Ruth cocked her head. “Townsend?”
“Yes. They used him to track me, but he’s gone off reservation. He’s accepted a contract from the Iranians to kill your prime minister. He’s planning to kill Kalb and frame me for it, but there is more to this I don’t understand.”
“You are lying. I don’t believe you.”
“You need to try. Because he is out there, and he will kill Kalb, and you are making it really fucking easy for him by concentrating your people on me.”
She took a moment, still breathing hard, but thinking over what he was saying. Looking him in the eyes she saw an earnestness that she did not expect, and his tone was certainly convincing.
“How do you know all this?” she asked. “About Whitlock?”
“Because he told me.” Court relaxed his grip on the woman, but not completely. “Townsend came after me in Estonia, and Russ fought alongside me. He told me he could help me get away from them, so I stayed in contact with him. I knew he had some agenda, but it wasn’t until last night when you told me about Zarini and the contract on Ehud Kalb, and today when he told me he killed your man so I could get clear, that I put it together.”
Ruth wanted to believe Gentry. If he was telling the truth, then it meant she had been right all along. Gentry was not the threat.
And Mike’s death was not her fault.
She wanted to believe him because it helped her; she knew that. She also knew Gentry might be lying to protect himself. But this second rogue assassin story, as far-fetched as it sounded, was the only scenario that made any sense to her. He had not convinced her, not yet, but she was well on her way to believing.
“Whitlock is in Sweden?” she asked.
“I don’t know where he is now. I guess he’s going wherever Ehud Kalb is.” Court looked at Ruth. “Where is your PM?”
With an incredulous tone she said, “I’m not going to tell you the travel plans of my prime minister.”
Court rolled his eyes. “He’s going to New York next week. I saw that on TV. But if Russ is going to frame me, he won’t do it in New York.”
Ruth understood. “Because you are a target of the U.S., and you can’t go to New York.”
“Yeah. I guess he could do it in Tel Aviv,” Gentry said. He found himself using his own thought process to determine the actions of someone else. “But I’m sure he’d rather do it outside Israel, get him on some neutral ground.”
Ruth spoke softly. “London.”
“Kalb is going to London?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “It’s public knowledge. He’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s it, then,” Court said. “Russ must be planning on hitting him there.”
“It’s a Pan-European trade conference,” she said. “Dozens of world leaders will attend. Do you have any idea how tight security measures will be?”
“Trust me. Russ and I had the same training.” He looked into her eyes. “I could do it. He could do it.”
Ruth found herself believing him.
Court said, “I just did you a favor with that information. Agreed?”
“If it’s true.”
“It’s true. You’ve got to get him to cancel his trip. Now, I need you to do me a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Tell me who will be waiting for me in Helsingborg.”
“No one. I have not called anyone.”
Court looked at her a long time, evaluating her nonverbal clues to gauge the veracity of her answer.
“Good.”
“But this new intel. You have to let me call this in.”
“Not until I’m off this train.”
“Please, there is no time to waste.”
But Court held firm. “You have two days. That’s plenty of time for Kalb to cancel his plans.”
Ruth said nothing, although she worried she did not, in fact, have two days.
FORTY-FIVE
Russell Whitlock landed at London’s Gatwick Airport shortly before two P.M. He wore business attire, traveled with only his briefcase and a small overnight tote, and looked exactly like all the other young male international business travelers in the border control line.
Normally when traveling within Europe, Russ would not have to pass through customs. Twenty-six European nations are members of the Schengen Area, a cooperation zone established by treaty that allows travelers from one member nation to travel to other area nations without undergoing border controls.
But the United Kingdom, unlike Sweden, is not a member of the Schengen Area, and for this reason Russ had to wait in an immigration line upon arrival. The process was of no concern to him; his Townsend credentials were solid, and his blue U.S. passport made the entire process little more than a formality. A U.K. Border Agency officer glanced at him, glanced at his document, and then ran it through a scanner to read the information housed on the RFID chip to verify that the man, the paperwork, and the digital information all matched. Since there was no block on Allen Morris, the credos used by Whitlock on this day, he was told to have a pleasant stay and then waved through the border control area.
Russ tried to hide his slight limp as he walked through the terminal. His hip was killing him, but he knew he could push through the pain and do his job here in London. He had forty-eight hours to get set up for the hit on Kalb. It wasn’t optimal — he would prefer at least seventy-two — but he’d already done much of the prep work for the op on an earlier trip here to London.
As he neared ground transportation, his phone rang and he answered it, even though he knew it would be Townsend, and even though he anticipated trouble. He believed in his power to charm, however, almost as much as he believed in his power to kill. He had been successful at both endeavors for his entire adult life, after all, so his self-confidence was easily understood.
“This is Graveside. Iden eight, two, four, four, niner, seven, two, niner, three.”
“Confirmed. This is Dead Eye, identity key four, eight, one, oh, six, oh, five, two, oh.”
Babbitt asked, “Where are you, Russell?”
“Stockholm.”
A pause. “What have you been doing?”
“Made contact with Jumper this morning, Parks called with intel that Gray Man was at the bus terminal there in the city center. You had me disarmed and disowned, so I went back to my hotel.”
“That was six hours ago. What have you been doing since?”
Russ kept walking. “I took a nap.”
After a short pause Babbitt said, “We need to talk.”
Russ found a place to sit in the terminal, away from others.
Babbitt said, “Beaumont tells me he confronted you about Trestle Seven.”
“You’re damn right we have to talk. I’m sending you the bill for my boots. That redneck spit on them.”
Babbitt took awhile to respond to this. When he did, he said, “Did you see a second target in Tallinn as was reported?”
“Negative. There was a blizzard going on, so I didn’t see too much until Gentry shot me.”
“There have been more doubts raised about the events of that night.”
“Such as?”
“You requisitioned a pistol from our weapons cache in Berlin, did you not?”
“I did. So?”
“A Glock nine-millimeter. Model 19.”
“Correct.”
“Historically speaking, that is the weapon Court Gentry uses.”
“It’s a Glock, the plastic fantastic. Everybody uses it.”
“Not you, Russell. You have always requisitioned a forty-caliber SIG. We checked your older work with CIA. Again, a SIG forty. You have to go back ten years to see any record of you preferencing the nine-millimeter round, but even then, you carried the SIG Sauer. Never a Glock.”