“They already have.”
A pause. “What’s happened?”
“They have my family. My son and my daughter-in-law, my two grandchildren.”
“The twins,” Court said softly.
“Yes. They are holding them in France, telling me I mustgive you up, or they will kill them. Thirty minutes ago they gave me forty-eight hours to produce you, dead or alive. They have teams hunting for you, but they want me to give them intel on your whereabouts.”
“Which you already have, apparently.”
“No, son. I haven’t said a word. You were compromised in Iraq somehow, yes, but a Nigerian agent saw you board the plane in Tbilisi. I’ve told them nothing, and I don’t intend to.”
“But your son’s family.”
“I don’t turn on my men. You are family, too.”
Fitzroy’s face was twisted into a pained expression of disgust at his words, but Lloyd’s eyes widened appreciatively at the elder Englishman’s two-faced ability to simultaneously cajole and betray his top killer. Fitzroy was playing whatever remaining heartstrings his assassin possessed like a virtuoso.
Lloyd knew Gentry’s file like the back of his hand. He knew what would come next.
“Where are they holding them?”
“A château in Normandy, France, north of the town of Bayeux.”
“Forty-eight hours?”
“Minus thirty minutes. Eight a.m. on Sunday morning is the deadline. They say they have assets in the French National Police; any hint of an operation against their location will result in a massacre.”
“Yeah. The cops will be useless. I’ve got a better chance going solo.”
“Court, I don’t know what you are thinking, but it is too dangerous for you to try any sort of—”
“Don, I need you to trust me. Best thing I can do is getthere and clean this shit up myself. I need you to get me all the intel you can about their force structure, don’t give up any info on me, and I will get your family back.”
“How?”
“Somehow.”
This time it was Sir Donald’s turn to pause. He rubbed his thick fingers in his eyes and said slowly, “I would be forever in your debt, lad.”
“One thing at a time, boss.” The line went dead.
Lloyd punched his fists into the air in victory.
Fitzroy turned to Lloyd and said, “I’ll get you the scalp you are after. But you have to adhere to your end of the bargain.”
“Sir Donald, nothing will make me happier than calling off my men and leaving you and your family alone.”
ELEVEN
Court Gentry had worked as a private operator for four years. Before that was Golf Sierra, AKA the Goon Squad, and previous to this he ran singleton ops for the CIA. A few steely-eyed agency operatives notwithstanding, Gentry had spent the majority of adult life alone. To be sure, when he was in deep cover, he developed the relationships necessary to conduct his missions, but these interactions were fleeting and based on a bed of lies.
His was a life lived out in the cold.
There had been but one episode in the last sixteen years when Court was not an assassin, not a spy, not a shadowy figure moving into and out of the landscape. Two years earlier, for just under two months, Fitzroy had employed the Gray Man in a capacity completely unique to anything else on his résumé. Court took a post in Close Personal Protection, bodyguard work, to watch over Sir Donald’s two granddaughters.
Their father, Sir Donald’s son, was a successful London real estate developer. He did not follow in his father’s footsteps into the shadowy realm of intelligence; he was anhonest businessman, played by the rules. Still, Phillip Fitzroy managed to run afoul of some Pakistani underworld types, something to do with his firm’s lobbying against a municipal proposal that would have allowed more uncertified and unqualified labor on his construction sites. Philip Fitzroy logically argued that it was best for everyone in London if only well-trained workers built apartment dwellings and shopping centers, but the Pakistani mob had been extorting from the undocumented populace for years, and they decided that if more immigrants had higher-paying jobs, they could squeeze out from them a few quid more.
