by Mark Greaney
He checked his watch, worrying that he might have cut it too close and arrived too late for his plan. But these fears were unfounded as the first gaggle of ferry passengers poured from the front door of the terminal, having just disembarked from the incoming ferry from Stockholm.
Soon it turned into a steady stream, hundreds of people, all rolling out their luggage, moving alone or with family in tow, heading into taxis and buses or just walking off through the heavy snow on the ground into the evening.
Court waited for just the right man.
There. A young man who looked Estonian rolled a cart through the terminal door. The cart was empty, and the man also wore a large backpack.
It was common for entrepreneurial Estonians to buy items in their home country, sometimes even duty-free items in the ferry terminal itself, and then cart them to Stockholm, where the goods would sell for a higher price. This man appeared to be one of these ferry traders, and Court decided he would suit his needs perfectly.
He followed the man along the street, but only until he had broken out of the scrum of people leaving the terminal.
In the parking lot of a Statoil service station Court caught up with him and walked alongside. In Russian he said, “Pardon me, do you speak Russian?”
The man stopped. Nodded. His eyes flitted around; he was definitely on guard, but not afraid. These traders, Court knew, often bought and sold other items, things of a contraband nature, so these types were at once looking to make a score from a stranger and watchful for cops or thugs out to steal their money or beat them off their turf.
Court affected a nonthreatening voice and posture to put the man at ease. He knew his time was short, so he didn’t want to hang out in this parking lot any longer than necessary. “I am a friend,” Court said. “I need something, and I am willing to pay for it.”
“What do you need?”
“I need a ticket to Stockholm on tonight’s crossing.”
The man looked at him a long time and then began walking again. He saw no money in this conversation. “So go buy one.”
Court walked along with him, kicking heavy powdery snow with his shoes as he trudged. “That is the problem, of course. I have lost my passport.”
The man stopped again. “Then you aren’t going to Stockholm. You need a passport to buy a ticket.”
“Yes, but I don’t need my passport if you buy me a ticket. I will pay you two hundred euros.”
The Estonian looked left and right, then back to Court. “Two hundred euros, just to walk back to the terminal and buy you a ticket.”
“Yes.”
“How will a ticket in my name help you?”
“They don’t check passports at the turnstiles. Only at time of purchase.”
The Estonian thought about this himself and nodded thoughtfully. “And there is no control in Stockholm, either.”
Gentry smiled. “You see?” It was clear to Court the man did see, and he was already scheming on ways to use this idea to make money from others in the future.
Then he hesitated. “If you are caught. If you do anything to—”
“I destroy your ticket as soon as I get on board. I don’t even go to the berth you reserve. Once I am on the boat, I disappear until Stockholm. If something happens to me, you are not connected.”
The man thought this over, and Court knew the man was going to up his fee.
“Four hundred.”
“Three hundred.” Gentry pulled out the exact fare amount without showing the man any more money. “This is for the ticket; I pay your fee when you return. And we must go now, and hurry, because the ferry leaves in thirty minutes. If I am not on it, you do not get paid.”
The man agreed; Court followed him back to the ferry terminal, even offering to push the man’s cart, and he stood in the hall behind him as the man bought the ticket.
The building was crawling with police, and they were alert but clearly not certain who they were looking for. Surely the hotel desk clerk would have given Gentry’s description to them, but Court was the Gray Man; the clerk would have forgotten more than she remembered. The police would also be looking for Dead Eye, Court knew, and that potentially could present a problem, as he and Court were both American and similar in appearance, and Court did not know the other man’s level of tradecraft. But, he decided, Dead Eye would not have been able to survive as a solo NOC for long if he walked the earth leaving a memorable impression.
The cops had their eyes open, Gentry could see this plain enough, but Court himself spotted a hundred or more brown-haired men in their thirties walking around the busy terminal, all of whom fit every bit of the description the hotel would have to give.
Back outside, Court exchanged three hundred-euro bills for the ticket to Stockholm in the name of Ardo Tubool.
The entire transaction had been done with an air of friendliness, but when the two men shook hands at the end of the deal, Gentry darkened.
“I will ask for one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Your discretion. I have friends here in Tallinn who will know if I made it safely to Stockholm, Ardo.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I will not worry about you telling anyone of our transaction, and you will not worry about my friends.”
Court had met hundreds of men like Ardo in his career, and he knew guys like this weren’t the type to go running off to the authorities to rat out others. They had enough problems with the cops without seeking them out. But Court also knew it was likely Ardo Tubool would learn just as soon as he got back into the city that early that same morning groups of foreigners—Westerners, all would say—had shot it out with each other. If Court had not left behind a little encouragement for the man to keep his mouth shut, he might have been tempted to mention his transaction with the Russian-speaking foreigner who left on the ferry to Stockholm.
It was a calculated risk Court was taking, but he saw it as his best option to get far away quickly and efficiently.
