The Gray Man

TWELVE

Gentry entered the capital of Hungary at three in the afternoon. Rain clouds hung low and gray white, just tickling the rounded green tips of the hills of Buda on the west side of the Danube River that bisected the city of four million. Court had last visited Budapest four years earlier on his first job for Fitzroy, a simple domestic op against a Serbian hit man who’d put a bomb in a local restaurant to kill a mob gunrunner but in so doing also took out an American man’s brother. The surviving brother had money and ties to the underworld, so it was a simple thing for him to connect with Fitzroy and hire a triggerman. And it was a simple thing for Fitzroy to send his newest asset to Budapest to find the offending Serb in a dockside bar, fill him with drink, then slip a knife into his spine and let his lifeless form slip silently into the black waters of the Danube.

Gentry also knew Budapest from before, back in his time with the agency. He’d been in and out of the city once every couple of years for nearly a decade, tailing diplomats, running sneak-and-peeks against shady Russian businessmen in the mansions of Buda or the hotels in Pest. He’d once chased off a Tajik assassin targeting the local CIA chief of station because there was no one else handy to deal with the matter.

In Court’s work in the city he’d had multiple run-ins with a local fraudster named Laszlo Szabo. Szabo was an amoral, devious scumbag; he’d do anything for anyone waving a big enough wad of crumpled Hungarian forints in his face. His specialty was forgery, buying and selling identity papers and modifying them for whoever needed their identity changed on the fly. He’d helped a dozen wanted Serb war criminals flee Central Europe just ahead of the International Court of Justice and had made a shitload of money cleaning up the dirty loose ends of that war and others. Then in 2004 he ran afoul of Gentry himself when he agreed to create papers for a Chechen terrorist who’d slipped out of Grozny and the Russians’ grasp and into Budapest on his way farther west. Court and his Goon Squad caught up with the Chechen in a warehouse Laszlo owned in the suburbs. It had gone loud, and in the melee a tub of Szabo’s photographic chemicals had blown up, killing the terrorist. Court and his team had to disappear before the fire trucks arrived, leaving Laszlo to slip away. Immediately thereafter, Court was sent after bigger fish, but he remembered Szabo, kept tabs on the forger, just in case someday he needed his services. Court normally used documentation assets from Sir Donald Fitzroy’s Network, but it was nice to know there was also a man in Budapest who could, for the right price, turn him into anyone he wanted to be, at least on paper.

Laszlo Szabo was an irredeemable piece of shit. Court knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt. But Court also knew Szabo was damn good at his work.

It was three thirty by the time Court had filled his gas tank, bought a gyro and lemonade at a little Turkish stand on Andrassy Street, and parked his bike a block away from Laszlo’s lair in Pest, just a kilometer or so from the shores of the Danube. Icy sheets of cold rain poured down, but Gentry did nothing to shield himself from the weather. His muscles were tiring from the already long day; the rain soaked his hair and his beard and his clothes, but it also kept him alert.

The door to Laszlo’s building was a deception. A rusty iron plate on hinges sunken in a stone building on Eotvos Utka Street, it was covered with yellowed and torn handbills and stood no more than five feet high. It looked like no one had passed through since the Second World War, but Court had just finished his soggy meal of lamb chunks and cucumber sauce folded into a pita when the door creaked open and disgorged two thin black men. Somalis, Court guessed. In Europe illegally, obviously, since no one who had access to legitimate papers would have need to come see Laszlo. Court knew how easy it was for Africans and Middle Easterners to immigrate legally to the Continent these days. The two knuckleheads walking past him in the rain somehow didn’t qualify for the near-universal rubber stamp entry, which indicated to Gentry that these were some seriously shady fuckers.

In a moment of perspective, the Gray Man realized there were few people on earth more wanted than he, so Court allowed he was, by definition, likely a shadier fucker than either of these two Somalis.

Gentry banged on the little iron door with an open left hand. His right hovered above the Walther pistol in his waistband and hidden under his wet jacket. There was no answer after a minute and a further knock. Finally Court found a little plastic intercom button tucked into the upper left corner of the doorway, “Szabo? I need your help. I can pay.”

A tinny response through the intercom. “References?” His accent was unmistakably Hungarian, but his English was good. The tone of his voice was sheer boredom. A clerk in a paint store. Court was just the next of a long line of customers reaching the counter to inquire about goods.

“I’m one of Donald Fitzroy’s men.” Though Szabo was not a Network asset, he would certainly know of Sir Donald.

