Chapter Thirty-Four #2
“I knew you and Hanley had worked together. In Russia, was it? I knew goin’ to him would get me closer to you, and I didn’t want to chase you around the bloody planet. I would if I had to, yeah, but I didn’t want to.”
“So?”
“So…I want ya to come to me. I’m gonna convince you to do that.”
“I’ve got other things to do at the moment.”
“Yeah, you’ve got to figure out who this bloody cabal is in your government, chief. Thems that want to put an end to the American way, whatever the feck that is.”
“Seems like a worthy pursuit on my part.”
“And what I’m doin’ is worthy, as well.”
“Just what is it you are doin’?”
“I’ve come here to America to kill you, mate, for somethin’ you’ve done.”
“Is this the point of the conversation where you tell me what that is?”
The Irishman breathed hard into the phone, then said, “Varna, Bulgaria.”
Court let out a long and slow sigh, but he was careful to keep it silent. No, this was not just some horrible misunderstanding. He’d been in Varna a couple of months earlier. He’d done things there. He’d killed people there.
Shit.
He kept his tone even. “Never heard of it.”
“You was there. People put you there, then they put you in Russia. Hanley, from what I’ve been told. I don’t care about Russia, I don’t care about Hanley, but I care about bleedin’ Bulgaria, because there’s where you killed me son.”
Shit, Court thought again. He stared at the ceiling, his feet on the desk.
“Sasho Minchev,” the Irishman said. “You remember the night.”
Confused, Court said, “Your son was Sasho—”
“Of course he wasn’t Sasho Minchev!” the man snapped. “Do I sound like I’m from the feckin’ Balkans?”
“Not really, no.”
“You killed and maimed other men that night. One of the dead was my boy.”
Court thought back to the night, some two and a half months earlier. A lot had happened since then. Many other violent encounters, other threats, other dangers, other bodies.
Varna. A hotel, a nightclub, an alleyway. He’d injured a man in the alley, another in a parking garage. He was pretty certain he’d killed a man on a stairway, then shot another in a hall.
And then, in a hotel suite, he’d wounded a guard, and then he’d killed the Bulgarian crime boss, Sasho Minchev.
He tried to picture the faces of the fallen, but he could not.
All this thinking took a long moment, and the man on the other end of the line finally interrupted.
“You remember now?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“When we finally meet, I’ll be happy to show you a picture.”
“If I hurt your son, I did it because he was a threat.”
“And you think that matters to me?”
Court took his feet off the desk and stood up now. “What is it you want? You seem like you know this world. You understand this life. You seem like a reasonable—”
“Do I?” the Irishman shouted. “Do I seem reasonable to you? I’ve killed five men so far trying to get to you, and I’ll kill more. As many as it takes. I don’t care. I’ve a job to do, and you’re my job.”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, dude?” Court asked.
“Many things, chief. Many things. I’m feckin’ mad, a lunatic. But this? It’s the most levelheaded thing I’ve ever done.”
Court had no words.
The man on the other end of the line finally said, “I’ve got to go, but each and every hour, know that I’m out here killing them, because I’m not where you are, killing you. Maybe it will weigh on you after a time. Either way, I’ll find ya.
“Better yet, mate. Give me a Signal number where I can reach you in the future.”
“Why would I—”
“Because I might just say ‘fuck it,’ and call you up to tell you where you can find me.”
Court pulled his mobile, opened his app, and generated an encrypted number. This he passed to the man on the other end of the line.
“Got it,” the Irishman said.
Court replied, “Is your plan to keep calling me so you can try to scare me?”
“Today’s contact was so you could have time to think on your sins. If I call you again, it will be to see if you’ve learned anything. I’ve got people lookin’ into your Hanley, lookin’ into you, and I know we’ll be seein’ each other soon.”
Court couldn’t help himself. “You keep working with Gauntlet, and we’ll be seeing each other even sooner.”
There was a pause. The Irishman said, “I don’t know what you’re on about with Gauntlet, never heard of him.”
Court couldn’t tell if this was true or not, but the man on the other end of the line hung up immediately after.
—
Court stood there, the phone in his hand for several seconds, then stopped the recording. He stepped back into the hallway and called Matt, Zack, and a drugged-up Chris Travers in.
He played back the call for them from beginning to end. No one spoke the entire time.
When they were finished, Matt darted away to task Jill, knowing she could find out the names of everyone killed that night in Bulgaria. That done, he came back into the office where the three assets sat around, mostly in stunned silence.
To Hanley, Court said, “He’s fishing. He knows that you and I are in contact, but he didn’t know my name. He didn’t know my voice.”
Hanley said, “This has to be tied to the operation in Russia. It’s possible someone knew both you and I were connected to it.”
“Maybe. But look at all the intelligence compromises going on right now. Someone could, possibly, have gotten some information about me, about my relationship to you, from the U.S. government, and not from the Russian government.”
Zack Hightower blew out a long sigh. “So, Six, our situation isn’t bad enough that you’ve now gotten yourself involved in a personal beef with some assassin.”
Court sniffed. “He’s not some random guy who’s after me. He’s very much connected with our adversaries now.”
Chris Travers spoke up, his hand holding a little pressure on his bandage, because it made talking less painful. “We need to see if what he said about the Hyattsville murder checks out.”
Hanley shook his head. “I read details on the flight in. Knife wound to the throat. That hasn’t been out in the news yet. This guy is who he says he is. He’s an assassin.”
Jill knocked on the door and then entered.
To Matt she said, “You wanted to know about the bodyguards killed in Varna, Bulgaria. The one you are interested in was a UK citizen, a twenty-four-year-old former French Foreign Legion enlistee named Charles Brendan Coyle. Born and raised in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, he was working for a security company based out of London run by a man named Marcus Maragos. Maragos, perhaps not incidentally, was knifed to death in his own home two days ago. Two security men were also killed with him.”
Hanley surprised Jill with the next question. “Do we know anything about his dad?”
She looked down at her laptop, typed a moment. “Father’s name is Campbell Finley Coyle. No known address. That’s all I have here, but I only ran Charles Brendan Coyle through the database. Need me to dig deeper on the father?”
“Yes, do that. I’ll call Lacy, see what she can find out, as well.”
Erin Childers said, “Matt, your house on Meeting House Road is now off-limits. We’ll have a moving company get your things out of there, put them into storage until this all gets sorted out.”
“Okay. But there’s nothing tying me to this building.”
Childers said, “You could have been followed here from your home.”
Hanley shook his head. “I haven’t been physically followed by anyone. Here is safe. You all are safe.” He looked to Court. “Well, most of you.”
Childers nodded. To Hanley, she said, “We’ve got cots. A kitchen. A shower. Let’s keep you here, with the Five Guys. Twenty-four-hour security, for as long as this takes. No more venturing out into the field.”
Reluctantly, Hanley agreed.
He turned to Travers. “Teddy, you’re out of commission. I want you in the rack recovering, because I need you back in action ASAP. Six, go home, get a few hours’ sleep. As soon as Lacy calls with our next target, you’re going to be back on the move.”
Hightower said, “I’ll call and cancel my MRI appointment in Boulder.”
Hanley shook his head. “No, you won’t. I’ve been watching you limp around at the airport, my place, here in the office. I want you back in Boulder. Get looked at, then get back here.”
“Okay. I’ll go back tomorrow, get it done the next day, get back here as soon as I’ve met with the doctor.”
“No time to go hunting, Night Train,” Hanley said.
“I’m hunting for you now, Pilgrim.”