The Gray Man Read online

  “I have him, sir. He’s just boarded the 9:40 for Geneva. Second-class ticket, no seat reservation.”

  “Geneva? Why is he going south? He should be headed west.”

  “He could be running away. Giving up, I mean.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s out of his way, but he does have associations there.”

  “I can have surveillance in Geneva ready to intercept him at the station.”

  “No. We’ll arrange a different welcoming party for him there if that is his actual destination. This could be a misdirection. He might get off along the way, take another train to France. I need you to organize coverage at every station where that train stops between Zurich and Geneva. Also make sure he doesn’t get off before the train leaves.”

  “I’m on the train myself now. I’ll babysit him along the route and update you as we get closer.”

  “Alles klar. Good work.”

  Riegel next called the Tech at the chateau in Normandy. “Get the Venezuelans heading south to catch up with the 9:40 from Zurich to Geneva. The Gray Man is on board, but he may try to get off along the way. The Venezuelans need to be ready to take him down at a moment’s notice.”

  “Understood.”

  Riegel consulted a large map of Switzerland on his desk. “Get the South Africans in Basel to Geneva. If Gentry makes it alive to the station, they’ll need to follow him out and do him in the street. There will be too many cameras and cops in the station.”

  Court didn’t last fifteen minutes. He’d found a window seat on the top level at the back of the last car in second class. He taken off his coat and draped it over his body. Under it, he pulled his pistol and laid it in his lap with his hand on the grip.

  And then he drifted off to sleep.

  “—weis.”

  He woke slowly, his head leaning against the window. Though his vision was blurred by his bloodshot eyes, he watched snow flurries beating the window next to his face. He wanted to stick his tongue out and taste a fat flake through the glass. The countryside was covered in white, only the sheerest stony mountains shone gray and brown where the snowfall found the grade too steep for a foot-hold. The sky hung low and gray, and a village streaked by before him. It was a beautiful winter morning.

  “Ausweis!” a voice said, close on his right. Court turned and looked quickly; he recognized the authority to the command.

  Four uniformed Swiss police officers stood in the aisle above him. They wore gray pants and two-tone gray jackets. They were Municipaux, city cops. Not the highly trained feds. Big Glock-17s hung off their hips. An outstretched hand at the end of the outstretched arm of the oldest cop.

  “Ausweis, bitte.”

  Court understood travel German. The white-haired police sergeant wanted to see some ID. Not a train ticket.

  Not good.

  Gentry moved the gun hidden under his coat, crammed it between the plastic cushion and the wall of the train car as he sat up.

  Gentry had no identification, only a ticket. Once the weapon was out of view, he fished through his coat, pulled out the ticket, and handed it over.

  The cop didn’t even look at it. Instead he switched to English. “Identification, please.”

  “I lost my passport. I’m heading to the embassy in Geneva to get another.”

  All four policemen obviously understood English, because all four policemen looked at Court like he was full of shit.

  “You are American?” asked the older officer.

  “Canadian.” Court knew he was in trouble. He may have dumped the pistol, but there was a leather holster Velcroed around his ankle. These guys looked sharp enough; there was no chance they would not frisk him. When they found the empty rig on his leg, the cops would just check his seat and find his gun.

  “Where is your luggage?”

  “Stolen. I told you.” There was no sense in making friends. Court knew he’d probably have to kick these guys’ asses before it was all over. He didn’t feel great about knocking a bunch of innocent policemen’s heads together, but he saw no way around it. Although it would be a four-on-one fight, the American operator knew that with surprise, speed, and violence of action, he could get the upper hand in such a small space like a train aisle.

  He’d done it before.

  Just then, the door to the car opened, and three more policemen filed in. They stayed at the door, far back from the rest of the scrum.

  Shit. Seven on one. They were taking no chances. Gentry had no illusions about disabling four men, then advancing twenty-five feet and taking down three more, before being riddled with gunfire.

  “Please stand,” said the silver-haired policeman in front of him.

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “Please stand, and I will explain.”

  “I’m just heading to—”

  “I will not ask you again.”

  Court dropped his shoulders, stood, and took one step into the aisle. A young cop approached and spun him around. Quickly, his hands were cuffed behind his back. The other passengers in the car watched with fascination. Camera phones appeared, and Gentry did his best to turn away from them.

  He was frisked by the young officer, who almost immediately discovered the folding knife in his pocket and the ankle holster on his leg. His seat was searched, and the pistol lifted high into the air like a trophy for all on the car to see.

  “I am a United States federal agent.” Court said this because he didn’t really have much else. He did not expect them to just hand him back his gun and pat him on the ass, but he hoped they might relax a little and give him some opportunity to escape.

  “With no identification?” Asked the officer in charge.

  “I lost it.”

  “So you said. Have you been this morning in Guarda?” asked one of the cops.

  The Gray Man, who, surrounded by camera phones and wide-eyed stares, did not feel much like a gray man, did not answer. One of the new policemen back at the entrance spoke into his walkie-talkie. A moment later, the train began to slow.

  TWENTY

  Riegel took the call at eleven thirty-eight in the morning.

