Loud snaps of gunfire continued below and behind him. He took care to avoid the broken glass left in the pane as he stepped through the window, but as he climbed into the apartment, he cut both his feet stepping in on the carpet. He cried out in pain, fell to his knees, and cut them, too.
Crab-walking through the small bedroom, he finally stood, hobbled into the bathroom, and rifled through the medicine cabinet. A few seconds later, he sat on the toilet and dressed his fresh injuries. His right foot was okay, a little jab that he poured antiseptic into and wrapped with toilet paper. The ball of his left foot was much worse. It was a relatively deep puncture. He washed it quickly and cinched a hand towel tight around it to stanch the bleeding. It neededstitches but, Court knew, he wouldn’t be getting stitches any time soon.
Similar to his feet, his left knee was okay, but his right was badly injured. With a wince he pulled a shard of glass from his skin, an unlucky barb at the end hooked on his flesh as he removed it. Blood ran down to the floor.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he cleaned and dressed the gash as best he could.
Three minutes later, he realized the shooting had died down across the courtyard. He heard sirens, shouting, a baby crying in the next apartment, woken from its nap by the activity.
He’d thought the apartment was empty, but when he walked into the living room, still just in his wet boxers but now with wrapped feet and knees, he found an elderly lady sitting alone on a couch. She looked at him with eyes unafraid, bright and piercing and blue. He put a hand out to calm her but lowered it slowly.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, but he doubted she understood. He mimicked pulling on pants, and she slowly pointed to a room down the hall. There he found men’s clothes. A dead husband, maybe? No, a son away at work. He found blue coveralls and climbed into them, and heavy steel-toed boots that were too big but serviceable with two pairs of white socks.
Gentry thanked the lady with a bow and a smile. She nodded back slowly. He pulled a wad of euros from his backpack and laid them on a table. The old woman said something he did not understand, and with another bow, he was out the door to the second-floor hallway.
Injured, unarmed, with neither means of transportation nor the documents he came all the way to Budapest to acquire, Court Gentry stepped outside and into a steady rain. He looked down to his watch. It was five in the afternoon, eight and one-half hours since beginning his journey. He seemed so much farther away now than when he started.
—
At LaurentGroup’s London office, Lloyd and Fitzroy waited for the news of the Indonesians. It came after four p.m., but not from the team itself. Sir Donald’s phone rang. It was Gentry.
“Cheltenham.”
“It’s me.”
Fitzroy had to compose himself before speaking. Finally he said, “Thank God! You’ve gotten clear of Szabo?”
“Yeah. Just.”
“What happened?”
“Not sure. Sounded like an SAD field team showed up, Szabo must have had some personal security, and it went loud.”
Lloyd and Fitzroy stared at one another.
“Uh . . . Right. Understood. How are you?”
“Surviving.”
“Where are you now?”
“Still in Budapest.” Both Lloyd and Fitzroy looked over to the Tech. His head leaned over a computer terminal, but he bobbed it up and down, confirming the truthfulness of the target by pinpointing the cell tower the phone was using.
“What now?” asked Fitzroy. The question was as much to the American on his right as it was to the American on the other end of the line.
“I head west. Everything’s still on track. Do you have any more information for me?”
“Umm, yes. The men you met this morning in Prague were Albanians. Simple mercenaries. Hired by Nigerian Secret Service.”
“They’ve probably contracted a new team by now. Any idea what I’m up against?”
“Hard to say, son. I’m working on it.”
“What do you know about the enemy force structure around your family?”
“Four or five Nigerian secret police types. Not tier-one gunmen by any stretch, though they have my family scared witless.”
“As I get closer, I’ll need the exact location.”
