The Gray Man

TWENTY-NINE

At two a.m., a shaft of light poured into the blackened second-floor bedroom. Sir Donald lay awake. The rest of the family had been moved into his room so that they could all be watched over by just one guard. Claire slept fitfully on her grandfather’s left; Kate snored on his right. Elise was so medicated it was hard to tell if she was with it or not. She lay sprawled across a chair and ottoman on the other side of the room.

Donald saw the silhouette of the Scottish guard, the one named McSpadden. He figured he was in for a covert beating and wondered if he could take much more.

McSpadden walked up to the bed, ignored the little girls, and whispered to Fitzroy, “I’ll do you a deal, old man. Here’s a phone. Snuck it out of one of the Ivan’s kit bags. They’re all at battle stations now; I’m the only one on the floor.”

“Bugger off. I’m trying to sleep,” said Fitzroy.

“Plenty of time for that come the morning if you’re dead.”

“You don’t think I can smell a trap? Why would a tosser like you just hand me a bloody phone?”

“Because… because I want some… consideration when this is through.”

Fitzroy cocked his corpulent head and pressed it deeper into the pillow to focus on the man standing above him. “What sort of consideration?”

“The Gray Man… Heard he did Kiev. If he did Kiev and he did half the other ops they say he did, if he did the team in Prague and Budapest and the teams in Switzerland… Hell, he just might make it here. He makes it here, and my gun’s going in the dirt, I’m doing a runner. I’m not fighting it out with that cold bastard. Got a couple of things to live for, I do. You understand me? Yeah, he shows up, and I’m doing a runner, and I don’t want Donald bleeding Fitzroy or his crazy attack dog coming after me, you see?”

The Scot held out the phone to Fitzroy, and he took it.

“On the level?” asked Fitzroy.

“You’re probably dead as dust come the morning, Sir Donald. I’m not sticking my neck out too far. But if you do make it, remember Ewan McSpadden was the one who helped you.”

“I’ll do that, Ewan.”

“Call your dog, tell him if he makes it… I’m the bloke with the green shirt and the black trousers. My gun will be in the dirt; he needn’t worry about that.”

“Good lad, McSpadden.”

The Scot receded into the dark; the shaft of light reappeared and then narrowed and extinguished behind him.

The knife dug deeper into Gentry’s stomach. The pain was horrific. Knee weakening. Bowel loosening. Something was happening that Gentry didn’t understand, so he looked down, saw he’d somehow caught the attacker’s wrist with the hook of the umbrella. Gentry pulled down and away on the umbrella’s shaft, did not have the strength to pull the knife out of his body, but at least his effort kept the blade from sinking in more than a couple of inches. Painful, excruciatingly painful, but much better than the knife digging in hilt deep or worse, cutting up into his gut like a fish filleted.

With all his might Court pulled down on the umbrella with his right hand. With his left, he reached out at the attacker. He fisted him in the chest weakly, because there was little strength in reserve after the exertion from his right arm and the pain deep in his belly. The assassin punched back, tried a head butt, but Court leaned away from it in time.

Court reached across his body to his waistband, took poor hold of the Glock pistol with his left hand but drew it anyway, just pulled it free of his belt as the assassin knocked it away.

The steel and polymer weapon clanged to the cobblestones, rattled off in the dark.

Their free hands fought one another, the attacker in the dark warding off an attempted eye gouge and Gentry deflecting an open-handed blow to his Adam’s apple that would have surely killed him, the tempered steel shaft stabbing into him notwithstanding.

The attacker gave up on trying to yank the knife up to the sternum or push it in deeper; the umbrella’s hook on his arm prevented him from accomplishing either task. Instead, the blade cut down, came to rest against the hip bone and gouged into it.

Gentry stifled a scream. He was nearly out of his mind from pain but knew more killers were yards away. Any slim chance he had at survival against the blade in him and the man manipulating it would disappear if more men intent on his demise heard his cries.

Court changed tactics himself. He pushed forward with his legs and shoved his chest into the smaller man, an Asian he could clearly now see. He slammed him into the wall, which only served to jab the knife in him a fraction of an inch deeper.

Court followed this with a head butt that slammed the two men’s foreheads together with a crack louder than any other sound in the alleyway since the fight began. The umbrella still held the Asian’s right hand down. Court pushed again with his body, and the Asian stumbled backwards all the way across the alley and slammed into the other wall. Court was still attached by the knife’s blade, so he moved along with his attacker. The light was better over here and, through the agony that threatened to cloud his mind to mush, Court saw the straps of the backpack and realized the man was now trying to take hold of something behind him in the bag with his free hand.

Court grabbed the Korean’s wrist with his own free hand and slammed it back into the brick wall.

“What’cha got?” Court asked, his voice quavering with pain and exertion. “What’s in the bag?” There was enough light for eye contact on this side of the covered alley, and their eye contact did not waver, though both men’s lids twitched with the expenditure of effort. One pushed forward, the other pushed back. “What’s in the bag?”

