The Gray Man

THIRTEEN

Gentry ripped off the jacket, the tie, the shirt, and looked around the pit. It was a seven-foot-wide circle, seemed to be some sort of old sewage well. A cylindrical wall of stone around him too sheer and slick with mildew to climb. The mattresses on which he’d fallen were smelly and rotting. There was a drainage problem to be sure. He looked under the mats and discovered an old iron water pipe. He wrapped his hand around it and found it to be hot. Budapest’s thermal baths were a tourist draw; this pipe likely pumped hot springwater from one location to another. Water pushed through it, dripping and steaming a little where it disappeared into the wall.

Court looked up and around. This would be a particularly awful place to die.

Ten minutes later, Szabo returned. He stood over Court and smiled.

Gentry said, “Whatever you are planning on doing—”

“I remember you. You thought I’d forget? Two thousand four. Central Intelligence Agency super special A team.”

Court knew Szabo had not seen his face in the operation in ’04. Still, he shouted, “That’s right, and my field team knows where I am right now.”

“Pathetic. You aren’t with the agency anymore.”

“Where did you hear that?”

The sixty-year-old Hungarian disappeared for a minute. He returned above the pit, placed a sheet of paper facedown on the glass six feet above his prisoner’s head.

Gentry looked up at his own face, an old head shot taken by the CIA for some dirty documentation. Above the photo were the words, “Wanted for questioning by Interpol.” It was just a photo and a description. His name was not given.

“American government men sat in a car outside in the street, seven days a week, for an entire year after you, shall we say, resigned your position with the agency. They actually thought you’d come to Laszlo for help. Their presence was bad for business, Mr. Gray Man.”

“Szabo. This is serious. Look, I know you. I know you’ll let me buy my way back up. Just name your price. I can call a man and get money wired—”

“Sir Donald can’t purchase your path to safety. I don’t want his money.”

Gentry looked up at the man above him. His voice lowered. “I’d hate to hurt a cripple.”

“You were the one who crippled me!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You shot up my darkroom. You thought I’d forget?”

“I didn’t shoot you.”

“No, you were shooting at the Chechen, hit a container of ammonium persulfate. Knocked the powder into a bath of aluminum water and… bang! The Chechen is dripping off the ceiling, and poor, helpless Laszlo is burned, the nerves of his lower body damaged from inhaling the toxic fumes.”

Shit. Court shrugged. “Whose fault is that? You were helping a terrorist enter the West. The CIA should have sent me back to finish you.”

“Maybe they should have, but I’ve since made friends with the good men of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the FBI came to talk to me, the agency came. They were the ones who told me you were the leader of the group that blew up my warehouse and ruined my legs. Believe it or not, these days, the local CIA station and Laszlo have a reasonably good working relationship.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe that? You always did play all sides.”

“I think our relationship will get even better now that I’ve called them and told them I have you locked away. They are on their way here to pick you up right now.”

The muscles in Court’s face twitched. “Tell me you did not do that.”

“I did. I am going to trade you to the CIA in exchange for a little détente. Our relationship is not so good that me handing over their number one target won’t make Laszlo’s life easier.”

“How long until they are here?”

“Under two hours. The station chief is ordering up a helicopter full of heavies from Vienna to take you into custody. I told him your reputation was overrated; old frail Laszlo captured you by himself, after all, but he was undeterred. You warrant a big operation just to carry you away. You will just have to amuse yourself in the meantime while you—”

“Laszlo, you need to listen very carefully to me.”

“Ha! Look at him shake. Look at the Gray Man shake like a little—”

“They aren’t sending a team to haul me away. They’ll send a wet team. There’s a shoot-on-sight directive against me. And when they come here to wax my ass, don’t expect them to just walk away and leave a witness behind. That’s not how these guys operate.”

Laszlo cocked his head, seemed to think this over, then said, “They won’t hurt me. The CIA needs me.”

“They only needed you until you made that phone call, you dumb son of a bitch!”

Szabo’s nerves began to show. He shouted, “Enough talk! If you think the grim reaper is on the way for you, maybe you should spend the next few minutes asking your God for forgiveness for your sins.”

