The Gray Man

NINETEEN

Song Park Kim awoke at dawn in his suite at the swank Plaza Athénée. His quarters surrounded him with opulence, but he did not sleep on the bed, did not drink from the minibar, did not partake of the room service. He’d slept in a back closet on the floor after rigging tripwires and telltales all around him.

He left his room at six in the morning and began walking through the streets of Paris, memorizing the roads that led from the Right Bank, over bridges, to the Left Bank: taking in the looks and mannerisms of the westerners: and memorizing the natural choke points of both automobile and pedestrian traffic.

He’d received a list of names and addresses on his GPS: the Gray Man’s known associates in Paris: a former CIA coworker who now headed a market intelligence firm in a skyscraper in La Defense, to the west of the city; an Afghani interpreter used by the Special Activities Division in Kabul in 2001, who now ran a swank Middle Eastern restaurant in the Left Bank on the Boulevard Saint Germaine; an informant in Fitzroy’s Network who was also a federal pen pusher at the Ministry of the Interior in an office near the Place de la Concorde; a pilot of renowned skill who had flown for the SAD in Europe and now lived semiretired in the Latin Quarter.

The Korean used public transportation to take a quick look at each site, checking them all out: access to the buildings, locations of nearby parking, and public transportation routes to and from each area. He knew there were local watchers hired by the people who had hired his government to send him, and in fact he’d seen men and women at every site on his list, men and women unable to remain undetected by an exceedingly well-trained operator. He had no doubt the Gray Man would see them, too. Kim knew he would have to supplant their support with his own tracking skills.

Afterwards, Kim patrolled the city center, still studying the map. He was prepared to rush back to any of the known associates’ locations if there was a Gray Man sighting, but he did not expect his adversary to use an associate on his current mission. If he could, Kim was certain, the Gray Man would bypass Paris altogether. It was too congested an area, with too many police and too many cameras and too many old acquaintances that would invariably be under surveillance. If the American assassin was forced to go into the city for some reason, Kim knew, he’d do his utmost to get what he needed from sources other than those who could be traced back to him.

Kim knew this because he himself was a lone assassin. A singleton. He himself had been hunted down like a dog, and he himself had been forced to avoid all those who might have been inclined to help him.

But Kim also knew that isolation, exhaustion, injury, necessity, and desperation all led to mistakes, and he knew that if his target somehow made it as far as Paris and had some need in the city, the Gray Man would be a desperate animal indeed, and all bets were off as to how he would act and react. This operator was perhaps already the most dangerous man in the world. Throwing in wild-eyed fear and a frantic race against time might make him slip up, but it would also make him even more dangerous to those around him. Kim knew that if the call came that the Gray Man was here, then blood would flow like a river through the streets of the City of Lights.

Gentry had ridden his stolen bike through the snowy dawn, then pulled up to the train station at the village of Ardez. A few locals milled about, waiting for the first morning trains west to Zurich or east to the Italian or Austrian borders. The American borrowed a cell phone from a kid waiting for the eastbound train and paid the teenage boy the equivalent of forty dollars to call Fitzroy for five minutes to confront his handler about selling him out. He walked twenty yards down the cement platform for privacy and stood in the snow as a train to Interlaken rolled by. He’d finally hung up the phone when a fight broke out on the other end of the line, erased the number in the phone’s memory, and handed it back to the kid with the cash. A few minutes later, Court climbed aboard the first train of the morning to Zurich. It was a Saturday, so he was the only passenger in his car for the majority of the hour-and-forty-five minute travel time through the narrow valley. One after another, the bright red train chugged on past the railroad stations of the villages along its tracks.

Gentry warmed up on the train, checked his wounds by dropping his pants in the empty car and poking at the sores on his knees and at the entrance and exit wounds on his stinging thigh with his fingertips. He was afraid he might have contracted an infection in the gunshot wound. Certainly, swimming in Szabo’s cistern hadn’t helped. Otherwise, he was okay. He’d put miles on the lacerations on his feet, and they did little more than throb, just like his broken rib.

