state. “Okay . . . okay. Don’t worry. I’ll see to him. He’ll be okay.”
The bugging eyes of the Irishman turned to him. Blinked tears mixed with blood that streamed down both sides of his face. Mucus sprayed from his nose as he sobbed. He nodded. Spoke through a clenched throat. “That’s just grand, lad. I take it back. You’ve got a soul. You’re a good man.”
“Yeah.” Court brought his fingertips to the Irishman’s forehead. “That’s me.” He smoothed the man’s sopping-wet gray hair back gently.
He nodded again.
“I’m a goddamned saint.”
In a swift single motion, Court Gentry scooped the Makarov from its resting place on the floor beside him, punched the suppressor into Dougal Slattery’s fleshy neck, and fired a single round up through his chin, through his tongue, through the roof of his mouth, through his sinus cavity, and into his brain. The .380-caliber hollow point projectile danced inside the skull of the fifty-four-year-old Irishman before coming to rest behind the left ear. Slattery’s protruding eyes turned glassy and remained wide-open in death.
Court rolled off of Slattery’s chest and lowered himself onto his back on the floor next to the dead man. He was exhausted, drained, sapped of all energy and emotion. His face hurt where he had been punched, his stomach and leg hurt where he’d been stabbed and shot last winter.
Together he and Slattery lay amid the shattered shambles of the little flat and stared vacantly together at the low ceiling.
FIVE
The landing launch cleared the fog bank a half mile from shore. Behind it, lost in the mist, the Lithuanian freighter that had been Court’s transportation both to and from the Emerald Isle had already turned to the north, brought its engines to full power, and begun steaming for its home port. Court stood at the front of the small launch, squinting towards the docks of the Gdansk shipyard in front of him. He was the boat’s only passenger.
He continued speaking into his satellite phone.
“Paulus, I want to be very clear. Except your commission, every last cent goes to this patient. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it.”
“That is no problem. We can set up a small trust. Regular automatic withdrawals for the institution. I checked into it as you asked. It is the best establishment in Ireland for people with such conditions.”
“Good.”
He paused. Court could sense discomfort in the call. “Sir. You understand I will need to contact Sir Donald.”
“Go ahead. But since you’ll be talking to him anyhow, tell him this. This money isn’t his. It isn’t mine. It belongs to the kid. He touches it . . . and I’m going to—”
“Herr Lewis. Please do not threaten Sir Donald. He is my employer. By duty I will be obliged to relay whatever you say—”
“I’m counting on it. I want you to tell him word for word. He touches the account, looks into it in any way, and I will show up at his door.”
“Herr Lewis, please—”
“You have the message, Paulus.”
“I know he will fulfill your wishes. And I will handle the account as agreed. My standard commission will apply to the funds.”
“
“Good-bye, Paulus.”
A frustrated pause. A polite good-bye. “
Gentry stowed his sat phone in his canvas bag. Then he focused all his attention on a new threat ahead.
Court had noticed it three hundred yards out: a large black car on the docks. At two hundred yards he could just make out men leaning against the vehicle, all wearing dark gray. At one hundred fifty yards he counted four of them, could tell they were big. At fifty yards he had them pegged as Slavic, wearing suits, and their car was a limousine of some make.
These would be Sid’s boys, here to pick him up and take him for a ride, and this made Court furious. He’d planned on getting off here in Gdansk, losing himself for a few days on the Polish coast, and then contacting Sid via the Ural Mountain Tours Web site when he was good and ready. Sir Donald, his ex-handler, never made him work face-to-face, but these goons, sent by his soon-to-be ex-handler, had no doubt come here on a babysitting mission to make sure Gentry came along peacefully to kneel before the throne of his liege.
“Fuck this shit,” Court said it aloud at twenty-five yards. The men were up off the hood of the limo; cigarettes were thrown on the ground and crushed out. Court could see the glint of thin gold chains around their necks. Russian mob boys. Who else? The men stepped up to the edge of the dock, coming to the water’s edge to prevent him from running away when the ferry landed.
Court looked up and down the landing to see if there was any place to run to.
Nope. Shit.
Gentry stepped off the swaying launch and up onto the floating wharf. He stood in front of the four goons. No words were exchanged. The only communication between them was through the looks of five men filled with testosterone, all of them on the job, none of them here particularly willingly. Court’s old CIA Special Activities Division team leader, a foul-mouthed ex-SEAL named Zack Hightower, referred to it as “eye fucking,” a crude but accurate description of men simultaneously sizing up one another and projecting their own power and prowess through their cold stares.
Slowly Court opened his peacoat to reveal the butt of the .380 Makarov on his hip. One of the younger Russians stepped forward and yanked the gun free of its holster, sneering at Gentry during his backwards draw stroke as if he had discovered the weapon himself. He then patted Court down front to back, pulled a knife from the foreigner’s pocket, and slipped it into his own. He looked through the canvas bag on Gentry’s shoulder, yanked out the satellite phone and pocketed it, but he did not find anything else of interest. Satisfied he’d disarmed the Gray Man, the Russian stepped back, and with an impatient gesture, he beckoned the American forward to the car.
Court unslung his bag from his shoulder, then tossed it underhanded to one of the men to carry. The bag hit the thick man on the chest, and he let it fall to the ground in front of him; his “eye fuck” stare neither wavered nor diminished.
Court could not help it. He cracked a smile, stepped forward, and scooped it up with a chuckle, then walked to the black limo and opened the back door of the car and climbed in.
An hour later he was airborne. A Hawker 400 light corporate aircraft had been waiting for his entourage at Lech Walesa International Airport. No passports or customs inspections were performed that Court could see; certainly no one asked him any questions or solicited from him any documentation. The Hawker shot upwards through the wet clouds and into a clear mid-morning Polish sky. With him in the seven-seated cabin were the four men who’d picked him up at the dock. They showed him where the food and the booze were stored on the plane, and in broken English they said the flight would only be two hours. They did not tell him where they were headed, but they did not need to.
Court knew. He was being taken to the boss, and the boss lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Gentry leaned back and relaxed, sipped bottled water, and listened to Sidorenko’s henchmen chat. Court’s Russian comprehension had been fair at its peak, a dozen years earlier, but it was extremely rusty at the moment. By concentrating on the chitchat of the men around him with his eyes closed for over an hour, he felt like he was retuning his brain to the nearly impenetrable language.
He was reasonably sure that Sid and his men would have no idea that he spoke a word of Russian, and he thought he might be able to use their ignorance to his advantage in the hours to come.
The Hawker dipped a wing and descended, landing just after noon. Court’s assumption that he’d be heading to Saint Petersburg to meet with his employer was confirmed when, upon their descent, he spied the Gulf of Finland