“You, too.”

Laszlo Szabo’s wrinkled and confused face disappeared from the glass above Court.

Sir Donald Fitzroy’s mobile rang at three. Lloyd pushed the speaker button, though the call had not come from Gentry’s satellite phone.

“Cheltenham Security.”

“Good afternoon, Sir Donald. I am calling in regards to an important business matter.”

“Do I know you?”

“Our paths have not crossed, I don’t believe. You may call me Igor.”

Fitzroy was short with the caller. There was more than enough on his plate to where he felt no need to be polite to some heavily accented solicitor. “And you may call me not interested. I am busy. If you have legitimate business, you can bloody well contact my secretary and make an appointment.”

“Yes… well, the Gray Man seems to think he represents legitimate business to you. He told me to call, is insisting you will pay handsomely for his safe return.”

“The Gray Man is with you?”

“Indeed.”

“Which team are you with?”

“Which team? I am my own team, sir.”

Fitzroy and Lloyd looked at one another. Lloyd pushed the mute button. “I don’t think this is one of our hunters.”

Sir Donald tapped the button to allow the caller to hear him. “Let me talk to him.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible at the moment.”

Lloyd hit the mute button again. He turned to the Tech at the bank of computers on the wall. The young man said, “The call originated in Budapest, the Pest side. He’s got some misdirection software on it. I’ll try and get it pinned down.”

Lloyd looked up at the large map on the wall monitor. “What’s Court doing in Budapest, for fuck’s sake?”

Fitzroy ignored him and hit the speaker box in the middle of the table, releasing the mute yet again.

“I… I may be very interested in accommodating you, Igor. I just need assurance that my man is, in fact, in your care.”

“No trust in this world, that’s what’s wrong. Very well, Sir Donald. Give me a moment. I don’t move as quickly as I used to.” There was shuffling through the speakers for nearly a minute. Then finally, “Go ahead, Mr. Fitzroy, you may speak.”

“Lad? Is that you?”

Gentry’s voice, distant or muffled by something: “He called the agency. A kill squad will be here in less than ninety minutes, Don! I’m in—”

There was more scratching and shuffling over the speakers. Then the accented voice came back on the line. “You have one hour, Sir Donald. Wire five hundred thousand euros, and I will have your boy spirited away in plenty of time to avert a counteroffer from a competitor. Here’s the account number. Do you have a pen?”

A minute later, the call was disconnected. Both Fitzroy and Lloyd looked to the Tech. The young Brit with the nose ring shook his head.

“Budapest, Sixth District. That much we know. But I couldn’t pinpoint it closer. There are a quarter million phones in the Sixth District. He could have called from any one of them.”

Lloyd was annoyed but in too much hurry to show it. He turned to his captive. “Who does he know in Budapest?”

Fitzroy rubbed his forehead and shrugged.

“Think, damn you! Who would Gentry go see there?”

Sir Donald lifted his head quickly. “Szabo! Not in my Network, you see; an old counterfeiter, used to work for the Reds back in—”

Lloyd interrupted “Got an address?”

“I can get it.”

“My closest kill team is in Vienna, a hundred miles away. No way we can have them there in that time frame. We’ll have to pay Szabo off to keep Gentry out of the CIA’s hands.”

Fitzroy shook his head. “Forget it. Szabo is a snake. If he called the CIA, he did it to curry favor with them. He just called me because Gentry told him I’d pay for his release. Laszlo Szabo will take my money and still give him up to the CIA. He’ll fuck me over long before he’ll fuck them over.”

“Will the CIA take Gentry in or kill him?”

“Irrelevant. If they kill him, they’ll cover their tracks. The body won’t turn up for weeks, if ever. Abubaker won’t sign just because we tell him Gentry’s on ice. You’ll kill my family just the same as if Gentry survived.”

“Then we have less than an hour to get killers to Szabo’s location and do the job before the agency boys get there.”

Gentry’s neck was sore from staring up at the plastic ceiling above him. He heard noises near the opening, so he yelled out, “How are you going to get me out of here before the agency assets come to kill us both?”

Szabo’s wrinkled face appeared above. “Once I have Sir Donald’s money, the only one leaving here will be me.”

