by Mark Greaney
He climbed aboard near the front of the train, and Ruth jumped onto the last car as the conductor blew his whistle.
The intercity was bound for Helsingborg, on the southern tip of the Swedish peninsula. She found a seat near the rear. As the train left the station she asked a passing conductor for a ticket, and she paid in cash.
The train headed west, making frequent stops. At each station along the route Ruth looked out the window, but within an hour she had the sense Gentry was heading all the way to Helsingborg. It was a port city just across the Øresund Strait from Denmark. From here Ruth knew Court could take a quick ferry across the water and avoid the route from Sweden to the European mainland: a long ferry crossing over the Baltic Sea to the south, which Townsend would surely have covered.
Certain she knew where he was heading now, she pulled her phone out of her purse to call Yanis. But just as she did this she looked up and realized she was just feet away from the man who had murdered Mike Dillman hours earlier. Gentry walked up the center aisle of the train, then glanced away and continued on, out of the car and into the next.
Her heart pounded. He’d passed by without giving her a second glance, and she felt reasonably sure her own face had remained impassive during the eye contact. She did not think he’d recognized her in her heavy disguise, but she would not leave it to chance. She got out of her seat and headed for the bathroom in the opposite direction of her target.
Ruth moved all the way to the very rear of the train and then stepped into the bathroom and removed her black wig. She’d go with her natural chestnut hair now, as Gentry had already seen her as both a blonde and a brunette.
She wished she had her team with her. By any normal standard of her tradecraft, she was burned; she would not show herself to Gentry again, even with a new disguise. But she was on her own, and she had to do her best to completely change her look.
She took off her tortoiseshell-framed glasses, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and removed every bit of her makeup with makeup remover and a small washcloth she kept in her purse for just such emergencies. She also took off her black sweater and exchanged it for a thin but warm dark green Patagonia base layer, transforming her look from business traveler on an international-bound train into an athletic-looking young woman commuting from one town to another.
Satisfied with her new look, she put her makeup remover and her clothing back in her bag, then unlocked the door and opened it and began to step into the gangway.
Suddenly a man spun into the open space in front of her, put his hand in her face, and shoved her back inside the little bathroom. He forced his way in with her and smashed her hard against the wall, shutting the door behind him.
She tried to scream, but his hand pushed against her mouth and cut off all but a small fraction of the sound. She fell back to her left, her body half over the little sink and the back of her head pressed against the cold mirror. She heard her attacker lock the door behind him, and she fought in the confined space to get her Mace out of her purse. His free hand pulled her purse away and shoved it behind his body where she could not reach it.
She knew who he was, of course, even before her eyes could focus on his face.
It was Gentry.
He relaxed his hold over her mouth slightly, and she took advantage of this. She jutted her face forward and bit down hard on the soft space between his thumb and forefinger. Gentry stifled a scream and his free hand rose to punch her in the jaw, but he stayed himself and just yanked his hand away from her gnashing teeth.
“Stop!” he said, but she had created space now, enough to get a hand wrapped around a metal soap dispenser on the wall. She pulled it free and swung it at him, but he got his head back and out of the way just in time, and the dispenser slammed into the little window just to the left of him.
“Stop!” he said again, but now she had her right hand free and she swung at his face. Her fist half-connected with his chin, but he managed to grab both her hands and restrain them against the wall above her head. He pressed his body hard into hers, pinning her back over the sink, and he used his own forehead to hold hers immobile. “Listen to me! Just listen!”
Ruth started to scream again, but Court let go of her right arm and slammed it back over her mouth. She immediately began punching him in the side and back with her free hand, but she could not get her arm back far enough in the confined area to do any real damage. Simultaneously she tried to knee him in the groin, but he locked her legs down with his own.
As she hit him over and over he said, “Stop! Just listen to me for one fucking minute!”
She stopped throwing short left-handed punches, but her hand reached down to his waist and she felt around, clearly trying to find the knife he’d threatened her with the previous evening.
But Gentry had prepared for this by sliding the sheathed blade into his boot before confronting the Mossad woman.
Ruth gave up the fight. She dropped her arm to her side and went limp, breathing heavily from the effort of the fight.
Court himself was breathing hard from the exchange. “I know what it looks like—it looks bad. But I didn’t kill your man in Stockholm. It wasn’t me. There is another guy out there. He is using me. Framing me.”
“Bullshit!”
“If I killed your friend, why would I deny it? Why wouldn’t I just kill you now?”
Through labored breaths she said, “Because you want to convince me you are no threat, so I will go back to my leadership and tell them to stand down on the hunt.”
“If you guys stay on me, then Kalb will die, because the man who killed your agent has a plan to kill Kalb. Believe me, he knows what he is doing.”
Ruth did not believe. As she looked at Gentry, their eyes not six inches apart, she could see only Mike Dillman’s glazed eyes, open in death.
“You killed Mike.”
Court shook his head. “He was killed by a man named Russell Whitlock. He’s the one you should be after.” He added, “He’s ex-Agency. Now he’s a Townsend asset.”
Ruth cocked her head. “Townsend?”
