That was fourteen years ago, and their paths had seldom crossed since. Maurice had been lured back into the game after 9/11, as were most high-level retired assets still in possession of a pulse. Because of his age and uncertain health, he was sent to Geneva to work in the finance end of the CIA’s Directorate of Clandestine Services. His knowledge of Swiss banking and bankers, accrued through forty years of utilizing numbered accounts for CIA shell corporations in his operations, made him an effective paymaster for operatives and operations around the globe.
It was easy work—clean, compared to some of the jobs he’d done as a younger man—but it was not without danger or controversy. Shortly after Court had been drummed out of the agency, Maurice himself was cashiered by the brass. Something about misappropriated funds, though Court did not believe the official story for a minute.
The word from Langley was that Maurice was now completely retired from the CIA. Court did not know that for sure, wasn’t 100 percent certain Maurice wouldn’t turn on him, which explained the pupil’s initial suspicion of his teacher.
Maurice handed Gentry a bottle of French beer, so the younger man cradled the frozen bag of blueberries in his lap and let his wrist rest upon it. The stinging cold slowly numbed the ache. The old man asked, “You hurt bad?”
“Not really.”
“You always were a tough bastard.”
“I learned from the best not to whine. It never worked around you.”
“I haven’t seen you in six years. Cyprus, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You saw the watcher outside?”
“Yeah. Girl with the braids.”
“Good boy. She’s pretty good, dressed like a tourist. We get a lot of tourists here in the Old Town. I hate tourists.”
“Transitory faces.”
“That’s right. Do yourself a favor, Court. If you make it to retirement, move someplace so damn god-forsaken no tourist would set foot there.”
“Will do.”
Maurice coughed. Cleared his throat. “There’s news floating about. Not connected yet, just bouncing around in the ether, waiting for dots to be connected. Prague, Budapest, and then this morning up by the Austrian border. I knew something big was going down, didn’t figure I knew any of the players until the coverage on my house started about eleven thirty. ’Bout an hour after she showed up, all the local stations began broadcasting the news of the gunfight just north of Lausanne. At that point, I knew you were heading this way.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I connected the dots. A hunted man who just kept on living. Death and destruction in his wake. As the bodies got closer, I told myself, ‘Here comes Court.’ ”
“Here I am,” Gentry confirmed distantly, looking at the bottle in his hand.
“Tell me you didn’t shoot those poor cops.”
“You know me. I wouldn’t kill a cop.”
“I
“
“A lot of people want you dead, Court.”
“You aren’t exactly the flavor of the month yourself. The CIA burned you, too.”
“There’s no shoot-on-sight directive against me. You were the one they really fucked over.”
“Still, how they framed you was wrong, Maurice. You were one of the honest ones. They should have left your reputation intact.”
Maurice said nothing.
“What are you doing these days?” Court asked.
“Finance. Private sector stuff. No more spook work.”
Court’s eyes scanned the expensive real estate around him. “You look like you are doing okay.”
“There is money in money, or haven’t you heard?”
Court detected a little defensiveness. He swigged his beer and rotated his arm to spread the cold around his swollen wrist. “You remember a guy at Langley named Lloyd?”
“Sure. Sharp-dressed little fag, law degree from London. King’s College, I think. He got in the way of a finance operation I worked in the Caymans not long before I got shit-canned. Smart kid, but a prick.”
“He’s at the center of all this stuff I’m dealing with now.”
“No kidding? He was like twenty-eight at the time. Must be only thirty-two or so now. He left Langley about a year ago, I heard.”
“What happened to all the good guys?” asked Court rhetorically.
“Before 9/11, we were a basket with a few bad apples. After 9/11, we grew into an orchard. Now there are enough bad apples to fill baskets. Same shit, different scale. No surprise.”
They both sipped beer for a minute in silence, relaxing in each other’s company, as if they spent every Saturday afternoon together. Maurice started to cough, and his coughing morphed into a violent hack.
When it ended, Gentry asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Maurice looked away a moment, answered without emotion. “Lungs and liver, take your pick.”
“Bad?”
“The good news is I may not die from the lung cancer because the liver disease may get me first. Conversely, I may be buried with a working liver if I can only die from lung cancer. Drinking and smoking fifty-some-odd years.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.” He laughed, and this turned into a raspy coughing fit as well.
“How much time do you have?”
“There’s an old Henny Youngman bit. Doc says I’ve got six months to live. I tell him, ‘I can’t pay your bill.’ He tells me he’ll give me another six months.” Maurice’s laugh turned into a wheeze and then a violent hack.
“So six months, then?”
“That’s what they said. Seven months ago.”
“Don’t pay ’em,” quipped Court. It was gallows humor, though Gentry wasn’t comfortable joking with his mentor about impending death.
“Let’s get back to you. What have you gotten yourself mixed up in?”
“It’s related to a job I did last week. I pissed someone off, I guess.”
“The colored guy who got it in Syria. Ali Baba, whatever his name was. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Abubaker,” Court corrected, but he neither confirmed nor denied his involvement.
Maurice just shrugged. “He needed to go. I’ve followed your career as a private. Your ops are always white on black. Not just nicely performed, but moral, just.”
“Tell that to Lloyd.”
“A lot of people say that thing in Kiev was you.”
“That’s what they say.”
“So?”
Maurice’s phone rang. The old man reached a reed-thin hand to the handset on the wall and answered it. His gray eyes widened slightly as he looked up at his young guest.
“It’s for you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
