The Gray Man

TWENTY-EIGHT

The watcher was bored, but he was accustomed to boredom. He’d spent twelve hours on the same street corner, sipped espressos in three different cafés, the first two at tables outside in the bright morning and the graying and chilly afternoon, and then lastly inside at a window table as the air filled with vapor and the last of the day’s warmth left the street and sidewalk.

At nine he’d moved to his car, a small Citroën parked at an hourly meter that he’d been feeding all day like a hungry pet.

But the watcher was good, and his boredom did not affect his tradecraft. He had the engine running for warmth but did not play the radio; he knew his ears were nearly as likely to pick up any hint of his quarry as were his eyes. The radio would rob from his senses the sharpness needed to pick a man he’d never seen out of a passing crowd of thousands.

He did not know the larger picture of this mission, only knew his role. He was static surveillance. Unlike other watchers on this detail, he was not assigned to a known associate location. Instead, his detail was a general choke point overwatch. He had a photograph of a man, and he was to spend the day trying to match the two-dimensional, years-old, five-by-seven picture to a living, breathing, moving target who would likely be trained in surveillance countermeasures and no doubt flow along in a crowd who would obstruct the watcher’s view.

But the watcher stayed optimistic; there was no other way to work. He knew if he doubted he’d see the man, this would detract from the acute senses he needed to bring to bear on his little operation.

The watcher was no killer, just a well-trained pair of eyes. A long time ago he’d been a cop in Nice, then he worked awhile in French counterintelligence as a pavement artist, following Russians or whomever around in leapfrogging details of surveillance, the bottom rung of the espionage ladder. More recently he’d practiced as a private investigator in Léon, but now he was principally an odd-job man for Riegel in Paris. There was always a need for the surveillance of someone on the Continent, and this watcher was usually one of the team. Though he was older than most of the rest, he was no leader. He was better than the rest when he was sharp, but he was a once and future drunk, could not be relied on long-term, though tonight he stayed off the wine and on the mission.

The watcher looked back again, for the thousandth time, to the photo in his hand. It was of no concern to him what the face had done or what fate awaited the face after he’d been spotted.

The face was not a man, just a target.

The face was not alive, did not breathe or think or feel or hurt or need or love.

The face was just a target, not a man.

Identifying a target in the field brought a bonus from Riegel. It did not bring even a shred of regret or guilt to the watcher.

Just after one thirty, the watcher pissed into a plastic bottle without missing a drop, also without bat-ting an eyelash at the ignobility of his action among the beautiful people passing by unawares within feet of him on the Boulevard Saint Germaine. He screwed the cap on tightly and tossed the warm bottle to the floorboard and just looked up when a man appeared in the half-light of a streetlamp. He walked along with another group of passersby, but he stuck out somehow to the watcher. He was younger than the others, was not coupled as were they, and his suit was slightly incongruous to their less formal attire. The man was twenty-five meters away when first noticed by the man in the Citroën. As he came closer, the eyeglasses and the shaved head and general facial features sharpened.

The watcher did not move a muscle, only glanced down to the photo clenched and moist and wrinkled in his hand, then back up to the three-dimensional figure closing in the evening fog.

Maybe. At fifteen meters, the watcher squinted, thought he detected a slight limp in the stride. Yes, this man was favoring his right leg. The French-speaking Brit who’d been sending out the updates throughout the day had said the target might have an injury to one thigh.

Yes. When the target moved to his closest point to the Citroën, not more than five meters away, the watcher saw two things about the man’s face that clinched his certainty that his choice of choke point and his twelve-hour-long vigil had paid off. There was a wince in the man’s cheeks with each step, just a touch, when his right foot touched down.

That and his eyes. The watcher was good, was well-trained, he saw the darting movement of the younger man’s eyes as he strolled. Where his body language portrayed a man sashaying through the Left Bank without a care in the world, the eyes were a flutter of constant movement. This man was watching out for watchers, and as soon as the pavement artist in the Citroën noticed this, he broke off surveillance, looked down to his hands until the man had fully passed. With a suddenly ferocious heartbeat, he waited several seconds to glance into his rearview, did not turn his head or lift his shoulders or even flex his neck to do so. Just his eyes flitted up and caught the man in the suit as he moved on, west on the Boulevard Saint Germaine.

The watcher put his car into gear as he pressed a single button on his earpiece.

After a beep indicating his call had been put through, he heard, “Tech, go ahead.”

The watcher was trained, was good, but he could not hide the excitement in his voice. This, even more than the money earned from the jobs, was what he lived for.

He said, “Tech, this is Sixty-three.” A very slight pause. “I have him. He’s moving east on foot.” He needn’t say more. The Tech would have his location on the GPS.

Moments like this fueled the watcher, kept him off the drink for long enough to see the mission through. He’d done well, he knew it, and now he would go home and celebrate with a jug of wine. And he would celebrate in the same manner in which he worked.

Alone.