“Fitzroy will kill you for double-crossing him.”

“Ha. I still have friends in the East. I have been looking for a way out. A half-million euros will be just about enough for a new start.”

“Look,” Court implored, “there’s more at stake here than you know. A family has been kidnapped. Two little girls have been taken, eight-year-old twins. They will be murdered if I don’t get to France in time to stop it. You let me out of here, and I swear you’ll get your money. You’ll get whatever you—”

“Two little girls?”

“Yes.”

“Murdered?”

“Not if I can get—”

Laszlo laughed cruelly. “You’ve obviously mistaken me for a man with a soul. The Russians had it surgically removed thirty-five years ago. I really could not possibly care less.” He disappeared from Gentry’s view.

Lloyd called Riegel, reached him in his teak-paneled Paris office. The German answered before the first ring ended. The American asked, “Do you have assets in Budapest?”

“I have assets everywhere.”

“Tier-one assassins?”

“No. Just a few pavement artists. I could arrange some low-class triggermen, I suppose, but why? Haven’t I provided you with enough alpha killers in the past twelve hours? Surely the Gray Man hasn’t chewed through them all yet!” His tone mocked the young lawyer.

“We sent the teams to the west. Gentry went south, to Hungary, apparently to get a passport to use to flee Europe after he’s finished in Normandy.”

“Prudent. Optimistic, but prudent.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out so well for him. The forger in Budapest double-crossed him. Locked him up. He just called Sir Donald to demand ransom.”

“Let me guess. Laszlo Szabo?”

“How did you know?”

“Let’s just say you can’t mention ‘Budapest’ and ‘double-cross’ in the same sentence without Szabo’s name coming up.”

“Can you get some men to his address in Pest?”

“Of course. Is it just Laszlo or does he have security?”

“It’s more complicated than that. Szabo also turned Court in to the CIA. They have a team racing to the location now. Supposedly they are an hour out.”

Riegel sighed, resignation now in his voice. “He falls into CIA hands, and the Lagos contract is history. If they take him, we won’t be able to prove to Abubaker if he’s dead or alive by Sunday.”

“Then we can’t let that happen. Right?”

“You want to send a team to shoot it out with American intelligence? Are you insane?”

“The CIA will think they’re men working for Gentry or working for the kidnapper. If your guys are any good, they won’t hang around to explain their motivation.”

Riegel thought a moment. When he finally spoke, it sounded to Lloyd as if the German was formulating the plan as the words left his mouth. “The Indonesian hit team is in the air at this moment. They are heading to Frankfurt, but they should be over south Central Europe right about now. Maybe we can divert them, get them on the ground and into the city in the next hour. We’ll be cutting it razor close, but it’s our only chance.”

“Are they any good?”

“Yes. They are Kopassus, Group Four. The best shooters Jakarta has to offer. Let me get to work.”

Captain Bernard Kilzer checked the altitude on the radio altimeter. It was a Wolfsburg model he was not entirely familiar with, as this plane was rented and not his normal craft. He was flying west-northwest at 37,000 feet. The Bombardier Challenger 605 was state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire technology. His duties and responsibilities as a pilot were great, but at this point, seven hours into his nine-hour flight from New Delhi to Frankfurt, there was little for him and his copilot to do other than stay awake, monitor the onboard systems, and scan the afternoon skies.

The two pilots had been flying, nearly nonstop, for sixteen hours. Their route had originated in Jakarta, Indonesia, at two a.m. local time. They’d flown west, stopped for fuel in New Delhi, and then immediately returned to the sky.

Normally, Captain Kilzer and his copilot, First Officer Lee, flew corporate heads around Southeast Asia. They also transported LaurentGroup scientists, critical IT personnel, anyone who was needed in any one of fifteen corporate facilities from the southern tip of Japan to the eastern edge of India.

In addition to these work-related trips, Kilzer and Lee also ferried executives and their wives on island-hopping vacations or to lavish parties in Brunei with the sultan himself. He’d once even shuttled company clients and Philippine call girls to a secluded tropical isle populated by French chefs and Swedish masseuses for a week of indolent debauchery.

