The crows in the trees above him cried out in an angry chorus.
Russ stopped suddenly, froze as he saw the ice in front of him shatter, exploding upward as if a bomb had detonated below it.
Water sprayed from the new hole next to the black pistol, and from the water Gentry appeared, his face nearly as gray as the landscape around him but his eyes wide with fury and determination. He slammed his hand down on the gun and raised it at Russ in one sweeping motion.
“No!”
At a distance of less than ten feet the Gray Man shot Dead Eye in the chest, center mass, knocking him flat on his back. His legs caught under his body awkwardly, his arms flailed out wide as he fell back, and his head slammed the ice, cracking it in all directions.
With the report of the gunshot the murder of crows in the still-bare tree limbs above scattered into flight, drifting off to the east in the gray afternoon.
Court grunted and screamed with the pain and the effort of pulling himself out of the jagged hole in the center of the pond. He pulled with his left arm, kicked a leg out up and onto the ice, and this helped him get the leverage he needed. He looked down at the pistol and saw that it had jammed after he fired it, no doubt because of his weak grip. He lay on his stomach, crept with his weak legs and his left arm, pulling and pushing his numb body away from the hole.
He made it to Whitlock and then stopped, laid his face down on the ice. Even though Court’s blood vessels were constricted by the cold, blood dripped from the gunshot wound on his arm and fresh cuts on his face and neck, and this blood moved across the cracked ice around him, forming lines of red in the fissures and creeping away from him, as if his very life were leaving him.
His lungs heaved, pushing moisture-laden warm air into the frigid atmosphere and it froze, fogging his field of view. Through it he looked at Dead Eye, saw the man’s thick blood pouring from his body from his chest wound, contrasting with the white ice as it moved along the same fissure lines on the pond’s frozen surface where Court’s blood traveled.
Whitlock wheezed softly, and then his eyes rolled back and his lids lowered halfway. He froze in position like this, his mouth slightly open, his face still pointing straight up at the sky.
Gentry rolled onto his back now, grunting with pain and exhaustion, then heaved the Glock through the air with his shaking arm and watched it splash into the hole in the center of the pond.
Court knew he would die from exposure in moments if he did not get heat. He pushed himself on his back all the way to the edge of the pond with his waterlogged boots. His teeth chattered and he could barely see through the thick clouds of vapor that came out of him with every heavy, labored breath.
He used the bare branches of a bush to hoist himself up to his feet and then he began climbing up the hill, slowly and awkwardly, using tree limbs and brush to pull himself along when his legs would not move properly.
His right arm hung to the side, his white thermal shirt began to freeze on his body, and small icicles formed on the tip of his nose and his earlobes as he struggled to kick one foot, and then the other, through the forest, heading for the house. His teeth chattered violently and his knees wobbled.
He walked for minutes; the entire time he tried to get his frozen shirt off his body, but he could not manage it with only one good arm, on the end of which was a swollen hand that had spasmed into a claw.
Court never gave up trying, but he also never managed to even get one arm out of the thermal.
He passed an old car on blocks in the backyard of the home, then made his way up a stone walkway toward the back door, almost falling twice along the way, struggling mightily to keep his balance.
Gentry’s body had been wholly ravaged by the cold, but his mind retained the ability to recognize that falling down in the snow here, on the open ground and with nothing to help him back up, would almost certainly be a death sentence.
But he did not fall; he made it to the back steps of the home and pulled himself up the railing.
With a hand convulsing wildly from the shakes he tried to turn the door handle, but he could not grip it.
He fell against the door, pushed his numb arm down against the latch, and found it locked.
Court slid all the way to the doorstep now.
“Help.” The word came out cracked and soft and nearly inaudible. He used the back of his head to knock at the door, feeling no sensation whatsoever by the action.
“Help.” Softer now, almost a surrender to the futility of his situation. He banged his head against the door once more.
The door opened, and Court fell inside on his back. He looked up; his view was upside down.
Standing above him was an old man, and next to him a little boy, probably no older than five or six.
Court said, “Help.”
Both the man and the boy looked him over with fascination and no small amount of terror.
Court’s mind drifted; he started to fall asleep.
The last thing he felt before he slipped into unconsciousness was the thickest, warmest wool blanket he had ever felt in his life being placed over his body.
EPILOGUE
Twelve hours after shooting Russ Whitlock dead on a frozen pond in the Brussels neighborhood of Uccle, Court Gentry arrived in Amsterdam in his third hitched ride of the day.
He wore fresh blue jeans and a new black thermal he’d bought at a shop a few miles from Brussels. Also there he’d found a pharmacy and he’d patched and stabilized his arm with gauze and Ace bandages and splinted it with four pieces of broken curtain rod he’d pulled from a garbage can behind an apartment complex.
He’d done a good job with his injury, all things considered, though it hurt like hell and he knew he’d need a real doctor to work on it sooner rather than later.
But not tonight. He had shit to do. Although it was one A.M. now, he needed to perform a proper SDR and then wander around until he could find a place to sleep here in Amsterdam.
He had no trouble staying awake. Court knew from experience that the gunshot wound to his arm was going to make sleep difficult for weeks if not months.
He’d just been let out of the car, a few miles south of the city center, when his mobile phone buzzed in his backpack.
This surprised him; he’d given the number to two people, and he was quite sure they were both dead. But he would answer it anyway; he’d grown confident in the power of MobileCrypt over the past few days.
He fished the phone out and sat down in an alcove alongside an office building, lit only by a soft yellow halogen bulb.
“Yeah?”
It was a shockingly soft male voice on the line, thickly accented but understandable, even over the satellite connection. “I found this number saved on Ruth Ettinger’s mobile phone. Judging from the time stamps, I am reasonably certain I am now speaking to Courtland Gentry.”
“Sorry, pal. Wrong num—”
“Please! For Ruth. Just a very brief moment of your time.”
Court hesitated. Then asked, “What do you want?”
“We did not believe her. About you. We had information that we determined more credible than your denials. We were wrong. I was wrong. She… Ruth… was right.”
Court flexed his jaw muscles. “Doesn’t do her much good now, does it?”
“No. It does not.”
The man was Israeli, Court could easily tell from the accent, and he seemed truly pained by what had happened.
“Who are you?”
After a weak cough the man said, “You and I met last night, actually. In Hamburg.”
“You’re the guy from the stairwell.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to make it?”
“You saved my life.” He coughed again. “And now… Mr. Gentry, I have the reports from Brussels. Obviously you killed the assassin near the cemetery. The man targeting Prime Minister Kalb.”