“That’s it? You’re giving me your phone number? How do I know you’ll do it? How do I know you will answer when I call?”
“You don’t,” he said, and then he turned away, disappearing in the flotsam and jetsam of the station crowd.
Ruth found a quiet place in a shopping mall near the station, and she dialed Yanis Alvey. He answered on the first ring, near breathless, though Ruth could not tell if it was from anger or worry.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Don’t play games, Yanis. You have the ability to track me through my phone. I also have Mike’s phone, so you have two means to do it.”
He asked, “What are you doing in Helsingborg? You were supposed to get off the train as soon as it stopped this afternoon, not switch trains and head for the border.”
She hesitated to answer, but she knew she could not lie to Yanis. The only way to convince him of the truth was to be perfectly transparent. She told him about her conversation with Gentry, about a second CIA asset gone rogue named Russell Whitlock, code-named Dead Eye, and his plot to frame Gentry in the death of Ehud Kalb. She explained that Dead Eye worked for Townsend, and both she and Gentry felt it was likely he would attempt to kill Kalb in Brussels.
“Where is Gentry now?”
Now she lied. “He got on a train. I did not see which one.”
“Don’t move from your location. I will come pick you up myself.”
“What about what I just told you? You need to be on your way to Brussels. I can take care of myself.”
“Ruth…” Yanis spoke in a fatherly tone. “You’ve lost a man today. You are coming in. We’ll take care of any threats against the PM.”
“So you don’t believe me, is that it?”
“I don’t believe him. Of course not. But I will check it out. It’s an easy call to Townsend to confirm if they have this”—he was obviously reading the name he just wrote down—“Whitlock fellow working for them. If they do, I’ll dig around some more.”
“Yanis. You know me. You know I don’t get played by the opposition.”
“I do know you, Ruth. You are one of the best and brightest. But I also know what losing a man in the field is like. You are flailing now, flailing about for any lifeline, any proof that you are not responsible for Mike’s death.”
“That is not—”
“If you had done your job in Stockholm yesterday, Court Gentry, a man wanted by CIA, FBI, Interpol, French DGSE, the Mexican Federal Police, the Russian FSB, and God only knows who else, would have been taken off the chessboard, and Mike would not have been standing alone in the dark bowels of the train station this morning with a wire around his throat. You can rationalize the rantings of a wanted murderer into some sort of exoneration of your actions, but right now I don’t care about that. I only care about pulling you out of the field. The surviving members of your team are halfway back to Tel Aviv already. Stay where you are and I will come pick you up.”
It was clear to her she would be pulled out of action, and Mossad would do nothing at all about the real threat to Ehud Kalb.
As she sat there in the shopping mall, she decided she would take one more proactive step before standing down. She called Leland Babbitt at Townsend Government Services. Babbitt took the call immediately and immediately asked where she was calling from.
She suspected he knew she was following Gentry, but she did not admit to it. Instead of answering the question, she said, “Mr. Babbitt, I’ve determined the threat against Ehud Kalb to be real, but Court Gentry is not the would-be assassin.”
“Explain.”
“There is another man out there. He took the contract from the Iranians by claiming to be the Gray Man. He killed the film director in Nice, I think, to establish his bona fides.”
“Wow. That’s a hell of a story. Who is this guy?”
“His name is Russell Whitlock.”
Leland Babbitt did not respond.
Ruth said, coolly, “I gather he is an employee of yours.”
“Where did you come by this information?”
“From Court Gentry himself.”
There was a long pause with a few stumbling starts, until finally Babbitt seemed to take control of his words. “You met with the Gray Man and he told you another operator was the real problem.” Clearly he was shocked by the news she’d just delivered, and although he was trying to show that he was not buying it for a second, he was obviously on shaky ground.
Ruth said, “Gentry was not in Nice. That is certain.”
“Certain how?”
“I saw him in Stockholm the morning of the Nice assassination.”
“You saw Gentry yesterday morning?”
“Correct.”
“When you were liaising with Jumper? That information would have been useful.”
“You are missing the point. Your employee is the real threat, not Court Gentry.”
Babbitt did not respond.
“Are you there?”
It took her almost a minute to realize that Babbitt had hung up on her.
FORTY-SIX
For the second time today Russ Whitlock stood in a border patrol checkpoint with his Townsend-issued passport in hand. Brussels, Belgium, was a member of the Shengen Area, but since the United Kingdom was not, he had to shuffle through the line and get his passport glanced at and scanned by a border officer who would certainly be targeting a much different demographic than the thirty-four-year-old American businessman.
Virtually all the passengers on his BA flight had been British citizens, and the control process seemed to be moving along quickly and smoothly. Russ made his way to the booth and handed his passport over with a tired smile, the polite boredom of a jet-setting businessman who crossed immigration lines with such mind-numbing regularity that he could do no more than affect this gentle pleasantry.
Russ had done this a thousand times before. His papers were so good and his training so complete that he let his mind wander, thinking about taking a long hot shower in the hotel, spending some time cleaning up his excruciating hip wound, and then ordering a four-course room service meal along with a bottle of champagne.
The Belgian policeman looked at the passport and ran it through a scanner. He compared the face on the photograph with Russ’s face, and Russ smiled at him once again.
The policeman looked down at his screen and then did a quick double take. He slowly held up a finger, asking Russ to wait just a moment.
Then he reached for the phone on his desk, and Russ’s dreams of showers and champagne evaporated in an instant.
Two plainclothesmen appeared at Whitlock’s shoulder just seconds later. They were young and fit, and they wore zip-up hoodies and blue jeans. Each man also wore an earpiece in his right ear. Instantly Russ pegged them as cops. “Mr. Morris,” one said in a Flemish accent, “would you please come with us for one moment?”
“Why?” Russ asked, concerned, but still very much in his cover. He was, ostensibly, a businessman from Ohio, and an Ohio businessman would be naturally bemused at being taken out of the immigration line by two men in civilian clothing.
“Just come along, and we’ll straighten it out.”
Whitlock walked along with his briefcase in his hand. Neither of the two men touched him, but they moved close enough to him to where it was clear they were ready if he decided to try something stupid.
Two uniformed policemen stood in the hallway with radios in their hands. One of the men asked for Whitlock’s briefcase, and he handed it over. The five of them then continued farther up the hallway.
As they walked up the hallway it hit Whitlock like a battering ram.