Dead Eye (19 page)

TWENTY-SIX

Ruth had spent nearly the entire day in conference rooms. After her morning at ODNI in McLean, she was taken by a CIA car to the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C., and up the long driveway to Townsend Government Services.

She was led by Jeff Parks through a building she found almost comically surreal. Seemingly every square inch of wall space was occupied by some homage to the Old West. Knowing what little she did about this company—that they were a glorified posse deputized by the CIA to bring back their man, dead or alive—she half wondered if Parks and the other men in the building wore ten-gallon hats and stirrups when they were not conducting meetings with outsiders such as herself.

Parks led her into a room and presented her with an accordion file full of papers about her target. He seemed unhappy about passing her the information, but he was clearly under orders by the CIA to do so and, like a good dog, he was doing as he was told. Still, he made her agree to certain ground rules. She promised to stay off her mobile phone and her laptop, and she was not allowed to make any written notes of the information. She agreed, Parks left her to her work, and she eagerly tore into the file.

Despite her requests to see everything the CIA could give her, she was immediately disappointed to find an incredible number of black strikethroughs on the paperwork—it appeared as if 75 percent of her target’s history had been redacted.

The file began with Gentry’s recruitment into the Agency, and Ruth was fascinated to learn that he had been headhunted by CIA after being convicted of a triple murder. The dossier had all the details of the crime. Gentry had been nineteen years old at the time, working as a bodyguard for a low-level drug smuggler working out of Opa-locka airport in south Florida.

From all the evidence available in the file, Gentry’s employer had been targeted for assassination by a group of Colombians, but young Court came to the rescue, killing the three hit men from Cartagena. The police showed up moments later; Gentry dropped his gun and was taken into custody.

He was convicted of murder and thrown into prison, but almost immediately the CIA scooped him up and put him through a two-year program to develop him into a nonofficial cover asset.

It was clear to Ruth the program was irregular, to say the least, because here the dossier became suspiciously vague. Mentions of the Balkans, a reference to St. Petersburg and Laos and Buenos Aires, but never an explanation of just what, exactly, the young man was doing in any of these far-flung locations.

In 2001, however, the paperwork picked back up when Gentry became a paramilitary operations officer for the CIA’s Special Activities Division, assigned to capture or kill al Qaeda personalities around the globe. She read details of operations conducted by CIA Task Force Golf Sierra, renditions and hits all over the world, and though the operations were well documented, there was nothing in the files to help her build a psychological profile on her target.

He was a member of the team, call sign Sierra Six. Nothing more.

Then came details of the events that led to what the file described as the kill/capture order on Gentry.

Ruth read it twice, the first time with rapt fascination, the second time with growing skepticism.

According to the report, Gentry had been home in his apartment in Virginia Beach when the rest of his field team came over for a visit. And then, with apparently no warning, Gentry murdered the entire team.

All four men.

There was no explanation in the documentation as to why he had done this, other than a report from an agency psychologist suggesting that post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by years in the field had caused him to snap. That he had somehow misinterpreted his teammates and colleagues as a threat.

To Ettinger the explanation seemed suspiciously convenient. And there was no reason whatsoever for why all the rest of his team happened to be in his apartment. He’d invited them over to watch a football game, maybe? She looked at the after-action report. The gunfight took place in predawn hours. A late-night party that turned into a tier-one shootout?

Sure, she said to herself,
that
happens.

Ruth Ettinger’s bullshit detector spiked into the red.

That the fight did take place was not in question. There were photographs of several bodies. Blood on the walls. A smashed window. Shell casings strewn across the floor. But Ruth was having a difficult time buying the official version of events.

The last portion of the accordion file dossier on Gentry was perhaps the most complete and most interesting to her. It detailed Townsend Government Services’ own hunt for the Gray Man. This hunt, if the documentation was to be believed, had led them from Mexico to Europe, and teams of assets were deployed even now in northern Europe.