Minutes later Court stood in line on the second floor of the ferry terminal, passed his ticket through an automated turnstile, and boarded the ship for a twelve-hour passage to Stockholm.
No one asked for his passport, no one asked to see his ticket, no one spoke to him at all.
He bought coffee and bottled water and plastic-wrapped and plastic-tasting sausages from a vending machine next to the piano bar on the boat, and he went outside on the deck. He sat down on a bench, bundled tightly in his coat and hat and scarf and gloves, and he looked out into the vast darkness of the Baltic Sea as the ship left Estonia, heading west.
Russ ate a simple meal at a restaurant around the corner from the inn in Paldiski, keeping his Bluetooth set in his ear the entire time. He was anxiously awaiting Gentry’s call, but it did not come during dinner, so he returned to his room, changed his bandages once again, and sat at the desk with the bottle of vodka in front of him as the hours ticked away.
Whitlock looked down to his watch again. Midnight. Gentry should have called by now, but he had not.
He realized Gentry would not be calling. Not today, anyway.
Dead Eye gritted his teeth.
He felt the anger boil in him, but he stopped himself from giving in to the rage. He knew the Gray Man would do things in his own way, on his own schedule.
Russ smiled a little at the irony of his frustration. He felt the way Lee Babbitt must have felt every time Russ himself failed to report in on schedule.
This was karma, biting him back for his own misbehavior.
Russ knew he should have expected this. In the scheme of things it was just a tiny bump in the road. He knew the Gray Man would get in touch with him. Not because he really wanted to work with him in the future. No, Whitlock had no illusions about Gentry signing on to that ridiculous idea, but rather because there was no way in hell Gentry could pass
up the bait Russ had set out the night before. The offer to help him avoid the Townsend hunt.
Russ swigged vodka from the bottle, then opened the little window by the desk. An icy wind whipped into the room as he poured the remnants of the alcohol onto the parking lot below, and then he tossed the bottle into a snow-covered bush by the window.
Russ was pissed, but he would shake it off. Trusting Gentry to happily bounce along to the next stage of Russ’s scheme like a bunny rabbit hopping to a head of cabbage had been foolish of him. He saw this plain as day now. But he would not let the anger take over him.
He blew out a long, controlled exhalation. “All right, Court, you piece of shit. We’ll have to do this your way, but we’re damn well still gonna do it.”
He stood from the table, grimacing along with the throbbing sting in his hip, grabbed his bag, and headed out the door.
There was no sense waiting around in this shit hole. He’d get on a train and head south for Vilnius, Lithuania.
Russ had a plane to catch there tomorrow, and, he decided, he might as well get moving.
TWENTY
Two black Lincoln Navigator SUVs pulled into the gates of Townsend House and negotiated the winding drive through the cherry trees up to the parking circle. Leland Babbitt and Jeff Parks stood on the expansive front porch, both men dressed in dark blue suits, their lapels and their hairstyles blowing gently in the cold morning breeze.
The SUVs parked in the parking circle in front of the main house and five dark-suited men climbed out; their jackets hung open and the wind exposed the FN P90 submachine guns hanging at their underarms. The grips of SIG pistols on their hips were even less well concealed. Four of them took up positions in the drive, and the fifth man opened the back door of the rear SUV.
Another man climbed out now. He was tall and thin and older than the others, his suit was gray, and he carried no obvious weapon. His face showed little expression as he regarded the two men at the front door, but he walked up to them, flanked by his security detail.
“Good morning, Denny,” Babbitt said as he extended his hand.
Denny Carmichael, Director of National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency, shook both men’s hands without replying, and within moments the three of them, surrounded by Carmichael’s security entourage, entered Townsend House’s opulent ground-floor conference room. Two large Frederick Remingtons were displayed adjacent to a huge showcase of Civil War–era weaponry. Perfectly maintained Whitworth and Enfield muzzle-loaded rifles hung above Henrys and Burnsides and Spencers. All the firearms were surrounded in the glass case by edged weapons of the period, each polished to a mirror finish and appearing as sharp and as ready for action today as they had been one hundred fifty years ago when they were wielded in battle.
Coffee was poured and pastries were offered by Townsend canteen workers, but Denny Carmichael himself waved the Townsend staff out the door along with his close-protection detail.
As everyone but the executives filed out of the conference room, Babbitt and Parks sat down across from their guest. Babbitt said, “Heard your daughter is expecting. Congratulations.”
To this Carmichael replied, “This morning’s meeting will be brief, and it will stay on theme. What, in God’s name, happened in Estonia?”
Babbitt kept his chin up and his voice strong as he spoke. “Resistance from the target. We expected him to mount a robust defense. He is, after all, the Gray Man. But our direct action team was, nevertheless, disabled. We lost a lot of good men.”
Babbitt bowed his head over the shiny tabletop almost as if saying a short prayer to himself over his fallen men.