He knew he had to continue on to Normandy, though he felt his odds for success were lessening with each mile nearer he came to the trap waiting for him. Fitzroy was a bastard for tricking him as he had, but, Court had to admit, Lloyd had put Sir Donald into one hell of a difficult position. Court wondered what lengths he himself would have gone to, who he would have sold out, if the twins were his family and their lives were jeopardized by some motherfucker with a mob of gun monkeys and no compunction about killing innocent children.

Thinking about Lloyd made Gentry’s blood boil. He honestly didn’t remember the guy, but the CIA had never gone wanting for lightweight desk-riding a-holes who worked way back in the rear of covert operations, while the Gray Man and those like him operated on the sharp edge. Court couldn’t picture any faces, but once in a while his superiors had cause to introduce him to some Langley suit. Lloyd must have been one of these, before taking top secret SAD personnel records and leaving the company for the private sector.

What a prick.

Court wanted to recall Lloyd, find something back in his memory banks that could somehow help him out of his current predicament, but the rhythm of the train along the tracks began to carry him off to sleep. With all his cuts, bruises, pulled muscles, and extra holes, it was a chore to relax at all, but it was almost as if he was too tired to hurt. He fell asleep a few minutes before arriving in Zurich, was jarred awake by the slowing of the train and the recorded announcement of the impending stop. As he stood and made his way to the exit, he cussed himself for his lack of discipline, for dozing with hunters so close on his tail.

In the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, he bought a ticket for Geneva. It would mean another two hours on the rails, so he made his way over to a sausage counter and bought a large bratwurst and a cup of coffee. It was a grotesque combination, but he hoped the jolt of caffeine and the half pound of solid protein would keep his body alert.

With twenty minutes until his train’s departure, he descended the escalator to a large shopping center two levels below the station, found a pay bathroom, and commandeered a stall. Here he sat, fully dressed, on the porcelain, leaned his head back on the cold wall behind him. He drew his pistol and held it at the ready in his lap. Train stations were obvious places for his enemies to hunt him. He didn’t like the scarcity of escape routes in a bathroom stall, but still, he knew he was better off hiding in the toilet than he would be standing at his track for a quarter hour just begging to be identified by the opposing force. If Lloyd’s goons found him here, then he’d just empty a couple of magazines into the door of the stall in front of him and try to bust his way out.

It wasn’t a good plan, but, Court admitted to himself, by taking on this operation in the first place he had forgone any pretense of wisdom. Now it was just about making his way through the shit in the hopes he would live to, and maybe even through, eight o’clock on Sunday morning.

With less than a minute to departure, Gentry walked up the platform alongside Track Seventeen and slipped silently on the train to Geneva just as it began to roll.

Riegel’s phone rang at nine forty in the morning. He was in his office, putting in a full day on Saturday, having reluctantly canceled a weekend grouse-hunting trip in Scotland.

“Riegel.”

“Sir. Kruger speaking.” Kruger was a Swiss security chief for LaurentGroup based in Zurich. “I have information on the target. I had been instructed to contact Mr. Lloyd, but I thought I would let you know.”

“Fine, Kruger. I’ll pass the information. What do you have?”

“I have him, sir. He’s just boarded the 9:40 for Geneva. Second-class ticket, no seat reservation.”

“Geneva? Why is he going south? He should be headed west.”

“He could be running away. Giving up, I mean.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s out of his way, but he does have associations there.”

“I can have surveillance in Geneva ready to intercept him at the station.”

“No. We’ll arrange a different welcoming party for him there if that is his actual destination. This could be a misdirection. He might get off along the way, take another train to France. I need you to organize coverage at every station where that train stops between Zurich and Geneva. Also make sure he doesn’t get off before the train leaves.”

“I’m on the train myself now. I’ll babysit him along the route and update you as we get closer.”

“Alles klar. Good work.”

Riegel next called the Tech at the chateau in Normandy. “Get the Venezuelans heading south to catch up with the 9:40 from Zurich to Geneva. The Gray Man is on board, but he may try to get off along the way. The Venezuelans need to be ready to take him down at a moment’s notice.”

