”
Ruth shrugged as she walked, her hands jammed in her coat pocket and her head leaning forward, into the snow. She was mad at herself, but she did not want to harp on it in front of her people. “No. I don’t think so. If he’s got a corner window he might have line of sight on the overwatch from his flat, but it’s a small chance. I think we dodged a bullet.” They were clear now, so she turned to her team. “We have to be smarter with this one. Slower, more thoughtful in our actions. Lose him, short term, if you have to, but do not get compromised. I don’t want Gentry to disappear from Stockholm and reappear at Kalb’s assassination.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“I want someone out here, all night. There was a bus stop up the street; it’s a shitty line of sight on the entire building, but it will get us eyes on the front door, at least. Tomorrow we can look for apartment space or office space on the street to get twenty-four-hour line-of-sight coverage.”
Ruth sighed, more vapor pouring from her mouth. She was confident in her abilities and those of her team, but she realized now she was up against an adversary who had been playing this game at an elite level for a long time. She could make one call to Mossad and have a dozen more surveillance technicians here in twenty-four hours, full electronic suites, vans and cams and forged credentials to get them access to anywhere they wanted to go.
But Ruth wanted to keep this investigation small. This target would spook at the first sign of trouble, and the Townsend drones seemed to be an effective technology with a low probability of compromise.
That would do for now.
And more than this, she was nowhere near ready to call in more of her countrymen, because she did not yet know she was hunting a man who posed a threat to her leadership.
All she knew for sure was the Americans sure wanted him dead.
THIRTY-ONE
Russ Whitlock had finished his bottle of champagne and his plate of cheeses, and now he stood on the fifth-floor balcony and looked out at the Friday night traffic of Nice grinding by on Boulevard Victor Hugo. A cool breeze blew through the buttons of his dress shirt and it, along with the alcohol, relaxed him into a state he had not felt in a long time.
The satisfaction that came from Gentry’s call gave him even more of a sense of repose right now. When this was all over, two weeks from now at the outside, only a few would have any idea what he had done, and those few would be disinclined to celebrate his act. No, he would not be famous, and he would not be a legend.
He lamented this for a second, standing there on the balcony, but then he smiled.
All famous assassins live a life on the run, just as Court Gentry did now.
And all legends are dead, just as Court Gentry would be when this was all over.
His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket and looked at it in the dim light. It was Townsend House.
He placed his earpiece in his ear. “Go.”
“Graveside.”
It was clearly Babbitt, but Russ kept to the protocol. “Proceed with iden.”
“Identity key eight, two, four, four, niner, seven, two, niner, three.”
“Dead Eye here. Four, eight, one, oh, six, oh, five, two, oh.”
“Iden confirmed. How are you feeling, Russell?”
“I’m recovering.”
“Good. Where are you?”
Russ knew he could not reveal he was in Nice. Instead he said, “Frankfurt.”
“Are you ready to get back to work?”
Not exactly. Russ turned on the balcony and began heading back into his room. He said, “Of course.”
“Head to Stockholm.”
Whitlock stopped suddenly. Huh? “Okay. Why?”
“We’ve identified the target. We have surveillance on him now.”
Fuck! A pause. “That’s good news,” Russ said, although it was anything but. “Where is he?”
“He’s rented a flat on Radmansgatan Street, right in the city center. Get into town and we’ll lead you in, unless we don’t need you there anymore by the time you make it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Jumper will act at first opportunity.”
“Jumper is on him now?” Shit. Shit. Shit!
“Negative, but they will be there within a few hours. He was ID’d by our UAV surveillance, and there is a small unit of Mossad officers keeping an overnight watch.”
Veins in Whitlock’s neck began to throb. “Wait. What? Mossad? How do you know Mossad is after the Gray Man?”
“We are liaising with a targeting team from their Collections Department.”
Whitlock’s jaw flexed now. He controlled his anger well enough to ask, “Why am I just now hearing about this?”
“I needed you to stand down after Tallinn. I told the signal room to cease all intel pushes to you for a few days so you didn’t throw yourself back into the mix before I thought it was safe or prudent for you to do so.”
Whitlock fought to keep his voice calm. “And what is Mossad’s interest in Gentry?”
“They received a tip that he accepted a contract to assassinate Ehud Kalb.”
Russ dropped down on the bed and put his face in his hands. The swollen and torn flesh on his left hip screamed at him for the thoughtlessness of his move, but he ignored the pain and fought to keep the tone of his voice measured. “Lee . . . I find it very hard to believe Gentry would target Israel’s PM.”
“We do, too. Our analysts don’t see Kalb as a likely Gray Man target.”
“So . . . Why are we involving Mossad in our operation?”
“Carmichael at Langley mandated it. Between you and me, he is punishing us for Tallinn, and just using them as oversight on our op. Making us coordinate with them, knowing they will complain directly to him if there is something in our op they don’t like.”
“Too many cooks, Lee.”
“I hear you. I do. But my hands are tied. The four-person Mossad team is already there, already integrated with our UAV crew on site, and I’ll expect you to liaise with them when you get there. I can send an aircraft to Frankfurt, but if you want to make your own arrangements, that will be fine.”
Russ wasn’t listening; he’d dropped back on the huge bed, and he stared at the ceiling. The Iranians have a mole in Beirut. What did they know?
In the long term
he wanted the world to think Kalb had been killed by the Gray Man. But that was after the fact. Now it only served to turn up the heat on Gentry, to send Mossad after him just when Whitlock needed Gentry to fly under the radar.
“Russell? You there?”
Russ sat up. There was nothing he could do but continue to play his part and hope Gentry could defy the odds one more time in his career and slip the noose tightening around him. “Yes. I will make my own way to Stockholm. I will contact you when I get there.”
Babbitt said, “Hurry. If Jumper has a delay, or screws up in any way, there is the possibility that Mossad will send its own people in to take care of Gentry.”
“Metsada,” Russ said, and his face darkened even more. He stood and began pacing back and forth in his suite. “That’s a problem,” he said, more to himself than to Babbitt.
“You’re damn right it’s a problem! Jumper needs to act before the Israelis get even more involved. We’re running out of time here. I need the target eliminated within the next twelve hours.”
“Roger that.” Russ ended the call, but he kept pacing for a moment.
He was angry at Gentry most of all. The supposed world’s greatest operative had gone and gotten himself compromised by facial recognition, ID’d by a drone, and tailed by Mossad targeters, and within hours, he would be surrounded by a cordon of armed killers.
And Russ was fifteen hundred miles away, unable to control things. Yes, he could warn Gentry, if he called in the next few hours, but they had just spoken, so he saw no chance he would hear from him for twenty-four hours or more.
Court was on his own now, and Russ could do nothing but hope the obviously highly overrated jackass escaped on his own.
If Gentry died before Kalb died, then Whitlock’s master plan would fall apart.
He screamed aloud in his hotel room. “Gentry!” And he punched a fist against the wall, bruising and scraping his knuckles.
Court opened his eyes quickly and looked left and right, searching in the darkness.
