Dead Eye (20 page)

“Thank you, but no thank you. My next meal will be in Stockholm.”

“Right. Of course.”

Babbitt and Parks escorted Ruth outside to a waiting taxi. As it drove off through a late afternoon rainshower, Parks turned to his director.

“Do you think Gentry is going after Ehud Kalb?”

Babbitt shook his head. “Not his MO at all. Kalb is no saint, but Court wouldn’t take out a world leader unless the man was extremely dirty, and that’s not Kalb.”

“Mossad got bad intel?”

“Happens all the time.” He then asked, “What do we know about the girl?”

Parks looked down to his tablet computer and pulled up a file. “She’s American, as you probably surmised. Though she has dual citizenship now. Typical Brooklyn Jewish family. No politics, intel, or military background in her tree at all. She was an honor student throughout high school, lettered in track and field. Graduated Columbia with a psychology degree, top of her class, of course.”

“Of course.”

“She was in her third year of law school at NYU when her fiancé was killed on 9/11.” Parks checked his notes. “He was in international finance. Ninety-second floor of Tower Two.”

Babbitt guessed the rest. “Lover boy gets killed, she shucks law school and goes into intel work for Mossad.”

Parks nodded. “I understand the need to join the fight for the people who killed her lover, but why Mossad? Why not her own country?”

Babbitt shrugged. “If she had the raw materials, a good psych degree and law school, for example, and she started sniffing around at FBI or CIA, it’s a good bet Mossad got wind of the fact that a Jewish girl was looking to get into the game. They might have approached her. Told her the truth.”

“The truth?”

“The Mossad hits harder than CIA or FBI. They are smaller, faster, less restrained by politics.” Babbitt spoke with approval. “That woman didn’t give a shit about politics. She wanted to strike back.”

Parks looked back down at his tablet. “And apparently, she still does. She was involved in that clusterfuck the Israelis had in Rome last year. She was the only senior officer in the collections department who was not reprimanded or shit-canned for that. She even got a letter of commendation, saying had her concerns been given the care they deserved, a tragedy could have been avoided.”

Babbitt smiled. “She’s a bitch, but she’s a survivor. I can live with that. She certainly talks a good game. Carmichael forced her on us, but I think we can use her to find Gentry. Dead Eye is hurt, Jumper and his boys aren’t surveillance experts, and the UAV team might be able to pick him up, but drones can’t do what human beings with eyes and feet can do. We’ll fold her and her unit into the operation.”

“And when it comes time to kill Gentry?”

“We kill Gentry,” Babbitt said coolly. “Mossad can take the credit. We’ll take the cash.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

A silver Range Rover rolled slowly up Rue Masse, a short two-lane road near the Gare du Roch train station in eastern Nice. The driver was not a local—in fact, he’d driven all day long from his home to get here—and his growing fatigue along with the moonless night made it difficult for him to see the addresses above the numerous shuttered garages lining the street on both sides of Rue Masse. Finally he pulled alongside the one open garage on the entire street, looked above the darkened entrance at the address, and realized he’d arrived at his destination.

Slowly, and with some trepidation, he pulled inside and put his vehicle in neutral. He left his headlights on; there was no lighting here in the parking garage and although he was not as wary as he normally was during a transaction such as this, there was no way in hell he was going to sit here in complete darkness.

He reached under his leather jacket and thumbed open the buttoned leather strap that held his Colt .45 pistol in its holster.

Just in case he was wrong about the identity of his customer.

His phone chirped in the cup holder on the Range Rover’s center console, and the call was picked up by his vehicle’s radio. He pushed a button on the steering wheel and answered. “Brecht.”

The man in the Range Rover was Austrian, and it was customary to answer with his last name.

The caller spoke English; it was the same man he’d spoken to twice in the past twenty-four hours. “That’s fine,” the man said. “Right where you are. Get out of the vehicle.”

Brecht replied. “Let me see you, please. Let me see that you are alone.”

A light flicked on suddenly over the Range Rover, startling Brecht for a moment. A second later another light came on, this one at the other end of the garage, some fifty feet from where Brecht sat. A man, dressed head to toe in black and wearing a ski mask that completely obscured his face, stood by the light switch on the wall. His hands were empty; Brecht assumed he communicated through an earpiece.

The Austrian was not completely put at ease by the scene, but in his line of work he knew he must take risks, and this transaction could not very well take place if he did not do as instructed. He turned off the engine and climbed out of his truck, then walked around to the back.

