The Gray Man

TWENTY-FIVE

Five minutes after exiting the nail salon, the Gray Man walked west on Rue du Marché, searching for the address on the note card in his hand. A light rain began, blurring his view of the numbers on the buildings. He’d just turned north on Rue du Commerce when an explosion roared behind him.

He stopped in his tracks as did the pedestrians around him on the pavement. Unlike them, however, Gentry did not turn around. After a few seconds standing motionless in the rain, he took a step forward. The momentum returned to his body, and he continued on, his head and shoulders slumped a little lower.

He spotted a watcher, so he dodged into the Rue du Rhône, a small, covered passageway, where he lost his tail in the foot traffic near the McDonald’s.

Minutes later, he found the single-car garage in the back of an underground parking lot below the Rue de la Confédération. It was a Saturday afternoon, no one was around, and the key Maurice gave him unlocked the sliding door.

It opened with a creak, and the dust from inside the unit mixed in his nose with the scent of motor oil. He felt the walls for a light for a half minute before bumping into a large object in the middle of the floor. Above it was a cord attached to a lightbulb hanging over the middle of the room.

Gentry found himself dazzled by the brilliance of the bare bulb. Quickly he pulled down the garage door to seal himself into the room, turned back to find that the object in the center of the garage was some sort of automobile covered by a large tarp.

Maurice had said nothing about loaning him a car. For a second Court wondered if he’d somehow gained entry into the wrong unit.

He pulled back the tarp and let it fall to the pavement.

Before him sat a large black sedan, a Mercedes S-class four-door with a black, all-leather interior.

Court figured the vehicle must have cost over one hundred thousand dollars.

“Thanks, Maurice,” he mumbled.

Opening the unlocked driver’s door, the Gray Man saw the keys were in the ignition. Looking at the dash, he noticed the car had fewer than four thousand miles on it. She was a beauty, and it would certainly make his eight-hour drive to Normandy quicker and more comfortable, but there were other ways to travel. No, what he really needed were weapons. In Europe they were far more difficult to come by than efficient means of transportation.

With anticipation, he popped the trunk of the Mercedes and walked to the back.

Four large aluminum cases stood side by side. Court pulled the first one on top of the others and flipped it open.

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

Heavy metal.

“My hero, Maurice,” he said.

An HK MP5, well-oiled and stored in a foam encasement; four magazines with thirty preloaded nine-millimeter rounds in each lay side by side in the foam; and two fragmentation hand grenades, one resting on either side of the MP5.

He loaded the submachine gun, chambered a round, and tossed it in the front seat of the Mercedes with all the spare magazines.

The second case contained two fragmentation and two flash-bang stun grenades, two door-breaching charges, and a small cube of Semtex plastic explosive with a remote detonating device. Court left this equipment in the trunk for now.

Brushed aluminum case number three housed a handheld GPS unit, two matched walkie-talkies, and a laptop computer. All this gear went into the backseat of the car.

In the final case Court found two Glock-19 nine-millimeter pistols and four loaded magazines.

Also in this container Court found a utility belt and two thigh rigs. One was for carrying a Glock on his right hip, and the other would hang on his left leg and hold magazines for the submachine gun and the pistol.

On a hunch he lifted the carpet up in the trunk of the Mercedes. There he discovered one more weapon, an AR-15 carbine assault rifle. Alongside the spare tire was a plastic container with three loaded magazines full of .223 ammunition, ninety rounds in all.

Court spent a few minutes powering up the sat phone and familiarizing himself with the GPS. All the while the police, fire department, and ambulance sirens continued to wail a quarter mile away at Maurice’s house.

This massive weapons cache told Gentry two things about his former mentor. One, though he was out of the CIA and living in the open, he still had some reason to believe he might need to blast his way out of a sticky situation.

And two, from the look of the top-notch automobile and the insane quantity and quality of the gear, it was apparent to Gentry that the rumors about his mentor had been true.

He had likely embezzled from the accounts he maintained for the CIA.

