Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
The Falcon taxied off the runway, down and off the taxiway, past a long row of parked corporate jets, finally turning into an open hangar door. A waiting limousine, still wet from the drizzle of the gray evening, idled in the middle of the hangar. A driver stood alongside.
As soon as the jet came to a complete stop and the turbines slowed, the copilot made his way back to the seven-seat cabin carrying a nylon gym bag. He sat in front of Song Park Kim and lowered the bag onto a mahogany table between them.
Kim said nothing.
“I was told to give you this upon touchdown. Immigration has been dealt with. No customs problems. There is a car waiting for you.”
A curt nod, nearly imperceptible, from the short-haired Korean.
“Enjoy Paris, sir,” said the copilot. He stood and retreated to the cockpit. The small partition closed behind him.
Alone, Song Park unzipped the bag. Pulled out a Heckler he had a tactical flashlight in his pack but did not use it. Instead, he stumbled to the west, walked a mile on his cut feet, could feel the sting and the warm blood squish in his socks and between his cold toes.
Finally, just before eight in the evening, he crossed a field full of modern windmills and found himself in the Austrian border town of Nickelsdorf.
He had made it into the European Union.
It was another mile walk—a limp, really, with the gunshot wound to the thigh and the injured feet and knees—before he found the road.
He walked west with his thumb out for a few minutes.
A trucker pulled over, but he was heading north and could not help.
A second driver and then a third were also heading in the wrong direction.
At a quarter past nine, he was picked up by a Swiss businessman heading all the way to Zurich.
Court told him his name was Jim. The businessman wanted to practice his English, and Court obliged.
They talked about their lives and families on the trip across Austria.
Court’s story was 100 percent bullshit, but he was a pro.
He sold the tale of the messy divorce back in Virginia, the lifelong desire to visit Europe, the mugging in Budapest that cost him his belongings, and his good fortune to still have his wallet and cash and passport and a friend in eastern Switzerland who could put him up until he caught his plane back home the following week.
As they drove through the night and talked, Court kept part of his focus on the side mirror, nonchalantly making sure he’d not been followed.
He also, between the BS stories of places he’d never been and people he’d created out of whole cloth, kept in mind his task at hand.
He tried to get his head around the events still to come in the next thirty hours.
It was a Friday night, traffic on the A1 was heavy, but the businessman’s Audi was sleek and fast. They skirted to the north of Salzburg. Court offered to drive, and the Swiss businessman caught a couple of hours of sleep.
The Audi turned onto the Engadiner-Bundesstrasse and crossed the northeastern border of Switzerland at three a.m. There was no customs control at the Swiss border, though Switzerland was not officially a member of the EU.
The Swiss driver pulled into an all-night rest stop, insisting Jim simply must try Swiss beer and give his honest opinion.
Court did so, gushed over the body and color and texture, threw in a few other accolades he’d once overheard in a Munich biergarten in reference to German brews, and this convinced the now-smitten businessman to take Jim directly to his destination instead of dropping him off once their paths diverged.
They took the 180 south and then the 27 west through a valley, though in the overcast night they could see nothing on either side of their headlights.
Finally in the burg of Lavin, Gentry picked a half-timbered house just off the main road and claimed it as his destination.
Actually, by climbing out of the warm Audi here, Court was left with a two-mile walk in the snow, but, he decided, should there be trouble waiting at his real objective, there was no reason for this nice fellow to suffer for his good deed.
“Thanks for the lift. Auf Wiedersehen.” Court climbed out of the car and shook the gentleman’s hand through the window. He stood in the road as he waved good night.
As the taillights of the Audi rounded a corner in the distance, the Gray Man turned in the opposite direction and began walking westward through a gentle snowfall.
He trudged along purposefully, but he was bone tired.
The adrenaline that, along with his discipline, had moved him forward without pause for the past twenty hours had now given out, and all that remained was the discipline.
He needed rest and hoped to find a few hours of it up the steep road in Guarda.