The man in the ski mask approached, stepping out of the light in the corner and into the darkness, stopping ten feet from where the Austrian stood.

“Guten Abend.” Good evening,
Brecht said.

“Good evening.” The man spoke American English, just as he had in their phone conversations.

“Do you have the money?”

The man in the mask reached to the small of his back, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it forward; the Austrian lost it in the dark but got his hands up, fumbled with it in the air for a moment, but brought it into his chest, and then he opened the envelope.

Thirty thousand euros takes a moment to count, and Reinhold Brecht counted carefully, but from time to time his eyes flashed up to check on the man in front of him.

He was on guard, of course, but much less so than usual today. Normally he would have taken many more measures to ensure his safety; he would have employed cutouts and brought armed associates to check out the area beforehand and to stay close by, but just out of sight, in case the transaction fell through and there was trouble.

But not tonight. Tonight he was here alone, and while wary, he was reasonably comfortable with this exchange.

He looked up from the envelope full of euros and smiled. “All there, of course. I expected nothing less.” He shoved the money into his jacket and walked to the back of his Range Rover.

“May I bring it out?”

“Please do,” said the American.

Reinhold Brecht pulled a large black leather satchel from the backseat and placed it on the cement floor of the parking garage. He unzipped the satchel and reached inside. The American shined a small flashlight on it, and Brecht pulled out a Blaser R93 sniper rifle in five pieces. He took a moment to assemble the weapon, occasionally looking up at the masked American or back over his shoulder to the street.

Once completed, he reached into the case again and pulled out a Leupold Mark 2 scope, and he snapped it into place on the rail at the top of the rifle. He reached once more into the satchel and produced a box magazine, loaded with four rounds of .300 Winchester magnum ammunition.

He snapped the magazine into the mag well and handed the weapon up to the American.

“The zero?” the man in the ski mask asked as he took it and looked it over.

“As you requested, it is ranged for one hundred meters.” Brecht looked up and winked. “It will do the job.”

After a few quiet moments where the masked man examined the weapon professionally, opening the bolt and looking through the optics, he handed it back to the Austrian.

“Pack it back up.”

The Austrian knelt down, did as instructed, and then stood back up.

“Fifty rounds of ammunition in the case as well. Will you require anything else, sir?”

“No. You may leave now.”

“With your permission, I would like to say something first.”

“Okay.”

Brecht smiled a little. “I only know of one man who requests the collapsible Blaser rifle in .300 Win Mag ammunition.”

The man in the ski mask did not reply to this.

Brecht added, “Two and a half years ago I procured a similar weapon for you. I did not speak with you directly. Another man ordered it, but I knew this other man worked for Sir Donald Fitzroy, your handler. I delivered the weapon to Italy. I saw soon after that a human trafficker in Greece, a man responsible for bringing many women from Europe and selling them into servitude, was killed by a single round of .300 Win Mag, right between the eyes, at a range of seven hundred meters.” Brecht grinned excitedly. “My contacts in the business began whispering the name of the Gray Man.”

Brecht puffed out his chest and said, “I was proud to play a small role in that operation.”

Again, the man in the ski mask did not say a word, and Brecht took note of his silence.

“It is no problem,” a slight touch of nerves in his voice now. “I am discreet, of course, and I would not normally mention I am aware of the identity of a customer. It’s just that . . . well . . . in this business, one does not have a chance to work with people of such impeccable character.

“I am a businessman; I don’t care what one does with my products. But it is nice to know today my tool is put in the hands of a good man who will use it for good. I want you to know that I remain at your service for any needs you might have in the future.”

Russ Whitlock fought a smile, though he doubted it would hurt his cover much to show a stupid grin to this man. Gray Man would probably eat up such platitudes.

Russ had chosen this arms trader, for three reasons. One, he was reliable enough. Russ had known of him for years. He had access to quality guns and he delivered the guns quickly.

Two, Russ had read in Gentry’s dossier that he had obtained a sniper rifle from Reinhold Brecht once in the past. Brecht would, of course, remember the sale and he would, of course, know that the Gray Man had been the killer of the Greek pimp and human trafficker.

And three, despite Brecht’s claim that he was discreet, he was anything but. From time to time he took money from the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies in exchange for information he picked up plying his trade. Russ knew the Austrian would not keep his damn mouth shut about supplying the Gray Man, and that was exactly what Russ was counting on. A successful execution of this phase of the operation depended on the loose lips of Reinhold Brecht.

“Thank you,” Russ said. “I hope to work with you again.”