Maurice had surely known Gentry would come to this conclusion, yet still he offered up his cache to his young protégé. It was the dying man’s last wish that Court use the hoard to get away and succeed in his mission, and not to judge him too harshly for it.

As Gentry pulled out of the garage, looked straight ahead through the tinted windows, and passed more first responders on their way to the crime scene on Rue de l’Evêché, his emotions were conflicted. Court had never misappropriated a dime in his life. He had never even run up per diem charges when working hits and black bag jobs for mobsters and drug dealers. No, he was a killer, but he was no thief. That Maurice had stolen from the company was disappointing, but in the end a great bit of those stolen funds Gentry planned to put to use. Court was at once both idealistic and pragmatic. Maurice’s thievery was wrong but, he told himself, he would not judge his old instructor too harshly. Instead, he’d redeem the old man’s honor, use every last goddamn bullet and gun to save the three innocents in Normandy and retrieve the personnel histories of all the assets in the Special Activities Division.

Riegel stood behind the Tech. Lloyd stood on his left. The young ponytailed man sat at his desk in front of computer monitors, headphones pressed to his ears.

From the expression on the young Brit’s face, the two men in charge of the operation could tell the news was not good.

The Tech said, “We have confirmation from our local sources that all of the South Africans are dead. There was a large explosion at the target location. Looks like it may have been a gas leak. No doubt brought on by gunfire or some other use of ordnance. The fire department is still working on the blaze; they don’t have a body count just yet, they only confirm there were no survivors. Multiple fatalities.”

Lloyd said, “Gentry?”

The Tech shook his head. “He was seen leaving the building minutes before the explosion.”

“Seen by?”

“A watcher who lost him in the crowd.”

“Come on!” screamed Lloyd. “Do I have to kill him myself?”

Riegel pulled his phone from his pocket and made a call. Waited a moment. “Yes, it’s me. I need a helicopter. Pick up the following items and get here before dark. Write all this down. Thermal imaging units, motion detectors, remote sensors, monitors, and cabling. You have all that?

“Also find Serge and Alain and get them on that helicopter. Tell them to grab anything else they need to put a three-hundred-sixty-degree electronic wall around Château Laurent.” Riegel hung up.

Lloyd stared at him. “What was all that about?”

“Electronic surveillance gear. Men to install and monitor it.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s for Gentry. It’s for tonight.”

“There are still three hundred miles and thirty-five shooters between him and here. You don’t seriously think he’s going to make it through to the château, do you?”

“It’s my responsibility to ensure he dies. Whether he dies in Geneva, on a road in the French Alps, or out here on the lawn, it is my job to salvage your operation. I am going to use every instrument, every technical advantage, every warm body, and every gun I can put between his current location and his destination.”

The Tech looked up to the two men behind him. For the first time, the young Englishman showed emotion: fear. “Nobody said anything about him actually coming here. I’m not a field man, for Christ’s sake.”

Riegel looked down at him sternly. “Consider yourself promoted.”

The Tech turned back to his terminal.

Next Riegel called up to the tower and had the Belarusian sniper join him and Lloyd out in the back garden. The sniper met them by the fountain, his large Dragunov rifle cradled across his chest. Together they walked slowly past the bloodstained grass, towards the apple orchard that started at the end of the backyard and continued on for several hundred yards to the high stone wall that ringed the entire property. Riegel and the sniper sniffed the air, then knelt to the grass and put their hands in it. They looked at everything in their environment carefully. Lloyd just looked bored and annoyed.

Riegel spoke to the sniper in Russian. Lloyd stared off towards the orchard. “You understand the rules of engagement?”

“If it moves towards the château, shoot it.”

“That’s right.”

“Simple enough.”

Riegel’s hiking boots sank in the well-manicured lawn. He sniffed the air again. “Did you have fog this morning?”

“Yes. Visibility not more than two hundred yards. Couldn’t see as far as the apple trees until almost ten a.m.”

“Shouldn’t be an issue. If he makes it here at all, it will be before sunrise.” The Belarusian just nodded as he scanned the orchard through his scope. Riegel said, “You should not have shot the father.”

