have gotten one way.
Kurt Riegel spun on the rampart and entered the chateau. He passed Lloyd, who was stepping out of the bathroom, continued down the corridor with the bearing of a storm trooper.
Lloyd saw the hunter’s determination. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Riegel said nothing. He marched down the hall and descended the wide, carpeted staircase to the second floor. He stormed down this hallway, past the sconces and the paintings, past the door to Elise Fitzroy’s room, past the bedroom where the kids were locked up. With Lloyd close on his heels, he passed Leary, one of the Northern Irish thugs Lloyd had brought along from LaurentGroup London. The fifty-two-year-old German threw his shoulder into the heavy door Leary was guarding, and it flew open. In the large room beyond, lying on his back in the bed, covered in white linen and facing the door, Sir Donald Fitzroy stared back at the procession of men filing into the room.
Riegel stomped across the room to Sir Donald’s bed. He showed none of the courtesy he had displayed in their earlier meeting. His face was that of a man who’d been played for a fool and was out for blood in recompense.
In a hushed voice that was incongruous to his mannerisms, Riegel asked a one-word question. “Where?”
Lloyd and Leary stood back in the center of the room. They looked at one another, searching for some clue as to what was happening.
“What are you talking about?” asked Donald.
Riegel drew his Steyr pistol, pressed it hard to the bald forehead of Sir Donald. “Your
After a brief pause, Sir Donald Fitzroy’s arms moved slowly under the covers. Soon a mobile phone appeared. He handed it to the big German.
Riegel did not even look at it. He slipped it into his pocket. “Who?” he asked now, still in a hushed and angry voice.
Sir Donald said nothing.
“It will take me seconds to determine the owner of this phone. You can save yourself some measure of misery by giving me the answer yourself.”
Sir Donald looked away from Riegel, across the room to Lloyd, then his eyes drifted to the Northern Irish guard.
“Padric Leary worked for me back in the old days, back in Belfast. You were one of my best touts, Paddy.” He looked back to Kurt Riegel. “Still, the wanker shook me down for a king’s ransom to make a couple of lousy calls.”
As Riegel’s fury turned from the Englishman to the Irishman, Fitzroy called out to the stupefied guard, “Sorry, old boy. Don’t guess I can come through with the ten thousand quid, after all. You’ll just have to take solace in the fact you remain a loyal servant to a nobleman of the Crown.”
Leary looked to Riegel. “A bloody lie! There’s a right bleedin’ Brit for ya! He’s bloody lying! Before two days ago I’d never laid eyes on the fooking old bastard!”
“Is this your phone?” Riegel pulled it from his pocket and held it out.
Leary looked at it for several seconds, then began walking towards Fitzroy in his bed.
“How the fook did you get your wrinkled old hands on my—”
A gunshot cracked in the small room. Leary’s head snapped forward, and he crashed face-first at Riegel’s feet. The German dropped to a knee in a blur of action, raised his weapon in a flash as he went down.
Lloyd stood in the middle of the room, his arm outstretched and a small silver automatic at the end of it. It was still pointed to where the back of the Irishman’s head was before the .380 hollow-point round sent it lurching forward.
As Lloyd spoke, he waved the gun around the room, used it as a pointer, swung it with his gesticulations. “We have enough problems out there without having to worry about enemies in our midst.” He then motioned to Riegel, who was still in a low crouch, eyes on the handgun dancing about the room at the end of Lloyd’s arm. “You wanted to treat Donnie boy like a gentleman, and this is how he repays you. You were too soft, and he used that against you. He’s been manipulating people since before I was born. That’s what he does! Find out who he called and what he said. You do it right now, or I will call Marc Laurent and tell him you are getting in the way of my mission!”
Lloyd lowered the gun and turned. He left the room. After a few more seconds on his knee with his gun raised, still scanning for targets, Riegel holstered his weapon, looked back to Fitzroy, and said, “I’m disappointed.”
Fitzroy’s voice was surprisingly strong. “I see the desperation, Riegel. I see it in your eyes as well as Lloyd’s. This is not only about a contract to siphon and ship natural gas. Abubaker has something else he’s holding over LaurentGroup. Some dirt about your past, your practices. Something that, should it see the bright light of day, would blow your organization to pieces.”
Riegel looked in a mirror hanging above a large armoire. He fixed his graying blond hair with his fingertips. “Yes, Sir Donald. We’ve allowed ourselves to be caught up in quite an unenviable predicament. My father used to say, ‘If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas.’ Well, we have lain down with many, many a dog for many, many years. Abubaker is one of the worst, and he knows much about what Marc Laurent will do for money and power. Since the decoloni zation of Africa, the continent’s resources have been ripe for exploitation for anyone prepared to dance with a despot. We have had Abubaker in our back pocket for years . . . and now we are in his. He’s threatening to talk about the length to which Marc Laurent has gone to take resources from Africa. It’s not a pretty story. We’d very much prefer the outgoing president held his tongue.”
With that, Riegel started to the door. Without a backward glance, he called out to his prisoner, “I’ll send someone to clean up the body.”
“Don’t bother. When Court gets here, there will be corpses all over the house.”
TWENTY-SIX
Five soldiers of Saudi Arabia’s Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah, or General Intelligence Directorate, flew west over the Alps in a stolen Eurocopter EC145. The chopper was the property of a local owner-operator who’d made a good living ferrying snowboarders and extreme skiers to otherwise inaccessible peaks on Mont Blanc and other mountains in the area.
Now the sleek black Eurocopter’s owner, a former French army major, was dead in his hangar, shot once through the heart with a silenced pistol, and the Saudis flew his craft north over the highway. The road below them rose and fell, weaved and disappeared into alpine tunnels and rushed past bright green forests and lakes so blue the bright sky around them looked positively dull in comparison.
Only the Saudi pilot spoke English. He stayed in sporadic contact with the Tech, an open two-way communication between his headset and the command center that came and went with the jagged peaks on either side of the aircraft. The Tech simultaneously ran other hit teams in the area and relayed reports from the watchers at bus stations and taxi stands. No sign of the Gray Man had been reported since he slipped his coverage just after leaving the financier’s home in Geneva.
The A40 is the obvious highway for a traveler to take from Geneva, Switzerland, through southwestern France, into the French heartland. There, at the city of Viriat, one could stay on the A40 to the A6, or one could go northeast on the A39 into Dijon. Either way it is roughly a five-hour drive to Paris, as compared with six or more hours by avoiding these routes.
The Saudis in the helicopter knew where to look for their target. If he came over the roads, they knew he would pass below them on the A40.
They just did not know what type of vehicle they were looking for.
Thirty watchers positioned themselves at overpasses, rest stops, along the highway’s shoulders with the hoods up on their vehicles. Others drove along with the traffic. Each pavement artist watched the road, scanned the occupants of as many cars as possible for the most basic profile. It was a large operation to remain concealed to