“It would be an honor.” And then Brecht actually bowed.

What a fucking suck-up,
Russ thought. He wanted to draw his Glock and pistol-whip the motherfucker to the ground. Instead he just nodded back at the man, stood there, and waited for him to climb into his vehicle and drive away.

When the Range Rover had rolled off into the night, Russ hefted the leather satchel with the Blaser rifle, walked back to the light switch, and flicked it down, returning the entire scene to darkness.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ruth Ettinger and her three-person team of targeting officers met at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm, borrowed a black four-door Skoda from the Mossad motor pool, and then drove together to the Townsend safe house just set up on Sankt Ericksgaten Street. They parked their car in a snow-covered lot, slung their luggage over their shoulders, and headed
up four flights of stairs
.

The only two occupants of the flat were a two-man Townsend UAV team who had themselves only just arrived: a drone pilot named Carl and a sensor operator named Lucas who stopped unpacking their equipment just long enough to introduce themselves.

Ruth, Aron, Laureen, and Mike all moved into a large bedroom at the back of the flat, while the drone operators pulled mattresses off beds in another bedroom and dragged them into the living room so they could stay close to their gear at all times.

And they had a lot of gear. While the Townsend men got set up, Ruth and her team watched them install four laptops on tabletop rack mounts, attach and calibrate flight control joysticks, uncoil microphone headsets, and finally unpack three identical UAVs. They were microdrone quadcopters, an X-shaped design with a small enclosed rotary wing topping each of the four arms, and a bulb-shaped center that held the power, brains, and cameras. The three identical devices were only sixteen inches in diameter and each unit weighed less than five pounds.

Mike Dillman whistled. “We’ve got some cool stuff, but we don’t have those.”

Lucas put one of the devices on a charging station on the floor. “Cutting edge. We’ve played around with these back in the States, but we’ve never fielded this model before. No one has. It’s called the Sky Shark. Got it from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the folks that build all the latest and greatest gadgets. They gave it to us to field-test it in an urban environment.”

“Sweet,” said Mike.

Laureen asked, “You plan to just fly this around downtown Stockholm and hope no one will see it?”

Carl answered this. “This thing is damn near silent, but it’s not invisible. We have some techniques to employ to keep it out of sight. Obviously we fly as high as we can, but this isn’t a Reaper or a ScanEagle where you can cruise at eight or nine miles up. With these you have to stay within a couple hundred feet of the target in a moving surveillance, so we fly behind the target in most cases, and we can use the sun, when there is sun around here to be had, so that our target won’t know he is being watched.”

Lucas added, “In the dark it’s better. The camera has night vision, of course.” He smiled. “Nobody’s going to detect this baby at night.”

Ruth asked to see the video the Townsend facial recognition software had identified as Court Gentry, and Carl brought up a still photo on one of the rack-mounted laptops. He explained that the image had been taken the previous day at an electronics store a few kilometers from where they now sat. The still photo was taken from the clearest image from the quick snippet of video.

Ruth leaned close to look at it, then raised an eyebrow. Townsend analysts had provided images of Gentry to her and all her team, and she called up a picture on her smart phone. She looked over a photo of Court Gentry wearing a suit and eyeglasses, then looked up to check the video still again. “Certainly not definitive.”

Carl shook his head, but said, “We put it at 60 percent prob.”

“How so? The photo isn’t clear and you can only see about two thirds of the face.”

“True, but the camera captured the periocular region, the area around the eyes, which actually has more biometrically identifiable features than fingerprints. And from the photographs of him we have on file we have built a virtual 3-D model of his face, and the reconstructed periocular region on that is close enough to this guy here to make the 60 percent assessment.”

This technology was not new to Ruth in theory—she tracked people for a living, after all—but she had never seen periocular data pulled from such a grainy, off-center image in the field.

The rest of her team looked at the photo on the laptop and compared it to the photos of Gentry on their smart phones. Aron and Mike thought they were looking at the same person, but Laureen and Ruth remained doubtful.

Ruth asked, “What’s your plan to find him, if he is in fact here?”

Lucas took his cue and said, “Babbitt wants you folded into our search, so this might be a good time to show you how we do it.”

Carl took one of the Sky Shark drones to the balcony and returned a moment later without it. He sat down at the flight controls while Lucas worked the laptop next to him for a moment.

“Ready.”

