Gentry saw the watcher immediately. An attractive womanwith long, braided blond hair, she sat at a picnic table in a little playground alongside the shopping street. Court was twenty-five yards from her, but her eyes were on the white house to his right.
Gentry turned, walked back through the foot tunnel, followed it up and around towards the white wall of the white house. There was an iron handrail built into the wall to aid pedestrians with the steep incline of the passageway. Court stepped up on this and, with his good right arm, pulled himself up on the top of the wall. He kicked one leg and then the other over and dropped down, letting his good left leg take the majority of the impact with the ground.
Still, the one-handed climb and the drop hurt like hell.
Inside the small garden, Gentry saw the security system through the glass. He knew how to circumvent all sorts of countermeasures, but this looked too sophisticated for him. He’d need schematics and tools and time.
Court moved low below a window, rose again at a side door. He drew a Beretta pistol he’d picked up on the platform shortly before fleeing the scene, left there by a dead Swiss municipal policeman. He held it low by his side as he tried a side door.
It was unlocked.
He entered a hallway and then a well-appointed kitchen. The lights were off, and he could easily make out the sounds of a television in the next room. The glowing set reflected off a mirror in a hallway on the other side of the kitchen, and Court used the flickering light to make his way.
He saw a pistol sitting on the kitchen counter: a full-sized 1911 forty-five caliber.
An American’s gun.
Gentry crossed the long kitchen carefully. He hefted the weapon and slid it into the back of his pants. His swollen wrist rewarded the movement with a hot jolt of electricity up to his elbow. Court moved into the hallway, rose confidently now, and entered a wide living room.
A plasma screen hung above a large fireplace that crackled with pine logs.
A lone man sat on a leather sofa with his back to Court. His eyes were trained on the television. The language coming from the TV was French, but the images were clear enough to Gentry. Less than two hours earlier he’d stood on that same train platform. He’d spoken to that young policeman who now lay facedown and dead on the snowy cement, the video images catching the moment when a yellow tarp was draped over his still form.
Court holstered his gun. There was no one else around.
“Hello, Maurice.”
The man stood and turned. He was pale and wrinkled, easily seventy and unhealthy looking. If Gentry’s appearance in his flat was a surprise to the old man, he made no sign of it. He stood on thin legs.
“Hello, Court.” American English.
“Don’t waste your time looking around,” Gentry said. “I have your gun.”
Maurice smiled. “No. You haveoneof my guns.” The old man pulled a small revolver from under his shirt and leveled it at Gentry’s chest. “You don’t have this one.”
“I didn’t figure you for the paranoid type. You weren’t so careful in the old days.”
“Even so, you should have kept your weapon trained on me till you knew I was unarmed.”
“Apparently so.”
The old man hesitated several seconds. The revolver did not waver. “Damn, boy. I taught you better.”
“You did. I’m sorry, sir,” Gentry said sheepishly.
“You look like shit.”
“I’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“I’ve seen you after rough days. You’ve never looked this bad.”
Court shrugged. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
The old man regarded Gentry for a long moment. “You never were.”
Maurice turned his revolver around in his hand, tossed it underhanded across the room to the younger American. Court caught it, looked it over.
“Thirty-eight police special snubby. The other one’s a 1911. Youdoknow, Maurice, that there is no law that says that just becauseyouare old, your guns have to be, too.”
