Agent in Place (Gray Man) Read online

“Call me whatever you want, doc, but you’ve got forty-five seconds to do it.”

  Tarek spoke quickly. “There has been a complication.”

  Another little eye roll. “Sorry, folks. No refunds.”

  “You misunderstand. It is not a complication with you. You were magnificent. Just as advertised. No, the problem is with Mademoiselle Medina.”

  The man in the chair reached for the pistol and scooped it off the table, startling both Syrians. Then he leaned forward and slid it into his waistband in the small of his back. “You’re losing me already. If I snatched the wrong lady, then it’s the fault of whoever you’ve got acquiring your intel. Not me.”

  “She was the right woman,” Rima said.

  The American cocked his head. “So . . . she’s not his mistress?”

  Tarek answered now. “She is. But . . . she is also something else. Something we didn’t know about when we sent you to rescue her.” He looked down at his hands, and then back up.

  Rima leaned in. “She is a mother. Her four-month-old son is back in Syria.”

  The grandfather clock ticked off a few seconds more before the American just said, “Oops.”

  “Her child is currently under the care of a nanny, guarded by security officers at her home in Damascus.”

  The American blew out a sigh, clearly understanding where the conversation was going. “And this is the part where you tell me who the daddy is.”

  Tarek said, “According to Mademoiselle Medina, Ahmed Azzam is the father.”

  The visitor looked off into space now. “That throws a wrench into the works, doesn’t it?”

  The Halabys struggled to understand the colloquialism, but Tarek responded, “Azzam is aware of this love child of his. In fact, he is the one protecting his son with members of his own security detail.”

  Now the American sat up straighter in the chair. Tarek could tell he was genuinely curious, which meant he likely had another minute to convince the man to help his cause.

  He asked, “Protecting him from . . . who?”

  Rima answered. “From his wife, Shakira Azzam. She knew about the affair; of that we are certain. We do not know if she is aware of the child.”

  “So . . . your whole plan was to flip Bianca so she would give up Ahmed’s plan against the Russians, hoping that might weaken the regime. But Medina left a baby back in Syria, a baby Ahmed has access to. She’d have to be a pretty shitty mother to turn on Azzam now.”

  Tarek nodded. “She refuses to help us. Needless to say, she wants to return to Damascus to be with her son. And needless to say, we can’t let her do that.”

  The American asset said, “I hate to state the obvious, but you two don’t know what the hell you are doing. I’m not just talking about the fact that you were clueless to the compromises of your target. Compromises that make her worthless as an intelligence asset. I’m also talking about the stunt you just pulled: neglecting to pay a freelance asset because you wanted to talk to him . . . two times out of three, that will get you killed in this game. Your ploy to get me to listen to you worked this time, but you try that next time with another contract asset, and he will shoot you at stand-off distance and be done with it.”

  “With your help, sir,” Rima said, “there won’t be a next time, and there won’t be another contract asset.”

  The American whistled softly. “Oh . . . I get it. You coaxed me here so you could ask me to go into Syria and kidnap the son of the president.”

  Tarek shook his head. “No. Not a kidnapping. It would be a rescue mission.”

  “Right. All I have to do is find a way to explain that to the bodyguards, the cops, the intelligence officials, and the military forces in my way.” When neither Tarek nor Rima spoke, the man just leaned back in the chair. “You two are out of your damn minds. No fucking way you’ll get me to go to Syria.”

  Tarek said, “We can get you in, and we can get you out. We have people there who will help you.”

  “Doc, three fourths of the shit that goes wrong in my life starts with some asshole feeding me that exact same line.” He stood up to leave.

  Rima and Tarek stood, as well, and Rima said, “Sir, I wouldn’t ask you to go if I didn’t believe you could do it. A Westerner can get in via a weekly charter flight carrying surgeons into the capital to work at Syrian regime hospitals. We can put you in with them, with all the documents you need to be safe.

  “Our documents are good. Just look at yesterday, for example. We provided you with the intelligence and papers that you needed to succeed in your mission.”

  “That’s a lousy example, whether you know it or not. Either you are lying to me, or someone else is lying to you. Last night wasn’t what it looked like. It was a setup.”

  “A setup?” Rima was stunned.

  “Someone in your organization purposefully sent me into that address at the same time ISIS was planning to make their attempt on Medina.”

  “Ridiculous.” But then she asked, “Why would someone working for us do that?”

  “It’s all about earning the trust and allegiance of the woman. If I snuck her away from her bodyguards, she might have been thankful, or she might still have looked at it like it was an abduction. But if I pulled her out of there in the middle of a terrorist attack, she would have been more appreciative, even more beholden to those who rescued her.”

  Rima said, “But everyone in our organization who knows about this operation is committed to overthrowing Ahmed Azzam. Sending you in when we knew the terrorists would attack only increases the chances you would be killed and fail, or Bianca would be killed, which means we all would fail.”

  The American had an answer to this. “Someone in your organization knew my reputation. They knew I could succeed when others could not. Very few people know this, and nobody who did not know this would dare roll those dice.”