The drone took off from the balcony, lifting a few feet into the air and then drifting sideways. It climbed again, out of sight, and then Ruth and her team moved behind the two American UAV operators to watch several live images on the laptops. One of the cameras was positioned on the drone to show a straight-ahead view; a second was the rear view. A third camera was obviously below the craft, and it could be turned and zoomed by a toggle on the sensor operator’s console.

They watched the screens as the drone flew over the buildings in the neighborhood, made a series of turns, and then descended between two buildings to hover over a pedestrian shopping street. The sensor operator picked out a young woman strolling along; she wore a fur coat and a matching mink hat, and her arms were laden with shopping bags.

While they worked, Lucas said, “As technology improves, it gets harder and harder for runners like Court Gentry to hide.”

“Because of biometrics?” Ruth asked.

“Exactly. It’s a biometric ID world now. Just a few years ago facial recognition software was nonexistent or unreliable. But as it improves, guys like Gentry are dinosaurs, waking up to the cold.

“The biometric database for CIA employees is quite extensive now, but Gentry was lucky to get out before most of it started being harvested. There is no soft biometric profile, which is his gait, the way he stands, stuff like that. All we have is an iris scan and fingerprints on file for him, which is useless in this situation. But the facial recog we are using should get the job done.”

Carl spoke now as he flew the UAV with the joystick and toggle throttle. “From the cam image in the electronics shop we know what he is wearing: the coat, the hat, the shades. We know how tall he is and how much he weighs. All that goes into an algorithm, and the Sky Shark camera goes out and records everyone it sees moving on the street and passes the images back to these computers. The software can evaluate over two hundred individuals a minute—”

Lucas spoke up here. “When it’s working right.”

“Yeah,” Carl allowed, “when it’s working right. Ninety-nine percent of the individuals are going to get tossed out immediately. Wrong height, wrong weight, different coat, female form, whatever. But anytime the computer finds someone that needs a second look it will let the drone know, and the drone will take another shot. The second look will go back to the computer for evaluation, as well. And a third look, to narrow it down more.”

“After that?” Aron asked.

“After that any image that is deemed a possible match will pop up on the screen. Those have to be weeded out manually.”

Lucas said, “I do that while Carl concentrates on not slamming the Sky Shark into a wall.”

Ruth said, “And if you find him? What then?”

Carl answered. “That’s another cool part. If I see him in one of the images, I just tell the computer to let the drone know we have a match. At that point the Sky Shark goes from hunting mode to tracking mode. It remembers where the individual was, goes back and relocates him, and locks on like a dog on a scent.”

“This is impressive,” Ruth admitted. “What are the drawbacks?”

Carl had an answer ready. “The electric engines use a ton of juice. Sky Shark can loiter only about a half an hour before we have to bring it back for a recharge. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem; we’ve got three, so we can keep circulating them.”

As the Townsend UAV team began what they freely admitted could be a lengthy hunt, Ruth sent Mike and Laureen to the electronics store where Gentry bought the computer. They would interview the salesman, branch out and check hotels nearby, and keep their eyes peeled.

Ruth called in to Yanis to let him know they were up and running here in Sweden.

“How are the Americans treating you?”

“Like we’re part of the team. CIA is desperate to get this guy.”

Yanis heard something in her voice. “You are, too, right?”

“So far, I’m more curious. It’s obvious the Americans want us to help, but it is not obvious at all to me that Gentry has any interest in taking out the PM. I can’t stop thinking about all the good this man has done, on his own initiative, while on the run.”

“Good guys do bad things. No reason bad guys can’t do good things once in a while, too.”

“I guess so. I’ve got an open mind on this, but I’m not sharpening my dagger just yet.”

Yanis said, “This is time critical. The likelihood of any danger to Kalb right now is only increased by the fact that he will be more vulnerable over the next two weeks during his travel. You don’t have the luxury of spending too much time on building a perfect target folder. I need you to find him, identify him, and monitor the Townsend people to make sure they stay on target. If they want to send their hitters to go in and kill him, they have their reasons, and you stand back and let them do it. Whether he’s a threat to Ehud Kalb will become a moot point if the Americans eliminate him.”

“I understand, Yanis,” she said, but still, there was reticence in her voice. “But when did we become the hunting dogs for the CIA?”

“When the fox started sniffing around our hen house, Ruth.”

“Right,” Ruth said.

“Get to work, but be careful. CIA conducted a teleconference briefing with us this morning about the Gentry case. He is a slick bastard, well trained to spot a tail. Find him, but stay loose.”

“Thanks for the concern, Yanis, but I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will.”