Dead Eye (34 page)

FORTY-FIVE

Russell Whitlock landed at London’s Gatwick Airport shortly before two
P.M.
He wore business attire, traveled with only his briefcase and a small overnight tote, and looked exactly like all the other young male international business travelers in the border control line.

Normally when traveling within Europe, Russ would not have to pass through customs. Twenty-six European nations are members of the Schengen Area, a cooperation zone established by treaty that allows travelers from one member nation to travel to other area nations without undergoing border controls.

But the United Kingdom, unlike Sweden, is not a member of the Schengen Area, and for this reason Russ had to wait in an immigration line upon arrival. The process was of no concern to him; his Townsend credentials were solid, and his blue U.S. passport made the entire process little more than a formality. A U.K. Border Agency officer glanced at him, glanced at his document, and then ran it through a scanner to read the information housed on the RFID chip to verify that the man, the paperwork, and the digital information all matched. Since there was no block on Allen Morris, the credos used by Whitlock on this day, he was told to have a pleasant stay and then waved through the border control area.

Russ tried to hide his slight limp as he walked through the terminal. His hip was killing him, but he knew he could push through the pain and do his job here in London. He had forty-eight hours to get set up for the hit on Kalb. It wasn’t optimal—he would prefer at least seventy-two—but he’d already done much of the prep work for the op on an earlier trip here to London.

As he neared ground transportation, his phone rang and he answered it, even though he knew it would be Townsend, and even though he anticipated trouble. He believed in his power to charm, however, almost as much as he believed in his power to kill. He had been successful at both endeavors for his entire adult life, after all, so his self-confidence was easily understood.

“This is Graveside. Iden eight, two, four, four, niner, seven, two, niner, three.”

“Confirmed. This is Dead Eye, identity key four, eight, one, oh, six, oh, five, two, oh.”

Babbitt asked, “Where are you, Russell?”

“Stockholm.”

A pause. “What have you been doing?”

“Made contact with Jumper this morning, Parks called with intel that Gray Man was at the bus terminal there in the city center. You had me disarmed and disowned, so I went back to my hotel.”

“That was six hours ago. What have you been doing since?”

Russ kept walking. “I took a nap.”

After a short pause Babbitt said, “We need to talk.”

Russ found a place to sit in the terminal, away from others.

Babbitt said, “Beaumont tells me he confronted you about Trestle Seven.”

“You’re damn right we have to talk. I’m sending you the bill for my boots. That redneck spit on them.”

Babbitt took awhile to respond to this. When he did, he said, “Did you see a second target in Tallinn as was reported?”

“Negative. There was a blizzard going on, so I didn’t see too much until Gentry shot me.”

“There have been more doubts raised about the events of that night.”

“Such as?”

“You requisitioned a pistol from our weapons cache in Berlin, did you not?”

“I did. So?”

“A Glock nine-millimeter. Model 19.”

“Correct.”

“Historically speaking, that is the weapon Court Gentry uses.”

“It’s a Glock, the plastic fantastic. Everybody uses it.”

“Not you, Russell. You have always requisitioned a forty-caliber SIG. We checked your older work with CIA. Again, a SIG forty. You have to go back ten years to see any record of you preferencing the nine-millimeter round, but even then, you carried the SIG Sauer. Never a Glock.”

“You’ve lost me, Lee. Do you want to transfer me to Geraldina in the requisition and outfitting department? Did I fill out the wrong form or something?”

“There are suspicions by Jumper Actual, and by Jeff Parks, that you wanted to carry a gun identical to the target in Tallinn because you wanted to engage Trestle team in a clandestine fashion. To make it look like it was Gentry firing on the team when, in fact,
you
were shooting at the team.”

Russ sighed, long and audibly. “For what possible reason?”

“We don’t know. I would like you to help clear the air. We are recalling you effective immediately. Come home; we’ll sit down in the conference room and do a long hot wash regarding the events in Estonia.”

“But what about Gentry?”

“We don’t need you on Gentry any longer. We’ll have him in our pocket soon. We received a call from the supervisor of the Mossad targeting officer on the case. The Mossad woman is on a train with eyes on Gentry right now.”

