Dead Eye (26 page)

THIRTY-SIX

Ruth found the bar mostly full, but there was an open stool along the L-shaped wooden bar near the door, likely, she assumed, because every time the door opened the arctic air poured in. She stayed in her coat and took a seat next to a blond-haired couple in their twenties. Careful not to look around at first, she fiddled with her mobile phone for a moment, then shouted over loud rock music to order a Falcon Pilsner on draft.

As she looked away from the bartender she glanced the length of the room and picked Gentry out around the turn of the L-shaped bar and almost at the far end. Though they were easily twenty-five feet apart, this was the closest she had been to the Gray Man. She stole glances at him as she brought her beer to her lips. He had a bottle of beer in front of him, and his head hung over it. A black knit cap covered his head, and he wore his coat unzipped. Days of rough stubble peppered his cheeks and chin, dark brown with a few flecks of gray.

He leaned over his bottle, seeming to not notice anyone or anything around him, but Ruth realized she could not accurately gauge his level of awareness, as she only glanced at him once every minute or so.

She had no illusions that she would see her target sitting next to a known Iranian intelligence officer, receiving a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills, but she felt like she needed to get this close to get some measure of this man. From the very beginning of this operation she’d been bothered by the official version of this man’s biography, and she realized she was desperately reaching out to try to find some understanding of his motivations. Something that would either rule him in as a threat, or rule him out.

But there wasn’t much going on in here. She finished her beer after ten minutes or so and ordered another, and she thought now Aron might have been correct. There might be need for surveillance tomorrow, and even though she had disguised herself with a wig and more makeup than she would normally wear, she would have to exclude herself from any close foot-follow, because she could not rule out the possibility that he might remember her from the bar.

If he was as good as his reputation, he would damn sure remember her face despite her best attempts at disguise.

She looked down, ran her finger along the rim of her beer glass, and quickly flitted her eyes up in his direction.

Gentry stared right back at her.

Ruth was burned and she knew it. She looked away quickly, not casually enough, she was certain, so she went in the opposite direction with her plan. She looked back, hoping to catch his eye again. She thought there was a chance she could make him think she was only eyeing him because she was attracted to him.

It took several seconds, but soon enough Gentry’s eyes met hers again. She could tell he was fully alert now, wondering why the woman across the bar was locked onto him, but all she could do now was pass her actions off as flirtation.

She smiled at him and looked down and away. Internally her senses were on fire. She had no idea how he would react.

She glanced again toward him, and he looked away.
Shit,
she thought to herself.
He’s not buying it.

The door opened behind her, and a moment later Aron passed behind her and kept walking around the L-shaped bar to the tables along the far wall of the room. They were all packed, but he moved into a group of college students and started chatting with them like he’d known them for years.

Ruth looked up to Gentry and noticed he was still looking down. She thought, at first, that he was concentrating on the bottle in front of him. But to her surprise, he pulled out a mobile phone, dialed a number with his thumb, and placed it to his ear.

Russ Whitlock’s plane had just landed at Stockholm Arlanda airport, and he walked with the other passengers from his flight toward the baggage carousel.

He checked his phone and saw that he had no new intel pushes from Townsend House, which he took as an indication that the noose had not yet closed around Gentry. He planned to grab his bag and then jump in a taxi for the city center, and along the way call Parks to see what was going on.

As he put his phone back in his coat it rang. The call was coming through his MobileCrypt app so he could not see the phone number. Quickly he checked the time. It was a little after nine here. Gentry had promised to call, so he hoped like hell it was him.

“Go.”

Russ first heard background noise over the line. Music, perhaps, as well. Then Court Gentry spoke, softly, and with stress in his voice. “Anything new you want to tell me about?”

Yes!
Russ had to stop himself from pumping a fist in the air, and he struggled to keep his reply low-key. “I wish you’d called me earlier. I got intel right after I talked to you last night. Townsend Group is in Stockholm. They thought they had you located in a tenement building, and they hit it this morning. A team with submachine guns, just like the other night in Tallinn. I don’t know how you did it, but you gave them the slip.”

“Who’s the girl?”

“The girl?”

“C’mon, man. The girl making goo-goo eyes at me right now. Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She
might
be on the surveillance detail.”

Court looked up again at the attractive blonde sitting on the other side of the bar; she concentrated on her beer glass for a moment, then glanced his way. Her eyes lingered on him a moment, then they moved on. She was good, he had to admit. She seemed relaxed, just a lonely girl on holiday with a couple of beers in her.

“Any chance you can find out for sure?”

“Of course I can. Where are you?”

“In a bar in the Gamla Stan.”

“Okay. Give me your cell number and I’ll call you back.”

Court just said, “I’ll just call
you
back in five.”

“It might be more than five. Dammit, Court. A private kill team has got you fixed, you are convinced there is surveillance on you right now, and you are worried that the guy who has already saved your life might trace your fucking phone number? Are you serious?”

Court conceded the point by reading the number off his cell phone.

Ruth had a running count going of the number of times she and her target had locked eyes. At five, she decided she had no choice. He was suspicious, and the only way she could keep from spooking him further was to go over there and hit on him. She felt like she could get him to relax a little, to accept the fact that the girl with the elevator eyes was just lonely or horny, and no threat to him. And if she played her cards right, she told herself, she might even learn something more about the man and his intentions.

She stood from her stool, lifted her drink off the bar, and began walking over.

Out of the corner of her left eye she saw Aron sitting with the college kids; he looked up at her and squared his shoulders in her direction. Though he was professional and showed no outward alarm, she wondered if he would call out to her, and she also wondered if he would leap from his chair and tackle her before she could walk over and sit down next to the man with the blood of so many on his hands.

But he did not shout and he did not tackle her. She made the crossing over to her target without incident, and she focused on the man as she stepped up to the bar next to him.

