Maurice just shrugged. “He needed to go. I’ve followed your career as a private. Your ops are always white on black. Not just nicely performed, but moral, just.”
“Tell that to Lloyd.”
“A lot of people say that thing in Kiev was you.”
“That’s what they say.”
“So?”
Maurice’s phone rang. The old man reached a reed-thin hand to the handset on the wall and answered it. His gray eyes widened slightly as he looked up at his young guest.
“It’s for you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Shit.” Gentry took it. “Yeah?”
“Court? It’s Don.”
“What do you want?”
“They don’t know I’m calling. I got Claire to pinch a phone from one of the chaps guarding the château. She’s a right chip off the old block, is she not?”
Gentry gritted his teeth. Maurice handed him a fresh bottle of cold beer. “What the fuck is your problem, Don? Claire is not some Belfast tout! You can’t run her like one of your agents! She’s a little girl! She’s your family!”
“Desperate measures for desperate times, mate. She was brilliant.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Do you want the intel I have, or not?”
“How can I use anything you’ve got? How do I know you still don’t—”
“They killed Phillip, Court. Claire did a runner. The bastards shot my boy as he went to look after his child.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“We can only hope.”
“I’m sorry.” Court paused. “How did you know I was here?”
“Lloyd knows you’re in Geneva.”
“Figured the shoot-out on the way from Zurich might tip him off.”
“Quite. I racked my brain as to what you were doing there. Knew you were too smart to approach somebody in my Network. Then I remembered there was an old agency banker in Geneva, used to be SAD, ran hard asset training. Figured you must have had dealings with him in your former life. I called a few contacts and got a number.”
“How are you able to make phone calls without them knowing about it?”
“They think I’ve given up. I’m lying in a bed with stab wounds and busted teeth from that fucking poof Lloyd. He tried to rough me up, did a cock-up job of it. Can’t even torture a man respectably. They have me pegged as a half vegetable, a compliant old shell-shocked nutter in bed upstairs. But I haven’t given up, Court. When I thought the only hope for my family was to make you dead, that was my intent. I’ll admit that to you. Now I know bloody well the only hope for my family is to get you here. To help you in any way I can to hit this place as hard as you can with everything you’ve got.”
“Just keep the girls out of it from now on. Can you do that? They’re just kids.”
“You have my word.”
“Lloyd really does have the documents he says he does?”
“He has your CIA personnel file, a couple dozen others, too. Papers and computer disks. He brought us down from London to add another enticement, to make sure you’d come.”
