“Aye. You’ll be there by tomorrow morning?”
“No. I have a stop to make first.”
“Not another dangerous detour, I hope.”
“No. This one is on the way.”
Fitzroy hesitated, then said, “Right. Anything else you need from me?”
“Anythingelse? What have you given me so far? Look, you are my handler.Handlesomething. I need to know if I am going to run into any more goons along my route. I need to know how the fucking Nigerians found out my name. Found out about you. There is something very screwed up here, and I need as much of it figured out as possible before I get to Normandy.”
“I understand. I am working on it.”
“Have you had any more contact with the kidnappers?”
“Sporadically. They think I’m turning over every rock tofind you. I’m calling everyone along my Network. Just to make it look good, you know.”
“Keep it up. I’ll stay away from the Network. Call me if you learn anything.” The line went dead.
Within two minutes Fitzroy and Lloyd had more of an explanation about what had happened. Riegel called, and between the three of them, they managed to put the pieces together. The six Indonesians had been completely wiped out. All dead. The CIA had torched the building to cover their tracks. It was unknown if the agency had taken casualties. Szabo was dead, and Gentry had used another of his nine lives but had gotten free.
“So where is he now?” asked Riegel.
“Heading west from Budapest.”
“Via train, car, motorcycle?”
“We don’t know. He called us from a cell phone. He’d apparently pulled it off a passerby, dumped it just after he hung up.”
“Anything else to report?” asked Kurt Riegel.
Lloyd barked into the phone angrily, “Youreport tome, Riegel! What happened to your shit hot Indonesian Kopassus commandos? I thought you said Gentry would be no match for them.”
“Gentry didn’t kill them. CIA paramilitaries did. Look, Lloyd, we knew the Gray Man would have some resiliency; my plan all along was for one or two teams to knock him off balance, get him reactive instead of proactive. That way, he’ll stumble into the next team unprepared.”
Lloyd said, “We have ten more teams lying in wait for him. I want him dead before the night is through.”
“Then we agree on something.” Riegel rang off.
Lloyd then turned his attention to the Englishman. A pained expression flashed on the older man’s face.
“What is it?”
Fitzroy’s anguish was unrelenting.
“What’s wrong?”
“I believe he told me something. He didn’t mean to tell me, but I sussed it out.”
Lloyd sat up. The few wrinkles in his pinstripe suit smoothed out with the movement. “What? What did he tell you?”
“I know where he’s going.”
The young American attorney’s face slowly widened into a smile. “Excellent!” He reached for his mobile phone. “Where?”
“There’s a catch. This place he’s going, only three blokes have ever known about it. One of those blokes is dead, one of those blokes is the Gray Man, and one of those blokes is me. I’ll tell you where, but if your little reality show contest doesn’t destroy him there, he’s going to know I’ve set him up. Your chaps miss him this time, and it’s game over.”
“Let me worry about that. Tell me where he’s going.”