Gentry looked down into his beer. He did not move a muscle.

“Hej,”
she said. It sounded like “Hey!” in English, but it was Swedish for “hello” and the only word she knew in the language.

Slowly the man’s face turned to her. “Hello,” he answered in English. His voice was softer than she’d imagined it to be.

“Crowded,” she said. “I guess everyone wants to get out of the cold.”

“I guess so.”

“You’re American?” she asked.

He nodded and looked back down to his beer, his shoulders and legs pointed forward, toward the bar, and not in her direction. His body language would have devastated her self-esteem if she had really been trying to chat him up.

“Me, too.”

He did not look up or respond.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just thought I could introduce myself.”

“All right.”

She used his response as an invitation to sit down on the stool just vacated next to him, although she was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.

In the intelligence world, a seemingly chance encounter with someone who is actually an enemy intelligence officer is referred to as a bump. If a male spy is riding the subway, the pretty girl who drops her purse next to him and then starts up a conversation as the two of them pick up the contents is probably bumping him. There is likely nothing at all random to the encounter.

Court had seen no specific tell indicating that this encounter with this woman was a bump. But Court was also a suspicious man. He would assume she was part of a surveillance team until he either confirmed it or somehow proved otherwise.

It occurred to him that the only true way he would ever be convinced she was not bumping him was if she walked away right now and he never saw her again.

He did not speak to her, so she started talking. “I’m here on vacation. Brooklyn, born and raised.” She smiled.

He looked up now, but not at her; instead he looked behind the bartender in front of them, scanning the glass bottles, the reflections off the glass shelving, even the tap handles over the draft beer faucet.

“I’m Rebecca,” she said, and she reached out a hand.

He took it and shook it softly; there was no eye contact along with the gesture.

His phone rang. “I’m sorry.” And then, with a slight smile he said, “Work.”

“Sure,” she said politely, and then she swiveled in her stool, faced forward, and took a sip of her pilsner.

Court answered with a light “Hello.”

“I’ve got answers for you.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

Russ said, “The short version is this: If I were you, I’d drink up.”

“Go on.”

Russ said, “I
will
go on. I’ve got all the intel you need right now, real life-and-death shit, but I want something for it.”

“What’s that?”

Russ said, “I want to know about Kiev.”

Court sighed a little and said, “Good-bye,” and he started to take his phone from his ear.

Russ shouted, “The woman is Mossad!”

Court brought the phone back quickly. His breathing quickened slightly, though he made no outward indication of alarm.

“Is that a fact?” The girl was on his right, sipping from her beer mug and looking ahead.

“Yes. There is a Mossad team liasing with Townsend. I’ve got all the particulars, but you have to give me what I want first. Tell me everything you did in Kiev.”

“That’s not really convenient for me right now.”

“I understand, you are in public. Look, I know you are a man of your word. You swear to me you will tell me about Kiev. The truth, no bullshit. You do that and I’ll help you get away from the Israelis.”

Court looked at the reflection of the woman in the mirror behind the bar. She glanced up at his reflection and smiled.

Mossad. Holy hell.
In his five years on the run he’d purposefully steered clear of the Israelis. He had great respect for their abilities, and the fact that they were on him now made his guts churn.

Softly he spoke into his phone. “Deal.”

“Listen carefully,” Russ said. “I just talked to Jeff Parks at Townsend. The woman’s name is Ettinger. Ruth Ettinger. She’s running a four-person targeting team, and although she is working with Townsend, they are not operating together tonight. Still, if there are targeters on you, you know good and well there are going to be shooters close by.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Court said flatly.

“You need to get out of town.”

“I hear you.”

Court looked back over his left shoulder; there was a hallway that led to a rear exit. It was his closest escape route, although there were easily thirty people crowding the floor between himself and the hallway.

“Not the back,” said Whitlock. He couldn’t see Gentry, of course, but he could guess what was going through the other singleton’s head. “They’ll have that covered with guns first. There will be eyes at the front, but they won’t expect you to bolt into public.”

Court knew Whitlock was right. He looked to the front door now. There was also kitchen access next to the bar, and he was sure there would be an exit through there.

“Okay, man. Good to hear from you. Call me tomorrow.”

Russ paused, then said, “She’s right there, isn’t she?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you talking to her?”

“Pretty much.”

Whitlock paused, and when he spoke again, the agitation in his voice was clear. “I need you to extricate yourself from that!”

“You and me both.”

“They will kill you, man. They are going to smoke your ass as soon as they get an opportunity!”

Court just nodded with the phone to his ear. The girl next to him smiled at him again in the mirror, then took a sip of her drink.

“You with me, Court?”

“Yeah.”

“Get the hell out of there and call me back. You give me Kiev, I’ll link up with Townsend and feed you everything you need to shepherd you out of the trouble you are in.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll talk to you later.” Court hung up the phone and slipped it back into his coat.

He spoke to the woman next to him. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” She turned to him and hesitated. Then, “What do you do that keeps you busy this late on a Saturday?”

Gentry rolled his head slowly, stretching his neck. His eyes were not on the girl; they faced ahead, still looking at the shiny surfaces of the bar.

“I’m in waste management.”

The girl’s voice faltered. “Oh. Okay.”

Now he stood from his bar stool, and as he did so he moved closer to her. His coat was open and it shielded his left hand, by the bar, from the crowd positioned to his right.

“And you are Mossad.”

Ruth’s eyebrows furrowed as she looked up at him from her seat on the bar stool. “Excuse me?”

“Why are you after me?”

“Look, buddy.” She laughed angrily as she grabbed her purse and stood from her stool. “You looked lonely. I was bored so I thought I’d come score a drink off you. Whatever the hell you are talking about I—”