Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

For the next hour Zoya and Court sat in the hotel room and pored over Court’s computer looking at maps of Phuket, a few hundred miles south of Bangkok along the ocean. Zoya explained that Nattapong’s father, Panit, owned a large jungle property that ran along the coast. Panit was abroad, and Kulap had told his brother he would lay low in Bangkok for a day or two, and then he would go to the Phuket estate.

Zoya also explained that Kulap had a helicopter, and if he was, in fact, at the estate, then the helo would be there, as well.

The two operatives used Google Earth to zoom in to the walled property, just inland from the coast. In the center was a large ornate home in the traditional Thai style, surrounded by tropical gardens, rimmed by thick jungle on all sides.

Less than a half mile west of the property was a large five-star resort. Court and Zoya agreed they would go to the resort, check in under the cover of an American couple, and begin their reconnaissance.

It looked like the journey by car from Bangkok to Phuket would take twelve hours if they split up the driving duties, which they agreed to do. They were both dead tired already, but Zoya offered to drive the first leg while Court slept.

Court agreed to this, as well, but he said he needed to go for a quick walk and make a phone call before they left.

“You are calling your handler, obviously,” Zoya said. “Why can’t I listen to you? Obviously you will tell him about me, you will tell him about Fan, and you will tell him about our plan to find him.”

Court shook his head. “In this instance I truly believe that less is more. My handler would be very upset if I revealed I am working with an SVR asset.”

“You could tell him I was fired.”

Court stood and headed to the door. “We are a team, you and me, but you’ll have to trust me that I know what I’m doing. My handler is—”

“Your handler is a woman, I take it.”

Court cocked his head. “How did you—”

“You keep saying ‘my handler,’ so as not to give the gender away. You wouldn’t do that if your handler were male.”

Court was at once pissed at himself for the tell and stunned by her powers of intuition.

“Yes. My handler is a woman.”

Zoya said, “Most men I know would have just lied.” She shrugged. “It’s a bad sign that my new partner gives away his secrets so easily, but maybe it’s a good sign that my new partner is, at least, a little honest with me.”

Five minutes later Court stood in the open parking lot of the Novotel, watching an Airbus A320 take off from the airport just a half mile away. In his hand he held his mobile, and while he waited for Brewer to come on the line he thought about the woman upstairs.

He wondered if she’d run, now that he wasn’t watching her. Of course he knew he couldn’t trust her to stay, and he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t call someone. He’d taken her mobile phone from her, but right now as he stood here she could have been on the hotel phone calling the police, the Russian embassy, or some other group. There were all sorts of people who could come in and ruin Court’s day, and he’d done nothing to prevent Banshee from contacting any of them.

But he trusted his instincts. And while his instincts did not tell him to trust her fully, they also told him she wanted the same thing he did, and she was practical enough to realize she needed help to get it.

Suzanne Brewer answered the phone with unmasked concern in her voice. It was ten p.m. on the East Coast, but at this point in the operation he took it as a given that Brewer would be in her office when he called.

“Identity challenge, Dastardly.”

“My response is Denver.”

“Confirmed. What’s your status? Everything I’ve heard about the Black Pearl has been disconcerting. I was wondering if your body was going to be found in that smoldering building.”

“I’m okay, but I have to tell you, your idea about calling the Chinese in to help last night really sucked.”

“The Chinese went into the building?”

“The Chinese and the Russians. And God knows how many Thai. Don’t worry, I kept a low profile. There are no comebacks on the Agency, and I managed to get some intel. From what I learned, Kulap has an estate in Phuket, and he might bring Fan immediately, or else it could take him a couple of days to get there. There is a helo that will be on site if Kulap Chamroon is on the property.”

Brewer pulled up satellite data of the area immediately. Looking it over, she said, “No helicopter on the ground, but the most recent image I have was four p.m. yesterday. As soon as I get updated imagery I’ll check again.”

Court said, “I’ll be on the ground there by late this evening.”

Brewer said, “Tell me how you got your intel.”

Court said, “Not prepared to do that. Trust that I’m working, and trust that I’ll check in as soon as I have something actionable for the team.”

And with that he hung up the phone. He knew he’d just pissed Brewer off, but he had to be careful with what he said. He was calling an audible working with the SVR operative, and he was certain Brewer would disagree with this decision.

Next he dialed Colonel Dai, and he told himself he had to keep his rage with the man under control.

Dai opened the conversation with, “What happened last night?”

“From where I was sitting, it looked like your men burned down a building full of innocent people, killed a dozen or more Thai gangsters and a team of Russian paramilitaries, and still managed to fail to accomplish anything.”

Colonel Dai said, “I lost seven men in that nightclub.”

“Then I guess you should have listened to me when I told you to keep them outside.”

“If my men had not gone in, the Russians would have captured Chamroon, and by now they would probably have Fan Jiang on a jet to Moscow.”

Court rubbed his temples. “No. If your men had not gone in, I would have captured Chamroon, and by now Fan Jiang would be dead.”

“I could not take that chance.”

Court said, “It doesn’t matter. I have a new lead on where Fan is located.”

“Tell me.”

