The Gray Man

THREE

On London’s Bayswater Road, a six-story commercial building overlooks the bucolic anomaly in the center of the city that is Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Comprising a large suite on the top floor of the white building are the offices of Cheltenham Security Services, a private firm that contracts executive protection officers, facility guard personnel, and strategic intelligence services for British and other western European corporations working abroad. CSS was conceived, founded, and run on a daily basis by a sixty-eight-year-old Englishman named Sir Donald Fitzroy.

Fitzroy had spent the early part of Wednesday hard at work, but now he forced himself to push that task out of his mind. He took a moment to clear his thoughts, drummed his corpulent fingers on his ornate partners desk. He did not have time for the man waiting politely outside with his secretary — there was a pressing matter that required his complete focus — but he could hardly turn his visitor away. Fitzroy’s crisis of the moment would just have to wait.

The young man had called an hour before and told Sir Donald’s secretary he needed to speak with Mr. Fitzroy about a most urgent matter. Such calls were a regular occurrence at the office of CSS. What was irregular about this call, and the reason Fitzroy could hardly ask the emphatic young man to return another day, was the fact his visitor was in the employ of LaurentGroup, a mammoth French conglomerate that ran shipping, trucking, engineering, and port facilities for the oil, gas, and mineral industries throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. They were Fitzroy’s largest customer, and for this reason alone he would not send the man off with apologies, no matter what other matters pressed.

Fitzroy’s firm ran site security at LaurentGroup’s corporate offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, but as large as was Fitzroy’s contract with Laurent as compared to CSS’s other corporate accounts, Sir Donald knew it was no more than a drop in the bucket as far as the mammoth corporation’s total annual security budget. It was well known in protection circles that LaurentGroup ran their own security departments in a decentralized fashion, hiring locals to do most of the heavy lifting in the eighty-odd nations where the corporation owned property. This might mean something as innocuous as vetting secretaries at an office in Kuala Lumpur, but it also included the nefarious, like having a recalcitrant dockworker’s legs broken in Bombay, or a problematic union rally broken up in Gdansk.

And surely, from time to time, executives at Laurent’s Paris home office required a problem to go away in a more permanent fashion, and Fitzroy knew they had men on call for that, as well.

There was a dirty underbelly to most multinational corporations that worked in regions of the world with more thugs than cops, with more hungry people who wanted to work than educated people who wanted to organize and bring about reform. Yes, most MNCs used methods that would never make the topic list of the chairmen’s briefing or a budget line in the annual financial report, but LaurentGroup was known as an especially heavy-handed company when it came to third-world assets and resources.

And this did not hurt the stock price at all.

Donald Fitzroy forced his worry about the other affair from his head, thumbed the intercom button, and asked his secretary to escort the visitor in.

Fitzroy first noticed the handsome young man’s suit. This was a local custom in London. Identify the tailor, and know the man. It was a Huntsman, a Savile Row shop that Sir Donald recognized, and it told Fitzroy much about his guest. Sir Donald was a Norton & Sons man himself, dapper but a tad less businessy. Still, he appreciated the young man’s style. With a quick and practiced glance, the Englishman determined his visitor to be a barrister, well-educated, and American, though respectful of customs and manners here in the United Kingdom.

“Don’t tell me, Mr. Lloyd. Allow me to guess,” Fitzroy called out as he crossed his office with a gracious smile. “Law school here somewhere? King’s College, I suspect. Perhaps after university back home in the States. I’m going to venture to guess Yale, but I will have to hear you speak first.”

The young man grinned and offered a well-manicured hand with a firm grip. “King’s College it was, sir, but I graduated from Princeton back home.”

They shook hands, and Fitzroy ushered the man to a sitting area at the front of his office. “Yes, I hear it now. Princeton.”

As Fitzroy sat in a chair across the coffee table from his guest, Lloyd said, “Impressive, Sir Donald. I suppose you learned all about sizing people up in your former profession.”

Fitzroy raised his bushy white brows as he poured coffee for both men from a silver service on the table. “There was an article about me. A year or two ago in the Economist. You may have picked up a few tidbits about my career with the Crown.”

Lloyd nodded, sipped. “Guilty as charged. Your thirty years in MI-5. Most spent in Ulster during the Troubles. Then a change of vocation to corporate security. I’m sure that flattering article helped with your business.”

“Quite so.” Fitzroy said through a well-practiced smile.

“And I must also confess that I’m pretty sure I’ve never met an honest-to-goodness knight.”

Now Fitzroy laughed aloud. “It’s a title that my ex-wife still mocks to our circle of friends. She likes to point out that it is an honorific of gentility, not nobility, and since I am clearly neither, she finds the designation particularly ill-suited.” Fitzroy said this with no bitterness, only good-natured self-deprecation.

