The Gray Man

FOURTEEN

For the next hour, Laszlo Szabo used his computer every fifteen minutes to check the numbered Swiss account he’d given Fitzroy. Between his frequent log-ons he packed a suitcase full of essential items for a permanent road trip, called a local car service, and ordered a limo to wait out front at four thirty, destination the Budapest Ferihegy airport. He bought a ticket to Moscow, first-class, and then called an acquaintance in the Russian capital to arrange pickup from the airport there.

Even with all this activity, he still limped over to the riser and looked down through the glass every now and then to check on his prize. The Gray Man sat shirtless on the mattresses in the cold pit, his back against the slimy wall and his eyes fixed ahead.

Laszlo thought nothing about leaving the young man to die; thought nothing of taking a half million euros from Sir Donald the Fat and then reneging on the deal; thought nothing of the ridiculous assertion that the lives of some poor, pitiful schoolgirls hung in the balance of his quickly orchestrated scheme. He’d not been born a sociopath, but he’d learned his way, executed the tenets of the disorder as precisely and with the same attention to detail as he counterfeited passports.

It was no lie when he said it was the Russians who’d removed his soul. He’d lived so long as an informer, had worked with local resistance to help dissidents escape out of the country, and then passed on to the Soviets their routes to the West. He’d played both sides in so many games over so many years that, to Laszlo, there remained no longer any right and wrong, only paths to his own benefit and obstacles to negotiate.

At the one-hour mark, he checked his account. The money had not yet been wired. He called Fitzroy to learn there had been a delay at his bank. He needed just a few more minutes; the funds were en route. Laszlo smelled a rat, swore he would go put a few bullets into the Gray Man’s head himself if the money didn’t come soon, then conversely warned Sir Donald that the CIA would bleed every detail of Cheltenham Security Service’s real operation out of its top killer, and Fitzroy’s own head would be on the chopping block within a day or two of Szabo handing over the man in his pit to the Americans.

Finally, Laszlo granted fifteen minutes more to the convincing Englishman, checked on his prisoner in the hole, and then phoned the driver waiting outside and told him he’d be delayed but to keep the engine running.

Szabo had been cutting it close all his life. If the CIA killers arrived before he left, he’d likely be killed. If they did not, he’d have his new start in Russia.

Captain Bernard Kilzer turned his head slowly to First Officer Lee. The action made the perspiration on his forehead run into his eyes. Lee looked back to his captain and blinked his own sweat away.

Both men’s faces were chalk white.

The Bombardier Challenger stood still in the mud. Out the windscreen both pilots could see only grass and fence obscured by a heavy rain shower. They had used every centimeter of the runway given them, then an additional eighty meters of soggy open field. There was no more.

Kilzer’s heart pounded, and his blood boiled. Riegel had forced them into this situation, a situation that had come within three seconds’ flying time of ending very, very badly, and even though it had not terminated in a ball of fire and an insurance payout to his wife, the German captain had every expectation he would be spending some time as a guest of the Hungarian penal system.

Still, they had survived. This aircraft had been equipped with anti-skid carbon brakes and a “Gravel Kit,” deflectors placed around the tricycle gear to keep runway debris from destroying the plane upon landing. Still, Kilzer and Lee both knew their rented Challenger would not be flying out of Hungary under its own power. The gear and engines were surely damaged, and it would take some serious towing equipment to pull this twenty-million-dollar aircraft out of the sucking mud pit where it now sat.

After a few more seconds to recover from the stress and fatigue of the landing, Kilzer shut down all systems, standard procedure for a fire on board. Now the only sound was the pelting rain against the aircraft’s skin and windows.

In his mayday message to Budaörs Airport’s control tower, he’d claimed he smelled smoke in the cockpit. Had he more time to come up with something, no doubt he and Lee could have conceived a ruse that would have been more verifiable. But from the time he’d gotten the call from Riegel to this moment, only thirty-five minutes had passed; in the interim, his wits were fully occupied as he dropped his jet from four hundred knots and seven miles in the air to a standstill beyond the far edge of a rain-soaked, too-short, unpaved runway at an unfamiliar airport.

He’d done damn well, and he knew it. He even thought, in the moment of buoyant optimism that came from the adrenaline high following the landing, that he might just manage to talk his way out of jail time if he could keep his winning streak going a few minutes more. But this pipe dream faded as a movement out the windscreen jolted him back to reality. A black van smashed through the fence directly in front of him. The six Indonesians appeared from around the starboard side of the Bombardier, pulling rucksacks retrieved from the cargo hold. Hurriedly they clambered into the vehicle. While Captain Kilzer and First Officer Lee sat silently and stared at the activity in front of their cockpit, the black van backed through the mud and grass from whence it came, skidded in the rainwater on a road on the other side, and then sped off into the storm.

