“Come tomorrow morning, Julius Abubaker is going tohave to find himself a new bitch to bargain with, because when you fail, and youwillfail, either I will kill you, or someone else will.”
Lloyd’s face twitched in anger. “I’m nobody’s bitch, you knuckle-dragging bastard. I’ve seen a lot of smug scalp hunters come and go in my days. You’re no different. You’d do well to remember that even with your reputation and your spooky nickname, you are just a glorified door kicker. You’ll be dead in a few hours, and I’ll have forgotten about you before the maggots finish you off.”
There was a short pause. “Let me guess, Lloyd. Your dad was somebody.”
“As a matter of fact, my fatherissomebody.”
“Figures. See you soon.” Gentry hung up the phone.
Riegel hid his smile from Lloyd. The Tech still stood with his hands on his knees, breathless from the run. He said, “Gentry sounds like he really thinks he’ll make it here.” There was palpable terror in his voice between his gasps for air.
Lloyd snapped at him, “Get back to work. I want helicopters in the air, I want men on the trains, and I want him dead before he gets to Paris!”
—
An hour later, Riegel stood on a flat rampart lining the rear of the château’s roof. He looked out through the decorative battlements at the cold but sunny afternoon. Three teams of Belarusians, each consisting of two men with assault rifles and radios, walked the grounds in a crisscrossing pattern. The sniper and his spotter were on Riegel’s left, high in the tower with a near-perfect 360-degree view of the lawn in the back and the lawn in the front. The helicopter with the thermalimaging equipment had just radioed in that they were on their way back from Paris with all the gear and the two-man team of engineers that could set it up in under an hour.
The Tech had put a hit team on the TGV from Geneva, the high-speed train to Paris. They’d reported no sign of Gentry. Three more teams and most of the available watchers were taking up positions on the highways through the French Alps that the Gray Man would have to traverse if he was traveling by car or motorcycle. Three more kill squads were in Paris. It was a natural staging area, a city full of his known associates and a city in which he might well stop for supplies or support.
There was not much left for Kurt Riegel to do at the moment but wait.
Still, something was bothering him.
It started out as a nagging irritation in the back of his mind and grew by the minute as he reconciled himself to the fact that he’d tidied up all the ends of the operation that he could at the moment. But it somehow remained after he could think of no other preparations to make.
Finally he closed in on the origin of his ill ease: something the Gray Man had said to Lloyd. Sure, Gentry would have figured out this op against him had to do with his assassination of Issac Abubaker. But what did he mean by Lloyd being Abubaker’s bitch? How could Gentry have known that Lloyd wasn’t just an employee of Abubaker, or of the CIA, doing a job? That he did his job for some other reason. Some sort of bargain. Riegel had read the Tech’s handwritten transcripts of Gentry’s phone conversation with Lloyd earlier in the day, before Riegel was on site. There was no mention byLloyd or Fitzroy of LaurentGroup or the true reasons behind this endeavor. Why on earth would the Gray Man assume this operation involved some sort of deal between the parties, which clearly the termbargainimplied? Why on earth would the Gray Man assume Lloyd’s life hung in the balance of his success?
It was another full minute of speculation, and when the answer came to Riegel, the sign came to him like it would were he hunting prey on safari. When tracking an animal, a skilled hunter can find indication in the animal’s tracks, indications that it knows it is being pursued. It had picked up a scent. It had seen movement. The gait changes when prey senses trouble, and only a uniquely adept hunter can pick up this subtle alteration in his quarry’s tracks.
Kurt Riegel was such a hunter.
Gentry had more than a scent of the real operation against him. He had specific details that he only could have gotten one way.
Kurt Riegel spun on the rampart and entered the château. He passed Lloyd, who was stepping out of the bathroom, continued down the corridor with the bearing of a storm trooper.
Lloyd saw the hunter’s determination. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Riegel said nothing. He marched down the hall and descended the wide, carpeted staircase to the second floor. He stormed down this hallway, past the sconces and the paintings, past the door to Elise Fitzroy’s room, past the bedroom where the kids were locked up. With Lloyd close on his heels, he passed Leary, one of the Northern Irish thugs Lloyd hadbrought along from LaurentGroup London. The fifty-two-year-old German threw his shoulder into the heavy door Leary was guarding, and it flew open. In the large room beyond, lying on his back in the bed, covered in white linen and facing the door, Sir Donald Fitzroy stared back at the procession of men filing into the room.
Riegel stomped across the room to Sir Donald’s bed. He showed none of the courtesy he had displayed in their earlier meeting. His face was that of a man who’d been played for a fool and was out for blood in recompense.
In a hushed voice that was incongruous to his mannerisms, Riegel asked a one-word question. “Where?”
Lloyd and Leary stood back in the center of the room. They looked at one another, searching for some clue as to what was happening.
“What are you talking about?” asked Donald.
Riegel drew his Steyr pistol, pressed it hard to the bald forehead of Sir Donald. “Yourverylast chance.” His voice was still a whisper. “Where is it?”
After a brief pause, Sir Donald Fitzroy’s arms moved slowly under the covers. Soon a mobile phone appeared. He handed it to the big German.
Riegel did not even look at it. He slipped it into his pocket. “Who?” he asked now, still in a hushed and angry voice.
Sir Donald said nothing.
“It will take me seconds to determine the owner of this phone. You can save yourself some measure of misery by giving me the answer yourself.”
Sir Donald looked away from Riegel, across the room to Lloyd, then his eyes drifted to the Northern Irish guard.