The sniper just shrugged as he scanned the near distance. “If you were on the scene, I would not have. As it was, I did not have leadership. I made the decision to shoot. That is what I do unless told otherwise.”

Riegel nodded. He regarded his sniper for a moment. “I saw the body. The entry wound. Good decision or not… it was a magnificent shot.”

The Belarusian lowered his eye from the scope of his Dragunov but continued his survey of the orchard. He betrayed not a speck of emotion. “Da. It was.”

Lloyd was tired of being ignored. “Look, Riegel. You’re wasting time. Even if Gentry does make it here, which he won’t, do you really think he’s going to come running straight up the middle of the yard?”

“It’s a possibility. He will do whatever he considers his best option.”

“That’s insane. He’s not going to storm the castle by himself.”

“I have to prepare as if he will. His options will be limited.”

“Well then, why don’t you line the fucking garden with land mines?” Lloyd’s sarcasm was delivered with utter derision.

Riegel looked at him a long moment. “Would you know where I can get some land mines?”

Just then, Lloyd’s phone chirped in his pocket.

“Yeah?”

“It’s the Tech here. Gentry is calling on Sir Donald’s phone. I can forward the call to you.”

Lloyd hit the speakerphone on his unit. “Do it.”

“Hello, Lloyd.” Gentry’s voice was tired.

“So you slipped the noose again. I was hoping to be standing over your charred remains sometime this evening.”

“No. Instead, your rented thugs just killed a seventy-five-year-old American hero.”

“Right. A terminally ill, out-to-pasture spy on the take. Excuse me while I dab the tears from my eyes.”

“Fuck you, Lloyd.”

“You’re in Geneva?”

“You know that I am.”

“Do you need me to fax you a goddamned map? Northern France is in northern fucking France, not southern Switzerland. I don’t know why you went to see Maurice. Money, documentation, weapons, another gunman, whatever. None of that shit is going to make a damn bit of difference in the long run. The only thing you need to be worried about right now is time, because tomorrow morning when the little hand reaches the eight and the big hand reaches the twelve, it is open fucking season on little British girlies up here!”

“Don’t worry, Lloyd. I’ll be there soon.”

“Why are you calling?”

“I was sitting here worrying that you may begin to relax, you may think that I died in the explosion. The possibility that you might be having a comfortable afternoon was really beginning to chap my ass, so I thought I’d give you a ring, let you know to leave a light on for me tonight.”

Lloyd sniffed into the phone. “You just wanted to make sure I didn’t give the mission up for lost. Didn’t go downstairs and kill the Fitzroys because I don’t need them anymore.”

“That, too. I don’t know how many more hit teams you have between you and me, but all the goons on earth won’t stop me from getting my hand around your throat in just a few hours.”

The Tech ran up to the three men in the back garden. Out of breath, he held up a sheet of paper on which he’d hurriedly scrawled the words, “Sat Phone — no trace.”

Lloyd frowned. He said, “Court, your death is an inevitability. Why don’t you save us all some time, make things easier on everyone, and kill yourself, then put your head in a cooler and ship it up to me.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll supply the head. You get the ice chest ready. Soon enough, I’ll give you the opportunity to put the two together.”

“Sounds like a plan, buddy.”

“Come tomorrow morning, Julius Abubaker is going to have to find himself a new bitch to bargain with, because when you fail, and you will fail, either I will kill you, or someone else will.”

Lloyd’s face twitched in anger. “I’m nobody’s bitch, you knuckle-dragging bastard. I’ve seen a lot of smug scalp hunters come and go in my days. You’re no different. You’d do well to remember that even with your reputation and your spooky nickname, you are just a glorified door kicker. You’ll be dead in a few hours, and I’ll have forgotten about you before the maggots finish you off.”

There was a short pause. “Let me guess, Lloyd. Your dad was somebody.”

“As a matter of fact, my father is somebody.”

“Figures. See you soon.” Gentry hung up the phone.