That dramatic event, Kilzer knew, would not have gone unnoticed by the control tower behind him. And that dramatic event, Kilzer knew, would land both him and Lee behind bars until that asshole Riegel could buy them out.

And it occurred to Kilzer as he placed his hat on his head and left the airplane, the rain whipping into his face and his ears assaulted with the shrieking sound of approaching sirens, that Mr. Riegel would certainly have other messes to attend to before the day was through, so he and Lee should prepare themselves to be forgotten about for some time to come.

The wire transfer appeared in Szabo’s account as he was furiously making a third call to Fitzroy. The CIA was due to arrive within ten minutes, he’d cut it way too close, but now the money was received, and he could leave. He hung up the phone as Fitzroy answered. Next he checked back in on the Gray Man one final time, bade him adieu and bon chance, finished packing his suitcase, and then hobbled out of his studio/laboratory /workshop, shuffling down the hall as quickly as his paralytic body would allow.

He was almost to the door when the phone rang. Thinking it was the CIA station chief giving him an update on the progress of the operators on the way, he decided to answer. They wouldn’t have called if they were moments away.

He lifted the phone off the hook. “I have fulfilled my side of the bargain. It is time for you to fulfill yours,” said Fitzroy.

“I am impressed, Sir Donald. My phones are scrambled, how did you—”

“I have my ways, Laszlo. Now, free the Gray Man before they come for him!”

The sweat already dripping down the sixty-year-old Hungarian’s back turned ice-cold. Fitzroy knew who he was. Szabo realized he’d be watching his back for the wily Englishman for the rest of his life.

“I will release your boy immediately.”

“You wouldn’t be talking out of both sides of your mouth, would you? Playing a game with myself and the CIA.”

“You have my word as a gentleman.”

“Very well, Laszlo. Enjoy the money.” The line went dead.

Szabo thought about taking a final step up on the riser, one more glance into the pit, but he decided against it. He hurriedly limped back down the hall, suitcase in hand.

He stepped to the small iron door, but it flew inwards as he reached for it. Bright lights shone into the Hungarian’s eyes, though it was dark and raining outside. In shock he leapt back, tripped over his bad leg, and fell onto his back. Squinting the lights away, he saw a team of men dressed in black, hooded faces, a half dozen gunmen with short-barreled weapons held to eye level. Protruding from each rifle was a powerful flashlight. The first man to him dropped onto a black kneepad. He lifted Szabo by the neck.

“Going somewhere?” He spoke softly in English. It was the CIA. Szabo could barely see eyes behind the operator’s goggles.

“I… I was waiting for you. Just putting the bag in the car, you see. I’ll be heading out after you boys finish.”

“Sure. Where’s the subject?”

Szabo was helped back to his feet. All the men in the narrow hall kept their weapons trained ahead.

“He’s in the front room, at the end of the hall. Step up on the riser and look down. He’s twelve feet down in the cistern, covered with a thick sheet of—”

“Show us.” Szabo read the man’s voice. There would be no negotiation. He turned and hobbled back up the hallway with the American paramilitaries.

Inside the low-lit room the leader of the SAD unit positioned his five men against the walls and stepped to the riser slowly. Laszlo urged him on, told him there was nothing to be afraid of, managed to drop the station chief’s name no less than three times as a way to let the CIA gunmen know he was “one of them.” Finally, the heavily armed and armored leader stepped up on the riser and peered warily over into the glass.

Laszlo called out, still trying to curry favor. “He probably has a gun, but he can’t use it while the lid is shut. He’d have to be quite a dancer to dodge a ricochet in that little space. Your boss promised Laszlo he’d be taken care of. Maybe I should call him and you can all have a talk so you see everything Laszlo’s done for your side. Laszlo the Loyal, he calls me.”

The tac team leader leaned over farther. Then farther. He took a knee over the Plexiglas. Turned slowly around, back to Szabo. “What the fuck is this?”

Laszlo did not understand. “What do you mean? It’s the Gray Man, all wrapped in a nice bow for my friends at the CIA—”

“Did you kill him?” asked the American operative, standing up now and turning to face the Hungarian.

“Of course not. Why do you ask me this?” Quickly the master forger hobbled on his cane towards the riser to see what was wrong.

