The Gray Man

TWENTY-SEVEN

Gentry hit the eastern edge of Paris just after nine o’clock on Saturday night. His pains in his feet and knees and thigh and wrist and ribs were only exceeded by his overwhelming fatigue, but still he pushed into town, found an overpriced parking space in an underground garage next to the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. He put all the guns in the backseat, locked the vehicle, and headed up to street level.

He’d had plenty of time to work out his Paris plan of action on the drive and had used the GPS to find a couple of shops in the area. After a few minutes on foot through the cold and misty evening, he hit a Mc-Donald’s, pushed through the crowd of kids of all nationalities, and made his way to the bathroom. Here he spent a minute and a half washing his tired face, slicking back his messy hair, using the bathroom, and wiping his clothing with a small gel air freshener.

It was a feeble attempt to clean up, but it was better than nothing.

Five minutes later, he stepped into a men’s store on the Rue de Rome just as the salesman was turning the sign at the door to Fermé. Court picked up a high-priced off-the-rack pinstripe suit, black, a white shirt, a muted blue tie, a belt, and shoes. He paid for these at the clothing counter, then headed across the street to a sporting goods shop with his suit bag over his shoulder. Here he bought a full wardrobe of rugged outdoor clothing in subdued browns.

He made his way back out into the street just as the last of the late-night clothing shops shut for the evening, found a pharmacy across from the station, and purchased an electric razor and a straight razor, scissors, shaving cream, and a few candy bars. He took a pair of black-framed costume glasses out of a rack and tried them on, decided they would suit his needs. Just as he stepped up to the counter to pay, he spotted a distinguished-looking long black umbrella hanging off a shelf by its hooked handle. The well-made accessory had caught his eye. Fumbling with his new wares and his other bags, he snatched up the umbrella and paid the bored Asian man at the register.

Just after ten, Gentry hauled all his loot back to the train station, stayed close to the walls, and kept his head down and away from the security cameras around the long, open hall. He ignored a half dozen Bosnian women begging for change and entered an empty bathroom down a hallway from a platform that had accommodated its last train of the evening. He stowed all his bags in a stall and went to work.

Quickly, he stripped to his undershirt and cut his hair. He tried to get as much in the toilet as possible but also laid plastic bags from his clothing purchases on the floor to catch the rest.

Next he used the electric razor to shave his head down to the absolute stubble. The straight razor and cream finished the job. He popped out of the stall twice to check his work in the mirror but retreated back to privacy quickly to avoid arousing suspicion, should someone walk in.

When he finished, he carefully pushed the bags of clippings into the waste bin and then flushed the toilet of hair. With his head cleanly shaved, he washed it again in the sink, quickly put on the suit and the shirt and the tie and the shoes. He slipped on his costume glasses, hefted his distinguished-looking umbrella, and collected the rest of his bags.

Eighteen minutes after Gentry walked into the bathroom, a different man walked out.

The hair and clothing had changed, of course, but also his gait was longer, his posture more erect. Court fought against his desire to limp off his right leg. The suited gentleman descended the stairs back to the parking garage and deposited his bags, retrieved one of the Glock pistols, then returned to the street, just a well-dressed Parisian strolling alone on his way home from a nice restaurant, his umbrella swinging along beside him as he moved with the pedestrians in the November mist. He climbed into a cab on the Rue Saint-Lazare at eleven thirty and instructed the driver in halting French to take him to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of the Left Bank.

Song Park Kim had spotted the Kazakhs by the Notre Dame Cathedral. He had no doubt they were hunters after the same target as he. From his sharp eye they could not hide, and the Korean had no doubt the Gray Man would ID them just as easily. He also passed three or four static surveillance operatives; his training picked them out in the Saturday-evening crowds, but he determined them to be adequately skilled, nonetheless.

Kim knew his target. If the Gray Man were to make a stop-off in Paris at all, he should have arrived by now. His already supersharp senses prickled a bit more as he listened to each dead-end report from the Tech over his earpiece, and the Korean walked from boulevard to boulevard, appearing nonchalant but remaining carefully equidistant to the known associate locations.