Kilzer had flown all manner of LaurentGroup employees, but he’d never transported a group like the one he was hauling now.

Behind him in the cabin were six men. Indonesians, they looked to be young military types, but they wore civilian clothing. The cargo hold of the Challenger was full of green canvas rucksacks. The men kept quiet for the most part. On Kilzer’s trips out of the cockpit to the lavatory he’d glanced into the twenty-eight-foot cabin and had seen darkness perforated by penlights, some men poring over maps while others slept.

They seemed a disciplined group, heading out on some important mission, and Kilzer did not have a clue why he’d been tasked with ferrying them.

The bald-headed thirty-eight-year-old German pilot reached behind himself to retrieve his lunch box. The multifunction display flashed. His copilot said, “Ground-to-air call coming through for you from the home office on the secure link.”

“Roger.” Kilzer turned away from his meal and flipped a switch on the center console to send the impending transmission into his ears alone.

“November Delta Three Zero Whiskey, over?”

“This is Riegel speaking, do you read me?”

Kilzer knew Riegel was the VP of security operations for the entire corporation. The German was known as an incredibly tough bastard. Suddenly Kilzer had a better idea about the mission of the fit young men in the cabin behind him. “Loud and clear, Mr. Riegel. How can I help you, sir?”

“How close are you to Budapest?”

“Just a moment.” Kilzer looked to the copilot, an Asian with a British accent. “It’s Riegel. Wants to know how far we are from Budapest.”

First Officer Lee checked his flight’s location on the navigation management system. He typed into the keypad on his left and in a few seconds responded. “We are one hundred seven kilometers south-southeast and twelve kilometers above.”

Kilzer relayed the information, and Riegel said, “We have a change in plans. I need you to land there as soon as possible.”

Kilzer felt the sting of sweat on the back of his neck. He did not feel good about disappointing the chief of security ops. “I am sorry, sir, that is not possible. We haven’t filed a flight plan for Hungary. We will have serious problems with immigration and security.”

“Don’t tell me what is possible. Put the airplane on the ground, distribute to the Indonesians their gear, and then get out of there.”

Captain Kilzer did not back down immediately. “How are we supposed to get out of there? We’ll be thrown in jail if we land without authorization, if we—”

“Declare an emergency. Surely you can find a reason to land the plane wherever you want. If you get detained for questioning, I’ll pay your way out. We can smooth things over with the Hungarians after the fact. That’s not your concern. Just make sure the Indonesians are off the plane before you taxi to the tarmac.”

“There is too much security at Budapest Ferihegy. They will surround the aircraft, and we will—”

“Then don’t land there. Find a little regional airport nearby, land the plane, and let loose the men in the back. Do I make myself clear?”

The captain frantically flipped through pages on his multifunction display. He scrolled through electronic charts of all the region’s airports.

“Tokol is forty minutes’ driving time from the city center. Its runway is long enough.”

“Too far! I need the Indonesians in the city center in under an hour!”

Kilzer kept looking. “There is Budaörs. It is half the drive time, but the runway is not paved, and it is too short.”

“How short?”

“This aircraft with this load requires one thousand meters on a paved runway in perfect conditons. Budaörs is one thousand meters exactly, but there is heavy rain and, as I said, it is unpaved. It will be like mud!”

“Then you should have no problems slowing down before you run out of runway. Land the plane!”

“You are demanding a crash landing, sir! It will be very unsafe.”

“If you want to be safe from me, Captain, you will land that plane in Budaörs. Am I clear?”

Kilzer gritted his teeth.

Riegel said, “I’ll have a coach and a driver there to pick them up.”

“Sir, I need to stress again, this will create an incident.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Roger, sir.”

Kilzer disconnected the call. He squeezed his hands on his control column in frustration.

The copilot asked, “What’s going on?”

“Apparently, Lee, you and I are about to help Indonesia invade Hungary.”

The first officer turned white. “Riegel is an asshole.”

“Ja,” said Kilzer. He then flipped a few switches on his center console, took the jet off autopilot, and slowly pushed the controls forward. He spoke into his headset. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. November Delta Three Zero Whiskey—”