Court had not sat as idly for the past seventy minutes as Szabo had presumed. As soon as the Hungarian left him alone, he’d pulled his necklace over his head, stripped off the thin leather to reveal a wire saw. He used this to cut away at the exposed water pipe below the mattresses. He’d cut it down in two places to where a few more passes of the wire’s teeth would open the pipe and fill the cistern with hot springwater in a matter of minutes.

Once this was done, Gentry pulled his pistol, ejected the round from the chamber, and retrieved the spare mags from his pants. Using his waterproof boots for a collection bin and the pliers on his multi-tool, he’d pulled each cartridge apart, poured the potassium nitrate-based gunpowder in the boot. When he had the powder from thirty of the thirty-one bullets he carried on his body collected, he disassembled one of his magazines, removed the spring, reattached the plate, filled it tight with gunpowder from his boot, and then placed the follower at the top, packing the explosive agent tighter in the metal magazine. Court used the magazine spring to bind the follower securely in place.

Lazlo checked in on him from time to time. The old cripple made so much noise climbing up on the wooden riser it was no trick for the Gray Man to stuff his arts-and-crafts project below a rotten mattress in time to avoid detection.

Next Gentry took off a sock, filled it with the empty cartridges, because the powder would not ignite without help from the primer each cartridge contained. He crammed the powder-filled magazine in the sock and lashed everything together tight with his bootlace.

In his fist he held it. It was a big, heavy sock and roughly the power equivalent of a hand grenade.

Gentry feverishly ripped several lengths of fabric from a mattress, tied them together to make a thin strand about ten feet long. He reloaded his Walther pistol with his one remaining round, left the magazine well empty, and tied the gun with more mattress strands to where the muzzle of the three-and-a-half-inch barrel was placed point-blank at the sock full of primers and explosive. The long strand he tied to the pistol’s trigger.

Finally, Gentry took off his pants. He tied the legs tight at the ankles and then again at the crotch. This created two chambers filled with air. They wouldn’t stay water tight for long, but long enough for Court’s needs. He used his last shoelace to tie the grenade to the pants. He sat with the pants draped over his legs so Laszlo would not easily notice he wasn’t still wearing them.

Lastly, he pulled wads of soggy foam from a mattress to use as earplugs when the time was right.

Satisfied with his preparations, Court waited.

Soon Szabo leaned over and said good-bye, then disappeared. This was the Gray Man’s cue. Frantically, the American cut the water pipe. Within a minute the cistern had filled more than knee-deep with water as hot as a bath. Court stood and held the grenade with the pistol affixed to it and the pants with the air chambers, all in his hands.

He stood there in his underwear and waited for the water to rise.

Within three minutes he floated up with the water and the mattresses, treading in place. After six minutes, the cistern was filled nearly to the top. He fought panic; he knew there was no guarantee his contraption would work or, even if it did, that it would be powerful enough to blow open the trapdoor.

When the water was three inches from the Plexiglas ceiling, Court forced himself to hyperventilate in the little space. He filled his lungs to capacity and then ducked down below the surface, positioned the floating bomb at one of the hinges. He pushed a mattress between himself and his bomb, then he swam down to the bottom of the cistern, one hand holding the line of mattress fabric that led to the pistol’s trigger and the other hand wrapped around the water pipe to hold him at depth. Looking up to make sure everything was in place, he saw his contraption had floated away from the hinge. Quickly, with depleting air reserves, he shot up to the top. Now there was no air here left to breathe. He fought the mattress to the side, repositioned the bomb, and struggled again to the bottom. The day-old gunshot wound in his right thigh burned with the flexion of his muscles. Panic, frantic exertion, and oxygen depletion all seemed to compete with one another to squeeze on his heart and crush it tight deep inside his body.

Finally he reached the water pipe and took hold. He looked back up and saw his device was in place.

Shortly before he pulled the cord, he saw a dark figure step onto the riser and kneel down, then turn back to face someone in the room.

The team leader said, “He must be dead. This hole is filled with—”

With a muted pop, the black-clad operator lifted into the air. The Plexiglas burst below his feet, white water sprayed in all directions, pieces of sharp plastic tore into the ceiling above. The operator crashed to the left of the riser, a tidal wave of warm water sloshing over him.

The other armed men dived for cover. Szabo fell on his back in the middle of the room.

The leader was alive. He scrambled to his knees and retrained his weapon on the riser to his left.

“Jesus! All elements, stand fast!” he shouted, his ear-drums ringing from the explosion.

Just then, small men in civilian attire and rifles held high poured into the room from the hallway, and gunfire erupted all around.

Laszlo Szabo was the first to die.