Kim walked in complete silence on an empty street. A single Irish pub lit the cobblestones ahead of him; otherwise it was dark, and the Korean used the night as his confederate, moving quickly and comfortably like a nocturnal hunter. At the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue du Sommerard he ducked down an alley, found a fire escape he’d spotted earlier in his full day of wandering the city, and leapt high to grab hold. The rucksack on his back swung, the HK machine pistol and the extra magazines causing the olive green bag to hang down as the Korean assassin pulled himself up the rungs. He climbed onto the metal staircase without a sound and scaled up to the sixth floor. Another heave with his strong arms, and he was over the top and on the roof. From here he could see the Eiffel Tower more than a mile away in front of him, the Seine was on his right, and the Latin Quarter all around him, stretching off to his left. The rooftops continued along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, touched one another, and made a path high above the streets below.

This would be Kim’s starting point for the evening. If Gentry ventured anywhere on the Left Bank, Kim could move quickly and quietly over this row of buildings or others like it. If the Gray Man showed on the Right Bank, Kim could be there within minutes by dropping down and running across any one of the bridges a few blocks to the north that spanned the cold, swift river, its surface shimmering as it flowed through the City of Lights.

Court Gentry climbed out of his taxi at an Internet café on the Boulevard Saint Germaine. He ordered an hour’s Web time and a double espresso from the bar, paid, and then politely nudged his way through the throngs of students towards an open computer at the back. His glasses low on his nose, his cup and saucer in his hands, his fancy umbrella hooked over his arm.

Once online, he opened a search engine and typed in “LaurentGroup properties in France.” He clicked on a Web site that showed off the real estate holdings of the huge firm: ports, offices, truck farms, and a Web page for corporate retreats. Here he found Château Laurent, a family property used by the corporation northeast of the tiny village of Maisons in Lower Normandy. Once he had the name, he searched the Web for more information about the property, found a site showing private châteaus of Europe, looked over the glamour shots of the squat seventeenth-century manor house. He committed many of the facts to memory, ignored others that didn’t seem so important, like the fact that Mitterrand had shot rabbits on the grounds or that some of Rom mel’s senior officers had billeted their wives there when in town to make final preparations to the Atlantic Wall.

He wrote the address down with a pen borrowed from a dark-skinned boy sitting next to him, then he surfed to LaurentGroup’s corporate Web site. It took him a few minutes to find the address in its corporate holdings — the château was listed just as a satellite office and not a company retreat — but from here Court found the listed phone number to the building. He wrote this on his forearm while the young kid who loaned him the pen laughed and offered him a sheet of paper, which Gentry declined.

Next the American took a few minutes to look at a satellite map of the area around the castle. The layout of the forest, streams running nearby, the orchards behind the 300-year-old stone building, and the graveled country roads outside the encircling wall.

He took one more look at the shots of the structure. A large turret was the high point of the building. Court knew a marksman would lurk there. He also knew there were 200 yards of open ground between Château Laurent and the apple orchard in the back. There was a shorter distance in front of the building, but a higher stone wall and better lighting. He imagined there would be patrolling men with dogs, watchers in the village, and maybe even a helicopter in the air.

Lloyd clearly had the resources at his disposal to protect a mansion from one lousy, limping attacker.

The fortification was not impenetrable; few places were impenetrable to Gentry. But if he left Paris right this very minute, he would not get to Bayeux before two in the morning. He had until eight to rescue the Fitzroys before Lloyd’s deadline, but this was false comfort. He knew if he was to have any chance for success, he’d have to make his move in the dead of night when the guard force would be groggy, and reaction times would suffer.

So, even though there were surely ways to breach Château Laurent, Court knew it would be tough to breach without laying up for hours and hours to get a feel for the security measures.

He would not have hours and hours. A couple hours’ watch at most before daylight.

And again, that was only if he left Paris right now, and that was not his plan.

At one a.m., Gentry sat in the Café le Luxembourg and drank his second double espresso of the evening among the young and the beautiful on the Rue Souf flot. A small ham sandwich sat untouched on a plate in front of him. The coffee was bitter, but he knew the caffeine would help him through the next few hours. That and good hydration, so he chugged his second five-euro bottle of mineral water while he pretended to read a day-old copy of Le Monde. His eyes darted around, but they kept returning to a building across the street, number 23.

Really, Court just wanted to get up and go, get out of town without pursuing his objective in Paris. He knew he would be taking a tremendous risk to pay a visit to the man in the apartment building across the little street, but he needed help, not just for himself but also a way to get the Fitzroys clear. The man across the street was named Van Zan, he was Dutch, a former CIA contracted ferryman and an awesome pilot of small prop planes. Court had planned to pay him a surprise visit, wave some cash under his nose, grossly underplay the danger in making a five a.m. trip up to Bayeux to pick up a family of four and Court himself, and then fly them low over the channel to the UK. Van Zan was a known associate, so Lloyd would have had his phone tapped within minutes of beginning this operation and would have planted surveillance outside his door. Court knew he couldn’t call Van Zan, but he figured he could duck past a watcher or two and drop in for a personal visit.