A pause just long enough for Court to worry ended with a buzz and the sound of remote-controlled door locks clicking open. Court pushed in the iron door warily, knelt, and entered a dark hall behind it, followed a pinprick of light fifty feet on. The light was another doorway, and through it Court found a large workshop, part science lab, part library, and part photo studio. Laszlo was there, sitting at a desk against the wall. He turned to face his visitor.

Szabo wore his gray hair long over his shoulders. His clothes were Hungarian drab, black jeans and a polyester shirt open halfway down to expose his rail-thin chest. He was sixty, but an East bloc sixty, which looked eighty in the face but thirty in the physique. A life of physicality, a life of hardship. He appeared to Court something like an aging rock star who still fancied himself a catch.

He stared at Court for a long time. “A familiar face,” he said. “Without the beard and the rainwater, perhaps I would know you?”

Court knew Szabo had never seen his face. He’d worn a balaclava mask when he took down Szabo’s lair with the Goon Squad in 2004, plus it had been dark and the action quick and confusing.

“Don’t believe so,” said Gentry, looking around the room for security threats. Wires hung off the walls like ivy, tables and shelves of equipment and boxes and books, locked file cabinets along the wall, a full-sized photography studio in the corner with a camera on a tripod facing a chair on a riser.

“An American. Thirty-five years old. Height five eleven, weight one seventy. You don’t carry yourself like a soldier or a cop, which is good.” Court remembered fragments from the man’s dossier. Szabo had been trained by the Soviets in electronic surveillance and forgery and other nonlethal black arts, he’d been used to spy on his own people by the Russians, but he had played for both teams, giving Moscow information on his countrymen while providing well-off Hungarians with escapes to get them through the Iron Curtain.

His marginal and conditional and halfhearted help of his own people had proven to be just enough to keep a knife out of his chest after the fall of the Soviet Union, though Gentry remembered reading that Laszlo had been no stranger to getting his ass kicked in retaliation for his association with Moscow.

“I’m just a man who needs some of your product. In a hurry,” Court said.

Laszlo stood up and reached for a cane leaning against the desk. He leaned heavily on it as he crossed the room to his visitor. Court noted the Hungarian’s slumped body and severe limp. This injury had developed since he last saw him five years ago.

After an eternity, Szabo arrived in front of Court, leaned well into his personal space. Put a hand up to the American’s chin and turned his head left and right.

“What sort of product?”

“A passport. Clean, not fake. I need it now. I’ll pay for the extra trouble.”

Laszlo nodded. “How is Norris?”

“Norris?”

“Sir Donald Fitzroy’s son, of course.”

“You mean Phillip.”

“Yes. Does Sir Donald still have the summer place in Brighton?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Neither would I, to be honest,” Szabo allowed with a sheepish shrug.

Court said, “I understand your need to establish my bona fides, but I am in a rush.”

Szabo nodded, hobbled to a little bench, one of a dozen in the room and each in front of a different table or desk covered with computers, microscopes, papers, cameras, and other gear. “Fitzroy has his own network. His own facilitators of documentation. Why would you be slumming with Laszlo?”

“I need someone good. And someone quick. Everyone knows you’re the best.”

The Hungarian nodded. “Maybe that’s just flattery, but you are exactly right. Laszlo is the best.” He relaxed. “I’ll do a great job for you; maybe you can speak to Fitzroy about the service. Put in a good word for Laszlo, you understand.”

Court knew to loathe men who referred to themselves in the third person. But he also knew to be polite when in need. “You get me out of here with clean papers in under an hour, and I will do just that.”

Szabo seemed pleased. He nodded. “I recently came into possession of a consignment of Belgian passports. New serial numbers, not reported stolen. Perfectly legitimate.”

Court shook his head emphatically. “No. Two-thirds of the stolen passports on the market are Belgian. They are guaranteed extra scrutiny. I need something less obvious.”

“An informed customer. I respect that.” Laszlo stood, leaned on his cane, and made his way to another desk. He strummed his fingers on a little notebook full of pencil scratches. Then he looked up. “Yes. I suppose you could pass as a Kiwi. I’ve had a few New Zealand passports for a long time. Most of my clients these days are Africans or Arabs… Can’t pull off a Kiwi, needless to say. Like I said, these books have been around a while, but Laszlo can doctor the serial number when I put in your information without tainting the hologram. No way it can be traced back to a missing lot.”

“Fine.”

Szabo sat back down and blew out a sigh that showed Gentry the movement was tiring and uncomfortable for him. “Five thousand euros.”

