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By now the last two security men had seen the futility of their predicament, and both turned and ran, leaping for the low retaining wall that ran along the road. Russ tracked the movement of one man and fired once more, striking him with a shot to the low back.

  The fourth executive protection officer made it to cover and, Russ felt sure, he would keep his head down for some time to come.

  Just as Russ took his eye out of the scope to begin the quick takedown of the gun, he heard shouting to his left. He looked across the hillside and saw several locals as well as a uniformed police officer, a member of the local police municipale, standing there, at the edge of the hamlet of Èze. The cop had some sort of pistol in his hand, and he fired it at a distance of 125 yards. He missed; dirt and dust kicked up ten feet from where Russ lay, but he quickly spun his rifle toward the cop and aimed at the top of the man’s head to allow for the fact that he’d adjusted the scope for the 335-yard shot. Russ fired just as the municipale fired; the cop missed again, but Whitlock’s .300 Winchester magnum round nailed the man between the eyes.

  Russ fired one last round at the crowd of idiots standing there watching, missing the civilians by inches, and then he quickly and calmly disassembled his weapon, stuffed it in his backpack, and began running up the hill, limping through the pain in his hip.

  It took him less than three minutes to make it to the Moyenne Corniche, a winding hillside road almost empty of traffic. He’d parked his BMW at a scenic lookout, and he leapt into it, throwing the rifle bag into the passenger seat, and then he sped off in a cloud of white dust, minutes before local authorities could respond en masse.

  Four hours later Russ Whitlock stood in front of a full-length mirror in a three-star hotel room in Genoa, Italy. He had showered, shaved off his beard, and cut his hair short and neat. He had rebandaged the wound on his hip and then dressed in an Armani suit he’d had waiting on him here in the room.

  He admired his look in the mirror, and he felt the pride in today’s accomplishment wash over him. No, it had not gone according to plan; there had been some collateral damage. Killing the cop had been unavoidable and very much necessary to achieve his objective, in Whitlock’s opinion, and the dead civilians in the car had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He did not blame himself for any of the deaths, though he remained objective enough to know that this assassination did not look exactly like a Gray Man assassination.

  But still, he told himself, it would suffice for his purposes.

  After straightening his tie once more in the mirror, he zipped closed his Italian leather roller bag and headed out the door.

  He went downstairs and rolled his luggage out onto the street. A taxi driver motioned to him, but Russ waved him away. Instead, Russ took out his phone and walked up the sidewalk, away from the entrance to the hotel, so he could have some privacy.

  He dialed a number using the MobileCrypt app and waited for an answer on the other end.

  “Yes?” It was Ali Hussein, the Quds Force operative he’d met earlier in the week in Beirut. Whitlock recognized the voice.

  “It’s me. It’s done.”

  “I know. It is all over the television. We had hoped for more . . . discretion.”

  “You are not implicated in what happened.”

  “That is not what I mean. My organization is highly uneased by today’s events. We are impressed you succeeded in your mission, but the collateral damage makes us very concerned you are not the man you say you are.”

  Whitlock squeezed the cell phone tightly as he tensed with anger. He said, “The tactical realities of the event resulted in unanticipated loss of life.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Angrily Russ said, “It means ‘shit happens.’”

  After a delay, Hussein said, “This, what transpired today, does not look like the work of the Gray Man.”

  Russ tried to calm himself before continuing, taking two long, silent breaths and telling himself everything was riding on his powers of persuasion. “I understand your concerns. I do. I am disappointed in some aspects of the operation. But I am who I say I am, and you only have to ask yourself who else could have executed this operation on such a tight timeline to see that I am telling the truth.”

  “There is only one way you can convince us.”

  Russ knew Hussein was referring to Kiev. He closed his eyes; he had to force himself not to throw the phone into traffic and then turn around and slam his fist into the wall of the hotel.

  The Quds Force officer said, “We have statements from all the Iranians present the night in question at Vasylkiv Air Base in Kiev, Ukraine. If your description of the events of that evening coincides with what we already know, then we have a deal regarding Ehud Kalb. If you will not tell us, or if what you tell us does not agree with the witness statements, then there will be no further communications between us.” The line went quiet for a moment, then Hussein said, “It is as simple as that.”

  Russ felt himself losing control of his emotions. The anger welled within him, pushing hot blood through his heart and his brain. There on the sidewalk Whitlock thought he might explode with the fury inside that had no way to vent from his body and into the atmosphere.

  “I’ll call you back,” was all he could say before he hung up the phone.

  Russ knew there was no way around it now. He had to somehow get Gentry to tell him about Kiev. Before he even began thinking of a way to achieve this seemingly impossible objective, his phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down at it, hoping like hell it was Gentry.

  Instead, it was Townsend House. Distractedly, Whitlock answered.

  “Go.”

  Babbitt’s voice came through his phone. “It’s Graveside.” After the identity check, Babbitt asked, “Have you made it to Stockholm yet?”

  “Yes,” Russ lied.

  “Jumper hit a dry hole this morning. Looks like Gentry slipped the Mossad watchers the night before.”

  Whitlock breathed a slow sigh of relief. Finally, some good news. Then, “No ideas where he is?”

