Fitzroy’s pause was short, his countenance unfazed. Sir Donald had been lying to his agents for nearly a half century. He found it no big trick to lie to his kin. “He’s in London, love. You’ll be home soon, as well. Run along now, and go carefully.”
TWENTY-THREE
Court parked the van at the main train station in Geneva, the Gare de Cornavin, located on the seedier north side of the city. Parking at train stations was simple tradecraft. When the vehicle was found, which Court had little doubt would take no time at all, his followers would have to entertain the possibility that he’d just jumped on the first set of wheels rolling out of town, causing them time and manpower to investigate where he might have gone.
It wasn’t much, but parking at the train station at least avoided the obvious “tell” of pulling his stolen vehicle up to the front door of his true objective.
The weather was cold but bright, and the last of the late autumn leaves blew across the wide streets of the city. From the station he walked south, past the afternoon street whores and the sex shops of the red-light district, over the bridge crossing the canal into huge Lake Geneva, passing middle-aged bankers and diplomats heading towards all those street whores and sex shops behind him. Five minutes south of the bridge the wide and modern streets gave way to uneven cobblestone passageways and the chic shops lining the roads morphed suddenly into medieval stone walls as a steep hill rose away from the modernity and towards the ancient, picturesque buildings of the Old Town.
Gentry consulted a tourist map hanging on the wall of a hotel lobby, hid his scraped and swollen left wrist from the Japanese couple next to him, and then returned to the chilly street. Another minute or two of climbing an alley brought him to the square in front of the Cathedrale St-Pierre. There Saturday afternoon tourists stood, heads and eyes and cameras all pointed to the thousand-year-old cathedral’s impressive facade. Court walked behind the two dozen or so sightseers, then melted down a side street that ran along the south side of the church. On his left was a white wall six feet high with a large iron gate in the center. As he walked past the gate, he glanced inside. There was a white house with a small front garden, a large chestnut tree on either side of a narrow walkway to the front door. The trees strained for light in the shadow of the Cathedrale St-Pierre that loomed high in front of them. Court walked on down a cobblestone passage that ran off the little one-lane street, followed the winding footpath through a narrow tunnel that led him down and around to the back of the white house.
Here the wall was two stories high. Modern structures stood alongside it: an apartment building with a nail salon on one side, a nursery school on the other. A few tourists wandered towards a narrow shopping street that ran farther down the hill behind.
Gentry saw the watcher immediately. An attractive woman with long, braided blond hair, she sat at a picnic table in a little playground alongside the shopping street. Court was twenty-five yards from her, but her eyes were on the white house to his right.
Gentry turned, walked back through the foot tunnel, followed it up and around towards the white wall of the white house. There was an iron handrail built into the wall to aid pedestrians with the steep incline of the passageway. Court stepped up on this and, with his good right arm, pulled himself up on the top of the wall. He kicked one leg and then the other over and dropped down, letting his good left leg take the majority of the impact with the ground.
Still, the one-handed climb and the drop hurt like hell.
Inside the small garden, Gentry saw the security system through the glass. He knew how to circumvent all sorts of countermeasures, but this looked too sophisticated for him. He’d need schematics and tools and time.
Court moved low below a window, rose again at a side door. He drew a Beretta pistol he’d picked up on the platform shortly before fleeing the scene, left there by a dead Swiss municipal policeman. He held it low by his side as he tried a side door.
It was unlocked.
He entered a hallway and then a well-appointed kitchen. The lights were off, and he could easily make out the sounds of a television in the next room. The glowing set reflected off a mirror in a hallway on the other side of the kitchen, and Court used the flickering light to make his way.
He saw a pistol sitting on the kitchen counter: a full-sized 1911 forty-five caliber.
An American’s gun.
Gentry crossed the long kitchen carefully. He hefted the weapon and slid it into the back of his pants. His swollen wrist rewarded the movement with a hot jolt of electricity up to his elbow. Court moved into the hallway, rose confidently now, and entered a wide living room.
A plasma screen hung above a large fireplace that crackled with pine logs.
A lone man sat on a leather sofa with his back to Court. His eyes were trained on the television. The language coming from the TV was French, but the images were clear enough to Gentry. Less than two hours earlier he’d stood on that same train platform. He’d spoken to that young policeman who now lay facedown and dead on the snowy cement, the video images catching the moment when a yellow tarp was draped over his still form.
Court holstered his gun. There was no one else around.
“Hello, Maurice.”
The man stood and turned. He was pale and wrinkled, easily seventy and unhealthy looking. If Gentry’s appearance in his flat was a surprise to the old man, he made no sign of it. He stood on thin legs.
“Hello, Court.” American English.
“Don’t waste your time looking around,” Gentry said. “I have your gun.”
Maurice smiled. “No. You have
“I didn’t figure you for the paranoid type. You weren’t so careful in the old days.”
“Even so, you should have kept your weapon trained on me till you knew I was unarmed.”
“Apparently so.”
The old man hesitated several seconds. The revolver did not waver. “Damn, boy. I taught you better.”
“You did. I’m sorry, sir,” Gentry said sheepishly.
“You look like shit.”
“I’ve had a rough couple of days.”
“I’ve seen you after rough days. You’ve never looked this bad.”
Court shrugged. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
The old man regarded Gentry for a long moment. “You never were.”
Maurice turned his revolver around in his hand, tossed it underhanded across the room to the younger American. Court caught it, looked it over.
“Thirty-eight police special snubby. The other one’s a 1911. You
“Kiss my ass. Want a beer?”
Gentry tossed the revolver underhanded onto the leather sofa. “More than anything else in the world.”
Two minutes later Court sat on the kitchen counter. He held a fat bag of frozen blueberries over his left wrist. The cold burned his skin, but it reduced the swelling. He could still move his fingers, though, so the hand was functional, if barely.
His host was Maurice, just Maurice. Court didn’t know his real name, could only be certain that it was
He’d been demobilized for years, working as a trainer for the CIA when a twenty-year-old convicted murderer was brought into his prefabricated aluminum classroom within sight of the Atlantic Ocean. Gentry was both cocky and quiet, raw beyond belief, but in possession of intelligence, discipline, and zeal. Maurice turned him out in under two years and announced to Operation’s leadership that this kid was the best hard asset he’d ever built.