“Yes. They used him to track me, but he’s gone off reservation. He’s accepted a contract from the Iranians to kill your prime minister. He’s planning to kill Kalb and frame me for it, but there is more to this I don’t understand.”
“You are lying. I don’t believe you.”
“You need to try. Because he is out there, and he will kill Kalb, and you are making it really fucking easy for him by concentrating your people on me.”
She took a moment, still breathing hard, but thinking over what he was saying. Looking him in the eyes she saw an earnestness that she did not expect, and his tone was certainly convincing.
“How do you know all this?” she asked. “About Whitlock?”
“Because he told me.” Court relaxed his grip on the woman, but not completely. “Townsend came after me in Estonia, and Russ fought alongside me. He told me he could help me get away from them, so I stayed in contact with him. I knew he had some agenda, but it wasn’t until last night when you told me about Zarini and the contract on Ehud Kalb, and today when he told me he killed your man so I could get clear, that I put it together.”
Ruth wanted to believe Gentry. If he was telling the truth, then it meant she had been right all along. Gentry was not the threat.
And Mike’s death was not her fault.
She wanted to believe him because it helped her; she knew that. She also knew Gentry might be lying to protect himself. But this second rogue assassin story, as far-fetched as it sounded, was the only scenario that made any sense to her. He had not convinced her, not yet, but she was well on her way to believing.
“Whitlock is in Sweden?” she asked.
“I don’t know where he is now. I guess he’s going wherever Ehud Kalb is.” Court looked at Ruth. “Where is your PM?”
With an incredulous tone she said, “I’m not going to tell you the travel plans of my prime minister.”
Court
rolled his eyes. “He’s going to New York next week. I saw that on TV. But if Russ is going to frame me, he won’t do it in New York.”
Ruth understood. “Because you are a target of the U.S., and you can’t go to New York.”
“Yeah. I guess he could do it in Tel Aviv,” Gentry said. He found himself using his own thought process to determine the actions of someone else. “But I’m sure he’d rather do it outside Israel, get him on some neutral ground.”
Ruth spoke softly. “London.”
“Kalb is going to London?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “It’s public knowledge. He’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s it, then,” Court said. “Russ must be planning on hitting him there.”
“It’s a Pan-European trade conference,” she said. “Dozens of world leaders will attend. Do you have any idea how tight security measures will be?”
“Trust me. Russ and I had the same training.” He looked into her eyes. “I could do it. He could do it.”
Ruth found herself believing him.
Court said, “I just did you a favor with that information. Agreed?”
“If it’s true.”
“It’s true. You’ve got to get him to cancel his trip. Now, I need you to do me a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Tell me who will be waiting for me in Helsingborg.”
“No one. I have not called anyone.”
Court looked at her a long time, evaluating her nonverbal clues to gauge the veracity of her answer.
“Good.”
“But this new intel. You have to let me call this in.”
“Not until I’m off this train.”
“Please, there is no time to waste.”
But Court held firm. “You have two days. That’s plenty of time for Kalb to cancel his plans.”
Ruth said nothing, although she worried she did not, in fact, have two days.
FORTY-FIVE
Russell Whitlock landed at London’s Gatwick Airport shortly before two P.M. He wore business attire, traveled with only his briefcase and a small overnight tote, and looked exactly like all the other young male international business travelers in the border control line.
Normally when traveling within Europe, Russ would not have to pass through customs. Twenty-six European nations are members of the Schengen Area, a cooperation zone established by treaty that allows travelers from one member nation to travel to other area nations without undergoing border controls.
But the United Kingdom, unlike Sweden, is not a member of the Schengen Area, and for this reason Russ had to wait in an immigration line upon arrival. The process was of no concern to him; his Townsend credentials were solid, and his blue U.S. passport made the entire process little more than a formality. A U.K. Border Agency officer glanced at him, glanced at his document, and then ran it through a scanner to read the information housed on the RFID chip to verify that the man, the paperwork, and the digital information all matched. Since there was no block on Allen Morris, the credos used by Whitlock on this day, he was told to have a pleasant stay and then waved through the border control area.
Russ tried to hide his slight limp as he walked through the terminal. His hip was killing him, but he knew he could push through the pain and do his job here in London. He had forty-eight hours to get set up for the hit on Kalb. It wasn’t optimal—he would prefer at least seventy-two—but he’d already done much of the prep work for the op on an earlier trip here to London.
As he neared ground transportation, his phone rang and he answered it, even though he knew it would be Townsend, and even though he anticipated trouble. He believed in his power to charm, however, almost as much as he believed in his power to kill. He had been successful at both endeavors for his entire adult life, after all, so his self-confidence was easily understood.
“This is Graveside. Iden eight, two, four, four, niner, seven, two, niner, three.”
“Confirmed. This is Dead Eye, identity key four, eight, one, oh, six, oh, five, two, oh.”
Babbitt asked, “Where are you, Russell?”
“Stockholm.”
A pause. “What have you been doing?”
“Made contact with Jumper this morning, Parks called with intel that Gray Man was at the bus terminal there in the city center. You had me disarmed and disowned, so I went back to my hotel.”
“That was six hours ago. What have you been doing since?”
