Chapter Fifty-Four
Fifty-Four
The town of Ballycastle in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, sits on the dramatic north coast of the island, and on this morning the cold breeze blew in from where the Irish Sea met the North Atlantic, making the prevalent sunshine all but irrelevant.
Campbell Coyle had driven up here the night before and taken lodgings, woken early, and had his tea and toast, then dressed in his Sunday best, though it was a Wednesday.
The last thing he did before he left the guest house was slide a long knife into a sheath on his belt, and a Makarov pistol into a holster on his hip.
His jacket came on over this; he positioned his cap on his head in the mirror, and he left his room, promptly at eight thirty in the morning, heading to a church nearby.
Thirty minutes later he knelt alone in a pew at the Church of St. Patrick and St. Brigid, prayed, took a moment to appreciate the beautiful building, and then he walked back to his car.
Fifteen minutes later he parked again, this time next to St. James Church. St. James was not Catholic, it was Church of Ireland, but Campbell was not here to pray.
He stood alone in the cold morning sunshine for a long time, still as the tombstones in the cemetery around him, and then, shortly after ten a.m., he walked back to his car.
It was time for an early lunch.
—
Matthew Hanley stepped out of Reagan National Airport into an overcast dawn, his coat already on and zipped. He’d not bothered with a tie; he didn’t feel the need to offer that respect to the man he’d come to talk to today.
He only carried a shoulder bag; he had a feeling that, like the last time he’d come for a meeting with the deputy director for operations, this would be a quick affair.
He’d be picked up in a government vehicle, driven around Arlington for a few minutes, then deposited back at the airport.
He’d rehearsed his words on the flight up, and for the few days since he’d first heard the CIA was stopping its investigations into the leaks, into the murders.
A text came as he stood there in the frigid air; Watkins said he was two minutes out, and Hanley should be ready to shuffle into the vehicle.
Hanley sighed. His fingers were cold, but he checked the news on his phone.
There’d been no more targeted killings in the past four days, and this was good news.
A cell of Russian spies in Brooklyn, some of them known GRU assassins, had been eliminated in a shoot-out, and although the news was saying the FBI and Homeland Security had conducted the raid, Hanley had learned from others that it had been a team of twelve Gauntlet security operators who were contracting with Homeland.
Men just working in the area who came upon the Russians coincidentally.
Hanley didn’t believe this story for an instant, which meant he didn’t believe the subsequent story, which was that these Russians had been responsible for all the killings.
He wondered if the killing of the Russian fall guys meant the immediate crisis was over, but it bothered him greatly that Lewis Shaw had been assassinated, and his concern was that the conventional wisdom in the government was going to be that Lewis Shaw of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had been feeding the intel to the Russians, and everyone involved was conveniently dead.
Gauntlet Group, of course, had been lauded as American heroes by much of the press.
Scrolling the news for more information, he almost passed the breaking story on the Washington Post’s website.
Paula Kerr, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, had apparently been involved in a hit-and-run the night before after leaving a fundraiser.
She was in critical condition up in Concord; other pedestrians had been hit by the same erratic driver, as well.
The damaged car was found overturned on a high school baseball diamond twenty minutes later, the driver inside it, his neck snapped. He was a twenty-four-year-old known user with two DUIs already, so no foul play was suspected.
The senator was not expected to survive.
Hanley didn’t know Kerr. She’d been the CEO of a tech firm before entering politics, and in the Senate, she’d shown little interest in intelligence affairs. She wasn’t on any committees Hanley paid attention to, so it didn’t seem related to everything else going on.
Still, a U.S. senator hit by a car, fighting for her life.
Jesus, Matt thought.
Just then, three SUVs pulled up to arrivals, two Suburbans with a Navigator in the center. A back door of the Navigator opened, and Hanley climbed in.
The last time he’d met with Trey Watkins, Angela Lacy, Ghost Town’s conduit to the DDO, had been in the vehicle and involved in the discussion.
This time, however, Watkins was alone, other than three security men in the vehicle with him, and that did not seem like good news to Hanley.
“Where’s Angela?” Matt asked.
“Reassigned. Same as Pace.” Watkins said nothing more.
“Where?”
“Undetermined, as of yet. For now, they’re at Langley, but I’ve asked them not to communicate with you.”
“What’s going on, Trey?”