  “Sir, Kruger again. Gentry has been taken off the train at a little village called Marnand. Not a scheduled stop.”

  “Taken off by who?”

  “Municipaux. He’s cuffed and just sitting on the platform, surrounded by the police. I heard one of the cops calling for a transport wagon to be sent up from Lausanne. It should take no more than thirty minutes.”

  “Did you get off the train as well?”

  “No other passengers were allowed off. I’ll disembark in Lausanne and go directly to the police station, wait for him to arrive.”

  Riegel stared at a map on his computer as he hung up and called Lloyd. “Tell the Venezuelans Gentry’s in Marnand, about thirty kilometers north of Lausanne. The police have him.”

  The American answered back immediately. “They can’t have him! We need him!”

  Riegel looked across his desk. The heads of a dozen brilliant animals, trophies of his hunts, stared back at him. He said, “I know that. Tell the Venezuelans they are weapons free. They can destroy whoever gets in their way.”

  “Now we’re talking! Are they any good?”

  “They are from the General Intelligence Office, Hugo Chavez’s secret police. They are the best Caracas has to offer.”

  “Right. Are they any good?”

  “We’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”

  Gentry sat shivering on a wooden bench on the one platform of the small train station. His left hand had been cuffed to the bench’s iron armrest. Five municipal cops stood around him in the light snowfall; the rest had stayed on the train.

  He’d gotten the idea that his description had been distributed after the morning ruckus in Guarda. He guessed the stolen bike showing up at the train station in Ardez earned the ticket girl a questioning by the police. She would have remembered a foreigner on the first train to Zurich that morning. Zurich being the main
transportation hub in the tiny nation, it was just a matter of alerting every cop to check every train, bus, and aircraft out of Zurich for a brown-haired male in his thirties traveling alone.

  The sign on the platform said Marnand. He had no idea where this burg was on the map, but his body felt like he may have gotten a couple of hours of sleep, so he suspected he was not far from Geneva. He had to find a way to get free from these guys and get back on the road. In the back of his head a clock was ticking.

  The lead policeman sat down next to him. His hair was white like a snow-capped mountain peak, and he smelled of fresh aftershave.

  “We wait for a car from Lausanne. They take you to the station. Detectives come and talk to you about the fight in Guarda and the gun you have on train.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gentry was trying on the friendly approach now, his strategy blowing around like a summer wind because he did not know what else to do. It wouldn’t win him release, but it easily could help him get the upper hand with the police, cause them to lower their guard just enough for him to find a window of opportunity to exploit. Still, carrying a gun in your pants in Switzerland was an outrage with nearly the gravitas of mass murder in America.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “No. Hold your piss.”

  The younger cops around laughed.

  Court sighed. It was worth a shot.

  Off to his left, down the platform, a two-lane road twisted up and over a rise. The road was wet and clean and black like liquorice, bisecting the white snowfall on the hill. A dark green panel truck was parked high up on the hill, fifty yards from the station’s edge and a hundred yards or so from where Court sat and his police guards stood on the station’s single platform. Exhaust vapors blew out from the muffler, rose into the air behind the vehicle.

  Court looked to his right now, still trying to find a way to gain the advantage before more cops showed up. To his right was the edge of the village proper. Gingerbread homes were sprinkled in among more modern structures. Plumes of woodsmoke floated into the air above the homes and dissipated in the gray sky above.

  A green truck, identical to the one on his right, rolled slowly out of the village and pulled into a gas station thirty yards from where Court sat. It jolted to a stop in the parking lot, away from the pumps.

  The Gray Man decided in seconds that he had just been surrounded.

  “Sergeant!” he called quickly to the cop in charge.

  The older man was speaking with his subordinates, but he walked over towards Court on the bench.

  “Please listen carefully. We have a problem. On both sides of us are green trucks. In or near those vehicles are men who have been sent to kill me. They will not hesitate to kill you and your men to get to me.”

  The policeman looked to his left and right at both of the vehicles, then back to Gentry.

  “What is this shit you are saying?”

  “They will be well-trained killers. You need to move us all inside the station. Hurry!”

  Slowly, the policeman pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and brought it to his mouth. His eyes did not leave Gentry’s. In German he instructed his men behind him to come over.

  He switched to English. “Two green vehicles. One to the north, one to the south. This man tells me they are men here to rescue him.”

  “Not rescue! Kill!”

  All five looked up and down the platform at the vans. There was still no movement from either.

  “It’s a trick,” said a young blond officer as he unfastened the retention restraint over the tang of his pistol.

  “Who are you?” asked another man.

  Court didn’t answer. Instead he said, “We need to go inside. Quickly.”

  The lead policeman told his officers, “Watch him. I’ll check this out.” He turned and began walking up the platform towards the van to the south at the gas station.

  “Sergeant! You really do not want to do that.” Court called out but was ignored by the silver-headed policeman in the heavy coat.

  The cop descended the platform steps and onto the property of the little gas station. The green van had tinted windows. It sat at idle, steam pouring from its exhaust and drifting away in the air behind.

  As the Municipaux officer approached the truck, Gentry spoke to the four remaining men.

