by Mark Greaney
He paid in euros, which annoyed the Serb but he took them anyway, and he gave Court a key. Court immediately locked his door behind the man and lay down on the mattress fully dressed.
His body ached from head to toe, but he slept like the dead until morning.
The next day he walked the streets of the city, learning the area and picking up provisions. He studied the dress and the mannerisms of the locals, the accessories men carried, the way people covered themselves from the cold or the method by which women would greet one another with a kiss or men would shake hands.
Whenever Court found himself in a new environment he endeavored to know the people intimately by observation. He needed to fit in, of course, and an awareness of how a man his age should dress and act and talk would help him play his role correctly. But there was more to this exercise than that. Gentry had to be able to pick out others here who did not belong. If he saw a man wearing an odd style of coat or two women who seemed either stiffer or more familiar than normal when they met on the street, Gentry knew those people merited a second glance. Could they be trackers sent by any one of the myriad organizations hunting him?
There was a science to his study, but it was not rocket science; it was automatic for Court now, and almost easy for him to discern those who did not fit in to the landscape. Enough years on his own in strange lands had made him a uniquely adept people watcher.
As he ventured through the districts he also noticed security cameras; he found them virtually everywhere. On street corners, in shop windows, along building exteriors, in parking lots, even mobile police camera stands.
Court countered this surveillance by moving through town with the hood of his coat up, a wool scarf wrapped over his nose and mouth, and, when the weather and lighting conditions allowed, sunglasses over his eyes. He did not know the quality or efficiency of the facial recog software used by U.S. authorities, or even if Stockholm would be a city covered with electronic surveillance by his opposition, but he planned on leaving nothing to chance. With the low temperatures his winter gear would fit in perfectly, so he decided he’d remove his scarf only when indoors, and take off his hood only when he was back in his room.
Being identified by Townsend or CIA or NSA electronic surveillance was his main concern here in Stockholm. Money, by contrast, would not be a problem, not for months anyway, as the Moscow Bratva’s cash would last for a long time in the manner in which Gentry was accustomed to living. But he had to exchange euros for kronor, and he did not want to enter banks or deal with aboveboard currency exchange booths, because he’d be forced to stick his face in a camera to do so.
He solved this small problem in Hortoget neighborhood, the tiny Chinatown of Stockholm. He identified several black-market moneychangers within minutes and chose one at random; he’d used men like this for years when moving about off the grid. He pulled five thousand euros from his pocket, the man charged him a usurious exchange rate for his trouble, and just like that, he was flush with local currency.
After stopping back at his flat with his groceries and other provisions, he ventured back into the cold, this time on a different mission. Again, he covered his face and head, taking a mental note of every camera he could find in his AO; he even crossed streets to avoid them, although he knew no recog algorithm on earth could identify him from the half-inch of exposed cheekbone that remained uncovered between his scarf and his sunglasses.
He found a small used electronics store on Klara Vattugrand near the train station, and he entered, passing the televisions and audio equipment at the front of the store before removing his hood and lowering his scarf, lest any distant street camera catch a fleeting image of him. There were security cameras here in the little store, of course, but Court kept his scarf over his jawline and his sunglasses on, and he identified the location of the cams immediately and did his best to avoid them.
He’d come to purchase a laptop. He planned to use the computer to research secure communications with which he could contact Russ Whitlock. Yes, Russ had passed Court a URL that he claimed would lead him to a protocol to do this, but Court wasn’t going to simply follow instructions. He would look into the technology independently, find his own means of establishing secure comms, and only then would he reach out to the other former AAP asset.
Gentry had decided to contact Russ, telling himself he would take his time to do it carefully and securely, and also telling himself he was doing it only because it was prudent, from a PERSEC perspective, to do so. If the man had information about Townsend’s training, tactics, and procedures, Court knew it would be in his interest to stay in touch, to bleed out as much intel as the man would give.
There might have been other reasons Court wanted to communicate with Whitlock, but he did his best to deny them. Russ had said it himself: They were the only two left, they were singletons, and they were alone out in the world. Some level of communication, if ultrasecure and based on the highest levels of encryption and not even the lowest degree of trust, might be a good thing.
The salesman in the electronics shop was young and an ethnic Indian, but he spoke English as perfectly as most Swedes. He sold Court a used MacBook Pro, a faux leather case, and an external battery.
Court paid in kronor, wrapped himself back up like a mummy, and returned outside to the cold.
He was completely unaware that a partial image of his face had been collected by a camera built into the bezel of a laptop on a display stand in the back of the store. The feed had been networked to the wireless router of the computer shop, which was protected only by off-the-shelf security encryption.
Court did not head back to his flat immediately. He spent an hour on an SDR, and while doing so he stepped into a convenience store and purchased a prepaid mobile phone.
Court liked it here in Sweden, and it was nice to move around fully cloaked. With a little luck, he thought, he might stay in Stockholm till late spring, when walking the streets with a hood over his head and a scarf across his face would no longer work. Then he would move on, smarter and slicker, and by then he just might have a plan.
