“What do you mean?”
“They had me take a bunch of tests to make sure I was mentally competent. I passed them all.”
“I took the same tests.”
“So how did you get recruited?”
Russ took his time responding. Court looked out the window. The morning had brightened to a gray day, revealing a frozen landscape of forest zooming by at 125 miles per hour. Finally Russ said, “In the Corps I spent two years in Iraq, had the fortune of being involved in twenty-two combat engagements. Fallujah, Sadr City. All the fun spots.
“Then it was Afghanistan. My company had more than five hundred contacts in eleven months. I was wounded twice, but I dished out a hell of a lot of death to the enemy.
“Then one day they pulled me back to J-Bad, then back to the States. They told me I was such a badass they were looking at me for SOF.”
“SOF?”
“Special Operations Forces.”
“I know what that means, dickhead. Didn’t they give you a psych eval?”
“Yes, they did.”
Court looked past the bathroom to the window on the door to the train. Snow-covered hills rolled past in a blur. “Let me guess the next part. Your psych eval was… questionable.”
“Negative, it was not questionable in the least. As a matter of fact, it answered their questions nicely. The tests determined I was—”
“A sociopath?”
“Wrong again.”
Court closed his eyes. Jesus. “You are a psychopath, aren’t you?”
The delay in Whitlock’s response told Court he’d hit the nail on the head. Finally Russ said, “I tried to argue that it was nurture, not nature. Twenty-four months in the sandbox followed by a year at a FOB in Kunar Province can skew a psych eval if it’s not taking into account the realities I had to face — each and every fucking day it was kill or be killed.”
“But the shrinks wouldn’t listen to your explanation.”
“They are paid to talk, not to listen to some jarhead just back from Asscrackistan.”
“So no SOF for you.”
“No SOF for me.”
Court watched the frozen landscape pass by, his mind on his own past with the CIA. He knew the next chapter of Whitlock’s story as if it had happened to himself. Court said, “And then the CIA dropped in. Patted you on the head and said they understood.”
“Of course they did. There were still tests to take, and I took them, but for a sharp tack like me, with a little forewarning about what was expected, gaming the tests was no big deal. There were the agency shrink interviews, but there again, I was smarter than any of those fucks evaluating me. A smart enough psychopath can easily appear only sociopathic with a little effort. Then the CIA recruiters sat me down. I’m sure you got the same spiel. They said, ‘We can make your life amount to something, but once you say yes, you belong to us.’”
Court remembered the moment it happened to him. He’d been pulled out of prison in Florida, facing a life sentence for shooting three Colombian enforcers. He was driven to a nice home in Kendall — a CIA safe house, he later determined — and run through days of meetings and tests. Push and pull. They made him feel like Superman, and then they made him feel like shit on their shoes. It was recruitment and assessment at the same time.
“But they let you in even though they thought you were sociopathic?”
Russ paused again before saying, “Court, I hate to break it to you… That was a prerequisite.”
“It was a prerequisite to be nuts?” Gentry shook his head in disbelief. “When did that change?”
“It didn’t.”
Russ was right. Court did not understand.
“Are you fucking blind, Court? We were all picked for AADP because the shrinks determined we were the right psychological fit. Remorseless loners.”
“That’s… that’s not true. I’m not a sociopath.”
“You’re a borderline sociopath. It’s in your unredacted file. Give me your address, I’ll send you a copy.”
Softly Gentry said, “I’m not.”
“That’s what the Autonomous Asset Program was all about. Taking misfits with nothing to lose, young men with the physical and psychological raw materials to make efficient killing machines, then building them and training them and programming them to follow orders, and finally sending them out into the world like goddamned robots to melt into foreign lands and do the dirty work without questioning the orders or building relationships or associations of a personal nature.”
“That’s not me. I’m not crazy.”
Russ laughed. “Sure, Court. You are the one Tootsie Roll in the box of turds, right? How many people have you killed over the years? Think about that. Does that sound like the life of a well-adjusted individual?”
“Fuck you, Whitlock. I do what I do because I have to.”
“Bullshit, Court. You could have escaped after the shoot-on-sight and disappeared anywhere in the world. You could have left the game, but you didn’t want to drive a taxi or gut fish. You wanted to kill people. Just because you justify your bloodlust by only targeting bad guys is irrelevant. You do that to make yourself feel better, not because you are some kind of hero. Trust me, if you run out of bad guys, the goal posts will just move, and you’ll start killing people who are more and more marginal.”
Gentry wanted to write off Whitlock’s assertions as nothing more than the fantasies of a maniac, but the truth was, Russ seemed like he knew what he was talking about.
Court said, “You’ve wanted me to stay in touch with you. Why?”
“You don’t like our little chitchats?”
“You are stringing me along. Trying to get me to join you. This isn’t just about framing me. You need me for something. For what, I don’t know.”
“I don’t need you,” Russ said, but Court could hear consternation in his voice.
Gentry said, “I’m not going to play into your plan. I am hanging up now, and I’m tossing this phone.”
Quickly, Whitlock said, “No! I can still help you.”
“How?”
“I’m going to blame the Kalb hit on you, but how is that really going to affect your day? One more country is after you? Big deal. Once you lose those people on you now, then you’ll be fine. Go back to South America, or Southeast Asia, or try the outback. Go off grid and stay off grid. When I’m done with my op, say three or four weeks from now, I’ll contact you again, and I’ll give you all the information on the shoot-on-sight sanction CIA put on you five years ago. I owe you that.” He laughed into the phone. “You are, after all, helping me make twenty-five mill, even if it is unwittingly.”
Court shook his head. “I’m done with you.”
“Court. Listen to me. You need to think very carefully—”
“You aren’t controlling me, Dead Eye. I am starting to wonder if you can even control yourself.”
Court disconnected the call and took the battery out of the phone. He put both pieces in his backpack and planned on destroying the phone when he got off the train and found a quiet place to do so.
He slung his backpack and coat back over his shoulder and left the rear cabin. The train would be in Copenhagen soon, and then it would cross the Baltic Sea on a ferry and roll on to Hamburg.
Court wanted to remain on board for the entire journey, but he needed to keep an eye out for any of the rapidly expanding number of threats against him.
FORTY-FOUR
Ten minutes after she left the bathroom, Ruth Ettinger found Gentry in the fourth car from the end of the train. She saw only the back of his head, but she recognized his nondescript black coat and the nondescript black backpack in the rack above him. Even though she felt like her disguise was as good as she could possibly make it, she knew she benefited from the fact that her target was seated facing away from her.