The DDO shrugged. “Not a lot I can tell you, to be honest. Basically, I was taken to the woodshed by the DNI when she found out Jim Pace had been involved in a clandestine investigation into Gauntlet Group. She ordered me to order him to stand down, and she now has HSI taking the lead on everything involving the killings.”
“The DNI? Olivia Anthony? She has Homeland Security Investigations in charge?”
“Yeah. Says this is bigger than the CIA, the CIA shouldn’t be operating domestically, so we’re shut down.”
Hanley was incredulous. “How did she even know Pace was working on this?”
“Because there are photos of Jim Pace in Georgetown climbing out of the BMW he later used to kill one of the assassins, and there’s a photo of you circulating that has you driving through the crime scene in a minivan in Washington Circle.”
“She knows about Ghost Town?”
“Yep,” Watkins said, looking out the window now.
“Did Olivia Anthony fail to acknowledge the fact that Pace and I were involved with bringing down three of the assassins, when the rest of the intelligence community hasn’t managed to accomplish a thing?”
Watkins turned back to Hanley. “Actually, she did acknowledge it. When she found out I was running an off-books op with the former DDO, she said, and I quote, ‘I appreciate your initiative in all this, but I’ll take over from here.’ ”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Look. Anthony is okay. She’s not the problem. But the president is very focused on bringing Gauntlet Group deeper into the community, especially after what they pulled off in Brooklyn, and Olivia Anthony is going to execute the president’s wishes.”
Hanley said, “Gauntlet Group, Trey, has been involved in this from the very start. Pace told you that, I’m sure. You don’t think these guys just stumbled onto a Russian cell and saved America, do you?”
Watkins looked uncomfortable. “It’s a bullshit story, but that’s the story.” He shrugged. “Gauntlet is a big company. Apparently some rogue operators might have been tricked into working with Russian intelligence assets here in America and—”
“Jesus Christ!” Hanley shouted it now. “You’re talking like one of them! I mean, up until two months ago, I thought you were one of them, but I was starting to believe in you, Trey.”
Watkins rolled his eyes. “Come on, Matt. I have a job to do. You do, as well. You are still my sub rosa outfit. We will just find some other tasks for you.” He smiled a little. “This is all over. You should be proud. We aren’t going to get the credit, but we won.”
Hanley sighed. “We won? This is over? Bullshit! You don’t believe the words coming out of your own mouth. But you sure as shit sound great when you say them, I’ll give you that.”
Watkins pounded on the glass behind him that separated the driver from the backseat. While looking at Hanley, he called out to the driver. “Back to Reagan! Matt has a plane to catch.”
—
Campbell Coyle went to a chip shop at eleven a.m., ate his fish at a picnic table outside in the cold blowing in from the coast, and then he returned to St. James Church.
It was quiet here in southwest Ballycastle; the hustle and bustle was along the coastline a few miles to the north.
A vehicle passed by on the road every few minutes, just as it had when he was here earlier in the morning.
He walked the grounds, strolled around the nearly empty car park, even looked inside the church, but he did nothing to arouse any suspicion to himself.
He appeared to be just a middle-aged man with nothing to do. No place to be.
Just before noon, he returned to the spot among the tombstones where he’d stood earlier in the day, his face cold from the whipping sea wind, and he watched a car in the far distance on Novally Road roll slowly to a stop.
A lone man climbed out, and he began walking this way.
His hands were empty, but his gait was pure menace.
The man’s coat was open in the frigid wind; his eyes were fixed ahead. Coyle knew how to check for every single tell that said someone meant trouble, and this man was doing nothing to hide the fact he imparted the gravest of danger.
Court Gentry left the road, passed through a little gate in a low stone wall, and then entered the cemetery.
The Northern Irishman held his ground until the man who had killed his son stopped, fifteen feet away, and stared him down.
—
Courtland Gentry faced off in front of the man who had killed his father.
He said, “You’ve had time to prepare the battlespace here. You have all the advantages, Coyle. Still…I came. That tell you anything?”
“It tells me yer feckin’ mad. You had no right to go to the house of me grandson. I took that as a threat.”
“It was anything but a threat. I spoke with Deirdre. She might not have liked it, but I could see in her that she knew that I didn’t mean her or the boy any harm.”
“Still. You shouldn’t have done it.”
“It put me right here, right now.”