Riegel hid his smile from Lloyd. The Tech still stood with his hands on his knees, breathless from the run. He said, “Gentry sounds like he really thinks he’ll make it here.” There was palpable terror in his voice between his gasps for air.

Lloyd snapped at him, “Get back to work. I want helicopters in the air, I want men on the trains, and I want him dead before he gets to Paris!”

An hour later, Riegel stood on a flat rampart lining the rear of the château’s roof. He looked out through the decorative battlements at the cold but sunny afternoon. Three teams of Belarusians, each consisting of two men with assault rifles and radios, walked the grounds in a crisscrossing pattern. The sniper and his spotter were on Riegel’s left, high in the tower with a near-perfect 360-degree view of the lawn in the back and the lawn in the front. The helicopter with the thermal imaging equipment had just radioed in that they were on their way back from Paris with all the gear and the two-man team of engineers that could set it up in under an hour.

The Tech had put a hit team on the TGV from Geneva, the high-speed train to Paris. They’d reported no sign of Gentry. Three more teams and most of the available watchers were taking up positions on the highways through the French Alps that the Gray Man would have to traverse if he was traveling by car or motorcycle. Three more kill squads were in Paris. It was a natural staging area, a city full of his known associates and a city in which he might well stop for supplies or support.

There was not much left for Kurt Riegel to do at the moment but wait.

Still, something was bothering him.

It started out as a nagging irritation in the back of his mind and grew by the minute as he reconciled himself to the fact that he’d tidied up all the ends of the operation that he could at the moment. But it somehow remained after he could think of no other preparations to make.

Finally he closed in on the origin of his ill ease: something the Gray Man had said to Lloyd. Sure, Gentry would have figured out this op against him had to do with his assassination of Issac Abubaker. But what did he mean by Lloyd being Abubaker’s bitch? How could Gentry have known that Lloyd wasn’t just an employee of Abubaker, or of the CIA, doing a job? That he did his job for some other reason. Some sort of bargain. Riegel had read the Tech’s handwritten transcripts of Gentry’s phone conversation with Lloyd earlier in the day, before Riegel was on site. There was no mention by Lloyd or Fitzroy of LaurentGroup or the true reasons behind this endeavor. Why on earth would the Gray Man assume this operation involved some sort of deal between the parties, which clearly the term bargain implied? Why on earth would the Gray Man assume Lloyd’s life hung in the balance of his success?

It was another full minute of speculation, and when the answer came to Riegel, the sign came to him like it would were he hunting prey on safari. When tracking an animal, a skilled hunter can find indication in the animal’s tracks, indications that it knows it is being pursued. It had picked up a scent. It had seen movement. The gait changes when prey senses trouble, and only a uniquely adept hunter can pick up this subtle alteration in his quarry’s tracks.

Kurt Riegel was such a hunter.

Gentry had more than a scent of the real operation against him. He had specific details that he only could have gotten one way.

Kurt Riegel spun on the rampart and entered the château. He passed Lloyd, who was stepping out of the bathroom, continued down the corridor with the bearing of a storm trooper.

Lloyd saw the hunter’s determination. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Riegel said nothing. He marched down the hall and descended the wide, carpeted staircase to the second floor. He stormed down this hallway, past the sconces and the paintings, past the door to Elise Fitzroy’s room, past the bedroom where the kids were locked up. With Lloyd close on his heels, he passed Leary, one of the Northern Irish thugs Lloyd had brought along from LaurentGroup London. The fifty-two-year-old German threw his shoulder into the heavy door Leary was guarding, and it flew open. In the large room beyond, lying on his back in the bed, covered in white linen and facing the door, Sir Donald Fitzroy stared back at the procession of men filing into the room.

Riegel stomped across the room to Sir Donald’s bed. He showed none of the courtesy he had displayed in their earlier meeting. His face was that of a man who’d been played for a fool and was out for blood in recompense.

In a hushed voice that was incongruous to his mannerisms, Riegel asked a one-word question. “Where?”

Lloyd and Leary stood back in the center of the room. They looked at one another, searching for some clue as to what was happening.

“What are you talking about?” asked Donald.

