Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“That gun is an antique, idiot!” said the elderly man as two South Africans shoved him roughly back into his chair. They dragged him and his chair into the main room and waited until the other four members of the unit pronounced the rest of the house clear.
When the entire team re-formed around their prisoner, the old American looked at all the faces.
“South Africans,” he said, obviously having heard their accents.
The leader asked, “Where is the Gray Man?”
“Look at you guys.” Maurice ignored the leader’s question. “Three black, three white. Ebony and ivory. Back in the old days you whiteys would be beating down on you darkeys, wouldn’t you?”
There was no response.
“You white boys must miss those apartheid days, huh?”
The leader repeated himself. “Where is the Gray Man?”
“Ah, but the head of the operation is white. You boys still roll like that? The plantation owners put the slaves in the big house, but they still give the orders. Am I right?”
One of the black operators unhooked his Uzi from his chest rig and raised it to smash its butt into Maurice’s jaw.
“Stop!” shouted the leader. “He’s just tryin’ to slow us down so his lover boy can get clear. Won’t work, old man. Now . . . where is the Gray Man?”
Maurice smiled. “This is the part where I say, ‘Who is that?’ ”
The leader’s eyebrows furrowed. He spoke in a thick Afrikaans accent.
“And this is the part where my man hits you across the face for giving us an attitude instead of an answer.” He nodded to the black operator still poised above him, and the Uzi’s squat butt smashed into the old American’s jaw, sending his head snapping back.
“Now, fooker. Let’s try again. Where did he go?”
Maurice spat blood and a bit of his bottom lip on the floor in front of him. “I don’t remember. I have reached the advanced age where the memory starts to falter. Very forgetful, you understand. Getting old sucks.”
After several seconds of waiting, the leader shouted into the man’s face, “I will not ask again. The Gray Man was here. Where is he now?”
“Sorry, young man. I’m unwell. You mind terribly if I use the restroom?”
The leader of the assassins looked to his subordinate. “Hit the fooker again.”
Maurice said immediately “He is gone. And you will not find him.”
The South African sneered at the thin man. “I’ll find him. I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him. The Gray Man’s reputation is nothing but a load of hype.”
Maurice laughed and coughed. “Do you have any idea how many men who said that very thing are now rotting away eternity in a pine box?”
“That ain’t gonna be me, mate.”
Maurice nodded appreciatively. “I will have to concede that point to you. There’s not going to be enough of you left for a pine box.
But not to worry, I hear mortuary services here in Geneva are exceedingly diligent.
With a little luck they may salvage a blob of you big enough to half fill an urn on your mother’s mantel. ”
The South African cocked his head. “What the hell are you talking about, you nutter?”
“I’m just saying, your future looks bleak, pal, but there is good news.”
The South African looked around to his men. He was clearly speaking to a crazy old buzzard. “I’ll play along, chief. What is the good news?”
“Your bleak future will be short-lived.” Then Maurice smiled. He softly began a prayer asking forgiveness for his sins.
Just then the Tech’s voice came over the radio. The six men put their hands to their earpieces to aid their hearing.
“Watcher Forty-three reports the subject just came out of the nail salon a block behind the house. He’s on foot, heading west.”
The leader of the South Africans nodded, turned his attention back to Maurice.
“Good news all around, Granddad. We won’t have to torture you to find out where he’s going.”
Maurice did not look up from his prayer. The South African team leader shrugged his shoulders, lowered his shotgun to the seated man’s chest, and fired one-handed.
As the slug left the barrel in a shower of fire, the South African lifted into the air and flew backwards into the kitchen.
His neck snapped, and the skin burned from his face and hands.
The other five suffered similar fates, though in the confines of the living room there was less open distance for the men to fly.
Maurice died instantly from the twelve-gauge blast to the chest at close range.
Firefighters on the scene minutes later would recognize the telltale devastation of a massive gas leak, probably from the connection between the wall and the big industrial oven.
This was an unfortunate but all too common occurrence in old homes like this one, and was hardly a surprise.
Only hours later, when the fire had been doused and the water and foam levels lowered to where the bodies could be examined, were the investigators scratching their heads.
The seven bodies soaked and burned beyond recognition gave them little information.
But the massive amount of firearms surrounding all the victims save one was highly irregular in peaceful Geneva, to say the least.