Chapter Twenty-Four
TWENTY-FOUR
“Shit.” Gentry took it. “Yeah?”
“Court? It’s Don.”
“What do you want?”
“They don’t know I’m calling. I got Claire to pinch a phone from one of the chaps guarding the chateau. She’s a right chip off the old block, is she not?”
Gentry gritted his teeth. Maurice handed him a fresh bottle of cold beer. “What the fuck is your problem, Don? Claire is not some Belfast tout! You can’t run her like one of your agents! She’s a little girl! She’s your family!”
“Desperate measures for desperate times, mate. She was brilliant.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Do you want the intel I have, or not?”
“How can I use anything you’ve got? How do I know you still don’t—”
“They killed Phillip, Court. Claire did a runner. The bastards shot my boy as he went to look after his child.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“We can only hope.”
“I’m sorry.” Court paused. “How did you know I was here?”
“Lloyd knows you’re in Geneva.”
“Figured the shoot-out on the way from Zurich might tip him off.”
“Quite. I racked my brain as to what you were doing there. Knew you were too smart to approach somebody in my Network. Then I remembered there was an old agency banker in Geneva, used to be SAD, ran hard asset training. Figured you must have had dealings with him in your former life. I called a few contacts and got a number.”
“How are you able to make phone calls without them knowing about it?”
“They think I’ve given up. I’m lying in a bed with stab wounds and busted teeth from that fucking poof Lloyd.
He tried to rough me up, did a cock-up job of it.
Can’t even torture a man respectably. They have me pegged as a half vegetable, a compliant old shell-shocked nutter in bed upstairs.
But I haven’t given up, Court. When I thought the only hope for my family was to make you dead, that was my intent.
I’ll admit that to you. Now I know bloody well the only hope for my family is to get you here.
To help you in any way I can to hit this place as hard as you can with everything you’ve got. ”
“Just keep the girls out of it from now on. Can you do that? They’re just kids.”
“You have my word.”
“Lloyd really does have the documents he says he does?”
“He has your CIA personnel file, a couple dozen others, too. Papers and computer disks. He brought us down from London to add another enticement, to make sure you’d come.”
“Why is he doing this?”
Fitzroy told Court all about LaurentGroup.
About Abubaker’s demands. About Riegel and the Minsk guard force and the pavement artists.
About the gauntlet of a dozen hit squads from a dozen intelligence agencies in a dozen third-world countries, all sent after him for the twenty-million-dollar bounty.
As Sir Donald relayed all the information he had about the operation against Gentry, Maurice pulled a blue box from a cabinet and brought it to the kitchen table where Court was seated.
The aged financier and former Clandestine Services operator cleaned the cuts on his young protégé’s wrist with antiseptic, then squeezed bags of cold gel to force a chemical reaction, turning the compresses frosty white in seconds.
These he wrapped around Gentry’s swollen left wrist, followed by a compression bandage to hold everything in place and prevent further swelling.
It was a tight, neat job, executed by someone who had obviously been trained to tend to the wounded.
When Fitzroy finished his report, Court said, “I can’t believe they’d go through all this just for the contract. I get it, ten billion dollars is a lot of cheese, but for Abubaker to confidently make a demand like this, I’ve got to think there is some other motive in play here.”
“I agree. The shoot-out with the Swiss cops—that’s an incredible risk for a company like LaurentGroup to take, even if they did it by proxy with Venezuelan shooters.”
Gentry said, “There is more than just a contract at stake. Look into that, okay, Don?”
“I’ll talk to Riegel. He’s a bit more lucid than Lloyd.”
“Good. Keep that phone with you. Ringer off.”
“Any way I can contact you while you’re on the move?”
Gentry looked up to Maurice. “You wouldn’t have a spare sat phone just lying around I could buy off of you?
” The older man laughed, disappeared down a long hallway, a fresh coughing fit almost doubling him over at one point.
Moments later he returned with a satellite phone; it was a high-tech Motorola Iridium, a model Gentry knew well.
Used by spies and soldiers and high-risk adventurers, it was not much larger than a regular cell phone, housed in a clear plastic case that was shockproof, waterproof, practically bombproof.
Court nodded appreciatively as he took it.