Lloyd chuckled politely.

“I normally conduct business with Mr. Stanley in your London office. What do you do at LaurentGroup, Mr. Lloyd?”

Lloyd set his cup down in the saucer. “Please forgive my abruptness in requesting a meeting with you, and please also forgive the abruptness with which I come to the point.”

“Not at all, young man. Unlike many Englishmen, especially of my generation, I respect the acumen of the American businessman. Endless tea and cakes have hurt British productivity, there’s little doubt. So just let me have it with both barrels, as you Yanks like to say.” Fitzroy sipped his coffee.

The young American leaned forward. “My rush has less to do with me being American, more to do with the critical nature of my firm’s need.”

“I hope I can be of service.”

“I’m certain of it. I am here to discuss an event that took place twenty hours ago in Al Hasakah.”

Fitzroy cocked his thick head and smiled. “You’ve got me there, lad. Must admit I don’t recognize the name.”

“It’s in eastern Syria, Mr. Fitzroy.”

Donald Fitzroy’s practiced smile faltered, and he said nothing. Slowly he lowered his cup to his saucer and placed it on the table in front of him.

Lloyd said, “Again, I apologize for the way I am rushing this along, but time is not merely crucial in this matter, it is virtually nonexistent.”

“I am listening.” The Englishman’s warm smile of ten seconds ago was dead and buried now.

“Around eight o’clock local time last evening, an assassin took the life of Dr. Isaac Abubaker. He was, you might know, the Nigerian minister of energy.”

Fitzroy spoke with a tone markedly less friendly than before. “Curious. Any idea what the Nigerian minister of energy was doing in eastern Syria? The only energy to be mined there is the fervency of the Jihadists who congregate before sneaking into Iraq to fuel the conflict.”

Lloyd smiled. “The good doctor was a Muslim of radical thought. He may have been in the area to offer some material support for the cause. I am not here to defend the man’s actions. I am concerned only about his assassin. As it happens, the killer survived, escaped into Iraq.”

“How unfortunate.”

“Not for the assassin. The killer was good. He was better than good. He was the best. He was the one they call the Gray Man.”

Fitzroy crossed his legs and leaned back. “A myth.”

“Not a myth. A man. A man of great skill, but ultimately a man of flesh and blood.”

“Why are you here?” Fitzroy’s voice held none of the paternal charm of their earlier conversation.

“I am here because you are his handler.”

“His what?”

“His handler. You vet his contracts, supply his logistical needs, assist him with intelligence, collect from the payers, and forward compensation to his bank accounts.”

“Where did you hear this nonsense?”

“Sir Donald, had I the time, I would offer you every courtesy you deserve, we could verbally fence, and I would feint and you would parry and we’d both strut around the room until one of our swords scored a killing strike. Unfortunately, sir, I am under a tremendous pressure, which forces me to dispense with the customary pleasantries.” He sipped his coffee again and made a little face at the bitterness of the brew. “I know the assassin was the one called the Gray Man, and I know you run him. You can ask me how I know this, but I will just lie, and our relationship in the next few hours depends upon our ability to speak frankly.”

“Go on.”

“As I said, the Gray Man crossed into Iraq but missed his extraction, because he foolishly engaged a superior insurgent force in a firefight. He killed or wounded ten men or more. Saved an American National Guardsman and recovered the body of another. And now he is on the run.”

“How do you know the Gray Man was the assassin of Dr. Abubaker?”

“There is no one else in the world who would be sent on that mission, because there is no one else in the world who could pull off that hit.”

“And yet, you say, he made a foolish mistake.”

“More evidence I am right. The Gray Man was once an operative for the U.S. government. Something went wrong, he was targeted by the CIA, and he went into hiding from his former masters. His soured relationship with Langley notwithstanding, the Gray Man is still very much an American patriot. He could not ignore a helicopter crash and eleven dead Americans without finding a measure of retribution.”

“That is your proof?”

Lloyd smoothed the drape of his suit coat. “It has been known by us for some time that the Gray Man had accepted a contract for the Abubaker hit. When the good doctor died as a result of foul play, there was no need to speculate as to the identity of his killer.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lloyd. I am an old man; you will have to connect the dots for me. What are you doing in my office?”

“My company is prepared to offer you a threefold increase in contracts if you will only assist us in the neutralization of the Gray Man. Without going into unnecessary detail, the president of Nigeria is asking us to help him bring justice down on his brother’s killer.”

“Why LaurentGroup?”

“That would involve unnecessary detail.”

“You will find it to be quite necessary if this discussion is to continue.”