As soon as she finished perusing the last document, she looked at her watch and realized three hours had passed. She had done her best to commit pertinent information to memory and to form a mental list of questions to have ready for her scheduled four
P.M.
meeting with Leland Babbitt, director of this odd enterprise.

Babbitt entered the conference room right on time, with Jeff Parks behind him. The director of Townsend Government Services was a big man with a thick neck and a wide smile on his face. As he shook her hand he said, “I was told to prepare myself.”

“For what, sir?”

“To keep my professional demeanor in the presence of such a striking woman.”

Ruth faked a little smile and worked to keep her eyes where they were, not rolling into the back of her head.

Babbitt sat down and said, “Denny has asked us to provide any assistance we can. I am happy to have help from the legendary Mossad on this difficult project.”

She doubted his sincerity but thanked him for his kind words.

He added, “I am sure you must have questions for me after looking over the dossier.”

“I do. These files are heavily redacted.”

He nodded somberly. “Yes, I know.”

“I was told I could see the internal documents. All of them.”

“The redactions are on the source docs.”

She wanted to say
Bullshit
, but instead she said, “I see. You are saying Gentry was run off book.”

“In the early part of his career he was part of a program that, for purposes of security, was not completely committed to paper.”

Ettinger cocked her head and held it there, urging Babbitt to provide her more information. But he did not bite.

“So there is nothing else about Courtland Gentry that you can provide me?”

“It’s all right in front of you. He was a solid operative for several years, working alone. After 9/11, CIA put together strike teams in the Special Activities Division. His name came up as a suitable candidate, and he joined a task force.”

Ruth picked up a page of the file and looked at it. While she scanned it again she said, “Where he was involved in targeted killings and extraordinary renditions.”

“Exactly.”

She lifted another series of documents and thumbed through them quickly, finally finding the ones she was looking for. “Looking over his freelance operations since his departure from CIA, this just doesn’t add up.” She held up the pages. “I see motive in these hits. His motive was justice. But I don’t see the motive in assassinating Prime Minister Kalb.”

Parks said, “According to what you told Denny, the Iranians are offering twenty-five million dollars. Money is motive, Ms. Ettinger.”

She shook her head and spoke softly, almost to herself. “Not really, no. Not with Gentry.” She changed gears quickly. “When and where was your most recent sighting of Gentry?”

“Tallinn, Estonia. Tuesday morning. An arrest team had him cornered there, and Gentry wiped them out.”

“Killed them?”

“Most of them, yes.”

“A Townsend arrest team?”

“Yes.”

Ruth had read a cable about the shootout in Estonia, but Mossad had not connected it to the Gray Man. She made a mental note to dig deeper into the details with Tel Aviv.

“Your sanction includes lethal means.”

“Of course. He is a dangerous man.”

“I understand that. Israel has its own file on the Gray Man, of course. We have been able to attribute several high-profile extrajudicial killings around the world to him over the past four or five years, and although there is nothing in your file here about it, my organization feels confident he single-handedly pulled off the Kiev operation a few years ago. If that was, in fact, the Gray Man, he is every bit as dangerous as his reputation.”

Babbitt put a hand up. “He is the best out there. But he did
not
do Kiev. It’s disappointing to me that an organization as talented as the Mossad is helping to spread that urban legend.”

“How can you be so sure it’s not true?”

“Court works alone. What happened at the airport in Kiev could not have been perpetrated by one man, despite his skill.”

Ruth leaned forward into the table. “Tell me why.”

“Do you know what a ‘command fire’ event is, Ms. Ettinger?”

She shook her head slowly. “I confess I do not.”

“It’s a tactical term, used by snipers, mostly. It is the simultaneous fire of multiple weapons against multiple targets to gain a tactical advantage.”

“I see.”