The call was broadcast over a net that ensured all five kill teams in Paris would hear the news simultaneously. This was a mistake on the Tech’s part; it all but assured discord among the competitors, did not allow for fallback teams and coverage of escape routes. But the young Brit could not help himself; they’d been a half day without a positive sighting of the target, and it was only an educated guess that he would go to Paris at all, so when the ID came through, he just sent every man with a gun towards his location.

He would never admit it to Lloyd or Riegel, but since the target had disappeared in Geneva, the Tech had been fighting a growing wave of panic. He’d run operations, black operations, wet operations, had overseen logistics of hard assets, but never at any jeopardy to himself. This was the first time his superiors had purposefully set up a scenario where the hunted man, an überkiller, had known good and goddamn well where the operation’s control center was and how to get there. The bad guy had been given a golden-engraved invitation to come to the Tech’s physical location, and that was just fucking stupid. Still, the ponytailed man amid the huge table of technology had to admit, it did have the effect of focusing his skills acutely on the matter at hand.

The Tech had a personal incentive in getting this son of a bitch before he got to the château, and for that reason he’d just broadcast the target’s current coordinates as soon as the confirmation had come through.

Lloyd appeared behind him suddenly, just as he was admitting to himself he’d made a stupid move. His superior’s proximity made him jump a little. This entire operation made him jumpy.

“Riegel heard on the radio! We’ve got him?”

“A watcher on Boulevard Saint Germaine, a first-rate veteran, spotted him at a choke point. It was a low-probability sighting, to tell you the truth. Can’t tell from his known-associates list where the hell he’s going.”

“We aren’t going to lose him, are we?”

“I’m sending a couple more watchers into the area. Not too many. The Gray Man would surely spot anyone who isn’t topflight.”

“Understood. Which kill team are you sending to go after him?”

The Tech hesitated, cringed. Surely Lloyd would be furious when he learned they all were on their way. But before the Tech could answer, Lloyd said, “Fuck it. This ends now. Send every goddamned gun you have after this bastard. Who gives a shit if it gets messy? We’ve got to get his ass right there.”

The Tech breathed a sigh of relief that deflated his lungs. “Yes, sir.”

The Botswanans and the Kazakhs were closest; they ran from different ends of the Latin Quarter, arms down by their sides to keep their coats from flapping open as they jogged and revealing their weapons, their eyes fixed to the next obstacle in front of them and ears tuned to the radio headsets in their ears. The Tech relayed the last known whereabouts of the target. He was out of the initial watcher’s field of view now, but pavement artists were moving closer, and their intel would be relayed.

The Botswanans, five men, each carried sidearms, caliber.32, a relatively weak bullet, but they augmented their marginal firepower with their tactics. These men were trained to execute three-round strings of fire called a Mozambique Drill: a pair of rapid shots to the chest and then a third, coup de grâce, to the forehead. The term and the tactic came from fighting in Mozambique, when a Rhodesian soldier found his small-caliber handgun had trouble downing an African with shots only to the chest, so he added a headshot for added effect.

The four Kazakhs wore small Ingram machine pistols with folding wire stocks under their winter coats. Their running stood out to a policeman, and he called out to them as they sprinted across the street. He took them for foreigners up to no good and made a few hand motions to tell them to slow down.

One member of each kill squad also carried a digital video camera attached via Bluetooth connection to their mobile phones. This way they could prove to those at the command center that they were the unit responsible for the termination of the subject and the team who warranted the top prize.

This was, after all, still a contest.

Each team knew from their earpieces that the other was approaching the last known whereabouts of the target from the opposite direction; this rushed them as much as the need to close on the target before he disappeared. This was more than a hunt — it was a competition, and to these teams, professional pride meant as much to them as did winning the money.

“All elements, this is the Tech. We have two watchers three blocks east of the last target sighting. Neither watcher has reported any signs of the target. He may have stepped into a hotel or café on the street, turned south into the Latin Quarter, or north towards the Pont Neuf to cross the river.”

Both teams, closing from opposite directions, slowed and conferred after getting this last intel from the Tech. Then both teams continued on. The Botswanans ran east on the Saint Germaine, the Kazakhs west on the Saint Germaine. They spread out to cover both sides of the street in groups of two or three, each small team of hunters looking in doorways, alleyways, cafés, and hotels along the way.

Song Park Kim ran along the roofs of the buildings, got ahead of his quarry’s last sighting. His earpiece came to life. From the distinctive beeps, the Korean could tell the transmission was not open to the other teams and watchers. He was the only one receiving.

“Tech to Banshee 1, do you read?”

“I read.”

“Find a way down to street level, and I will guide you to him. He’ll ID the other teams and the watchers and try to get away. They will force him to flee, and he won’t be expecting a single assassin. I’ll put you in position to stop him.”

“Yes.”