  “The UAV team is up and Jumper has split into four two-man teams. They are watching choke points.”

  “And Mossad?”

  “They are still in the city, but operating independently of us for the time being. We expect they will bring in reinforcements from Tel Aviv.” He paused. “If you were ever going to use your sixth sense about Gentry and what he’s up to, this would be the time.”

  “Understood. I’ll work on it.”

  He hung up the phone and stood there on the sidewalk, struggling with his own next move. He’d planned on flying from here in Genoa to London so he could start the prep for his hit on Ehud Kalb eight days from now, but he could not just assume Court would be able to avoid all the forces lining up against him in Stockholm. And if Gentry died before Kalb died, then Whitlock knew he’d lost his lifeline.

  He knew he had no choice. He had to rush to Stockholm, to help Gentry slip the noose and somehow convince him to talk about Kiev.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Court chose to spend the majority of the day in his small attic room in the Gamla Stan. The accommodations were opulent compared to where he had spent the previous few evenings, as this unit had its own bathroom and shower, and even a small refrigerator. But as the day turned into night and snowfall picked up outside, Court felt like he was going a little stir-crazy. He decided he would head up the narrow street to a corner market and grab dinner, and then perhaps even venture out for a beer in a dark local bar he had noticed earlier in the day.

  At 7-Eleven he bought some cheese spread and packaged toast to smear it on, along with a bottle of water. As he stood in line to pay he noticed a table in the back, upon which three computer terminals had been set up, serving as a tiny Internet café. After paying he strolled to one of the machines and sat down, and soon he was reading up on the Department of State facial recognition system, thought to be the most advanced recog software in use today. Court suspected there were
technologies out there that hadn’t made it to open source just yet, although whether Townsend possessed such capabilities he had no idea.

  He spread cheese on his dry toast and sipped water, flipped his eyes up to the front of the market, and noticed a woman entering. He looked her over quickly and perfunctorily, and then went back to his online reading.

  Thirty-three-year-old Mossad targeting officer Laureen Tattersal stepped through the doors of the 7-Eleven, brushed snow off the hood of her down coat, and pulled off her gloves. She took a few seconds to warm her face with her hands and then headed to the coffee area hunting for an espresso, desperately needing one last jolt of caffeine before checking the twenty-first potential target location, just up the street.

  It was past eight P.M. now; fat snowflakes drifted around the gas lamps hanging from the colorful buildings of the Old Town. The temperature was heading back down to single digits, and the Israeli woman planned to enjoy every second of warmth she could before heading back outside.

  It had been a long day for the entire team. They’d moved into a hotel in the city center, less than a half mile from the Townsend safe house and only a hundred yards or so from the bridge to the Gamla Stan, where Ruth had last tracked Gentry. They had then bundled up in their cold-weather gear and hit the area, visiting hotels, apartments, tenements, and B&Bs and even checking under bridges where the homeless lived on cardboard in dirty rags.

  So far they’d found nothing, and they planned to knock off for the night in two hours and try again the following day.

  Laureen dropped a sugar cube into her espresso and brought it to her lips. As she did so her eyes lifted up to the rear of the brightly lit store, and she froze, nearly scalding her mouth and tongue on the hot coffee.

  Laureen looked back down as the man glanced up from the computer in front of him, and she added another sugar to her drink. Then she turned and headed to the register to pay.

  It was him. The Gray Man sat at a tiny three-station Internet café set up in the back of the 7-Eleven. He wore his black knit cap just over his eyes, and a scarf hung loosely around the lower portion of his face. He’d bought a new coat since the last time she’d seen him, but still she felt certain this was her target.

  She left the convenience store and, in an abundance of caution, walked a full winding, descending block, checking to make certain she was not herself being followed before she pushed the button on her earpiece and announced to her team that she had located the target.

  Ruth, Mike, and Aron converged on Laureen a few minutes later. They parked the embassy Skoda in an hourly-rate lot there on the Gamla Stan and sat in the sedan for a few minutes, satisfied with the location though it had no line of sight on their target at the convenience store, because Ruth did not dare risk compromise. For now they searched the Internet on their smart phones, looking for tenements or inns around the neighborhood where the Gray Man might be staying, and searching for suitable rooms for themselves to rent in the neighborhood so they could set up a base of operations close by.

  Mike called out, “Castanea hostel is two minutes away from the market. It’s the closest location that looks like his kind of place.”

  Ruth pulled it up on her phone. “Yeah. I don’t see anything else around here this cheap; I think this has got to be it. We’ll check it out in the morning to make sure.”

  Aron was researching places for the team to use to bed down for the night. “There’s a place called the Gamla Stan Lodge just around the corner from us now. I can go get us a couple of rooms there.”

  “Do it,” Ruth said.

  Aron climbed out of the car and headed up the street on foot.

  Ruth decided to give Yanis Alvey the news about finding Gentry, but before she could make the call there was a beep in her ear. Ruth looked down to her phone and saw that it was Yanis calling her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Stockholm. We found the target. He’s still here.”

  There was a short pause. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Laureen picked him up thirty minutes ago.”

  “But you’ve had no visibility on him all day, is that correct?”