  Tarek and Rima stole a glance at each other.

  The American said, “And you both know exactly who I am talking about.” When neither of them spoke, he asked, “Who is he? The Frenchman I spoke with? Is he the one pulling your strings?”

  There was more pained silence in the room, until Tarek said, “I am sorry to put it this way, sir, but you are hired help. I am not giving you information about our organization. Only what you need in order to do the job.”

  Court looked at the refined middle-aged couple, and he could not see any hint at all that they ran a rebel group. “Why do you do this?”

  Rima looked at Tarek, then back at Court. Her eyes misted over. “We did not want war with Ahmed Azzam. It was the young who thought it could be won. Those of us in the older generation, we told the young people . . . ‘You don’t know the Azzam family. They will drown the nation in blood before they relinquish power.’ But the young would not listen, and now they are dead.

  “All the dancing, the singing they did when the protests began. The pride of fighting for something they believed in.

  “All those beautiful young people, all those beautiful memories, all that hope, is buried under the stone now. All that remains is Ahmed and Shakira Azzam. They are smiling over the corpses of the rebellion.”

  Tarek added to his wife’s thoughts. “Personally I wish the rebellion would end, but you’ll never hear me saying that publicly. Not because I support Azzam. Just because I know he will kill every living thing that opposes him now.”

  “Then why do you run a rebel movement?”

  Tarek answered for them both. “We have our reasons. Now we have to do whatever we can to bring him down, and Bianca Medina is the key.”

  Court said, “You act like you are in control of what’s going on. You two are just puppets.” And with that, he headed past them towards the entryway. He put his hand on the door latch; he was steps away from disappearing again.

  Rima said, “If you leave, what will happen with the war in Syria?�
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  “I didn’t start it, and I sure as hell can’t end it.” He looked back and forth between the two of them. “Look . . . like you said, I’m just the hired gun here, but I can see the problem with your entire op. Your reach exceeded your grasp. If you flipped Bianca, you might have been able to get Azzam in hot water with the Russians. But this plan of yours wasn’t ever going to lead to his ouster. This was a harassing action. Nothing more.” He shrugged. “You tried, and you failed.”

  He opened the door now, looked out into the hall, but turned back before departing. “What will you do with Bianca?”

  Rima said, “That is no concern of yours, clearly. You are leaving her, and us, behind.”

  The man said nothing, but neither did he make any move to walk through the door.

  Tarek heaved his chest. “She will be taken care of here. She will not be harmed. But we can’t let her return to Syria. She knows too much about us and our organization now.”

  The asset looked at the floor now. “The kid? What will happen to the baby when his mom doesn’t come back?”

  To this Tarek said, “Ahmed has never acknowledged the son’s existence, so anything could happen. But if he has any decency, then I suppose—”

  The American looked up. “Jesus Christ, do you realize what you just said?”

  Tarek stared blankly at the man at the door. “The baby will not survive long. If Azzam thinks Bianca is dead, he won’t bring the child into the palace. Shakira would not stand for it. Azzam will be looking for Bianca now, but when he does not find her, he will have to remove the compromise.” Tarek frowned. “Kill the child, most likely. But you can’t expect us to just send Bianca home to Azzam after what she knows. We must keep her here, and try to persuade her to help us.”

  The American did nothing to hide the disdain from his face. He just turned into the hall. Mustafa pushed off from where he was leaning against the wall and looked at the Western stranger.

  Rima called out from behind. “We know we aren’t in control of all this. We aren’t trained as revolutionaries.”

  “No shit,” snapped the American.

  “We are doctors,” she continued. “And we are desperate for our people back in Syria, for the future of our nation. We thought this was a perfect opportunity to find important information about Azzam that could be used against him to end the war. It was.” Rima’s eyes teared. “We just didn’t know about the baby.”

  The American said, “You are playing a dangerous game you don’t understand. Please, take my advice. Free the girl. And then go back to aid and comfort . . . something you’re good at.”

  And with that he left the couple alone in their second-floor apartment, pushing past Mustafa in the narrow hallway.

  CHAPTER 15

  Court walked down the long hallway towards the stairwell. He descended one flight, moved through a narrow and dark passageway to the door to the street, then stepped out onto the Rue Mazarine.

  A pair of motorcycle cops wearing the uniform of Public Order and Traffic Control rolled in his direction from the north, slowing to a stop not far from the Halabys’ large apartment building. They showed no interest in him, and there were two dozen other pedestrians around, so Court simply turned to the south, then made a quick right on a small winding avenue with outdoor cafés on both sides of the street.

  The two helmeted cops never saw him.

  Court’s personal security was at the forefront of his thinking now. All the pedestrians around him, the people he could see through the shop windows, in the vehicles passing by: they all had to be assessed as a potential threat. His eyes scanned and his brain spun as he evaluated individuals, looking for pre-assault indicators, the flash of a camera lens striking sunlight, any odd mannerisms that could indicate someone taking interest in his presence.

  And cops. Court always had an eye open for cops, but especially in Paris, because he had something of a history here.