Kim stepped over the edge of a six-story apartment building’s roof, fluidly found footing on a windowsill. lowered himself down, reached across to a drainpipe, and swung his legs over. The pipe was poorly attached to the wall, so he used it only to make his way to a fire escape, followed it down, and dropped the final few feet to the ground, six floors of descent in under a minute.

“Banshee 1 is on the street, Tech. Guide me to the target.”

“There are two teams closer than you, Banshee 1. We think he’s turned onto the Rue de Buci, sticking with the crowds for security. You can move two blocks north and be in position to cut him off if they don’t spot him.”

“Yes,” said Kim, but he had no intention of following this direction. The Korean felt he could read the Gray Man’s thoughts. Kim had been hunted many times, and from this experience, he felt he could divine this hunted man’s every move. If teams of foreign agents were following him through central Paris on a Saturday night, Kim would notice, and so would the Gray Man. If dozens of static watchers were placed in his path, Kim would be immediately aware of it, and so would the Gray Man. He might not identify every single adversary, but the Tech had thrown so many bodies into the operation, it would have to be obvious to an operator as skilled as the Gray Man that he was facing a full-on wet operation, that all the stops had been pulled and all normal rules of engagement and restraint were out the window. There would be no safety in a crowd. The gunmen that the Gray Man surely had spotted by now were going to take the first opportunity to destroy their target, and bright lights and passersby would be more hindrance than security blanket to the hunted man.

Yes, Kim could feel what the Gray Man was feeling just now, and he allowed this symbiosis to guide him, not the directives of the Tech. This melding of the minds between Kim the hunter and the Gray Man the hunted steered the Korean assassin through the misty night, three blocks to the east, to a darkened alleyway just a half block off the noise and lights and swarms of diners and revelers. He knew the river Seine was just a hundred meters to the north, meaning if the Gray Man detected the heavy surveillance, he would need to turn south to melt into the night; the north would afford him nothing but a bridge or two, natural choke points that he would avoid at all costs.

Song Park Kim found the darkest spot in the little alleyway, twenty-five meters north of the Boulevard Saint Germaine and twenty meters south of the Rue de Buci. He could move off in either direction in seconds if the watchers spotted the target nearby. But Kim had a feeling this little alley would be the site of his final confrontation with his adversary. There were restaurants and nightclubs brimming with patrons just yards from his darkened hiding space. Plus there were competing kill teams close by. He did not want to draw attention to his act by using a firearm, so he left the MP7 in the backpack on his shoulders. Instead, he pulled his folding knife from his front pocket, flicked open the matte black blade, and tucked his body deeper into the dark to await his prey.

Court Gentry felt his black suit moistening from the sweat running down his back as he walked east on the Rue de Buci. In his right hand his umbrella swung by his side with each step; he fought the urge to use it as a cane because his feet were hurting from the lacerations he’d picked up in Budapest the day before.

But it wasn’t the walk that caused him to sweat, it was the eyes scanning the street in front of him. Thirty yards distant he saw a young couple huddled together on a bench, talking to one another but actively checking the male passersby. Court had found a bald-headed man about his own age to follow behind; he kept his eyes ahead of the man to see if he was garnering attention that seemed out of place. This would indicate to Gentry he’d been spotted and identified via radio to other surveillance teams in the area.

Immediately the young lovers fixed on the bald man for a few seconds, one seemed to speak to the other about the man, and then their eyes moved on, satisfied he was not the subject of their surveillance. Court knew immediately he had been compromised. He’d seen at least ten watchers so far and was reasonably sure he’d slipped every one of them, but there must have been someone he missed, some asset static in a dark window or a car on the street or somewhere Gentry could not get a fix on him, and this asset had broadcast Court’s appearance and direction to every watcher and hunter in the city.

Quickly, Court chanced a glance back over his shoulder. Three dark-skinned men were moving quickly, looking in a shop window, not twenty meters behind. Across the street there were two more. These guys were part of the same squad, and they were scanning the north side of the street, looking over tables full of diners in front of a café.

Shit. Court turned left down a little passageway off the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie and followed it in the dark. At its end was dim light from a quiet passage twenty yards on. The watchers would be sparse off the main drag of the Left Bank as long as they didn’t know he’d spotted the surveillance on him.

Court walked into the dark, his eyes on the light ahead, the tip of his umbrella scuffing the wet cobblestones. The noise echoed in the black, covered passageway.

Court needed to catch a cab back to the Gare Saint-Lazare, pick up his Mercedes, and head on to Bayeux. This stop in Paris, like the stop in Budapest yesterday afternoon and the one in Guarda last night, had been all but useless. At least this time he had gotten away without being hurt, and that was something, though he really needed more help before—

From the close dark, there was a flash of movement. Quickly from his left came the figure of a man. Before Court’s lightning reflexes could react, he sensed further movement low, an arm swinging towards him. Gentry moved his own right arm to parry it, but he was too slow.

He was never too slow.

Court Gentry felt the knife stab into his belly and shear through soft flesh just above his left hip bone.