Court hesitated. “It might not bother you that everywhere your people go there is a massacre, but I’m not going to be a contributor to it. I’m going after Fan on my own. I’ll kill him, and then I will contact you. It should have been this way from the start. Your people are only good at slaughtering. They lack the precision they need for this job.”

“You are forgetting that Sir Donald Fitzroy is with me. What if I decide your insubordinate attitude will cost your old boss a few more of his appendages?”

Court said, “Then I won’t know about it, because I’m hanging up now. I will call you back when I have taken care of Fan.”

“Gentry!” Dai shouted into the phone, but Court heard nothing else, because he did as he said he’d do and hung up the phone.

He wasn’t certain this was the right move. The colonel was crazy enough to kill on principle. But by not giving him an audience, Court deprived him of any real benefit he would get from killing or injuring Fitzroy.

Now Court just had to put that out of his mind and get back to his operation.

Zoya Zakharova had spent the last ten minutes going through the backpack of the American who called himself Bob. Along with the knives she had with her pack, he’d taken both guns with him to make his call, so she wasn’t looking for weapons, but she wanted to get any intel she could from the equipment he carried.

The bag was stuffed with phones, basic surveillance and first-aid gear, and clothing.

Eventually she pulled out a black Montblanc pen and looked it over, because it was different from the other items in the pack. It looked authentic on the outside, but it didn’t match with the other items the man carried with him. His watch was an obvious fake. His pack, his belt, his shoes; they were all just average, nothing she would ever notice.

So why was he walking around with such a fancy writing instrument?

As she suspected, it wasn’t just a pen. While it had a nib with ink in it, when she took the cap off and turned the base, the nib slid out of the way, exposing a hollow-looking tube. At the end of this was a CO2 cartridge and a small clear vial of dark gray powder. There was some tiny writing on the side of the tube, and Zoya had to move it into the bright lights of the bathroom to even see it. When she could finally make it out she realized she couldn’t read it.

It appeared to be in Chinese.

It had been well disguised, but Zoya wasn’t fooled. She knew exactly what it was.

She’d seen scopolamine hydrobromide blowguns before in books, but never in real life, and never housed in a Montblanc pen.

Russian intelligence had used scopolamine hydrobromide back in the KGB days; she remembered studying it in her training at SVR, and while the Russians had moved on to other truth serums, she knew the Chinese still used “Devil’s Breath” as a relatively effective interrogation enhancement.

The Chinese? Where did the American get this?

She almost slipped the pen in her pocket to use as a defensive weapon if it came down to it, but she decided the American was too smart to allow her to be up here with his gear all this time without taking an inventory when he returned.

She put everything back in the pack exactly the way she found it, and then she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.

The American still might have been playing her, she hadn’t worked that out yet, but she certainly could not argue with his logic. Zoya couldn’t take Fan back to Russia without getting herself thrown in prison — or worse — for the killing of Oleg Utkin. She’d no doubt take the fall for the destruction of the Zaslon team, as well, regardless of whether Vasily and Ruslan survived and spoke up in her defense.

No… she wasn’t going back to Russia. And while the American seemed to be reticent about some information — clearly he was keeping pertinent details of his operation from her — he also seemed to be one of the most sincere people she’d ever met. His willingness to partner with her based on a gut feeling was something she was completely unaccustomed to.

But still… this man must have some angle here, some ulterior motive she hadn’t yet worked out.

Zoya had the clarity to realize that her mistrust of the American was not based on him at all. No, it was based on her, on her experiences, on her relationships in the past, both professional and personal. Other than her older brother, Feodor, she’d never in her life known a man who had earned both her trust and her love. She had loved her father; he had done his best, but she had known most of her childhood that she could only trust her father to live for his work.

Her father had done just that, and then he had died.

Her brother Feodor had been the one man different from all the others… and Feodor was dead, as well.

This calm but dangerous American had done everything humanly possible in the past few hours to prove himself to her — he’d saved her life, jeopardizing his mission; he’d asked for her help instead of taking the information from her that he needed; and he’d told her the truth when he could easily have lied. If he had ulterior motives in all this, at least related to her, she was unable to identify them so far, and she prided herself on her skill at sniffing out the schemes of others.

Still… she’d keep an eye on this man, fully expecting the other shoe to drop.

And just as she told herself this, she heard the key card in the door.

Court Gentry returned to the suite and entered as quietly as he could, expecting that the Russian woman might have nodded off to sleep. As he stepped lightly into the bedroom he found her on the bed, but her eyes were open, looking back at him. “Everything go okay with your conversation?”

“Fine. I thought you’d be sleeping.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come back. Now that I’ve given you my intel, I wondered if you would just leave your pack behind and drive to Phuket.”

Court shook his head. “I want you right where I can see you. If I left you behind I expect I’d bump into you in Phuket anyway. We have the same objective, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past couple of weeks, it’s that working against each other doesn’t seem to turn out so great for either of us. I beat you in Vietnam; you beat me here.”

She said, “Okay, Bob. I guess now it will be you and me against the world.”

There was sarcasm dripping off the comment, but Court just smiled and hefted his pack. Zoya climbed to her feet and grabbed her own bag, and soon they were heading for the car.