His brain did not want to accept the fact that the Gray Man had just slit his throat and walked away.
After five minutes walking through the darkened streets, Yanis Alvey made his way to the downstairs entrance to the Bremer Haus Apartments. He found the door open, and it led into a dark and dirty ground-floor lobby that smelled like rotten food. To Alvey the feel of the place was more Tunisian ghetto than German, and he suspected the majority of the inhabitants of the building were indeed Middle Eastern or North African. For a Jew, especially a Jew who worked for Mossad, it was not a terribly inviting atmosphere.
He bypassed the bank of dodgy-looking elevators and found a stairwell on the southeastern corner of the building. Once inside, he looked up. Each landing had a small bare bulb high on the wall above it, but the stairs themselves were unlit. The stairs were also metal, so Alvey slipped off his shoes and carried them in his hands so as not to make noise as he began ascending. He kept his pistol in his shoulder holster, as he knew there was a good chance he would run into Townsend men or civilians, and he needed to remain low profile.
“Jumper Eight to Jumper Seven? How copy?”
Eight stood in the stairwell with his boot propping open the door and his tactical light under the barrel of his gun illuminating the area in front of him.
He took his support hand off his pistol to switch his radio to broadcast to all elements, but as he looked down to find the right channel he heard a noise directly ahead. He looked up just in time to see a figure appear from the dark just to the right of his flashlight’s beam. He jerked his weapon toward the threat but staggered back, dropped his gun to the metal landing, and brought his hands to his neck.
A knife had embedded in his throat. He tried to scream, but quickly his scream was squelched by a hand over his mouth.
The Gray Man held the man down and he drew the knife from him, and then buried the blade once again in the side of Jumper Eight’s neck, silencing him completely and permanently.
Court hefted the man’s SIG Sauer pistol from the metal landing, slipped it into his waistband, and then dragged the body back into the construction area, hiding it perfunctorily. He returned to the stairwell and listened for any noise. He heard a door open high above him, and men began descending; he kicked off his boots quickly, picked them up, and began running down the stairs as fast as he could, certain all remaining threats were above him.
Alvey climbed up the stairs in his stocking feet, ascending slowly, listening for any sound of activity on the floors as he passed them.
The lightbulb above the second-floor stairwell exit was burned out and the landing was dark. Alvey paused at the door, listened to it, and decided there was no team of Townsend men running around in the hallway on the other side.
He turned away and began climbing again, but a man spun around the landing between floors two and three, taking the stairs down three at a time, and the two men collided violently in the low light.
Both men slammed into the wall of the stairwell and tumbled down half a flight of stairs before crashing down on the second-floor landing.
Court landed on his side and rolled onto his back. As he did so he scanned the hands of the man in the dark with him, trying to determine in a fraction of a second whether he was a threat or just some poor schlub on his way up the stairs after a long day at work. He saw empty hands, which relieved him, but as soon as the other man pushed himself back up to a seated position across from him, Court saw his right hand move under his jacket.
Court checked the man’s eyes; they were locked on his own and widening with excitement.
Court’s right hand instinctively shot to his waist.
“No!” he shouted, but he saw the matte black butt of a pistol coming from under the jacket. Court drew the gun he’d just taken from the dead Townsend man from his waistband and angled the barrel up toward the threat, taking no time to raise the weapon to eye level or extend it toward his target.
The man in the suit swung his black pistol out toward Court as he himself began to shout.
Court fired twice from the hip, no hesitation between shots, and a pair of quick crashing reports echoed in the stairwell. Both nine-millimeter rounds hit their target, and the other man slammed against the wall and dropped to his back on the landing.
Court kept his gun on his target while he rose to his feet. He crossed the landing, kicked the pistol away from the wounded man’s outstretched hand, and then trained his weapon high up the stairs, searching for any other threats.
The men who had been in the stairwell above him had apparently left the stairwell to check another floor.
Court holstered the SIG Sauer pistol, pulled a flashlight from his pack, and shined it on the man.
“You don’t look like Townsend. Christ. You’re Mossad, aren’t you?”
The man just blinked; he did not answer.
Court knelt down and opened the man’s coat and then ripped open his shirt and found a Kevlar vest. One of the rounds had hit him in the chest, and the vest caught it perfectly.
The second round struck below the ballistic protection, however, in the lower abdomen. Blood flowed with the rising and falling of the wounded man’s breath.
Court shined his light on the man’s face and asked again, “Mossad?”
This time the man nodded. His face was covered with sweat, his skin tone was ashen, and his pupils were unfixed.
“Oh shit,” Court said softly.
He pulled on the wounded man’s down coat and the man fought weakly, not sure what was happening. Court got it off in seconds, however, and he wrapped it into a tight ball and pushed it into the wound. He placed the man’s hands over the ersatz bandaging. “Press down. I’m going to check your back for an exit wound.”
Court rolled him on his side; the wounded man groaned in agony. Court felt around at his low back at first, then expanded his search, feeling the shirt for any sign of blood or torn fabric.
“Okay, no exit,” Court said. “If your men get you into surgery fast, they just might be able to save your life. If they spend the rest of the night chasing me around”—Court shrugged—“then you’re pretty much fucked.”
Court stood back up. The ashen-faced Israeli just stared up at him.
Court saw the astonishment in his face.
This was the remorseless assassin known as the Gray Man?
Court heard shouting coming from the third floor now. Obviously the Townsend men had found their dead colleagues. Court drew his gun again and held it at his side. He looked back down to the injured man and said softly, “You should have listened to Ruth. You are making a mistake. You are chasing the wrong man.” He shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t want to die in the middle of a mistake like that.”
Without another word he picked up his boots from the landing, then turned and descended the staircase, his pistol in front of him scanning for threats.
Yanis Alvey kept the pressure on his stomach up with one hand while reaching into his pants pocket with the other. He pulled out his phone, pushed a button with a bloody thumb, and brought it to his ear.
Weakly he said, “It’s Alvey. I’m hit. I’m in the stairwell.” He took a slow breath. “Approach with caution.”
He dropped his phone so he could use both hands now to keep the rest of his blood inside him.
FIFTY-ONE
Russ Whitlock spent the night at an abandoned Townsend safe house in an old apartment building on Rue Kelle in the southern Brussels neighborhood of Saint Pieter Woluwe. Townsend had leases on dozens of locations in the area, and he knew they would not be able to check them all in the short time he would be here, so he was unconcerned about the potential for compromise. He awoke early, ate breakfast at a nearby patisserie, and then returned to his flat to redress his wounded hip.