Russ squeezed the sides of the chair.
Fuck!
He fought to keep his voice calm. “Why did the Mossad call you?”

“Gentry killed a targeting officer this morning. It’s personal now with the Mossad. Mr. Alvey, the Mossad executive, wanted to let me know so we could pull our team out to avoid any . . . blue-on-blue mishaps.”

“But you aren’t going to pull Jumper back, are you?”

“Of course not,” Babbitt said, matter-of-factly. “Anyway, none of this concerns you. Just get home; we’ll straighten everything out. We’ll get your wound looked at by our docs, too.”

Russ was still thinking about Gentry or, more precisely, he was thinking about his operation and Gentry’s continued potential to compromise it.

Babbitt took his silence for something else. “Look, Russ. We are very close to securing a contract with CIA to target a general in South America who’s pissing off the White House. I want to use you for this, so I need you cleared and in top form.”

Russ stood up; he needed to catch a flight immediately and did not have time to sit around and chat. “I’m on the way. Dead Eye, out.” He disconnected the call and all but race-walked to the closest departures board in the terminal. He scanned the list of flights and found what he was looking for.

Twenty-five minutes later he stood in line at the gate preparing to board a flight.

Not to D.C. Russ wouldn’t be going back to Townsend House.

No, he was going to Brussels, and he had to get there quickly.

Russ realized there was nothing more he could do to protect Gentry. It was likely the Mossad or Jumper would get him, sooner rather than later, and Russ couldn’t stop them, or even slow them down. The only way he could potentially salvage his operation was to speed up the hit on Kalb, to kill him before Mossad killed Gentry, so Gentry would still take the fall for the hit.

Kalb was due in Brussels at noon the next day, less than twenty-four hours from now. Each year on the date, Russ knew, Kalb traveled to Belgium to pay his respects at the grave of Piet De Schepper, a Belgian doctor who had, at great personal risk, saved the lives of hundreds of Belgian Jews by secreting them from the Nazis.

Two of the Jews had been Kalb’s mother and father.

Each and every year since De Schepper’s death from natural causes in 1999, Kalb had made the pilgrimage to his grave at the Dieweg Cemetery in the southern Brussels neighborhood of Uccle. The trip was unannounced because Kalb’s security detail had a serious problem with their PM going to the same exposed, outdoor location at the same time each and every year.

But the CIA knew about the PM’s movements; it was coded confidential, which was not terribly secure, as it was not terribly interesting to the United States. Whitlock had easy access to the information through the Townsend secure network, and he’d learned of the annual pilgrimage in his research on Kalb.

Russ had originally ruled out hitting Kalb in Belgium because the Gray Man would be more likely to choose London. Kalb doubted Gentry had access to the secret travel plans of the Israeli leader, after all. Still, Russ needed to call an audible now and change locations. He hoped the superhero legend of the Gray Man would make it easy for the world to believe he knew of Kalb’s annual pilgrimage.

Whitlock had confidence in his own skill to do a rush-job assassination. Just as he had in the United Kingdom, Russ had access to a Townsend weapons cache in Brussels. If he could do the job before Gentry was killed by the Israelis or Townsend, then he could get away scot-free.

Obviously there were potential problems with this plan. If Gentry died first, or if there was surveillance on the Gray Man at the time of the Kalb hit tomorrow, then Whitlock would have a hard time convincing anyone that the Gray Man was the killer. But Russ knew Gentry was on his way to the continent of Europe; if Court could somehow just make it over the Baltic Sea and into Germany, then he’d be only a few hours away from the location of the assassination, and Russ hoped the clearly exaggerated reputation of the Gray Man would sell his superpower ability to kill the PM on a secret visit.

Whitlock was rooting for Gentry’s miserable life to continue for just one more night.

A half hour later, Dead Eye boarded a British Airways flight to Brussels, still cursing Court Gentry under his breath for making every last thing so damn more complicated than it needed to be.

Court and Ruth arrived in the southern Sweden city of Helsingborg during a light snow shower. They climbed out of the train together and headed into the station, Court’s eyes darting around in all directions, on alert to pick up any surveillance or pre-aggression indicators in those around him. He was armed with only a four-inch paring knife, which would be a lousy defense against a half-dozen guys with submachine guns, although Court would not go down without a fight.

