by Mark Greaney
All four men.
There was no explanation in the documentation as to why he had done this, other than a report from an agency psychologist suggesting that post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by years in the field had caused him to snap. That he had somehow misinterpreted his teammates and colleagues as a threat.
To Ettinger the explanation seemed suspiciously convenient. And there was no reason whatsoever for why all the rest of his team happened to be in his apartment. He’d invited them over to watch a football game, maybe? She looked at the after-action report. The gunfight took place in predawn hours. A late-night party that turned into a tier-one shootout?
Sure, she said to herself, that happens.
Ruth Ettinger’s bullshit detector spiked into the red.
That the fight did take place was not in question. There were photographs of several bodies. Blood on the walls. A smashed window. Shell casings strewn across the floor. But Ruth was having a difficult time buying the official version of events.
The last portion of the accordion file dossier on Gentry was perhaps the most complete and most interesting to her. It detailed Townsend Government Services’ own hunt for the Gray Man. This hunt, if the documentation was to be believed, had led them from Mexico to Europe, and teams of assets were deployed even now in northern Europe.
As soon as she finished perusing the last document, she looked at her watch and realized three hours had passed. She had done her best to commit pertinent information to memory and to form a mental list of questions to have ready for her scheduled four P.M. meeting with Leland Babbitt, director of this odd enterprise.
Babbitt entered the conference room right on time, with Jeff Parks behind him. The director of Townsend Government Services was a big man with a thick neck and a wide smile on his face. As he shook her hand he said, “I was told to prepare myself.”
“For what, sir?”
“To keep my professional demeanor in the presence of such a striking woman.”
Ruth faked a little smile and worked to keep her eyes where they were, not rolling into the back of her head.
Babbitt sat down and said, “Denny has asked us to provide any assistance we can. I am happy to have help from the legendary Mossad on this difficult project.”
She doubted his sincerity but thanked him for his kind words.
He added, “I am sure you must have questions for me after looking over the dossier.”
“I do. These files are heavily redacted.”
He nodded somberly. “Yes, I know.”
“I was told I could see the internal documents. All of them.”
“The redactions are on the source docs.”
She wanted to say Bullshit, but instead she said, “I see. You are saying Gentry was run off book.”
“In the early part of his career he was part of a program that, for purposes of security, was not completely committed to paper.”
Ettinger cocked her head and held it there, urging Babbitt to provide her more information. But he did not bite.
“So there is nothing else about Courtland Gentry that you can provide me?”
“It’s all right in front of you. He was a solid operative for several years, working alone. After 9/11, CIA put together strike teams in the Special Activities Division. His name came up as a suitable candidate, and he joined a task force.”
Ruth picked up a page of the file and looked at it. While she scanned it again she said, “Where he was involved in targeted killings and extraordinary renditions.”
“Exactly.”
She lifted another series of documents and thumbed through them quickly, finally finding the ones she was looking for. “Looking over his freelance operations since his departure from CIA, this just doesn’t add up.” She held up the pages. “I see motive in these hits. His motive was justice. But I don’t see the motive in assassinating Prime Minister Kalb.”
Parks said, “According to what you told Denny, the Iranians are offering twenty-five million dollars. Money is motive, Ms. Ettinger.”
She shook her head and spoke softly, almost to herself. “Not really, no. Not with Gentry.” She changed gears quickly. “When and where was your most recent sighting of Gentry?”
“Tallinn, Estonia. Tuesday morning. An arrest team had him cornered there, and Gentry wiped them out.”
“Killed them?”
“Most of them, yes.”
“A Townsend arrest team?”
“Yes.”
Ruth had read a cable about the shootout in Estonia, but Mossad had not connected it to the Gray Man. She made a mental note to dig deeper into the details with Tel Aviv.
“Your sanction includes lethal means.”
“Of course. He is a dangerous man.”
“I understand that. Israel has its own file on the Gray Man, of course. We have been able to attribute several high-profile extrajudicial killings around the world to him over the past four or five years, and although there is nothing in your file here about it, my organization feels confident he single-handedly pulled off the Kiev operation a few years ago. If that was, in fact, the Gray Man, he is every bit as dangerous as his reputation.”
Babbitt put a hand up. “He is the best out there. But he did not do Kiev. It’s disappointing to me that an organization as talented as the Mossad is helping to spread that urban legend.”
“How can you be so sure it’s not true?”
“Court works alone. What happened at the airport in Kiev could not have been perpetrated by one man, despite his skill.”
Ruth leaned forward into the table. “Tell me why.”
“Do you know what a ‘command fire’ event is, Ms. Ettinger?”
She shook her head slowly. “I confess I do not.”
“It’s a tactical term, used by snipers, mostly. It is the simultaneous fire of multiple weapons against multiple targets to gain a tactical advantage.”
“I see.”