Yeah, it was a good plan, Court told himself as he gulped bitter espresso and pointed his unfocused eyes at the newspaper in front of his face.

But slowly he realized it wasn’t going to happen.

Sure, Court knew he could slip a couple of surveillance goons and make it in to see Van Zan.

A couple, yes.

But not a half dozen.

While sipping his espresso, he’d compromised five definite watchers, and there was another person in the crowd who did not belong.

Shit, thought Court. Not only did he now know there was no way he could get into Van Zan’s place to make him an offer, but he was beginning to feel extremely hemmed in and vulnerable, surrounded by a half dozen eagle eyes.

There were two, a young couple hanging out in the Quality Burger across the street. They checked out each white male passerby, then jacked their heads back towards the doorway to the alcove to Van Zan’s place. Then there was the man alone in his parked car. He was Middle Eastern, strummed his fingers on the dash like he was listening to music, watched the crowd as they passed. Number four stood at the bus stop in front of the Luxembourg Gardens, like he was waiting for a bus, but he never even glanced at the front of any of the buses that pulled up to see where they were going.

Five stood on a second-floor balcony, held a camera with a lens the size of a baguette, and pretended to take photos of the vibrant intersection, but Court wasn’t buying it for a second. His “shots” were up and down the pavement below him and across the street at the alcove. Nothing of the well-lit Panthéon up the road to his left. Nothing of the typically French produce stands and the beautiful iron fencing around the Luxembourg Gardens.

And number six was a woman, alone, in the café just a few tables ahead of Gentry. He’d made sure to get a table towards the back but near the window that ran along the side of the eatery. From here he could keep an eye on everyone in the room with him while covering his face with the paper, and yet still look to his right to Van Zan’s place and those around it. She had done the same thing, sitting just ahead.

Number six was slick. She spent 80 percent of her time looking down to her big, foamy mocha, not bouncing every glance out the window. But her mistake was her dress and her attitude. She was French — he could tell by clothes and countenance — but she was alone and did not seem to know anyone in the café. A pretty French girl in her twenties who spent Saturday night alone, away from friends but still out in the crowd, in a café unfamiliar to her, in a part of town she did not know.

No, Court determined, she was a pavement artist, a watcher, a follower, paid to sit there and keep her big doughy eyes peeled.

After eating his little sandwich and finishing his coffee, after giving up on his great plan to set up a foolproof escape route after saving the Fitzroys, he decided he needed to get away, get out of town, get up to Bayeux and work something out. His spirits had ebbed to their lowest point since yesterday morning — he was even more dejected than he’d been when sitting in the moldy pit in Laszlo’s laboratory — but Gentry knew the absolute worst thing he could do right now was sit and sulk. He dropped a wad of euro notes on his table and slipped down a back hall to the bathroom. After relieving himself, he continued down the hall, ducked into the kitchen like he belonged, walked straight to a back door and then through it onto the Rue Monsieur le Prince.

No one in the kitchen looked up at the man in the black suit.

The Gray Man had that ability.

Five minutes later, Riegel stood again on the walkway on the roof and stared through the crenellations at the moonlit gardens. The scent of the apple orchard in the distance mixed with the cold darkness. Riegel hoped to clear his head a bit, to get away from Lloyd and the Tech and the Belarusians and the incessant radio reports from the watchers in Paris who had yet to see anyone and the kill squads who had yet to kill anyone. His phone chirped in his pocket. His first inclination was to ignore the call. It was probably one of the foreign intelligence service chieftains wondering why their team hadn’t checked in and how the fuck they could have all been wiped out working on a commercial job. Riegel knew he’d spend months or years smoothing over this catastrophe, and that was only if the Lagos contract did get signed by eight a.m. If not, and Riegel did not want to even think of this, but if not, he’d likely lose his job or at least his position. Laurent had too much riding on this to not put every possible pressure to bear.

Riegel felt like his head was on the chopping block much like Lloyd’s. Not literally like Lloyd. Riegel was certain Laurent would eventually order Riegel to have Lloyd killed if the operation failed. Riegel would not die for this fiasco like the young American, but still, his career would be ruined if his corporation’s excesses in Africa were brought to light by that shameless son of a bitch, Julius Abubaker.