The number was written on tape on the back, and Court read it off to Donald before slipping the device into his front pocket.
After he recited the number back, Fitzroy paused a moment, then said, “Court, my boy, one other thing. When this is all over, when you’ve killed every last living thing that is a threat to you, I am going to contact you and give you an address.
It will be a tiny out-of-the-way place that will be easy for you to slip into and out of without worry.
You will find a little one-room cottage, and I will be in that cottage, sitting in a chair, stripped to my undershirt with my hands flat on a table, and I will be waiting for you.
My neck will be bare. For what I have put you through, for what you have done for me, I will give you my life in recompense.
It will give you little comfort, but maybe it will help you.
I am sorry for what I have done to you in the last forty-eight hours.
I was desperate. I didn’t do it for me; I did it for my family.
Save them, and I will go to my death to give you a measure of peace.
“Court? You still there?”
“Keep the girls safe, Don. Do that one thing for me. We’ll settle up the rest when this is over.” Gentry hung up.
—
After Court handed the phone back to Maurice, he finished his second beer. Wiping his fingerprints from the bottle with a rag from the counter, he walked to the rear of the home and looked through the long curtains.
“When I leave, can you handle the watcher?”
“She’s just sitting there. I think I can manage that. I’m not dead yet.”
“You’ll outlive us all.”
“Coming from you, son, that’s not particularly comforting.” He changed his tone. More fatherly, now, he asked “How can I help you?”
“I’ve got to do a . . . ‘thing’ in northern France. Have to get up there and engage by first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You’re in no condition to—”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to go.”
“You need some money?”
“A little, if you can spare it.”
“Of course, I can float you some cash. What else do you need?”
“I’ll take the forty-five, if you’ve got a few more mags.”
Maurice chuckled, hacked. The sickness in his lungs seemed to grow with the conversation. “You’d probably just hurt yourself with a big manly weapon like that. They don’t make them like they used to. That’s my baby. I’ll get you something a little more contemporary.”
“I was hoping you might have a bug-out bag that you’d staged for a rainy day. I’ve got nothing, so any gear you could spare would be much appreciated.”
“I’ve got a SHTF cache a couple of blocks from here. In case the shit ever hit the fan. From what you’re telling me, I’d say your situation qualifies.”
“I really appreciate it.”
“Anything for my best student.” Maurice disappeared down a back hallway. He returned a minute later with a sheaf of euros in an envelope and a key on a chain. He wrote an address down on the envelope and handed it to his protégé. “I think you’ll be pleased with the gear.”
Court pocketed the items.
“Another beer?”
“I’d love one, but I’d better get moving.”
“Understood.” Maurice poured several antiinflammatory pain pills from a bottle in a cabinet into Gentry’s hand. Court downed them with the last swig from his bottle. Then they walked together towards the back door.
Court said, “I wish I could say I’d see you again. If I make it through tomorrow, I’ll have to drop off the face of the earth for a while. Maybe if you don’t pay your doctor’s bill, we can have another beer someday.”
Maurice smiled, but this time he did not laugh. “I’m dying, Court. No sense in putting lipstick on a pig. I can’t make it any prettier than it is.”
“Is there anything I can do for you? Anybody you need me to see? Look in on after you’re gone?”
“There’s nobody. No family. No friends. There was just the Agency.”
“I know the feeling,” Court said. Spending time with his mentor was good in that Gentry had so few opportunities to talk to someone who’d gone through some of the same things in life as he had.
But it was also bad. Depressing, because Court saw a measure of himself in the tired old cynical eyes of the man facing him in the living room and knew that, though no one likes to get old, in Gentry’s profession, mere survival was the absolute best one could hope for.
And this was success?
“You can do one thing for me.” Maurice smiled as he spoke.
“When you get yourself extracted from this mess you’re in, I want you to get away to some tropical island somewhere.
When you read in the paper about an older-than-dirt disgraced American banker dying in Switzerland, I want you to go out to your favorite cantina, find yourself a pretty girl, and drink the night away with her.
I’m serious. Get through this and get out of this life.
There are still corners of the world where no one gives a shit what you’ve done.
Go there. Meet somebody. Live like a human. Do that for me, kid.”
“I’ll try.”