Gentry nodded, pulled the money from his pack, showed it to Laszlo, but did not hand it over.

“What about your appearance? I can photograph you as you are, or we can create something more professional.”

“I’d like to clean up first.”

“I’ve got a shower. A razor. A suit coat and tie that should fit you. You ready yourself while Laszlo works on the papers.”

Court walked down a hall and sniffed his way to a bathroom that reeked with body odor and mildew. The shower was equipped with soap and razors and shears, all laid out for operators and illegal immigrants and criminals who needed to camouflage their nastiness for a few minutes in order to pose for a photograph intended to portray them to cops and border control agents as little Lord Fauntleroys. For the first time in three months Gentry shaved his beard. He’d laid his Walther on the little shelf with the shampoo and the razors. It was covered with lather by the time he finished.

Gentry cleaned up his shavings. He saw each brown hair as DNA evidence, so he spent more time collecting his beard than he had cutting it off.

He looked at himself in the mirror while he combed his brown hair to the right in a wet part that would disappear when it dried. He was aging in the face, the creases of sun and wind and life itself deepening into his skin. He could tell he’d lost weight since he’d begun the Syrian operation, and soft bags of discoloration hung under his eyes.

When he was twenty-six, he’d once gone four days without sleep. He’d been tracking an enemy agent in Moscow and was following him to a dacha in the country, when Court’s piece of shit two-door Lada broke down in the snow. The Gray Man had to stay on the move overland to keep from freezing to death.

Now, at thirty-six, he feared he looked much worse after four days of work than he did back then when his extraction team pulled him, half-frozen, out of the ice and into a helicopter.

After he dried off, he pulled his rain-soaked pants back on. He was careful to keep the soggy bandage in place on his leg. He cinched his belt and climbed into his boots and socks. He dressed in a white dress shirt Laszlo had left out for him that was too small for his neck, tied the cheap tie with it carefully, a big knot covering the open collar. A blue jacket that felt like cardboard bunched at his shoulders. He didn’t even try to button it. Court slid his pistol onto his hip, tossed the extra mags and his multi-tool in his pocket, and went back into Laszlo’s lab.

Szabo sat in a wheelchair at a drafting table, leaning over an open passport with a razor. He looked up at his customer for a long moment. “Quite a metamorphosis.”

“Yeah.”

“Sit for the picture, please.” There was a small plastic chair on a riser in front of a blue background hanging from the ceiling. A digital camera on a tripod was connected to a computer on a desk a few feet away.

Court stepped up on the hollow wooden riser and sat in the chair. He fumbled with his coat and tie while Szabo rolled the wheelchair into position behind the camera. “We need to think of a name for the passport. A good Kiwi name.”

“It’s up to you. Whatever is fine.”

The camera flashed, and Gentry began to stand.

“A couple more, please.”

He sat back down.

“I have a name for you. Don’t know if you will like it.”

“Anything is—”

“It’s flashy. Dramatic. Mysterious.”

“Well, I don’t think I need—”

“Why don’t we call you Gray Man?”

Gentry stared blankly into the camera as it flashed in his face.

Shit.

Szabo glared at him.

Gentry began to stand.

He felt movement in his seat. He had shifted his weight to his feet, but his heels felt like they were dropping, Before he could react, his arms flew up to his sides, his borrowed coat bunched up higher on his neck, and his knees raised in front of his eyes. He was falling backwards, the plastic chair sliding back with him. The light around him vanished, and he dropped into darkness, finally landing on his side, his fall cushioned by something soft and wet.

The impact, though cushioned by padding, still knocked the wind from his lungs. Reactively he leapt to his feet, pulled the pistol from his hip, and spun in all directions to both engage any threats and get his bearings.

It was a brick-lined pit, a cistern of some sort. Looking up, he saw he’d fallen twelve feet or so from where the riser had opened up to swallow him. Before he could reach for it, the chair raised into the air, its leg held with a thin chain. It clanged back over the edge of the riser and disappeared. A Plexiglas trapdoor closed above him, sealing him into the dank container.

Slowly, Szabo leaned over the side, looked down through the plastic at his captive, and smiled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” shouted Gentry in utter frustration.

“I presume you are armed. Beasts like you usually are. You might want to think before firing a weapon in there.” Szabo used the tip of his cane to tap the clear lid over the hole. “Two inches of hardened Plexiglas; you’ll be dodging your own ricochets.” He then tapped his forehead with a bony finger. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I don’t have time for this, Szabo!”

“On the contrary. A little time is all you have left.” Szabo backed away from view.