The phone rang again. With a sigh that blew vapor into the night, he pulled the phone from his pocket.

“Riegel.”

“Sir, it’s the Tech. There’s a call for you on the landline. I can send it to your mobile.”

“The landline? You mean the château’s phone?”

“Yes, sir. Wouldn’t say who he was. He’s speaking English.”

“Thank you.” A click. Riegel asked, “Who is speaking, please?”

“I am the guy you just can’t quite seem to kill.”

A chill ran up Kurt Riegel’s spine. He did not know Fitzroy had given his name to the Gray Man.

After a moment to collect himself, he said, “Mr. Gentry. It is an honor to speak with you. I have followed your career and consider you a very formidable adversary.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“I’ve been looking over your file.”

“Interesting?”

“Very.”

“Well, read up, Kurt, because I intend to pull my file out of your cold, dead hands.”

Kurt Riegel chuckled aloud. “What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to make a social call.”

“I have hunted all manner of quarry in my life, big and small, including quite a few humans. This is the first time I have had a social conversation with my prey shortly before the kill.”

“Same here.”

There was a short pause. Then Riegel laughed. His laughter carried across the dark expanse of the château’s rear garden. “Oh, I am your prey now?”

“You know I am coming for you.”

“You won’t make it, and if you somehow do make it to Normandy, you certainly won’t make it to me.”

“We’ll see.”

“We know you are in Paris.”

“Paris? What are you talking about? I’m standing right behind you.”

“You are a funny man. That surprises me.” Riegel said it with a chuckle, but he could not help himself from looking back over his shoulder and at the empty walkway around the château’s roof. “We have all your known associates covered with literally dozens of watchers.”

“Really? I wouldn’t know.”

“Yes. You must be going from one old friend to the next. You are identifying my surveillance teams because you are good, but you are not good enough to become invisible. So you must turn away from your potential source of aid. Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

“Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“As soon as we see you, we will swoop down. I have nearly as many guns in Paris as I do sets of eyes.”

“Lucky for me, I’m not in Paris.”

Riegel paused. When he spoke again, his tone had changed. “I want you to know, Phillip Fitzroy’s death was a regrettable accident. I was away at the time. It should not have happened.”

“Don’t bother to try to charm me with professionalism. That won’t save you when I come. You and Lloyd both are dead men.”

“So you continue to say. You should know, I recovered the telephone Sir Donald took from the guard. Your intelligence source from inside the château has been eliminated.”

Court said nothing.

“It’s looking bleak for your side, my friend.”

“It is. Maybe I’ll just walk away. Give up.”

Riegel considered this. “I don’t think so. When you went south to Geneva, I thought perhaps you were leaving the chase. But no. You are a hunter, as am I. It is in your blood, isn’t it? You can’t turn away. You have your quarry, your objective, your raison d’être. Without men like Lloyd and me to target, you would be a sorry soul, indeed. You will not walk off into the morning. You will come for us, and you will die along the way. You must know this, but you would rather be killed by your prey than give up the hunt.”

“Perhaps we can make an alternate arrangement.”

Riegel smiled. “Ah. Now we come to the reason for your call. Not just being social, then. I am listening with interest, Mr. Gentry.”

“You will lose the contract. When I am still alive in seven hours, Abubaker will give your natural gas deal to your competitor, and he will use whatever it is he has on LaurentGroup against you. You cannot avoid that. But if you let the girls and their mother go, just get them to a safe place, when I come tomorrow, after the deadline, I will kill Lloyd, do your job for you, but I will spare you.”

“Spare me?”

“You have my word.”

“In my mind’s eye I always pictured you as a two-dimensional predator. A gunman, nothing more. But you are actually a clever fellow, aren’t you? You and I could be friends under other circumstances.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“You make me smile, Gentry. But you will make me smile even more when I am standing over your body, another trophy for my case.”

“You really should consider my offer.”

“You overestimate your negotiating leverage, sir. We will have you within the hour.”

A pause. “You’d better hope so. Sleep well, Mr. Riegel.”

“I might stay up awhile. I am expecting some good news from my associates in Paris. Bon soir, Court.”

“À bientôt, Kurt. See you soon.”

“Just one more thing, Mr. Gentry. Call it professional curiosity on my part. Kiev… Not you, was it?”

The line went dead, and Riegel shook in the cold that seemed to have just blown down from the coast, four kilometers to the north.