He ordered her, in no uncertain terms, to stay as close to Gentry as possible so that when the Mossad technical surveillance team on the way from Tel Aviv arrived in the city early the next morning, they would have a target to begin tracking.
She acknowledged her superior without her normal borderline insubordinance, because she knew Mossad surveillance was exactly what this operation needed. If she could get a fifteen-person tech survey operation in place around Gentry, they would determine quickly that he was not planning any sort of attack on anyone, much less Ehud Kalb.
Ruth sat there quietly after the phone conversation, and for a moment she considered revealing to her team that she knew, without a doubt, that their target had not shot across the continent last night to perform a massacre at lunch, then shot back up to be seen at a 7-Eleven just after dinnertime. Again she decided to keep the information to herself. If she could not tell Yanis — and she was more certain now after her most recent conversation with him that she could not tell him — then it was not fair for her to bring her three employees into her deceit.
Aron brought her out of her moment of quiet consternation. “I feel like we need to get back out in the field. At least to cover the train station in case he tries to skip town.”
Ruth nodded. “I agree, but we need to keep it static. We start moving around the city in the middle of the night and I can guarantee you he will see us before we see him. Find a stationary survey location in or near the central station, someplace where we are ironclad sure we won’t be compromised, and we’ll start a three-hour watch rotation.”
Aron had his coat zipped and his hood up within seconds. “I’ll take first watch.”
Mike grabbed the keys to the Skoda. “And I’ll drive car pool.”
Court spent the early morning hours riding a bus to Jakobsberg, a town southwest of Stockholm. There was nothing in Jakobsberg for him to see or do; as soon as he arrived he would climb aboard a bus that would return him to Stockholm.
There were only a half dozen other riders, but Court was alone in the back, bundled in his coat with his backpack on his lap. His phone sat on the backpack and his headphones were in his ears; he’d sat like this for a half hour because he was having a tough time psyching himself up to contact Dead Eye.
He knew he needed to make the call. Whitlock was his one connection to intelligence on the opposition, not just of Townsend but also of the Mossad team working with them. Whatever Russell Whitlock’s motives were for offering to help him, and whatever the reason behind the man’s seemingly obsessive curiosity about the event in the Ukraine three years earlier, Court knew the five minutes it would take him to give up details could easily mean the difference between life and death.
He called Whitlock’s number through MobileCrypt and tucked his head deeper into the hood of his coat, all but insulating himself from the world around him.
Whitlock had rented a BMW at the airport and then he took a room at the Grand Hotel in the city center. For the past two hours he’d sat waiting on the comfortable sofa in the sitting room of his junior suite. He was still dressed in his now somewhat wrinkled dark suit, his tie was loose and his collar was open. Next to him on the end table was a half-empty and tepid split of champagne from the mini bar, and a prescription bottle of Adderall. He hadn’t taken any pills, but he had them staged and ready so that he could swing into action at a moment’s notice.
His face wore a near catatonic expression. He was awake but despondent. Each minute Gentry didn’t call was another minute nearer to the failure of this operation. Russ occupied his brain with thoughts of killing the Gray Man; he’d come up with a dozen savage schemes to do just that, all because the son of a bitch wouldn’t play his role in Whitlock’s escapade and make contact. He also thought of ways to kill Ali Hussein. The fucking Iranians weren’t playing their role, either. As far as Whitlock was concerned, he’d pulled off the Zarini hit close enough to convince them he was the Gray Man; they were just splitting hairs with their ridiculous complaints about collateral damage. Their request for the one piece of proof that he had not been able to deliver them infuriated him and, he told himself, if this entire thing fell through, he would make his way back to Beirut and put a dagger into the eye of Ali Hussein.
After he did the same to Court Gentry.
His phone was in his pocket but his earpiece was jammed in his right ear. He’d all but forgotten it was there; so when it chirped he bolted upright. In the space of a single heartbeat Whitlock went from near hopelessness to heart-pounding anticipation.
He answered on the first ring. “That you, brother?”
“It’s me.”
“I heard you made it out of the bar,” Russ said as he fished two Adderall out of the bottle and popped them in his mouth.
“Yes. What else do you hear? Any new intel?”
Russ downed the rest of the lukewarm champagne, swallowing the pills with it. They burned going down. “Yeah. I just got off the phone with Townsend House. Metsada is in play. They are in the city and moving into position.” It wasn’t true, but Whitlock needed a sense of urgency in Gentry now.
“Metsada,” Court muttered. There was dread in his voice. “I was afraid of that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I got you out of trouble before. I’ll steer you through it again.”
“Okay,” Court replied softly.
“That is, of course, if you are ready to talk.”
A pause. “What is your interest in Kiev?”
“It’s simple, brother. I know everything the CIA knows about that night. They’ve got police reports, ballistics reports, witness testimony, and gigs of bullshit analysis, but they don’t have all the answers. It’s the one operation in my career that I can’t figure out, and if there is a tactical equation I am unable to solve on my own, then I don’t mind someone passing me a cheat sheet. C’mon, Court. Let me in on the answer. How the fuck did you do it?”
“Tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the details.”
“No fucking way. I’ll keep what I know close to my vest, so I can make sure you aren’t bullshitting me.”
Court sighed, long and slow. Russ had the distinct impression Gentry had never done this before, talking in detail about one of his operations.
“I talk, then you talk. You tell me where Metsada is. You tell me where Townsend is. You tell me everything you know.”
“I’ll do you one better. I’m here in Stockholm. I’ll personally intervene to keep everybody away from you.”
Court said, “I don’t like that. As far as I’m concerned, you can waste every Townsend operator you see. But I don’t want you touching a hair on the head of any of the Israelis. I don’t need any more trouble than I already have.”
“Whatever you say.” Russ leaned back on the couch. “Now… Kiev.”
Softly Court said, “Kiev.” And then, “It was me.”
“All alone?”
“All alone.”
With a smile in his voice, Russ said, “I fucking knew it.”
THIRTY-NINE
Nine Mig-25PD Foxbats, each wearing the yellow trident of the Ukrainian National Air Force, sat in a row on a parking apron at Vasylkiv Air Base, northwest of Kiev. Towable light towers next to each plane gave them a top-down glow. The evening rain had let up less than an hour earlier; now patchy fog hung between the wet fighters and the operations building of the air base, some fifty yards to the north of the apron.
A round and squat control tower rose from the building. On a catwalk around the tower, spotlights hung unmoving next to armed sentries, and inside the tower itself two men sat looking out over the air base. These were not air controllers; there were no official flight operations scheduled this evening. Instead they were the two men assigned to the missile battery attached to the roof of the tower. From the comfort of the heated and covered room they could aim, fire, and control the wire-guided 9M-133 Kornet, a Russian antitank weapon that was also effective against helicopters. Four of the Kornets were visible on rails above the tower.