Carmichael leaned forward, speaking with unmistakable anger. “You could not have possibly been more aware of the capabilities of Courtland Gentry.”
“Certainly we were aware, and we remain so. We sent in eight of our best men, and then only after real-time intelligence from the singleton operative.”
“And still, Gentry wiped out the strike team.”
Babbitt nodded. “Seven dead. One wounded and arrested.”
“Christ,” Carmichael groaned. “We didn’t need that!”
“No,” agreed Babbitt.
“And your solo asset survived?”
“My intel about what happened came directly from Dead Eye, who was ordered to stand down before the raid. He reported hearing the target fire first. We don’t know if Gentry just got lucky, happened to see the strike team as they approached his location, or if he had some sort of warning or countermeasures in place that were missed by our men.”
“And where is Dead Eye now?”
“He was wounded, but he is still operational.”
“If he stood down before the op, how was he wounded?”
“On his own initiative he entered the engagement. He was unable to respond in time to save the direct action assets, but he caught a round from Gentry’s gun in the process.”
Denny sighed, strumming his fingers on the table. “And collateral damage? We are told that two policemen were killed, along with a civilian.”
Jeff Parks chimed in quickly. “All at the hands of Court Gentry.” He paused. Then said, “A CIA-trained asset who has gone rogue.” This was clearly an attempt to deflect a touch of responsibility for the disaster back on the CIA itself.
Denny just gave Parks an eat shit look.
Babbitt cleared his throat. “Look, I’m not going to tell you no mistakes were made last night. We’ll do an after-action hot wash with the surviving member of the direct action team as soon as we can, and we will make any improvements in our tactics and procedures that we need to make to reflect the data he can provide. But, Denny, you handed us a very difficult case here, and we will sort it out for you. We just hit a snag.”
Carmichael looked off into space a moment. “None of this would have happened if you had warned Sidorenko about Gentry’s impending attack. I am told Sid had fifty men at his dacha. With the heads-up you had that Gentry was ingressing into the AO, you could have just picked up the phone and allowed Sidorenko to prepare a defense that Gentry would have walked right into.”
Babbitt shook his head. “We did not see a high probability that Sidorenko’s security measures could have been employed to eliminate the target. Added to that, there was a chance that Sid or his people could have unwittingly tipped Gentry off about the advance warning, at which point he would know he was under aerial surveillance. We could not allow that to happen if we were going to track him in the future.”
Denny’s steel-gray eyes narrowed. “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard, Lee. You were afraid you wouldn’t get paid if Gentry died at the hands of the St. Petersburg mob.”
Babbitt rolled his hands over and opened them on the table, a palms-up gesture. “It would have been nice to have had the proper assurances from you that our contract bonus conditions would have been met without physical presence of our personnel at the point of elimination.”
“I can terminate your contract right now,” Carmichael said angrily.
Babbitt did not blink. “You can. But you won’t. We got guns in Gray Man’s face; Dead Eye says he might have even wounded him. That’s something CIA hasn’t managed to do in five years.”
“We’ve had eyes on him,” Carmichael countered.
“You had him in Russia, and you let him go. You had him in Sudan, and he got away. You had him in Mexico, and again, he escaped.”
“Just as he escaped your net, Lee.”
“We will pick him up again. Soon. If you have a minute, we’d like to take you down to the signal room to show you some new technology we are deploying in the hunt.”
Carmichael shook his head. “Every minute you spend telling me how you are going to catch and kill Court Gentry is another minute you aren’t catching and killing Court Gentry.”
The CIA’s top spy stood up f
rom the table, indicating the end of the meeting.
He said, “This isn’t fun anymore. Find him. Kill him.” He paused. “I will approve an update to your contract to stipulate that Townsend will be rewarded for Gentry’s termination.”
“Regardless of the circumstances?”
“Barring undue collateral damage, yes.”
“Define undue,” Parks said with a raised eyebrow.
Carmichael looked at him with cold eyes peering out of his tanned and deeply lined face. “No.”
The silence in the room lasted several seconds. Finally Babbitt walked around the table. “Excellent, Denny.” The two men shook hands, but Babbitt was the only one who looked happy. “This will facilitate the hunt.”
Denny started walking toward the door of the conference room. Babbitt walked along with him, and Parks trailed behind. “Lee . . . you have done good work for us in the past. We value our relationship with Townsend. It keeps my testimony to congressional hearings simple, and your people always get their man.”
Lee put his hand on Denny’s back as they strode up the hallway to the foyer. “We’re patriots here at Townsend. We’re proud to serve. You know that.”
Denny did not respond to this. Instead he said, “Court Gentry is a different animal. His very existence is creating a dangerous rift in the U.S. intelligence community. When he goes away, America will benefit greatly.”
“How so?” asked Babbitt. “I’ve read every word of his file that’s not redacted, many times, and it leaves me with more questions than answers. I understand he killed other personnel on his task force. But . . .”