Gentry yanked sideways with the umbrella, pulled the Asian quickly off balance, used the moment to reach behind the man to the pack pressed against the wall. The American had to tighten his abdominals to do so, and his voice cracked as he groaned in agony.

The Asian turned the knife; the two-inch-deep wound opened with the twist and Gentry felt blood run freely across his crotch and down the insides of both legs.

“Ahhh.” It was quieter than a scream, but it echoed in the alleyway nonetheless. Court had the bag now and got a hand on a zipper. Kim knocked the hand away with the side of his head. Another head butt from Gentry stunned the assassin, and Court quickly opened the top of the backpack and reached inside with his left hand.

“What’s this? What’s this?” he asked as tears began streaming down his face. The tears dripped into the spit that sprayed from his sobbing mouth as he spoke. The discharge flew into his attacker’s face with his words. “This what you want? This what you’re after? Huh?” Court pulled the end of a small black sub gun from the bag, stared into the new fear in the eyes of his adversary. Kim reached back and got his hand around the squat suppressor of the weapon, then pushed harder on the knife hilt, Court tried to back off of the blade but could not, and the shaft sank another millimeter into his gut.

Court slid his finger into the trigger guard and fired the MP7. Kim had left the fire selector switch on semiauto, just as Gentry would have. The barrel was pointed at the brick wall behind Kim, and rounds exploded off the masonry and debris whizzed around them both. As fast as he could, Gentry pulled the trigger. Each ignition of a cartridge in the breach caused recoil, which made Court’s body jerk, which allowed the knife in his gut to bite into a new morsel of flesh and bone. Three rounds, five rounds, ten rounds, twenty rounds. Kim screamed in agony and let go of the weapon’s silencer, nearly white-hot now from the gunfire. He wrapped his burned hand around the hand that held the knife, and now with both clenched fists and all his might, he tried to force one last, fast, massive thrust of the blade through to the Gray Man’s spine.

The American’s blood pumped over his scorched fingers.

Gentry brought the empty HK down in one quick action, smashed the hot barrel into Kim’s face, breaking his nose.

Both men fell to the cobblestones, their connection finally broken. Kim lay on his back, head against the bullet-pocked wall, blood gushing out his nose, and his burned hand cradled in his lap. His chest heaved from exertion. Gentry lay on his side in the center of the alley, his chest also heaving, the black hilt of the black knife jutting obscenely from his lower abdomen.

Court tried to pull the knife free, cried out as he did so. The Asian, exhausted and stunned from the concussion, clambered to his knees and frantically crawled across the cold stones to close the distance between them.

At five feet he leapt into the air, desperate to get his hand on the knife before the Gray Man pulled it out of his stomach.

An instant before he landed on his target, the full length of the black knife’s blade appeared in the low light, slick, wet with blood. Court slashed it back-handed across the wide-eyed Asian’s throat as he came down. Arterial blood spewed forth.

Song Park Kim thrashed in the alleyway and died in seconds, his lower torso ending up across the Gray Man’s body.

Gentry dropped the knife on the cobblestones and pushed the dead man’s still-spasming legs off him. The body rolled unceremoniously onto its back, and all movement ceased. Court unfastened his tie with one hand and wadded it into a ball. He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself and then pressed the ball down into the hole in his abdomen. Blood ran down his white shirt onto the pavement.

“Jesus!” he screamed, tears and spit and snot covering a face contorted with pain. He felt the nausea brought on by abject agony but quelled it by focusing on his work.

Normally he was careful about his DNA, but now he didn’t bother. It would take a bathtub of bleach, a five-man cleaning crew, and a full day to sanitize this scene, and Court had nothing of the sort.

The pressure of the wadded necktie actually reduced the pain when he flexed his abs; without it, he would not have been able to stand. But he did stand, stumbled, steadied himself on the alley’s wall, and shuffled on. He heard voices behind him. Passersby had been alerted by the noise of the scuffle. Police and killers would be here in seconds. He stumbled around the corner to a shopping passage. The stores were closed for the night, and there were no window shoppers. With his body slumped over, his face white, he staggered away from the orgy of blood behind him.

He moved north off into the cold night, his life’s blood draining down his leg and dripping onto the paving stones at his feet.

Thirty seconds later, one of the Botswanans shoved his way through a panicking crowd and found the Korean’s body, the dark alley a blood-dripping horror show in the beam of light from the African assassin’s tactical flashlight. He called it in to the Tech.

“There is a dead man here. He is Asian. Nearly decapitated.”

Lloyd and Riegel stood behind the Tech as the Botswanan assassin’s accented English came over the speakers.

Mr. Felix entered the room, stood back in the shadows, and watched intently.

The Tech flipped a switch on his bank of electronics in front of him. “Banshee 1. Do you read? Banshee 1, how do you copy?”

