“What happened?”
“Not sure. Sounded like an SAD field team showed up, Szabo must have had some personal security, and it went loud.”
Lloyd and Fitzroy stared at one another.
“Uh . . . Right. Understood. How are you?”
“Surviving.”
“Where are you now?”
“Still in Budapest.” Both Lloyd and Fitzroy looked over to the Tech. His head leaned over a computer terminal, but he bobbed it up and down, confirming the truthfulness of the target by pinpointing the cell tower the phone was using.
“What now?” asked Fitzroy. The question was as much to the American on his right as it was to the American on the other end of the line.
“I head west. Everything’s still on track. Do you have any more information for me?”
“Umm, yes. The men you met this morning in Prague were Albanians. Simple mercenaries. Hired by Nigerian Secret Service.”
“They’ve probably contracted a new team by now. Any idea what I’m up against?”
“Hard to say, son. I’m working on it.”
“What do you know about the enemy force structure around your family?”
“Four or five Nigerian secret police types. Not tier-one gunmen by any stretch, though they have my family scared witless.”
“As I get closer, I’ll need the exact location.”
“Aye. You’ll be there by tomorrow morning?”
“No. I have a stop to make first.”
“Not another dangerous detour, I hope.”
“No. This one is on the way.”
Fitzroy hesitated, then said, “Right. Anything else you need from me?”
“Anything
“I understand. I am working on it.”
“Have you had any more contact with the kidnappers?”
“Sporadically. They think I’m turning over every rock to find you. I’m calling everyone along my Network. Just to make it look good, you know.”
“Keep it up. I’ll stay away from the Network. Call me if you learn anything.” The line went dead.
Within two minutes Fitzroy and Lloyd had more of an explanation about what had happened. Riegel called, and between the three of them, they managed to put the pieces together. The six Indonesians had been completely wiped out. All dead. The CIA had torched the building to cover their tracks. It was unknown if the agency had taken casualties. Szabo was dead, and Gentry had used another of his nine lives but had gotten free.
“So where is he now?” asked Riegel.
“Heading west from Budapest.”
“Via train, car, motorcycle?”
“We don’t know. He called us from a cell phone. He’d apparently pulled it off a passerby, dumped it just after he hung up.”
“Anything else to report?” asked Kurt Riegel.
Lloyd barked into the phone angrily, “
“Gentry didn’t kill them. CIA paramilitaries did. Look, Lloyd, we knew the Gray Man would have some resiliency; my plan all along was for one or two teams to knock him off balance, get him reactive instead of proactive. That way, he’ll stumble into the next team unprepared.”
Lloyd said, “We have ten more teams lying in wait for him. I want him dead before the night is through.”
“Then we agree on something.” Riegel rang off.
Lloyd then turned his attention to the Englishman. A pained expression flashed on the older man’s face.
“What is it?”
Fitzroy’s anguish was unrelenting.
“What’s wrong?”
“I believe he told me something. He didn’t mean to tell me, but I sussed it out.”
Lloyd sat up. The few wrinkles in his pinstripe suit smoothed out with the movement. “What? What did he tell you?”
“I know where he’s going.”
The young American attorney’s face slowly widened into a smile. “Excellent!” He reached for his mobile phone. “Where?”
“There’s a catch. This place he’s going, only three blokes have ever known about it. One of those blokes is dead, one of those blokes is the Gray Man, and one of those blokes is me. I’ll tell you where, but if your little reality show contest doesn’t destroy him there, he’s going to know I’ve set him up. Your chaps miss him this time, and it’s game over.”
“Let me worry about that. Tell me where he’s going.”
“Graubunden.”
“Where the fuck is that?”
SIXTEEN
Song Park Kim had sat motionless in a meditative state while airborne, but his eyes opened, awake and alert, upon touchdown at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The only passenger of the Falcon 50 executive jet, his small, rough hands rested on his knees, and his eyes remained hidden behind stylish sunglasses. His perfectly tailored pinstripe suit fit his environment precisely. The cabin was appointed for executive travel, and he appeared to be a youngish but otherwise unremarkable Asian executive.
The Falcon taxied off the runway, down and off the taxiway, past a long row of parked corporate jets, finally turning into an open hangar door. A waiting limousine, still wet from the drizzle of the gray evening, idled in the middle of the hangar. A driver stood alongside.
As soon as the jet came to a complete stop and the turbines slowed, the copilot made his way back to the seven-seat cabin carrying a nylon gym bag. He sat in front of Song Park Kim and lowered the bag onto a mahogany table between them.
Kim said nothing.
“I was told to give you this upon touchdown. Immigration has been dealt with. No customs problems. There is a car waiting for you.”
A curt nod, nearly imperceptible, from the short-haired Korean.
“Enjoy Paris, sir,” said the copilot. He stood and retreated to the cockpit. The small partition closed behind him.
Alone, Song Park unzipped the bag. Pulled out a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 machine pistol. He ignored the telescoping stock and held the weapon like a handgun out in front of him, looking through the gun’s simple sight system.
Two long, thin magazines, each filled with twenty 4.6x30mm hollow-point cartridges, were attached to one another by means of a nylon cinch.
He replaced the weapon in the bag.
Next he pulled out a mobile phone and an earpiece. He tucked the earpiece in place on the side of his head and turned it on. The phone he also turned on before slipping it into his coat pocket. A handheld GPS receiver went
