But his last hit on file was six years ago. Court couldn’t help but notice that Sid’s dossier on Slattery went wafer thin after that. A few speculative inferences aside, all that was known about his life since then was that he played the drum in a traditional Irish band that performed five nights a week in the touristy Temple Bar section of Dublin.
Hardly work that got your name scribbled onto a termination order.
Gentry found this to be one of his more morally neutral operations. The man was a killer, but so was Court. Court rationalized the difference; he vetted
Killing Dougal Slattery wouldn’t much improve the evil ways of the world, Court decided, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Well, it wouldn’t hurt anyone who was
Hello? You still there? Sid’s previous post was three minutes old. Court had drifted off-mission for a moment. He forced himself to concentrate on his phone’s tiny screen.
I’m here. No problems.
How long will you need?
Unknown. Will assess situation tonight. Act at first prudent opportunity.
I understand, my friend. Don’t take too long. I have more work after.
There was always more “work,” Court knew. But most “work” involved contracts Gentry would never accept. Court would be the judge if there was “more work after.” He didn’t argue the point with Sidorenko, though. Instead he just replied, Okay.
I look forward to good news. Do svidaniya, friend.
Court just logged off. He shut down the phone and stuck it in the side pocket of his peacoat. He finished his meal, paid, and left the hotel.
In the late afternoon he walked the neighborhoods around Grafton Street. He’d spent an hour looking at the dress and mannerisms of the locals, trying to assimilate. It would not be hard for the trained professional; Dublin was an international city full of Poles, Russians, Turks, Chinese, South Americans . . . even a few Irish here and there. There was no one look or walk or attitude to parrot; still, Court stepped into a used-clothing shop on Dawson Lane and stepped out with a bag. In the bathroom of a department store he changed into worn blue jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a black denim jacket. Black athletic shoes and his dark blue watch cap finished off the ensemble.
By nightfall he was a local, moving with the masses. He ran a security sweep, backtracked, stepped on and off a few trains on the DART—Dublin’s mass transit—all to make sure he was not being followed. There were more people in this world who wanted Court Gentry dead than would ever give a rat’s ass about Dougal Slattery, and Court kept this in mind, just to keep his operation in perspective. His secondary objective was to kill the Irishman; the primary objective, as always, was to keep his own ass alive for another day. His PERSEC, or personal security, needed to remain at the forefront of his thoughts.
Satisfied he had not grown a tail, he headed to the Temple Bar neighborhood on the southern bank of the River Liffey.
At ten o’clock he sat at the bar at the Oliver St. John Gogarty. Although it was a Wednesday evening, the touristy pub was packed full. Americans, Continental Europeans, Asians. The only Irish in the bar were likely the barmaids, the bartenders, and the band.
Court hadn’t spent much time in raucous juke joints in the past few months. He’d laid low in the south of France, lived in the tiny attic room of a tiny cottage in a tiny hillside village and rarely ventured out past the little corner market for canned foods and bottled water. Even his few visits into Nice to see his doctor were tame. It was the winter season; the nightclubs and the kitschy shops on the Promenade des Anglais, always bursting at the seams during the tourist season, were nearly empty or boarded up. That was the way Court liked it. The Oliver St. John Gogarty was anathema to his standard tradecraft; already the female bartender had asked him his name, and two Englishwomen next to him had tried to engage him in small talk. He’d ignored their overtures, sipped his Guinness, scanned the room, wished he had four milligrams of Dilaudid to relax him, and then angrily told himself to unfuck himself and get his head back on this job.
There are two types of people in the world. Only two. Sheep and wolves. Court was a wolf, and he knew it. The past few months had weakened him somewhat, but a wolf was always a wolf, and it had never been more evident to him than it was here at the bar, surrounded as he was by a hundred sheep. No one in the crowd scanned for threats like he did. No one in the crowd had pin-pointed the exits and the fit men in the room and the type of glass in the front window. No one in the crowd had taken note of the paucity of law enforcement on the street or the lighting scheme of the back alley. No one in the crowd knew where to sit so no mirror’s reflection cast his image about the room.
No one in the crowd had a plan to run for his life if necessary.
And no one in the crowd had a plan to kill everyone else in the crowd if it came down to it.
Yes, he was in a crowd full of sheep, but there was, in fact, one more wolf in the room. According to Sid’s dossier, the drummer onstage was a hard man as well. There were five in the traditional, or “trad” band, and though Gentry was no expert on such matters, from the reaction of the patrons, he supposed they must have been very good. The big man with the white hair sitting on a bench to the side of the stage played a bodhran, a traditional handheld Irish drum. He took his work seriously, kept his head down and leaned forward as if to pick up on the subtleties of the music. He looked to Court more like a middle-aged musician and less like a middle-aged hit man. Maybe it had been a while since he’d worked his “day job.” Next to him, a young thin man played a tin whistle into his microphone, the guitarists strummed and sang in harmony, and the crowd of sheep went wild. Court couldn’t make out many of the words of the song, but it had something to do with a beautiful young woman and a bad potato harvest and a husband dead from drink.
Court finished his stout and headed out the door.
TWO
Dougal Slattery said good-bye to his bandmates at eleven thirty, covered his thick white hair with a Donegal wool walking cap, and left the Oliver St. John Gogarty with his drum in its leather case hanging over his shoulder. It was a cold but clear evening, like a thousand other nights he’d played in the bar, and also like most other nights, he fancied a pint before heading back to his flat. There were three dozen pubs within a few minutes’ walk, but his flat was a mile away on the other side of Pearse Station. He’d do what he usually did: head to his local watering hole for a nightcap.
Slattery walked with a limp, a bad knee. Actually, a bad knee and a worse knee, but limping on both legs was out of the question, so he leaned into the better of the two weakening joints, his thick body lumbering on through the cold night.
It took the big Irishman nearly thirty minutes to make it to the Padraic Pearse, named after the Irish Catholic leader executed by the British in the 1916 Easter uprising. It was a staunch Catholic pub; photos and relics of the Rebellion decorated the windows of the small establishment.
Dougal limped in, placed his coat and his bodhran in a corner booth, and headed to the bar for the pint of Guinness already being poured from the tap.
Court Gentry found a darkened doorway and sat down on the stoop. He’d done more walking today than he’d done in months, and he was surprised to feel the ache in the muscles of his thighs and his calves and thought he sensed a faint sting where the bullet had torn into his right leg the previous December. He wished he had a Vicodin, but he knew he couldn’t be doped up and operational at the same time, so he just sat there and stared at the front door of the pub across the street. Tonight was reconnaissance only; he’d follow his target home and then assess