  He’d been to Paris more than two dozen times in his life, which meant he knew these streets, and that helped him both assimilate and keep a keen eye for anyone acting out of phase. He spoke the language and he had the feel and rhythm of the city down cold. Not all of his experiences had been good; he’d nearly been stabbed to death just a few blocks south of here a couple of years earlier in an alleyway that ran off the Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, and then he nearly bled out along the Left Bank of the Seine just a few blocks to the north.

  But despite his close calls, he was comfortable here in the French capital; his tradecraft normally kept him safe, and he had every confidence it would do so today, at least long enough for him to get out of town.

  And getting out of town was on his mind now. He told himself he had to go someplace far away from the neophytes who had hired him into this sloppy train wreck of an operation. But as he walked, he couldn’t help but feel something tugging at him, something telling him he shouldn’t leave the Halabys to swing in the wind alone.

  He had no doubt they’d be killed before this was all over. There was danger in Paris, even from threats borne out of Syria. The Halabys were running the group holding the Syrian president’s mistress, and that would send a lot more bad actors into the area, sooner and not later. Azzam would either want her back or he’d want to silence her. Either way, people would die. Court knew he had no business in the middle of that madness, but he still felt like shit about leaving a lot of nearly defenseless people to deal with the fallout.

  The naïve and foolish young mother. The middle-aged couple working for the peace and health of their people, only to find themselves at the heart of a high-stakes, life-and-death operation.

  And a four-month-old child. Son to the devil incarnate, true, but a baby whose only crime was having a shitty dad.

  It was a cruel, sick, heartless world; this Court told himself not for the first time, and as he turned onto the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, his eyes still wary for threats, his mind began wondering just why he gave a damn about some random baby in some faraway land. Twenty-four hours ago he was trying to keep his head in the game because of his feelings for a woman on the other side of the world he might never see again, and now he found himself on the verge of getting caught up in a multifaction civil war in the Middle East, a quagmire that looked more and more like a never-ending meat grinder.

  Why the hell did he even care?

  It didn’t take him long to come up with the answer. Even though nothing that had gone wrong for the Halabys in the past twenty-four hours was, in any way, his fault, Court knew that his own actions now would determine if these people lived or died.

  And it wasn’t impossible to imagine that getting that child in Damascus to safety could also play a small but important part in bringing one of the most brutal dictatorships on Earth to a close.

  Court sure as hell didn’t want to go to Syria, but he weighed it against the alternative: sitting around in some European café, sipping coffee with the knowledge that right then a baby was being hunted, a mother was helpless twenty-five hundred miles away from her son, a well-meaning husband and wife were in imminent peril of assassination, and a savage dictator was winning his war.

  Court’s moral compass was trying to steer his body to get involved, but his brain was fighting back, because Court’s brain had long ago concluded that this moral compass of his was an unrelenting pain in the ass.

  “No . . .” he said aloud. “No fucking way.”

  Just then, Court’s attention cycled back to the present. His PERSEC radar pinged when he saw another pair of motorcycle cops pull to a stop on the Rue André-Mazet, blocking the narrow road. But just as quickly as he alerted to them, the two young officers pushed their bikes up on the pavement and took their time removing their helmets. They showed no interest in Court as he approached their position across the little street, and as he passed them he saw no hint of trouble.

  As he stepped by the pair, the
radio on one man’s shoulder chirped, a voice asked the officer where he was, and the bike cop relayed the street corner. Court thought little of this, until the voice on the radio ordered the two bike officers to maintain their positions until further notice.

  Court kept walking, but he understood now that this duo was holding some sort of a soft perimeter, right in the center of Paris. They were clearly waiting for someone or something. Neither of the young cops looked in any way anxious; Court thought they might have been set up for a passing march or something similar.

  But he thought back to the other pair of cops he saw. They had been pulling up right in front of the Halabys’ apartment building. Were they part of this perimeter as well, or were the Halabys at the center of this police action?

  Court turned left and then he stepped into a restaurant crowded with lunchtime diners, picked his way through the throngs of businesspeople and tourists, and continued walking all the way to the rear of the establishment. Something told him to double back to the Halabys’ apartment building, to check on them just on the chance the police were there, arresting the couple for their involvement in the action the night before.

  For their own good, Court realized, the best thing that could happen to Rima and Tarek would be to get picked up by the cops for questioning. Their life expectancy would go up surrounded by locks and bars, because the clock was sure as hell ticking on their survival out here in the wild.

  Court told himself he’d feel better about this whole thing if they were arrested and confessed to snatching Bianca Medina, and the Spanish woman was released to go home to her child. He just wanted to see if this was, in fact, what was going on.

  He pushed through the back of the restaurant, turned left in a tiny alleyway, then made it out on the street a half block beyond where the two motorcycle cops on the Rue de Buci could see him. He was just two short blocks from the Halabys’ building now, and his only plan was to be a spectator if the cops had come calling on Tarek and Rima.

  Court arrived back on the Rue Mazarine, a half block south and across the street from the building, and now he saw a total of four motorcycle police officers from Public Order and Traffic Control, all parked in front of the door to the apartment.