His plan, he was certain, would not allow him to stop hiding, but he thought maybe, just maybe, soon he could stop running so damn much.
TWENTY-FOUR
Ruth Ettinger, senior targeting officer in the Collections Department of the Mossad, reasonably assumed her meeting this morning would take place in the unincorporated community of Langley, Virginia, at the George Bush Center for Intelligence, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. But a phone call just before eight A.M. that Thursday morning, just as she was climbing into her cab in front of her hotel in Tysons Corner, directed her instead to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, some three and a half miles away from the CIA.
The cab dropped her at the outer gate in front of Liberty Crossing, the name given to the intelligence campus in Tysons Corner that housed both the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Ruth’s destination was Liberty Crossing Two, or LX2, the office building that held ODNI, the bureaucracy created after 9/11 and placed in charge of all seventeen American intelligence organizations and agencies.
At the Tysons McLean Drive gate to Liberty Crossing she handed over her cell phone and her handbag to federal security officials; then she was wanded and badged, and soon she boarded a golf cart driven by an armed security officer. The golf cart dropped her at the front door of LX2 and here she was met by a woman waiting outside, bundled in her coat and stamping her feet to stay warm.
Inside Ruth passed through a metal detector and was ushered into a small conference room on the third floor of the building. She was left alone at a conference table with a coffee service and a tray of glistening Danishes for over a half hour. She ignored the pastries, sipped black coffee, and wrote notes to herself on a notepad, anxious about the meeting to come.
Finally the door opened and she found herself face-to-face with Denny Carmichael, the director of t
he CIA’s National Clandestine Service.
He strolled in with confidence; before the door shut behind him she saw that he had an entourage of at least half a dozen men and women left behind in the hallway, and she was thankful he had chosen to meet with her alone.
This particular quick get-together had been arranged by the director of Mossad’s Collections Department, Menachem Aurbach, an old friend of Carmichael’s. The two men had served in the trenches of their respective agencies since Ruth was in preschool, and they shared a professional and personal respect for one another, despite the occasional rivalries between the two ostensibly friendly nations. Aurbach had called Denny at home the evening before and implored him to meet with a young targeting officer already in the States on a matter that he promised would be of mutual importance for both agencies. Menachem had also suggested Denny keep the meeting off the books, as there were matters to be discussed that he might not want jotted down for the public record.
Carmichael agreed; he and Aurbach went back over thirty years, after all, but Ruth imagined he must have been somewhat put off by the request.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” Ruth said as she stood and walked around the conference table, her hand extended.
“My pleasure,” he said, but no pleasure showed on his face, only a mild surprise that the woman from Mossad that he was here to meet was actually quite attractive.
Ruth noted his attraction. It neither insulted nor flattered her; she only saw it as something to file away, to use if possible and if necessary.
Denny’s eyes lingered over her a little longer than necessary, and he smiled a craggy smile at her as they sat. There were so many deep-set worry lines in his face that it looked to Ruth as if his smile might cause his head to shatter. She put him in his midsixties, but he was fit and moved like a much younger man, and, it seemed to her, this was an impression of himself that he was more than happy to convey.
He said, “I’m sorry we had to change the venue on you at the last minute. Got called over here to ODNI early for a quick confab with the director.”
“No problem at all, sir.”
“How is Menachem?”
“He is sick and tired and disagreeable and pushy.”
Carmichael chuckled, surprised by the frankness of the young woman. “Unchanged in the past thirty years. That’s good, I guess.”
“He sends his regards.”
“He called me at home last night, asked me to make time to meet with one of his best people. He speaks very highly of you.”
Ruth did not smile at the platitude. Instead she said, “I solve problems for him and make him look good.”
“I see you don’t lack confidence,” Denny said with another surprised chuckle. He sipped water from his bottle, then smiled at Ruth once more. “I come from a different age, Ms. Ettinger, so you will have to forgive me if you find this out of line. But I just have to say it. The Mossad has always possessed the best-looking female officers.”
Ettinger did not miss a beat. “And the CIA has always possessed the most impertinent executives.”
Carmichael’s eyebrows rose at the young woman’s comment. She’d seen this before, many times. That moment when the man in front of her realizes she is not just a pretty face. He shuffled a little in his chair, and she liked this, liked making lecherous men uncomfortable with her intelligence and willingness to confront them. He laughed finally, finding her candor refreshing. “Your statement is true, but so is mine.”
Ruth only smiled politely.
“Tell me about the problem that brings you here today.”
She got right to it. “We have a source in Beirut. Not a joint source. One of ours exclusively.”
“Any good?”
“He has been reliable in the past.”
“And you want to share him with us?” He said it as a joke, and she obliged him with a smile before shaking her head. He moved on. “What is your source telling you that you, in turn, would like to tell me?”
