Rue de Buci. In his right hand his umbrella swung by his side with each step; he fought the urge to use it as a cane because his feet were hurting from the lacerations he’d picked up in Budapest the day before.
But it wasn’t the walk that caused him to sweat, it was the eyes scanning the street in front of him. Thirty yards distant he saw a young couple huddled together on a bench, talking to one another but actively checking the male passersby. Court had found a bald-headed man about his own age to follow behind; he kept his eyes ahead of the man to see if he was garnering attention that seemed out of place. This would indicate to Gentry he’d been spotted and identified via radio to other surveillance teams in the area.
Immediately the young lovers fixed on the bald man for a few seconds, one seemed to speak to the other about the man, and then their eyes moved on, satisfied he was not the subject of their surveillance. Court knew immediately he had been compromised. He’d seen at least ten watchers so far and was reasonably sure he’d slipped every one of them, but there must have been someone he missed, some asset static in a dark window or a car on the street or somewhere Gentry could not get a fix on him, and this asset had broadcast Court’s appearance and direction to every watcher and hunter in the city.
Quickly, Court chanced a glance back over his shoulder. Three dark-skinned men were moving quickly, looking in a shop window, not twenty meters behind. Across the street there were two more. These guys were part of the same squad, and they were scanning the north side of the street, looking over tables full of diners in front of a cafe.
Shit. Court turned left down a little passageway off the Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie and followed it in the dark. At its end was dim light from a quiet passage twenty yards on. The watchers would be sparse off the main drag of the Left Bank as long as they didn’t know he’d spotted the surveillance on him.
Court walked into the dark, his eyes on the light ahead, the tip of his umbrella scuffing the wet cobblestones. The noise echoed in the black, covered passageway.
Court needed to catch a cab back to the Gare Saint-Lazare, pick up his Mercedes, and head on to Bayeux. This stop in Paris, like the stop in Budapest yesterday afternoon and the one in Guarda last night, had been all but useless. At least this time he had gotten away without being hurt, and that was something, though he really needed more help before—
From the close dark, there was a flash of movement. Quickly from his left came the figure of a man. Before Court’s lightning reflexes could react, he sensed further movement low, an arm swinging towards him. Gentry moved his own right arm to parry it, but he was too slow.
He was never too slow.
Court Gentry felt the knife stab into his belly and shear through soft flesh just above his left hip bone.
TWENTY-NINE
At two a.m., a shaft of light poured into the blackened second-floor bedroom. Sir Donald lay awake. The rest of the family had been moved into his room so that they could all be watched over by just one guard. Claire slept fitfully on her grandfather’s left; Kate snored on his right. Elise was so medicated it was hard to tell if she was with it or not. She lay sprawled across a chair and ottoman on the other side of the room.
Donald saw the silhouette of the Scottish guard, the one named McSpadden. He figured he was in for a covert beating and wondered if he could take much more.
McSpadden walked up to the bed, ignored the little girls, and whispered to Fitzroy, “I’ll do you a deal, old man. Here’s a phone. Snuck it out of one of the Ivan’s kit bags. They’re all at battle stations now; I’m the only one on the floor.”
“Bugger off. I’m trying to sleep,” said Fitzroy.
“Plenty of time for that come the morning if you’re dead.”
“You don’t think I can smell a trap? Why would a tosser like you just hand me a bloody phone?”
“Because . . . because I want some . . . consideration when this is through.”
Fitzroy cocked his corpulent head and pressed it deeper into the pillow to focus on the man standing above him. “What sort of consideration?”
“The Gray Man . . . Heard he did Kiev. If he did Kiev and he did half the other ops they say he did, if he did the team in Prague and Budapest and the teams in Switzerland . . . Hell, he just might make it here. He makes it here, and my gun’s going in the dirt, I’m doing a runner. I’m not fighting it out with that cold bastard. Got a couple of things to live for, I do. You understand me? Yeah, he shows up, and I’m doing a runner, and I don’t want Donald bleeding Fitzroy or his crazy attack dog coming after me, you see?”
The Scot held out the phone to Fitzroy, and he took it.
“On the level?” asked Fitzroy.
“You’re probably dead as dust come the morning, Sir Donald. I’m not sticking my neck out too far. But if you do make it, remember Ewan McSpadden was the one who helped you.”
“I’ll do that, Ewan.”
“Call your dog, tell him if he makes it . . . I’m the bloke with the green shirt and the black trousers. My gun will be in the dirt; he needn’t worry about that.”
“Good lad, McSpadden.”
The Scot receded into the dark; the shaft of light reappeared and then narrowed and extinguished behind him.
The knife dug deeper into Gentry’s stomach. The pain was horrific. Knee weakening. Bowel loosening. Something was happening that Gentry didn’t understand, so he looked down, saw he’d somehow caught the attacker’s wrist with the hook of the umbrella. Gentry pulled down and away on the umbrella’s shaft, did not have the strength to pull the knife out of his body, but at least his effort kept the blade from sinking in more than a couple of inches. Painful, excruciatingly painful, but much better than the knife digging in hilt deep or worse, cutting up into his gut like a fish filleted.
With all his might Court pulled down on the umbrella with his right hand. With his left, he reached out at the attacker. He fisted him in the chest weakly, because there was little strength in reserve after the exertion from his right arm and the pain deep in his belly. The assassin punched back, tried a head butt, but Court leaned away from it in time.
Court reached across his body to his waistband, took poor hold of the Glock pistol with his left hand but drew it anyway, just pulled it free of his belt as the assassin knocked it away.
The steel and polymer weapon clanged to the cobblestones, rattled off in the dark.
Their free hands fought one another, the attacker in the dark warding off an attempted eye gouge and Gentry deflecting an open-handed blow to his Adam’s apple that would have surely killed him, the tempered steel shaft stabbing into him notwithstanding.
The attacker gave up on trying to yank the knife up to the sternum or push it in deeper; the umbrella’s hook on his arm prevented him from accomplishing either task. Instead, the blade cut down, came to rest against the hip bone and gouged into it.
Gentry stifled a scream. He was nearly out of his mind from pain but knew more killers were yards away. Any slim chance he had at survival against the blade in him and the man manipulating it would disappear if more men intent on his demise heard his cries.
Court changed tactics himself. He pushed forward with his legs and shoved his chest into the smaller man, an Asian he could clearly now see. He slammed him into the wall, which only served to jab the knife in him a fraction of an inch deeper.
Court followed this with a head butt that slammed the two men’s foreheads together with a crack louder than any other sound in the alleyway since the fight began. The umbrella still held the Asian’s right hand down. Court pushed again with his body, and the Asian stumbled backwards all the way across the alley and slammed into the other wall. Court was still attached by the knife’s blade, so he moved along with his attacker. The light was better over here and, through the agony that threatened to cloud his mind to mush, Court saw the straps of the backpack and realized the man was now trying to take hold of something behind him in the bag with his free hand.