“That night in Kiev, four targets in two different locations were shot at the beginning of the engagement, all at the same exact instant. Two of the four targets were moving. Two of the targets were killed with the same bullet. All four men were shot through the head. There is no way in hell any one sniper does that. There were three snipers, which means three spotters.” He held up six fingers. “And then, after this, is when the close quarters engagement took place, so there were probably another six or eight guys. Langley figures there were twelve to fourteen operators involved in Kiev . . . not one.”
Ruth made a mental note to pass this information to Mossad so they could adjust their Gentry file accordingly, and then she moved on. “One more question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is Courtland Gentry a villain, or is he a hero?”
Parks laughed aloud.
Babbitt said, “Why do you ask that?”
“Quite frankly, he’s done some great work. Everyone he’s targeted has been human debris who, to be honest, this world is better off without.”
“That’s your opinion,” Babbitt said.
“And even in your heavily redacted—one might even say ‘doctored’—file on him, I see so many vague references to operations, ops in which the CIA obviously was satisfied with the result. And then, one day, out of the blue, he throws a pizza party at his apartment and kills all his coworkers.”
Babbitt responded immediately. “That is not how I read the events of the evening when he—”
Ruth interrupted him. “I am sure I have it wrong. I am sure there is more to the story.” She looked both men over. “Much more to the story. Frankly, none of that matters to me. I only need to know where he is, and whether he poses a threat to Ehud Kalb.”
Babbitt said, “You are going to have a hard time focusing on bringing him down if you hold on to the illusion that he is being treated unfairly.”
“Mr. Babbitt. That is not the way my world works. My job is to stop the Gray Man before he kills my prime minister. I don’t care what he is; if he is a threat to Ehud Kalb I will track him, I will find him, and I will take him down.”
Parks raised a hand. “Just so we are clear, we will let your team tag along with us, advise us, but we will find him, and we will do the taking down. If you want in on our operation, you will heed our terms.”
Ruth knew it was pointless to argue, and she also knew this was better for her organization anyway. “This is about a paycheck to you. It is about the survival of my nation to me. I’ll go along with your conditions, because Gentry may very well be a threat to my prime minister. But I don’t believe half of what I’ve read here today, and I don’t believe 25 percent of what you’ve told me.”
Babbitt ignored the accusation. He just nodded, glad the matter was settled.
Just then the door to the conference room opened and a man called Parks out of the room.
He returned a moment later. “Excuse me, Lee, can I talk to you in private for a moment?”
He started to excuse himself, but Ruth said, “I’m sorry, but if this happens to involve the Gentry operation, this would be the time to start including me in the intelligence.”
Babbitt turned to Parks. Ruth saw a questioning look, something deeper there. Parks gave a slight nod.
Lee Babbitt sat back down. “Go ahead, Jeff.”
Parks said, “We have a potential ID. It is very preliminary, probably not actionable at this stage, but it—”
“Where?” Ruth asked.
“Facial recognition software picked up data points that may or may not be—”
“Where, Mr. Parks?”
Parks sighed, not hiding his frustration with the woman’s impatience. “Stockholm, Sweden.”
Ettinger pulled her phone out and held it up. “I am calling my people.” She pushed a button and slid the phone under her thick hair.
Parks warned her, “You are jumping the gun. Something this preliminary won’t cause us to deploy assets. We will just tune the software, focus our attention on the cameras in the traffic areas near where the potential sighting occurred, and then, when we get—”
He stopped talking because she clearly was not listening to him.
“It’s me. He’s in Stockholm. I’m on the way. I’ll meet you there in the morning.” She hung up the phone without another word.
Babbitt just shook his head in mild surprise. He looked like he was going to say something more, but he stopped himself, then waved away the thought. “I have a technological surveillance detail in Estonia right now. If you are going to Stockholm, I’ll send them over. You and your team can coordinate with them. They have some amazing new tools to help in the hunt. You just might get lucky.”
Ruth stood, shook his hand. “Thank you for that.”
Babbitt himself stood now. “We’d planned on taking you to dinner. There’s a hell of a good Italian place around the corner.”
“Thank you, but no thank you. My next meal will be in Stockholm.”
“Right. Of course.”
Babbitt and Parks escorted Ruth outside to a waiting taxi. As it drove off through a late afternoon rainshower, Parks turned to his director.
“Do you think Gentry is going after Ehud Kalb?”
Babbitt shook his head. “Not his MO at all. Kalb is no saint, but Court wouldn’t take out a world leader unless the man was extremely dirty, and that’s not Kalb.”
“Mossad got bad intel?”
“Happens all the time.” He then asked, “What do we know about the girl?”
Parks looked down to his tablet computer and pulled up a file. “She’s American, as you probably surmised. Though she has dual citizenship now. Typical Brooklyn Jewish family. No politics, intel, or military background in her tree at all. She was an honor student throughout high school, lettered in track and field. Graduated Columbia with a psychology degree, top of her class, of course.”
“Of course.”
“She was in her third year of law school at NYU when her fiancé was killed on 9/11.” Parks checked his notes. “He was in international finance. Ninety-second floor of Tower Two.”
