“My advice, Lloyd from Legal, is to apologize to Sir Donald for the gross misunderstanding, release him and his family, retire to your home, put a gun in your mouth, and pull the goddamn trigger! Crossing Fitzroy was a huge mistake.”
“You can dispense with the advice then and just supply me with more men. Right now I don’t know where the Gray Man is, but I do know where he will go. Fitzroy will send him to Normandy. He’ll be traveling overland, east to west. I don’t know his starting point yet, but if you give me enough support, I’ll send them everywhere across Europe to hunt him down as he gets closer.
“Why will he go to Normandy? To rescue Fitzroy’s family?”
“Exactly. He will be told Nigerians have kidnapped them and are holding them until Fitzroy turns him over. He will take it upon himself to rectify the problem.”
Riegel drummed on his desk. “I agree with your assessment. He does have a reputation as a paladin, and he won’t trust the French authorities.”
“Precisely. I just need from you a surveillance team and a kill team. Right now your crew from Minsk is guarding his family in France, but I’d like Gentry dead before he gets to Normandy, as time is of the essence.”
“This is the Gray Man. You need more than this.”
“What do you suggest? I mean, other than me killing myself.”
Riegel looked up to the far wall of his office. The head and shoulders of a wild boar stared back at him. Slowly Kurt nodded to himself. “To get this done in the time allowed, you’ll need a hundred watchers.”
“You can get me a hundred surveillance experts?”
“Pavement artists, we call them.”
“Whatever. You can provide that?”
“Of course. And you will need a dozen teams of hunter-killers, spread out and placed all along each possible route, coordinated by a central command center, each with an incentive to be the unit that finds and kills the target.”
Lloyd’s voice showed his astonishment at the scale of the undertaking Riegel proposed. “A dozen teams?”
“Not company men, of course. Too many chances for comebacks on LaurentGroup. Not local talent, either. Local boys would be known to local police, and that would compromise the hunt. No, we need foreign operators from parts unknown, as you Americans like to say. Hard men, Lloyd from Legal, if you get my meaning. Hard men who do hard jobs when no other solution can be found.”
“You are speaking of mercenaries.”
“Absolutely not. The Gray Man has either dodged or dispatched every gang of hired hit men sent after him in thepast. No, to be certain, we will need established field units. Government hit teams.”
“I don’t understand. Whose government?”
“We have branch offices in eighty nations. I have good relationships with the internal security chiefs in dozens of third-world countries. These men run stables of operators in their countries to keep their citizens and their countries’ enemies in check.”
Riegel paused while he thought through his plan. “Yes, I will contact my government counterparts in offices in the third world, hard places where I am likely to find hard men without the faintest shred of scruples. I will contact these men and, within half a day of this very moment, there will be a dozen corporate jets flying back from these armpit countries. Each jet will be packed tight with the baddest boys and the biggest guns, and each team will be tasked with the same mission. They will all be vying for the chance to kill the Gray Man.”
“Like a contest?”
“Exactly.”
“Incredible.”
“We’ve done it before. Admittedly on a smaller scale, but we’ve had cause in the past to bring in multiple teams to vie for a single objective.”
“But I don’t understand. Why would these governments help us?”
“Not the governments themselves. The intelligence agencies. Can you imagine what a bounty of twenty million dollars added to the coffers of the secret police in the nation of, shall we say, Albania, would do to the security and stability of thestate? Or to the Ugandan Army? Indonesia’s Directorate of Internal Intelligence? These organizations work independently of their heads of state from time to time, when it suits the purposes of the organization or its leaders. I know which countries’ internal security apparatus will sanction their men to kill for cash; I have no doubt of it.”
There was a pause before Lloyd responded. “I get it. These intelligence agencies won’t worry about American retribution. They will know the CIA won’t hunt down the killers of the Gray Man.”
“Lloyd, the victorious team will probably tell the CIA themselves, seek bounty from the Americans, as well. Langley has been after the Gray Man for years. He killed four of their own, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I like your plan, Riegel. But can we do this quietly? I mean, without negative impact on LaurentGroup?”
“My office maintains shell corporations for deniability’s sake. We’ll use LaurentGroup aircrews in planes flying under the shells to infiltrate the kill squads and their weapons onto the Continent. It will be expensive, but Marc Laurent has instructed me to succeed by any means necessary.”