Russ kept walking. “I took a nap.”
After a short pause Babbitt said, “We need to talk.”
Russ found a place to sit in the terminal, away from others.
Babbitt said, “Beaumont tells me he confronted you about Trestle Seven.”
“You’re damn right we have to talk. I’m sending you the bill for my boots. That redneck spit on them.”
Babbitt took awhile to respond to this. When he did, he said, “Did you see a second target in Tallinn as was reported?”
“Negative. There was a blizzard going on, so I didn’t see too much until Gentry shot me.”
“There have been more doubts raised about the events of that night.”
“Such as?”
“You requisitioned a pistol from our weapons cache in Berlin, did you not?”
“I did. So?”
“A Glock nine-millimeter. Model 19.”
“Correct.”
“Historically speaking, that is the weapon Court Gentry uses.”
“It’s a Glock, the plastic fantastic. Everybody uses it.”
“Not you, Russell. You have always requisitioned a forty-caliber SIG. We checked your older work with CIA. Again, a SIG forty. You have to go back ten years to see any record of you preferencing the nine-millimeter round, but even then, you carried the SIG Sauer. Never a Glock.”
“You’ve lost me, Lee. Do you want to transfer me to Geraldina in the requisition and outfitting department? Did I fill out the wrong form or something?”
“There are suspicions by Jumper Actual, and by Jeff Parks, that you wanted to carry a gun identical to the target in Tallinn because you wanted to engage Trestle team in a clandestine fashion. To make it look like it was Gentry firing on the team when, in fact, you were shooting at the team.”
Russ sighed, long and audibly. “For what possible reason?”
“We don’t know. I would like you to help clear the air. We are recalling you effective immediately. Come home; we’ll sit down in the conference room and do a long hot wash regarding the events in Estonia.”
“But what about Gentry?”
“We don’t need you on Gentry any longer. We’ll have him in our pocket soon. We received a call from the supervisor of the Mossad targeting officer on the case. The Mossad woman is on a train with eyes on Gentry right now.”
Russ squeezed the sides of the chair. Fuck! He fought to keep his voice calm. “Why did the Mossad call you?”
“Gentry killed a targeting officer this morning. It’s personal now with the Mossad. Mr. Alvey, the Mossad executive, wanted to let me know so we could pull our team out to avoid any . . . blue-on-blue mishaps.”
“But you aren’t going to pull Jumper back, are you?”
“Of course not,” Babbitt said, matter-of-factly. “Anyway, none of this concerns you. Just get home; we’ll straighten everything out. We’ll get your wound looked at by our docs, too.”
Russ was still thinking about Gentry or, more precisely, he was thinking about his operation and Gentry’s continued potential to compromise it.
Babbitt took his silence for something else. “Look, Russ. We are very close to securing a contract with CIA to target a general in South America who’s pissing off the White House. I want to use you for this, so I need you cleared and in top form.”
Russ stood up; he needed to catch a flight immediately and did not have time to sit around and chat. “I’m on the way. Dead Eye, out.” He disconnected the call and all but race-walked to the closest departures board in the t
erminal. He scanned the list of flights and found what he was looking for.
Twenty-five minutes later he stood in line at the gate preparing to board a flight.
Not to D.C. Russ wouldn’t be going back to Townsend House.
No, he was going to Brussels, and he had to get there quickly.
Russ realized there was nothing more he could do to protect Gentry. It was likely the Mossad or Jumper would get him, sooner rather than later, and Russ couldn’t stop them, or even slow them down. The only way he could potentially salvage his operation was to speed up the hit on Kalb, to kill him before Mossad killed Gentry, so Gentry would still take the fall for the hit.
Kalb was due in Brussels at noon the next day, less than twenty-four hours from now. Each year on the date, Russ knew, Kalb traveled to Belgium to pay his respects at the grave of Piet De Schepper, a Belgian doctor who had, at great personal risk, saved the lives of hundreds of Belgian Jews by secreting them from the Nazis.
Two of the Jews had been Kalb’s mother and father.
Each and every year since De Schepper’s death from natural causes in 1999, Kalb had made the pilgrimage to his grave at the Dieweg Cemetery in the southern Brussels neighborhood of Uccle. The trip was unannounced because Kalb’s security detail had a serious problem with their PM going to the same exposed, outdoor location at the same time each and every year.
But the CIA knew about the PM’s movements; it was coded confidential, which was not terribly secure, as it was not terribly interesting to the United States. Whitlock had easy access to the information through the Townsend secure network, and he’d learned of the annual pilgrimage in his research on Kalb.
Russ had originally ruled out hitting Kalb in Belgium because the Gray Man would be more likely to choose London. Kalb doubted Gentry had access to the secret travel plans of the Israeli leader, after all. Still, Russ needed to call an audible now and change locations. He hoped the superhero legend of the Gray Man would make it easy for the world to believe he knew of Kalb’s annual pilgrimage.
Whitlock had confidence in his own skill to do a rush-job assassination. Just as he had in the United Kingdom, Russ had access to a Townsend weapons cache in Brussels. If he could do the job before Gentry was killed by the Israelis or Townsend, then he could get away scot-free.