“He is telling me—he is telling his case officer in Beirut, I should say—that Iranian agents met just yesterday with an American. A man whom they have hired to assassinate my prime minister. A contract killer who was, if rumors are to be believed, trained by your agency.”
“Who is this killer?”
“The Gray Man,” she said, her eyes locked on his, searching for hints of what this news meant to him.
Carmichael did not react. Instead he sat quietly for a moment before saying, “That particular nom de guerre comes up more often than you could possibly imagine, Ms. Ettinger.”
“As I said, we deem our source reliable. The Iranians, from what we understand, have a file on Courtland Gentry, and they compared their knowledge of him with information he was able to provide, and they determined they were dealing with the authentic Gray Man.”
“What information did he provide?”
“Our informant was peripheral to the meeting. He is passing on secondhand intelligence, admittedly, but his information in the past has been proven reliable enough to where we take this new threat very seriously, and we will be acting on it.”
She read something in his eyes now, and it surprised her for two reasons. For one, she was surprised he could not keep his craggy old face impassive. He’d been a case officer himself for decades, after all; he’d surely heard many things over his career that left him startled but nevertheless required him to hide any show of alarm or excitement.
And second, his reaction seemed to be less what she expected, which was Oh shit! and more of what she did not expect, which was Hell yes! It was an open secret that the CIA was hunting their former assassin turned rogue hit man, but it did surprise her to see that Carmichael was pleased to know the man had turned up mentioned in a plot to kill the head of a friendly nation.
Denny said, “Okay. He’s out there. We know that, so I’ll have to entertain the possibility your man in Beirut is credible. What is it that I can do for you?”
“I would like you to provide me everything you have on the Gray Man. He is . . . was, your man. You have been unable, despite what I am sure are your agency’s best efforts, to rein him in for a number of years. We would like to look for him ourselves. To take care of him ourselves.”
“The Gray Man is our problem, Ms. Ettinger.”
She shook her head. “With due respect, once he took the contract on our prime minister, he became our problem. I have hunted down many individuals in the past several years. If Menachem alluded to my abilities and competence in your conversation last night, this is exactly what he was talking about. I am certain, with your help, I will be able to track him and stop him before he is able to do any more harm.”
“And by ‘stop him’ you mean . . . ?”
Ruth leaned forward over the table. “Kill or capture.”
Denny smiled and leaned back, then scooted his chair out and crossed his legs. Ruth was offended by the gesture, but she did not let on; she surmised that the man’s intentions were to insult her, and she would not play into his intentions. He said, “Ms. Ettinger, my service is not without its own resources. I’m not sure what you know about the Gray Man, but certainly your organization is dialed in enough to be aware there has been a five-year manhunt by us, not just CIA but also members of our Joint Special Operations Forces, to effect the capture of him.”
“But our prime minister is now in—”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Your asset in Lebanon says your PM is under threat. I get it. But what I don’t get is why Menachem Aurbach sends a young woman such as yourself to talk to me about this. I see you are all piss and vinegar and energized about your mission, but this building, the building next door, the CIA campus, hell, a dozen other buildings across D.C. are all chock-full of bright young people who have been working hard to locate and terminate this man, and yet he continues to create a swath of death and destruction around the world.”
“I’ll find him, Director Carmichael. I always do.”
“Ms. Ettinger, you come from a small agency in a small country. You fill yourself with delusions of your importance. You aren’t half as special as you think you are.”
He started to stand up, to end the meeting. “I mean you no offense, of course.”
Ruth stood herself, leaning over the table now with both hands gripping the edge. “Obviously, Director Carmichael, you don’t know a thing about me or my capabilities. I have personally effected the arrest or elimination of thirteen direct threats on Israel’s national leadership. Believe me, if you had office buildings full of people”—she lifted her hands, making sarcastic quotes with her fingers—“‘just like me,’ you would have already killed Gentry, ended the war on terror, and liberated both Cuba and North Korea. But you haven’t, have you?”
She slowed down a little, but the intensity in her voice did not lessen.
“You don’t know me, obviously, so you can’t be sure if I am as capable as I claim, but I have to think if CIA doesn’t know about me or my record by now, then that says more about your people and their abilities than it does about me and my abilities.
“If our prime minister is threatened by a CIA project gone haywire, a supersecret asset who went rogue to knock off some mafia dons and third-world despots but has now graduated to decapitating first-world democracies allied with the United States, then this five-year-long dull headache of yours is going to turn into an immediate bullet-to-the-brain head wound and it will come back to harm your agency in a very real and very public way.
“But starting today, your situation will improve, because I am here and I will find your little fuckup named Court Gentry, and I will call in my own set of killers, Metsada men who make your Joint Special Operations Forces look like pimple-faced pubescent Boy Scouts, and together we will kill your man because obviously you and your people can’t manage it yourselves.”
She sat back down slowly and finished with, “I mean you no offense. Of course.”