Babbitt guessed the rest. “Lover boy gets killed, she shucks law school and goes into intel work for Mossad.”
Parks nodded. “I understand the need to join the fight for the people who killed her lover, but why Mossad? Why not her own country?”
Babbitt shrugged. “If she had the raw materials, a good psych degree and law school, for example, and she started sniffing around at FBI or CIA, it’s a good bet Mossad got wind of the fact that a Jewish girl was looking to get into the game. They might have approached her. Told her the truth.”
“The truth?”
“The Mossad hits harder than CIA or FBI. They are smaller, faster, less restrained by politics.” Babbitt spoke with approval. “That woman didn’t give a shit about politics. She wanted to strike back.”
Parks looked back down at his tablet. “And apparently, she still does. She was involved in that clusterfuck the Israelis had in Rome last year. She was the only senior officer in the collections department who was not reprimanded or shit-canned for that. She even got a letter of commendation, saying had her concerns been given the care they deserved, a tragedy could have been avoided.”
Babbitt smiled. “She’s a bitch, but she’s a survivor. I can live with that. She certainly talks a good game. Carmichael forced her on us, but I think we can use her to find Gentry. Dead Eye is hurt, Jumper and his boys aren’t surveillance experts, and the UAV team might be able to pick him up, but drones can’t do what human beings with eyes and feet can do. We’ll fold her and her unit into the operation.”
“And when it comes time to kill Gentry?”
“We kill Gentry,” Babbitt said coolly. “Mossad can take the credit. We’ll take the cash.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
A silver Range Rover rolled slowly up Rue Masse, a short two-lane road near the Gare du Roch train station in eastern Nice. The driver was not a local—in fact, he’d driven all day long from his home to get here—and his growing fatigue along with the moonless night made it difficult for him to see the addresses above the numerous shuttered garages lining the street on both sides of Rue Masse. Finally he pulled alongside the one open garage on the entire street, looked above the darkened entrance at the address, and realized he’d arrived at his destination.
Slowly, and with some trepidation, he pulled inside and put his vehicle in neutral. He left his headlights on; there was no lighting here in the parking garage and although he was not as wary as he normally was during a transaction such as this, there was no way in hell he was going to sit here in complete darkness.
He reached under his leather jacket and thumbed open the buttoned leather strap that held his Colt .45 pistol in its holster.
Just in case he was wrong about the identity of his customer.
His phone chirped in the cup holder on the Range Rover’s center console, and the call was picked up by his vehicle’s radio. He pushed a button on the steering wheel and answered. “Brecht.”
The man in the Range Rover was Austrian, and it was customary to answer with his last name.
The caller spoke English; it was the same man he’d spoken to twice in the past twenty-four hours. “That’s fine,” the man said. “Right where you are. Get out of the vehicle.”
Brecht replied. “Let me see you, please. Let me see that you are alone.”
A light flicked on suddenly over the Range Rover, startling Brecht for a moment. A second later another light came on, this one at the other end of the garage, some fifty feet from where Brecht sat. A man, dressed head to toe in black and wearing a ski mask that completely obscured his face, stood by the light switch on the wall. His hands were empty; Brecht assumed he co
mmunicated through an earpiece.
The Austrian was not completely put at ease by the scene, but in his line of work he knew he must take risks, and this transaction could not very well take place if he did not do as instructed. He turned off the engine and climbed out of his truck, then walked around to the back.
The man in the ski mask approached, stepping out of the light in the corner and into the darkness, stopping ten feet from where the Austrian stood.
“Guten Abend.” Good evening, Brecht said.
“Good evening.” The man spoke American English, just as he had in their phone conversations.
“Do you have the money?”
The man in the mask reached to the small of his back, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it forward; the Austrian lost it in the dark but got his hands up, fumbled with it in the air for a moment, but brought it into his chest, and then he opened the envelope.
Thirty thousand euros takes a moment to count, and Reinhold Brecht counted carefully, but from time to time his eyes flashed up to check on the man in front of him.
He was on guard, of course, but much less so than usual today. Normally he would have taken many more measures to ensure his safety; he would have employed cutouts and brought armed associates to check out the area beforehand and to stay close by, but just out of sight, in case the transaction fell through and there was trouble.
But not tonight. Tonight he was here alone, and while wary, he was reasonably comfortable with this exchange.
He looked up from the envelope full of euros and smiled. “All there, of course. I expected nothing less.” He shoved the money into his jacket and walked to the back of his Range Rover.
“May I bring it out?”
“Please do,” said the American.
Reinhold Brecht pulled a large black leather satchel from the backseat and placed it on the cement floor of the parking garage. He unzipped the satchel and reached inside. The American shined a small flashlight on it, and Brecht pulled out a Blaser R93 sniper rifle in five pieces. He took a moment to assemble the weapon, occasionally looking up at the masked American or back over his shoulder to the street.