“Understood.”

Riegel consulted a large map of Switzerland on his desk. “Get the South Africans in Basel to Geneva. If Gentry makes it alive to the station, they’ll need to follow him out and do him in the street. There will be too many cameras and cops in the station.”

Court didn’t last fifteen minutes. He’d found a window seat on the top level at the back of the last car in second class. He taken off his coat and draped it over his body. Under it, he pulled his pistol and laid it in his lap with his hand on the grip.

And then he drifted off to sleep.

“—weis.”

He woke slowly, his head leaning against the window. Though his vision was blurred by his bloodshot eyes, he watched snow flurries beating the window next to his face. He wanted to stick his tongue out and taste a fat flake through the glass. The countryside was covered in white, only the sheerest stony mountains shone gray and brown where the snowfall found the grade too steep for a foot-hold. The sky hung low and gray, and a village streaked by before him. It was a beautiful winter morning.

“Ausweis!” a voice said, close on his right. Court turned and looked quickly; he recognized the authority to the command.

Four uniformed Swiss police officers stood in the aisle above him. They wore gray pants and two-tone gray jackets. They were Municipaux, city cops. Not the highly trained feds. Big Glock-17s hung off their hips. An outstretched hand at the end of the outstretched arm of the oldest cop.

“Ausweis, bitte.”

Court understood travel German. The white-haired police sergeant wanted to see some ID. Not a train ticket.

Not good.

Gentry moved the gun hidden under his coat, crammed it between the plastic cushion and the wall of the train car as he sat up.

Gentry had no identification, only a ticket. Once the weapon was out of view, he fished through his coat, pulled out the ticket, and handed it over.

The cop didn’t even look at it. Instead he switched to English. “Identification, please.”

“I lost my passport. I’m heading to the embassy in Geneva to get another.”

All four policemen obviously understood English, because all four policemen looked at Court like he was full of shit.

“You are American?” asked the older officer.

“Canadian.” Court knew he was in trouble. He may have dumped the pistol, but there was a leather holster Velcroed around his ankle. These guys looked sharp enough; there was no chance they would not frisk him. When they found the empty rig on his leg, the cops would just check his seat and find his gun.

“Where is your luggage?”

“Stolen. I told you.” There was no sense in making friends. Court knew he’d probably have to kick these guys’ asses before it was all over. He didn’t feel great about knocking a bunch of innocent policemen’s heads together, but he saw no way around it. Although it would be a four-on-one fight, the American operator knew that with surprise, speed, and violence of action, he could get the upper hand in such a small space like a train aisle.

He’d done it before.

Just then, the door to the car opened, and three more policemen filed in. They stayed at the door, far back from the rest of the scrum.

Shit. Seven on one. They were taking no chances. Gentry had no illusions about disabling four men, then advancing twenty-five feet and taking down three more, before being riddled with gunfire.

“Please stand,” said the silver-haired policeman in front of him.

“Why? What did I do?”

“Please stand, and I will explain.”

“I’m just heading to—”

“I will not ask you again.”

Court dropped his shoulders, stood, and took one step into the aisle. A young cop approached and spun him around. Quickly, his hands were cuffed behind his back. The other passengers in the car watched with fascination. Camera phones appeared, and Gentry did his best to turn away from them.

He was frisked by the young officer, who almost immediately discovered the folding knife in his pocket and the ankle holster on his leg. His seat was searched, and the pistol lifted high into the air like a trophy for all on the car to see.

“I am a United States federal agent.” Court said this because he didn’t really have much else. He did not expect them to just hand him back his gun and pat him on the ass, but he hoped they might relax a little and give him some opportunity to escape.

“With no identification?” Asked the officer in charge.

“I lost it.”

“So you said. Have you been this morning in Guarda?” asked one of the cops.

The Gray Man, who, surrounded by camera phones and wide-eyed stares, did not feel much like a gray man, did not answer. One of the new policemen back at the entrance spoke into his walkie-talkie. A moment later, the train began to slow.