Gentry had ridden his stolen bike through the snowy dawn, then pulled up to the train station at the village of Ardez. A few locals milled about, waiting for the first morning trains west to Zurich or east to the Italian or Austrian borders. The American borrowed a cell phone from a kid waiting for the eastbound train and paid the teenage boy the equivalent of forty dollars to call Fitzroy for five minutes to confront his handler about selling him out. He walked twenty yards down the cement platform for privacy and stood in the snow as a train to Interlaken rolled by. He’d finally hung up the phone when a fight broke out on the other end of the line, erased the number in the phone’s memory, and handed it back to the kid with the cash. A few minutes later, Court climbed aboard the first train of the morning to Zurich. It was a Saturday, so he was the only passenger in his car for the majority of the hour-and- forty-five minute travel time through the narrow valley. One after another, the bright red train chugged on past the railroad stations of the villages along its tracks.
Gentry warmed up on the train, checked his wounds by dropping his pants in the empty car and poking at the sores on his knees and at the entrance and exit wounds on his stinging thigh with his fingertips. He was afraid he might have contracted an infection in the gunshot wound. Certainly, swimming in Szabo’s cistern hadn’t helped. Otherwise, he was okay. He’d put miles on the lacerations on his feet, and they did little more than throb, just like his broken rib.
He knew he had to continue on to Normandy, though he felt his odds for success were lessening with each mile nearer he came to the trap waiting for him. Fitzroy was a bastard for tricking him as he had, but, Court had to admit, Lloyd had put Sir Donald into one hell of a difficult position. Court wondered what lengths he himself would have gone to, who he would have sold out, if the twins were his family and their lives were jeopardized by some motherfucker with a mob of gun monkeys and no compunction about killing innocent children.
Thinking about Lloyd made Gentry’s blood boil. He honestly didn’t remember the guy, but the CIA had never gone wanting for lightweight desk-riding a-holes who worked way back in the rear of covert operations, while the Gray Man and those like him operated on the sharp edge. Court couldn’t picture any faces, but once in a while his superiors had cause to introduce him to some Langley suit. Lloyd must have been one of these, before taking top secret SAD personnel records and leaving the company for the private sector.
What a prick.
Court wanted to recall Lloyd, find something back in his memory banks that could somehow help him out of his current predicament, but the rhythm of the train along the tracks began to carry him off to sleep. With all his cuts, bruises, pulled muscles, and extra holes, it was a chore to relax at all, but it was almost as if he was too tired to hurt. He fell asleep a few minutes before arriving in Zurich, was jarred awake by the slowing of the train and the recorded announcement of the impending stop. As he stood and made his way to the exit, he cussed himself for his lack of discipline, for dozing with hunters so close on his tail.
In the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, he bought a ticket for Geneva. It would mean another two hours on the rails, so he made his way over to a sausage counter and bought a large bratwurst and a cup of coffee. It was a grotesque combination, but he hoped the jolt of caffeine and the half pound of solid protein would keep his body alert.
With twenty minutes until his train’s departure, he descended the escalator to a large shopping center two levels below the station, found a pay bathroom, and commandeered a stall. Here he sat, fully dressed, on the porcelain, leaned his head back on the cold wall behind him. He drew his pistol and held it at the ready in his lap. Train stations were obvious places for his enemies to hunt him. He didn’t like the scarcity of escape routes in a bathroom stall, but still, he knew he was better off hiding in the toilet than he would be standing at his track for a quarter hour just begging to be identified by the opposing force. If Lloyd’s goons found him here, then he’d just empty a couple of magazines into the door of the stall in front of him and try to bust his way out.
It wasn’t a good plan, but, Court admitted to himself, by taking on this operation in the first place he had forgone any pretense of wisdom. Now it was just about making his way through the shit in the hopes he would live to, and maybe even through, eight o’clock on Sunday morning.
With less than a minute to departure, Gentry walked up the platform alongside Track Seventeen and slipped silently on the train to Geneva just as it began to roll.
Riegel’s phone rang at nine forty in the morning. He was in his office, putting in a full day on Saturday, having reluctantly canceled a weekend grouse-hunting trip in Scotland.
“Riegel.”
“Sir. Kruger speaking.” Kruger was a Swiss security chief for LaurentGroup based in Zurich. “I have information on the target. I had been instructed to contact Mr. Lloyd, but I thought I would let you know.”
“Fine, Kruger. I’ll pass the information. What do you have?”
“I have
“Geneva? Why is he going south? He should be headed west.”
“He could be running away. Giving up, I mean.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s out of his way, but he does have associations there.”
“I can have surveillance in Geneva ready to intercept him at the station.”
“No. We’ll arrange a different welcoming party for him there if that is his actual destination. This could be a misdirection. He might get off along the way, take another train to France. I need you to organize coverage at every station where that train stops between Zurich and Geneva. Also make sure he doesn’t get off before the train leaves.”
“I’m on the train myself now. I’ll babysit him along the route and update you as we get closer.”
“
Riegel next called the Tech at the chateau in Normandy. “Get the Venezuelans heading south to catch up with the 9:40 from Zurich to Geneva. The Gray Man is on board, but he may try to get off along the way. The Venezuelans need to be ready to take him down at a moment’s notice.”
“Understood.”
Riegel consulted a large map of Switzerland on his desk. “Get the South Africans in Basel to Geneva. If Gentry makes it alive to the station, they’ll need to follow him out and do him in the street. There will be too many cameras and cops in the station.”
Court didn’t last fifteen minutes. He’d found a window seat on the top level at the back of the last car in second class. He taken off his coat and draped it over his body. Under it, he pulled his pistol and laid it in his lap with his hand on the grip.
And then he drifted off to sleep.
He woke slowly, his head leaning against the window. Though his vision was blurred by his bloodshot eyes, he watched snow flurries beating the window next to his face. He wanted to stick his tongue out and taste a fat flake through the glass. The countryside was covered in white, only the sheerest stony mountains shone gray and brown where the snowfall found the grade too steep for a foot-hold. The sky hung low and gray, and a village streaked by before him. It was a beautiful winter morning.
Four uniformed Swiss police officers stood in the aisle above him. They wore gray pants and two-tone gray jackets. They were Municipaux, city cops. Not the highly trained feds. Big Glock-17s hung off their hips. An outstretched hand at the end of the outstretched arm of the oldest cop.
Court understood travel German. The white-haired police sergeant wanted to see some ID. Not a train ticket.
Not good.
Gentry moved the gun hidden under his coat, crammed it between the plastic cushion and the wall of the