There was a shuffling sound on the speaker. Lloyd and Riegel looked up in hope.

“He can’t come to the phone right now, don’t bother to leave a message,” said a mocking African voice. The Botswanan had obviously pulled the radio set off the dead Korean and was speaking into it.

Riegel said, “The Korean was probably the best man we had on this job. His organization is going to be furious he was lost on this operation.”

“Fuck ’em,” snapped Lloyd. “They should’ve sent us someone who could complete the task. When they gave us only one man, I knew their heart wasn’t in this game.”

“You are an idiot, Lloyd. Do you have any idea what that assassin has done in his career?”

“Sure do. He left a greasy stain in a Paris alleyway. The rest I couldn’t give a flying fuck about.”

Just then the Botswanan hunter came back over the speakers. “There is a blood trail leading north. We’ll follow it; we’ll find him.”

“You see,” said Riegel. “Banshee 1 served his purpose.”

Three minutes later, a watcher came over the net. “Fifty-four to Tech.”

“Go ahead, Fifty-four.”

“I’m in a fourth-floor window near the Place Saint-Michel. I believe I am tracking the subject on my camera. I can send it to you for verification.”

It took ten seconds to make the connection. When the plasma monitor in the control room sparked to life, the lights of Paris shone brightly, silhouetting the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Seine was a glimmering ribbon bisecting the city. The camera did not seem to be centered on anything in particular.

“Where is he?” shouted Riegel the hunter, wild from the chase now, frantically searching for his quarry. “Fifty-four, tighten up on the subject!”

“Oui, monsieur.” The image zoomed to the Pont Neuf bridge that ran over the river to the cathedral. A lone figure in a dark suit hobbled, stumbled, stopped, and stooped in the middle of the bridge. Clearly the man was wounded, fleeing, trying to cross from the Left Bank to the Île de Cité, the tiny island in the middle of the Seine upon which the cathedral of Notre Dame stands.

“Look at him. He’s toast!” shouted Lloyd with excitement. “Who do we have close by?”

The Tech answered before Lloyd finished posing the question. “The Kazakhs are thirty seconds out. You’ll see them coming up the bridge from the south. The Botswanans are close behind them, and the Bolivians are to the north of the Seine. The Sri Lankans are still ten minutes west.”

The video image widened enough to see the buildings on the Quai des Grands Augustins, the Left Bank road that rimmed the Seine. Several men sprinted along the road and turned right onto the bridge. One of them slipped on the wet cobblestones and fell, but the others held their footing and raced up the incline of the Pont Neuf.

“This is it!” Riegel proclaimed victoriously. “Tell them to finish him, get the body into a car and on the way to the heliport. We’ll have it ferried here for Mr. Felix to see up close.”

“That would be satisfactory, Mr. Riegel, thank you,” said Felix, standing like a statue behind the animated men in front of the bank of monitors.

The watcher’s camera tightened back in on Gentry. He’d turned around and was facing the Kazakhs, who were not more than forty yards away now. The injured American stood upright, though it obviously pained him to do so. He looked back over his shoulder to the other end of the bridge.

Lloyd said, “You won’t make it, Court. You can’t run anymore. You are so fucked.” There was mirth in his voice.

But Riegel muttered, “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Lloyd.

“Scheisse,” Riegel repeated himself in German.

“What’s wrong with you? We’ve got him!”

Just then, the Gray Man stepped to the cement railing. He looked back up to the men closing on him, twenty-five yards off.

“No!” said Lloyd, understanding Riegel’s worry. “No, no, no, no—”

Kurt Riegel pulled the microphone off the Tech’s table, jammed the button down, and shouted “Schiest ihn sofort!” He caught himself speaking German in his excitement. He screamed, “Shoot him now!”

But it was too late. Court Gentry tipped himself over the railing, fell thirty feet to the shimmering water, its crystalline surface exploding as his body crashed through it, his dark form disappearing as the current re-formed into a swiftly flowing mirror.

Lloyd spun away from the monitor. He put his hands on his head in shock. Then he turned to Felix, who remained silently behind.

“You saw that! You saw him! He’s dead!”

“Falling into water does not kill a man, my friend. I’m sorry. I need confirmation for my president.”

Lloyd turned back to the Tech and screamed loud enough to be heard all over the château, “Goddammit! Tell them to get their asses in the water! We need his corpse!”

The image on the plasma screen showed the Kazakhs converging on the portion of the Pont Neuf just vacated by the target not five seconds earlier. They all looked over the side. Five men were on the bridge. Two jumped over the railing and dropped into the cold, black water, while three ran back to the Left Bank.

Riegel belted out instructions to the Tech. “He’s injured badly, and that fall didn’t help him. Get the Botswanans there; move the Bolivians and the Sri Lankans, too. Put somebody in a boat in case his body doesn’t wash up immediately. Brief everyone to search both banks. Move all the watchers downstream to hunt for where he washes up. We need his body, and we need it now!”