  “He’s going to die. Don’t freak out; we will all have to work together. If you try to run, they will just gun you down. If you want to live, just do what I say.”

  “Shut up,” said one, and all four were looking at their sergeant as he approached the driver’s-side window. He used his walkie-talkie to tap on the tinted glass.

  “Don’t forget about the other van!” Court pleaded to the uniformed men standing over him.

  “Shut up,” repeated the policeman. Gentry could see their growing concern as their heads swiveled back and forth between the north and south.

  The sergeant tapped harder on the glass. As Gentry and the others watched, the silver-haired man seemed to peer closely through the heavy tint. He must have seen something, some movement or other indicator of danger, because quickly the Swiss policeman stepped back and reached down to the pistol on his hip.

  The driver’s-side window shattered with the crack of gunfire. The cop backpedaled away quickly, and the door opened. A man in a black jumpsuit and a ski mask slid out from behind the wheel and onto the pavement, a short-barreled machine pistol in his hand. He fired another three-round burst into the sergeant’s stumbling body, and the Swiss officer dropped dead on his back.

  All four Swiss cops around Court drew their pistols with technique hampered by panic. At thirty yards an accurate shot would be difficult, but the young men fired rounds downrange as they shouted in shock and dropped for cover.

  “The other truck! The other fucking truck!” Court screamed as he himself dropped to the cement. He lay on the cold pavement next to the bench, his left arm above him in the seat, shackled to the armrest.

  The cops looked behind them and saw four masked men walking down the blacktop road towards their position. They all held rifles similar to the man at the gas station, who was now joined by three confederates. All eight moved closer with confidence, like they had all the time in the world.

  “Uncuff me! We’ve got to get inside!” Court yelled, but the policemen just pressed lower into the cement platform, squatted and ducked behind a wooden push-cart or lay flat in the open, and they fired inaccurate rounds at the gunmen as the men in black approached menacingly through the swirling snowfall from opposite directions.

  A bald-headed young policeman shouted into the radio affixed to the epaulets of his jacket. He crouched fifteen feet from Gentry behind a luggage cart that provided him poor shielding from the men on the hill to the north and no cover whatsoever from the men fanned out at the gas station to his south.

  Court watched bursts of concrete stitch up the platform, race towards the young cop as he looked the other way and screamed into his microphone, unaware. Each explosion of cement and dust tracked closer to him, until finally supersonic machine pistol rounds burrowed into his legs and back. He spun onto his side and twitched on the concrete. The death throes ceased as quickly as they began.

  “Somebody give me a gun!” Gentry shouted. The three remaining policemen ignored him. They fired inaccurately and reloaded slowly with jittering hands.

  Court swiveled around on the cold concrete. He put his boots against the iron legs of the bench and kicked as hard as he could. He desperately tried to break the large iron end piece to which he was manacled free from the rest of the twelve-foot wooden bench. The metal handcuff bit into his left wrist as he kicked and pulled. Soon he created a rhythm to his work. A kick with his feet, cracks of the old wood, and searing pain in his wrist and hand.

  A salvo of automatic fire hit the window above him, sending broken glass over the bench and onto the ground all around. As he kicked he looked back over to his right. A second policeman had been hit in the shoulder and hip. He
dropped his gun and writhed on the cement in agony.

  It took over thirty simultaneous strikes with both feet to break the iron end piece away from the wooden bench. On the last drive down with his boot heels, he yanked back with his arm. The pain in his left wrist was excruciating, but the bench broke apart. Gentry crawled to his knees, knelt over the heavy piece of ornamental metal, and lifted it. It was easily thirty pounds and still attached to his scraped and swelling wrist. He hooked his handcuffed arm over the metalwork and hefted it off the platform. Then, in the line of fire from both directions, he ran towards the injured cop writhing in agony in the middle of the platform. When he was still a dozen feet away, he flung the iron out in front of him, down next to the man, and fell with it in a slide. The piece clanged on the cement with nearly as much noise as the gunshots barking all around. His swelling wrist tightened inside the metal cuff.

  Kneeling over the Swiss officer, he reached to the man’s midsection.

  The cop cried out to his rescuer. “My hip! I’m hit bad in the—”

  “Sorry,” Court said as he pulled the handcuff key off the chain on the cop’s utility belt. It was smeared with the young man’s blood. Crouching lower in response to a supersonic whine just inches from his right ear, the American assassin pushed the ornamental iron armrest out in front of him, towards the platform’s edge. He crawled along as he pushed it again.

  The injured policeman reached up and grabbed Court’s leg as the American moved away, a pitiable attempt to both seek help from a rescuer and to regain control of his prisoner, as if that were somehow still an issue. Gentry kicked off the dying man’s hand, picked the cop’s Beretta off the platform, and kept crawling. A spray of sub gun rounds chased Court all the way to the edge of the platform, just missing him as he and his iron anchor rolled off. Gentry dropped four feet down to the ground and behind the cover of the platform’s edge. His adrenaline-tinged brain nearly panicked when he lost the key for a moment in the snow, but he quickly dug it out. Rising to his knees, he kept his frozen red fingers steady as he unhooked the handcuff on his left wrist.