Riegel drew his Steyr pistol, pressed it hard to the bald forehead of Sir Donald. “Your very last chance.” His voice was still a whisper. “Where is it?”

After a brief pause, Sir Donald Fitzroy’s arms moved slowly under the covers. Soon a mobile phone appeared. He handed it to the big German.

Riegel did not even look at it. He slipped it into his pocket. “Who?” he asked now, still in a hushed and angry voice.

Sir Donald said nothing.

“It will take me seconds to determine the owner of this phone. You can save yourself some measure of misery by giving me the answer yourself.”

Sir Donald looked away from Riegel, across the room to Lloyd, then his eyes drifted to the Northern Irish guard.

“Padric Leary worked for me back in the old days, back in Belfast. You were one of my best touts, Paddy.” He looked back to Kurt Riegel. “Still, the wanker shook me down for a king’s ransom to make a couple of lousy calls.”

As Riegel’s fury turned from the Englishman to the Irishman, Fitzroy called out to the stupefied guard, “Sorry, old boy. Don’t guess I can come through with the ten thousand quid, after all. You’ll just have to take solace in the fact you remain a loyal servant to a nobleman of the Crown.”

Leary looked to Riegel. “A bloody lie! There’s a right bleedin’ Brit for ya! He’s bloody lying! Before two days ago I’d never laid eyes on the fooking old bastard!”

“Is this your phone?” Riegel pulled it from his pocket and held it out.

Leary looked at it for several seconds, then began walking towards Fitzroy in his bed.

“How the fook did you get your wrinkled old hands on my—”

A gunshot cracked in the small room. Leary’s head snapped forward, and he crashed face-first at Riegel’s feet. The German dropped to a knee in a blur of action, raised his weapon in a flash as he went down.

Lloyd stood in the middle of the room, his arm outstretched and a small silver automatic at the end of it. It was still pointed to where the back of the Irishman’s head was before the .380 hollow-point round sent it lurching forward.

“Nein!” shouted Riegel in a Germanic scream.

As Lloyd spoke, he waved the gun around the room, used it as a pointer, swung it with his gesticulations. “We have enough problems out there without having to worry about enemies in our midst.” He then motioned to Riegel, who was still in a low crouch, eyes on the handgun dancing about the room at the end of Lloyd’s arm. “You wanted to treat Donnie boy like a gentleman, and this is how he repays you. You were too soft, and he used that against you. He’s been manipulating people since before I was born. That’s what he does! Find out who he called and what he said. You do it right now, or I will call Marc Laurent and tell him you are getting in the way of my mission!”

Lloyd lowered the gun and turned. He left the room. After a few more seconds on his knee with his gun raised, still scanning for targets, Riegel holstered his weapon, looked back to Fitzroy, and said, “I’m disappointed.”

Fitzroy’s voice was surprisingly strong. “I see the desperation, Riegel. I see it in your eyes as well as Lloyd’s. This is not only about a contract to siphon and ship natural gas. Abubaker has something else he’s holding over LaurentGroup. Some dirt about your past, your practices. Something that, should it see the bright light of day, would blow your organization to pieces.”

Riegel looked in a mirror hanging above a large armoire. He fixed his graying blond hair with his fingertips. “Yes, Sir Donald. We’ve allowed ourselves to be caught up in quite an unenviable predicament. My father used to say, ‘If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas.’ Well, we have lain down with many, many a dog for many, many years. Abubaker is one of the worst, and he knows much about what Marc Laurent will do for money and power. Since the decoloni zation of Africa, the continent’s resources have been ripe for exploitation for anyone prepared to dance with a despot. We have had Abubaker in our back pocket for years… and now we are in his. He’s threatening to talk about the length to which Marc Laurent has gone to take resources from Africa. It’s not a pretty story. We’d very much prefer the outgoing president held his tongue.”

With that, Riegel started to the door. Without a backward glance, he called out to his prisoner, “I’ll send someone to clean up the body.”

“Don’t bother. When Court gets here, there will be corpses all over the house.”