“That night in Kiev, four targets in two different locations were shot at the beginning of the engagement, all at the same exact instant. Two of the four targets were moving. Two of the targets were killed with the same bullet. All four men were shot through the head. There is no way in hell any one sniper does that. There were three snipers, which means three spotters.” He held up six fingers. “And then, after this, is when the close quarters engagement took place, so there were probably another six or eight guys. Langley figures there were twelve to fourteen operators involved in Kiev . . . not one.”

Ruth made a mental note to pass this information to Mossad so they could adjust their Gentry file accordingly, and then she moved on. “One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“Is Courtland Gentry a villain, or is he a hero?”

Parks laughed aloud.

Babbitt said, “Why do you ask that?”

“Quite frankly, he’s done some great work. Everyone he’s targeted has been human debris who, to be honest, this world is better off without.”

“That’s your opinion,” Babbitt said.

“And even in your heavily redacted—one might even say ‘doctored’—file on him, I see so many vague references to operations, ops in which the CIA obviously was satisfied with the result. And then, one day, out of the blue, he throws a pizza party at his apartment and kills all his coworkers.”

Babbitt responded immediately. “That is not how I read the events of the evening when he—”

Ruth interrupted him. “I am sure I have it wrong. I am sure there is more to the story.” She looked both men over. “
Much
more to the story. Frankly, none of that matters to me. I only need to know where he is, and whether he poses a threat to Ehud Kalb.”

Babbitt said, “You are going to have a hard time focusing on bringing him down if you hold on to the illusion that he is being treated unfairly.”

“Mr. Babbitt. That is not the way my world works. My job is to stop the Gray Man before he kills my prime minister. I don’t care what he is; if he is a threat to Ehud Kalb I will track him, I will find him, and I will take him down.”

Parks raised a hand. “Just so we are clear,
we
will let your team tag along with us, advise us, but we will find him, and we will do the taking down. If you want in on our operation, you will heed our terms.”

Ruth knew it was pointless to argue, and she also knew this was better for her organization anyway. “This is about a paycheck to you. It is about the survival of my nation to me. I’ll go along with your conditions, because Gentry may very well be a threat to my prime minister. But I don’t believe half of what I’ve read here today, and I don’t believe 25 percent of what you’ve told me.”

Babbitt ignored the accusation. He just nodded, glad the matter was settled.

Just then the door to the conference room opened and a man called Parks out of the room.

He returned a moment later. “Excuse me, Lee, can I talk to you in private for a moment?”

He started to excuse himself, but Ruth said, “I’m sorry, but if this happens to involve the Gentry operation, this would be the time to start including me in the intelligence.”

Babbitt turned to Parks. Ruth saw a questioning look, something deeper there. Parks gave a slight nod.

Lee Babbitt sat back down. “Go ahead, Jeff.”

Parks said, “We have a potential ID. It is
very
preliminary, probably not actionable at this stage, but it—”

“Where?” Ruth asked.

“Facial recognition software picked up data points that may or may not be—”

“
Where
, Mr. Parks?”

Parks sighed, not hiding his frustration with the woman’s impatience. “Stockholm, Sweden.”

Ettinger pulled her phone out and held it up. “I am calling my people.” She pushed a button and slid the phone under her thick hair.

Parks warned her, “You are jumping the gun. Something this preliminary won’t cause us to deploy assets. We will just tune the software, focus our attention on the cameras in the traffic areas near where the potential sighting occurred, and then, when we get—”

He stopped talking because she clearly was not listening to him.

“It’s me. He’s in Stockholm. I’m on the way. I’ll meet you there in the morning.” She hung up the phone without another word.

Babbitt just shook his head in mild surprise. He looked like he was going to say something more, but he stopped himself, then waved away the thought. “I have a technological surveillance detail in Estonia right now. If you are going to Stockholm, I’ll send them over. You and your team can coordinate with them. They have some amazing new tools to help in the hunt. You just might get lucky.”

Ruth stood, shook his hand. “Thank you for that.”

Babbitt himself stood now. “We’d planned on taking you to dinner. There’s a hell of a good Italian place around the corner.”