  “Correct. But we’ve got him now. We think we know where he’ll stay the night, and we’ll move into a place a couple blocks away.”

  “You lost coverage last night at . . . ten P.M.?”

  Ruth was confused by the questioning. “Around that, I guess. Maybe nine thirty. Why?”

  Yanis said, “Because your target went to the south of France and killed a man. If you are certain he is there now . . . you are certain?”

  “Back up. What do you mean he killed a man in France?”

  “Amir Zarini was murdered this morning.”

  “Oh shit,” she said. Then quickly she added, “But not by Gentry.”

  “We just got off a conference call with Langley. They say all their preliminary intel indicates Amir Zarini was gunned down by none other than Court Gentry. He must have flown down from Stockholm last night. I can get you airline manifests, but for anything chartered, you’re better off going yourself to the fixed-base operators at Stockholm Arlanda and talking to them directly.”

  “He did not go to Nice. That’s impossible.”

  “Why is it impossible? You lost him for twenty-four hours. It’s not only possible, it’s perfect. He left Stockholm last night, did the hit this morning, and arrived back this afternoon or this evening. You guys picked him right back up. Nice work.”

  Ruth knew Gentry had been in Stockholm that morning; she’d seen him herself. But letting Alvey know she’d purposefully short-circuited the Townsend attack in violation of her orders would get her pulled off the case and recalled to Tel Aviv.

  She said, “Send me everything you have on the Zarini assassination.”

  “What we have is preliminary. Hell, it was only nine hours ago. But CIA is working with French federal police and they—”

  “Just send me everything. Now, please.”

  The Mossad team moved into two rooms at the Gamla Stan Lodge, a small hotel in the Gamla Stan that looked out over a tiny cobblestone square. Across the street a bar popular with students and other patrons of the cheap hotels and hostels in the area was in full swing; young men and women moved across the snowy open space heading to and from the bar’s bright entrance in a steady stream.

  While Mike parked the car at a neighboring lot and Aron and Laureen unpacked, Ruth sat at a little desk and read everything Yanis had sent her about the assassination in Nice. Ruth also scanned online news reports of the hit on the websites of CNN and the BBC.

  When Mike returned, they turned on the TV hoping to find more information on the attack. The lodge’s satellite broadcaster received France 2, and the state-owned station showed a lengthy story on the attack, with footage from the scene. Twisted wreckage, bodies covered in yellow tarps, incongruous in front of a backdrop of azure water dotted with pleasure craft. As she watched the news, the others read the CIA info sent by Yanis. When they were finished Ruth said, “You guys have read the after-action reports from the operations Court Gentry has pulled off?”

  Everyone had read the Mossad files, and Ruth had filled them in on the dossier she was allowed to see at Townsend House.

  “Then you see this is bullshit. This operation in Nice does not fit the Gray Man pattern at all.”

  Aron disagreed. “The rifle used in the Zarini hit was a Blaser R93, a favorite of the Gray Man. A weapons smuggler in Austria identified the Gray Man as the purchaser of said rifle. Witnesses at the scene described the Gray Man. Zarini was a known target of Iran, which has also been linked to the Gray Man, just in the last week.” He shrugged. “Sure, certain aspects do not fit, and I can’t deny that, but most of the details do fit, and you should not deny that either.”

  Ruth countered. “There are a lot of white guys with brown hair in their thirties. Anyone can use a particular weapon. But the target, the collateral dam
age . . . the killing of the police officer. That is not Gentry.”

  Mike said, “He got sloppy. He missed the target and hit the driver, and that caused the collision. After that his operation went tits up, and the cop had time to close in on him, so he didn’t have any options. He took him out.”

  “Missed his target? The Gray Man doesn’t miss his target!”

  “Listen to yourself,” Aron said. “You sound like you are infatuated by a myth.”

  “It’s not a myth. He’s that skilled. And that principled. He doesn’t shoot innocent cops.”

  “You told us yourself that he killed his own field team.”

  “I told you the CIA says he killed his own field team.”

  “And you don’t believe them?”

  Ruth hesitated. “I think that if he killed those guys, he had a reason.”

  Aron said, “Well, the timeline doesn’t rule him out of the Zarini hit. Nice is fifteen hundred miles away. Four hours flying time tops with a small corporate jet. Add an hour each way in a turbo prop. That is more than enough time for him to fly to Nice, whack Zarini, and then get back to Stockholm.”

  Ruth couldn’t argue with this, because she did not want to reveal to her team that she’d seen Gentry that morning.

  Mike Dillman had been standing by the window. He looked out, then quickly moved to the overhead light switch. He flicked it off and said, “Speak of the devil.”

  Ruth leaned away from her desk to take a look into the little square. Within a half second she shot back straight up, removing herself from the window. Quickly she turned off the TV with the remote, enshrouding the room in complete darkness.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yep,” said Mike.

  She looked again now and saw a lone man heading toward the lights of the little bar on the other side of the courtyard. She would be invisible up here in the dark from this distance, but still she felt his eyes on her as he glanced around.

  After he entered the bar Laureen said, “I guess he doesn’t want to drink alone tonight,” she said.