That was, he admitted to himself, only if he did not have any problems in Paris.
—
“It’s time to pull everyone back to the capital,” said Riegel. He stood behind Lloyd and the Tech, having just returned to the command center after working for two hours with the two French security engineers on the electronic cordon around the château.
Lloyd just nodded, repeated the German’s words to the Tech sitting next to him. He then turned back to the VP of Security Risk Management Operations.
“Where the hell is he?”
“We knew there was the possibility he would take another route. There are a hundred ways he could have gone. A drive through the countryside will delay his arrival to Paris, but it will still get him there.”
“Ifhe goes to Paris.”
“We assume he is not going to attack a defended fortress full of gunmen and hostages by himself. He’s going to have to get some help before he comes here, and he has more known associates in Paris than anywhere else. If he stops at all, he stops in Paris. We have all the associates covered. Plus, since he’s injured, I’ve got men at all the hospitals in Paris to keep watch.”
“He won’t go to a hospital.”
“I agree. Probably not. He won’t expose himself like that.”
“A doctor in Fitzroy’s Network, perhaps?”
“Possibly. But the pavement artists are all over the place, staked out at every known contact.”
“I don’t want him getting out of Paris alive.”
“I gathered as much, Lloyd.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Gentry hit the eastern edge of Paris just after nine o’clock on Saturday night. His pains in his feet and knees and thigh and wrist and ribs were only exceeded by his overwhelming fatigue, but still he pushed into town, found an overpriced parking space in an underground garage next to the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. He put all the guns in the backseat, locked the vehicle, and headed up to street level.
He’d had plenty of time to work out his Paris plan of action on the drive and had used the GPS to find a couple of shops in the area. After a few minutes on foot through the cold and misty evening, he hit a Mc-Donald’s, pushed through the crowd of kids of all nationalities, and made his way to the bathroom. Here he spent a minute and a half washing his tired face, slicking back his messy hair, using the bathroom, and wiping his clothing with a small gel air freshener.
It was a feeble attempt to clean up, but it was better than nothing.
Five minutes later, he stepped into a men’s store on the Rue de Rome just as the salesman was turning the sign at the door toFermé. Court picked up a high-priced off-the-rackpinstripe suit, black, a white shirt, a muted blue tie, a belt, and shoes. He paid for these at the clothing counter, then headed across the street to a sporting goods shop with his suit bag over his shoulder. Here he bought a full wardrobe of rugged outdoor clothing in subdued browns.
He made his way back out into the street just as the last of the late-night clothing shops shut for the evening, found a pharmacy across from the station, and purchased an electric razor and a straight razor, scissors, shaving cream, and a few candy bars. He took a pair of black-framed costume glasses out of a rack and tried them on, decided they would suit his needs. Just as he stepped up to the counter to pay, he spotted a distinguished-looking long black umbrella hanging off a shelf by its hooked handle. The well-made accessory had caught his eye. Fumbling with his new wares and his other bags, he snatched up the umbrella and paid the bored Asian man at the register.
Just after ten, Gentry hauled all his loot back to the train station, stayed close to the walls, and kept his head down and away from the security cameras around the long, open hall. He ignored a half dozen Bosnian women begging for change and entered an empty bathroom down a hallway from a platform that had accommodated its last train of the evening. He stowed all his bags in a stall and went to work.
Quickly, he stripped to his undershirt and cut his hair. He tried to get as much in the toilet as possible but also laid plastic bags from his clothing purchases on the floor to catch the rest.
Next he used the electric razor to shave his head down to the absolute stubble. The straight razor and cream finishedthe job. He popped out of the stall twice to check his work in the mirror but retreated back to privacy quickly to avoid arousing suspicion, should someone walk in.
When he finished, he carefully pushed the bags of clippings into the waste bin and then flushed the toilet of hair. With his head cleanly shaved, he washed it again in the sink, quickly put on the suit and the shirt and the tie and the shoes. He slipped on his costume glasses, hefted his distinguished-looking umbrella, and collected the rest of his bags.
Eighteen minutes after Gentry walked into the bathroom, a different man walked out.
The hair and clothing had changed, of course, but also his gait was longer, his posture more erect. Court fought against his desire to limp off his right leg. The suited gentleman descended the stairs back to the parking garage and deposited his bags, retrieved one of the Glock pistols, then returned to the street, just a well-dressed Parisian strolling alone on his way home from a nice restaurant, his umbrella swinging along beside him as he moved with the pedestrians in the November mist. He climbed into a cab on the Rue Saint-Lazare at eleven thirty and instructed the driver in halting French to take him to the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of the Left Bank.
—
Song Park Kim had spotted the Kazakhs by the Notre Dame Cathedral. He had no doubt they were hunters after the same target as he. From his sharp eye they could not hide, and the Korean had no doubt the Gray Man would ID them just as easily. He also passed three or four static surveillanceoperatives; his training picked them out in the Saturday-evening crowds, but he determined them to be adequately skilled, nonetheless.
Kim knew his target. If the Gray Man were to make a stop-off in Paris at all, he should have arrived by now. His already supersharp senses prickled a bit more as he listened to each dead-end report from the Tech over his earpiece, and the Korean walked from boulevard to boulevard, appearing nonchalant but remaining carefully equidistant to the known associate locations.
Kim walked in complete silence on an empty street. A single Irish pub lit the cobblestones ahead of him; otherwise it was dark, and the Korean used the night as his confederate, moving quickly and comfortably like a nocturnal hunter. At the corner of Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue du Sommerard he ducked down an alley, found a fire escape he’d spotted earlier in his full day of wandering the city, and leapt high to grab hold. The rucksack on his back swung, the HK machine pistol and the extra magazines causing the olive green bag to hang down as the Korean assassin pulled himself up the rungs. He climbed onto the metal staircase without a sound and scaled up to the sixth floor. Another heave with his strong arms, and he was over the top and on the roof. From here he could see the Eiffel Tower more than a mile away in front of him, the Seine was on his right, and the Latin Quarter all around him, stretching off to his left. The rooftops continued along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, touched one another, and made a path high above the streets below.
