Mike Dillman put his hand over his earpiece so he could not be heard by the Townsend men. “Let’s call in Metsada and we can get on the next plane home before I freeze my dick off.”
Aron and Laureen laughed.
Ruth looked at him with annoyance. She covered her own mic. “We don’t even know what he’s up to. Metsada won’t be targeting anyone on this operation unless we know the man is a threat. I don’t want to hear any more talk like that.”
Mike said, “It was a joke, boss.”
Aron looked at Ruth for a moment. “What’s wrong, Ruth? Why can’t we just let Townsend put him down and be done with it?”
“This one feels different. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Lucas transmitted over their headsets now, “We’re pulling the Sky Shark back home and calling it a night. We’ll get back on him in the A.M. You guys can stay out there if you want, but we’re low on juice.”
The four Israelis remained at the top of the staircase looking down to Radmansgatan Street for several minutes, surveilling the urban area from this high ground to find the best place to watch the building. As people passed, heading up and down the staircase next to them, the four operatives discussed softly among themselves where they would post their overnight watch on the building.
As they stood there, a family of seven passed the Mossad team, then trudged through the snow to the stairs to the second-floor property. The youngest in the family could not have been more than two years old, and she bobbed along in the line, her thick boots kicking up snow almost to her eye level.
Laureen said, “Kids. That complicates things.”
Ruth nodded. “Immigrant tenements like this are usually full of children. We will need visibility inside that building. Aron, tomorrow I want you to see if they have a vacancy. We’ll pull up the schematics of the building and run fiber optics through the wall into Gentry’s room.”
While they talked it over, Aron looked around at the raised area they were standing on. “You know, right here is the best place to watch the building tonight. You don’t even need to rent an apartment in the neighborhood. It’s not a perfect sight line, but it’s not bad.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not bad at all.” She looked back over her shoulder, then down again toward the street and Gentry’s building.
She said, “He’s made something of a mistake, tactically speaking, hasn’t he?”
The question was to herself, but Aron responded.
“You mean hiding out in that tenement? With this overwatch covering the entrance just up the road?”
“Yes,” she answered, even more distracted now.
Laureen offered, “He has a lot to think about, I guess. Only so many places in the area he can rent.”
“But why this one? Why here?”
Mike answered. “It’s convenient. Close to the tram. Close enough to the river if he wants to jump on a vessel to get out of town. Our file on him says he’s used urban waterways in a pinch. Plus there are good options for food in the neighborhood.”
Ruth shook her head. “That’s not how this man thinks.”
“Then what?” Laureen asked. “He just screwed up? Got lazy?”
Ruth shook her head again. Slowly at first, but then more emphatically. “No. No, that’s not what’s going on.”
“What’s going on, then?”
She turned away from the stairs down to the street, away from the narrow view of the windows leading to the second-floor apartments. Her movement was slow and unconcerned, but her words to the others were severe. Demanding. “Turn around and walk with me. Now, dammit!”
“What’s wrong with you?” Laureen asked, but she did as she was told.
“He knows where to look.”
“What?”
“He saw the vulnerability this overwatch created; there is no way he would miss that. But he chose that location anyway. He did that because he knew staying there would funnel any surveillance of his safe house into that one spot. Every time he comes out of the front door of that building, he’ll look right up here, first thing. All he has to do is keep his eyes on this overwatch; as soon as he sees someone here he doesn’t buy, someone who doesn’t fit, someone like the four of us idiots standing in the snow watching his door, for instance, he will know he’s been compromised and he will disappear.”
Together the four of them left the overwatch, heading in the other direction. They wandered up the street, back up a slight rise on Radmansgatan Street.
“That’s fucking brilliant,” Aron said. “If you’re right, that is. Maybe you are giving him too—”
“I’m not giving him too much credit. He’s that good.”
“So, did he see us, then?”
Ruth shrugged as she walked, her hands jammed in her coat pocket and her head leaning forward, into the snow. She was mad at herself, but she did not want to harp on it in front of her people. “No. I don’t think so. If he’s got a corner window he might have line of sight on the overwatch from his flat, but it’s a small chance. I think we dodged a bullet.” They were clear now, so she turned to her team. “We have to be smarter with this one. Slower, more thoughtful in our actions. Lose him, short term, if you have to, but do not get compromised. I don’t want Gentry to disappear from Stockholm and reappear at Kalb’s assassination.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“I want someone out here, all night. There was a bus stop up the street; it’s a shitty line of sight on the entire building, but it will get us eyes on the front door, at least. Tomorrow we can look for apartment space or office space on the street to get twenty-four-hour line-of-sight coverage.”
Ruth sighed, more vapor pouring from her mouth. She was confident in her abilities and those of her team, but she realized now she was up against an adversary who had been playing this game at an elite level for a long time. She could make one call to Mossad and have a dozen more surveillance technicians here in twenty-four hours, full electronic suites, vans and cams and forged credentials to get them access to anywhere they wanted to go.
But Ruth wanted to keep this investigation small. This target would spook at the first sign of trouble, and the Townsend drones seemed to be an effective technology with a low probability of compromise.
That would do for now.
And more than this, she was nowhere near ready to call in more of her countrymen, because she did not yet know she was hunting a man who posed a threat to her leadership.
All she knew for sure was the Americans sure wanted him dead.
THIRTY-ONE
Russ Whitlock had finished his bottle of champagne and his plate of cheeses, and now he stood on the fifth-floor balcony and looked out at the Friday night traffic of Nice grinding by on Boulevard Victor Hugo. A cool breeze blew through the buttons of his dress shirt and it, along with the alcohol, relaxed him into a state he had not felt in a long time.
The satisfaction that came from Gentry’s call gave him even more of a sense of repose right now. When this was all over, two weeks from now at the outside, only a few would have any idea what he had done, and those few would be disinclined to celebrate his act. No, he would not be famous, and he would not be a legend.
He lamented this for a second, standing there on the balcony, but then he smiled.
All famous assassins live a life on the run, just as Court Gentry did now.
And all legends are dead, just as Court Gentry would be when this was all over.
His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket and looked at it in the dim light. It was Townsend House.