Once inside the station, Ruth said, “Can I call my boss?”

“Be my guest. I’m leaving now.” He started to walk away.

She called to him. “Wait. This Whitlock man is a current Townsend employee, right?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “Ehud Kalb is stopping off somewhere else before London.”

“Where?”

“It’s classified.”

Court shrugged. “Fine with me. It’s not my problem.”

“Brussels,” she said, softly, not entirely comfortable passing this information on to Gentry. “It wasn’t announced, but if Whitlock is working for a U.S. intelligence contractor, he might have access to that information.”

Court said, “You can be sure that if CIA knows about the trip, then Whitlock knows about the trip. When does Kalb get to Brussels?”

“Tomorrow. Lunchtime. He’ll leave the city around three
P.M.
”

Court again considered what he would do in Whitlock’s shoes. “That’s a tight timeline. If Russ knows about Brussels, and if he has a weapon staged there already. Maybe.” He shrugged. “Get Kalb to cancel.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t cancel Brussels. He goes every year. It’s a personal pilgrimage. His security detail has begged him to stop the trips, but he overrules them.”

Court rolled his eyes. “Then you’ve got yourself a problem.”

“Will you help us? You can contact Dead Eye; you can tell him we know he’s going to Brussels. Tell him Metsada will be there and he won’t have a chance in hell at pulling it off.”

Court thought it over. With MobileCrypt he could do this with no exposure to himself.

“I’ll contact him. Call me in an hour and I’ll tell you what he said.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out his phone and the phone’s battery. It took him a moment to fire it up, but when he did, he read the phone number off the screen to her. She put it in her own phone, although she wasn’t sure what his plan was at first.

“That’s it? You’re giving me your phone number? How do I know you’ll do it? How do I know you will answer when I call?”

“You don’t,” he said, and then he turned away, disappearing in the flotsam and jetsam of the station crowd.

Ruth found a quiet place in a shopping mall near the station, and she dialed Yanis Alvey. He answered on the first ring, near breathless, though Ruth could not tell if it was from anger or worry.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Don’t play games, Yanis. You have the ability to track me through my phone. I also have Mike’s phone, so you have two means to do it.”

He asked, “What are you doing in Helsingborg? You were supposed to get off the train as soon as it stopped this afternoon, not switch trains and head for the border.”

She hesitated to answer, but she knew she could not lie to Yanis. The only way to convince him of the truth was to be perfectly transparent. She told him about her conversation with Gentry, about a second CIA asset gone rogue named Russell Whitlock, code-named Dead Eye, and his plot to frame Gentry in the death of Ehud Kalb. She explained that Dead Eye worked for Townsend, and both she and Gentry felt it was likely he would attempt to kill Kalb in Brussels.

“Where is Gentry now?”

Now she lied. “He got on a train. I did not see which one.”

“Don’t move from your location. I will come pick you up myself.”

“What about what I just told you? You need to be on your way to Brussels. I can take care of myself.”

“Ruth . . .” Yanis spoke in a fatherly tone. “You’ve lost a man today. You are coming in. We’ll take care of any threats against the PM.”

“So you don’t believe me, is that it?”

“I don’t believe
him
. Of course not. But I will check it out. It’s an easy call to Townsend to confirm if they have this”—he was obviously reading the name he just wrote down—“Whitlock fellow working for them. If they do, I’ll dig around some more.”

“Yanis. You know me. You know I don’t get played by the opposition.”

“I
do
know you, Ruth. You are one of the best and brightest. But I also know what losing a man in the field is like. You are flailing now, flailing about for any lifeline, any proof that you are not responsible for Mike’s death.”

“That is not—”

“If you had done your job in Stockholm yesterday, Court Gentry, a man wanted by CIA, FBI, Interpol, French DGSE, the Mexican Federal Police, the Russian FSB, and God only knows who else, would have been taken off the chessboard, and Mike would not have been standing alone in the dark bowels of the train station this morning with a wire around his throat. You can rationalize the rantings of a wanted murderer into some sort of exoneration of your actions, but right now I don’t care about that. I only care about pulling you out of the field. The surviving members of your team are halfway back to Tel Aviv already. Stay where you are and I will come pick you up.”