Another impact cracked the door behind him. He grabbed hold of the huge commercial stove, yanked the old gas appliance back a few inches with a jerk. Desperately he reached behind the stove, stretched his aged body to its limit, but he could not take hold of his objective. He looked around the room for something to extend his reach.
The South Africans were commandos from their nation’s National Intelligence Agency. The leader of the six-man squad stood in the front yard of the white house, his Benelli shotgun resting on his shoulder, as the rest of his team finally made entry on the barricaded door. They moved in a well-practiced tactical train throughout the two-story building. They split into two units in the middle of the first room. One team went into the kitchen and found an old man sitting at a table, hands on top of his head, fingers laced, facing the far wall, the image of submission. The first man in the train pulled him down to the floor roughly and searched him in the narrow breakfast nook. He found a pistol in the old guy’s waistband and threw it up and into the sink.
“That gun is an antique, idiot!” said the elderly man as two South Africans shoved him roughly back into his chair. They dragged him and his chair into the main room and waited until the other four members of the unit pronounced the rest of the house clear.
When the entire team re-formed around their prisoner, the old American looked at all the faces.
“South Africans,” he said, obviously having heard their accents.
The leader asked, “Where is the Gray Man?”
“Look at you guys.” Maurice ignored the leader’s question. “Three black, three white. Ebony and ivory. Back in the old days you whiteys would be beating down on you darkeys, wouldn’t you?”
There was no response.
“You white boys must miss those apartheid days, huh?”
The leader repeated himself. “Where is the Gray Man?”
“Ah, but the head of the operation is white. You boys still roll like that? The plantation owners put the slaves in the big house, but they still give the orders. Am I right?”
One of the black operators unhooked his Uzi from his chest rig and raised it to smash its butt into Maurice’s jaw.
“Stop!” shouted the leader. “He’s just tryin’ to slow us down so his lover boy can get clear. Won’t work, old man. Now . . . where is the Gray Man?”
Maurice smiled. “This is the part where I say, ‘Who is that?’ ”
The leader’s eyebrows furrowed. He spoke in a thick Afrikaans accent. “And this is the part where my man hits you across the face for giving us an attitude instead of an answer.” He nodded to the black operator still poised above him, and the Uzi’s squat butt smashed into the old American’s jaw, sending his head snapping back.
“Now, fooker. Let’s try again. Where did he go?”
Maurice spat blood and a bit of his bottom lip on the floor in front of him. “I don’t remember. I have reached the advanced age where the memory starts to falter. Very forgetful, you understand. Getting old sucks.”
After several seconds of waiting, the leader shouted into the man’s face, “I will not ask again. The Gray Man was here. Where is he now?”
“Sorry, young man. I’m unwell. You mind terribly if I use the restroom?”
The leader of the assassins looked to his subordinate. “Hit the fooker again.”
Maurice said immediately “He is gone. And you will not find him.”
The South African sneered at the thin man. “I’ll find him. I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him. The Gray Man’s reputation is nothing but a load of hype.”
Maurice laughed and coughed. “Do you have any idea how many men who said that very thing are now rotting away eternity in a pine box?”
“That ain’t gonna be me, mate.”
Maurice nodded appreciatively. “I will have to concede that point to you. There’s not going to be enough of you left for a pine box. But not to worry, I hear mortuary services here in Geneva are exceedingly diligent. With a little luck they may salvage a blob of you big enough to half fill an urn on your mother’s mantel.”
The South African cocked his head. “What the hell are you talking about, you nutter?”
“I’m just saying, your future looks bleak, pal, but there is good news.”
The South African looked around to his men. He was clearly speaking to a crazy old buzzard. “I’ll play along, chief. What is the good news?”
“Your bleak future will be short-lived.” Then Maurice smiled. He softly began a prayer asking forgiveness for his sins.
Just then the Tech’s voice came over the radio. The six men put their hands to their earpieces to aid their hearing.
“Watcher Forty-three reports the subject just came out of the nail salon a block behind the house. He’s on foot, heading west.”
The leader of the South Africans nodded, turned his attention back to Maurice.
“Good news all around, Granddad. We won’t have to torture you to find out where he’s going.”
Maurice did not look up from his prayer. The South African team leader shrugged his shoulders, lowered his shotgun to the seated man’s chest, and fired one-handed.
As the slug left the barrel in a shower of fire, the South African lifted into the air and flew backwards into the kitchen. His neck snapped, and the skin burned from his face and hands. The other five suffered similar fates, though in the confines of the living room there was less open distance for the men to fly.
Maurice died instantly from the twelve-gauge blast to the chest at close range.
Firefighters on the scene minutes later would recognize the telltale devastation of a massive gas leak, probably from the connection between the wall and the big industrial oven. This was an unfortunate but all too common occurrence in old homes like this one, and was hardly a surprise. Only hours later, when the fire had been doused and the water and foam levels lowered to where the bodies could be examined, were the investigators scratching their heads. The seven bodies soaked and burned beyond recognition gave them little information. But the massive amount of firearms surrounding all the victims save one was highly irregular in peaceful Geneva, to say the least.
TWENTY-FIVE
Five minutes after exiting the nail salon, the Gray Man walked west on Rue du Marche, searching for the address on the note card in his hand. A light rain began, blurring his view of the numbers on the buildings. He’d just turned north on Rue du Commerce when an explosion roared behind him.
He stopped in his tracks as did the pedestrians around him on the pavement. Unlike them, however, Gentry did not turn around. After a few seconds standing motionless in the rain, he took a step forward. The momentum returned to his body, and he continued on, his head and shoulders slumped a little lower.
He spotted a watcher, so he dodged into the Rue du Rhone, a small, covered passageway, where he lost his tail in the foot traffic near the McDonald’s.
Minutes later, he found the single-car garage in the back of an underground parking lot below the Rue de la Confederation. It was a Saturday afternoon, no one was around, and the key Maurice gave him unlocked the sliding door.
It opened with a creak, and the dust from inside the unit mixed in his nose with the scent of motor oil. He felt the walls for a light for a half minute before bumping into a large object in the middle of the floor. Above it was a cord attached to a lightbulb hanging over the middle of the room.
Gentry found himself dazzled by the brilliance of the bare bulb. Quickly he pulled down the garage door to seal himself into the room, turned back to find that the object in the center of the garage was some sort of automobile covered by a large tarp.
Maurice had said nothing about loaning him a car. For a second Court wondered if he’d somehow gained entry into the wrong unit.
He pulled back the tarp and let it fall to the pavement.
