Next, one by one, LCD screens along the wall across the table came to life. At the bottom of each screen were a title and the local time. Luanda, Botswana, was first online. Four men sat in a conference room similar to the one in England. They were backlit and in silhouette, similar to Lloyd. Then Jakarta, Indonesia, came up. This time, there were six dark figures sitting shoulder to shoulder at a table and looking at a monitor. Then Tripoli, Libya. A minute later Caracas, Venezuela; Pretoria, South Africa; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia all illuminated simultaneously. Within the next five minutes the feeds from Albania, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, and Bolivia were up and running. Freetown, Liberia, took another minute for the Tech to patch through. Finally the transmission from South Korea appeared. A single Asian man sat alone at a desk.
These were the government kill teams Kurt Riegel had arranged for the hunt. Riegel had already spoken to the head of each team’s agency, so he declined speaking to the operators directly. That was Lloyd’s job. As Riegel had said, he was just helping with arrangements and consultation.
Before the audio came online, Lloyd called across the room to the Tech, “Where are the rest of the Koreans?”
The Tech checked a paper on his desk quickly. “They just sent one guy. Don’t guess it will matter. All in all, there are over fifty men total on the twelve teams.”
The Tech next assured Lloyd his voice would be altered with both hardware and software to make it completely unrecognizable.
After a final moment for the Tech to check the audio link with the translators sitting off camera in each location that needed them, Lloyd cleared his throat, his silhouette brought a hand to his mouth and then lowered it.
“Gentlemen, I know you have been briefed in general about the mission we have for you. It’s very simple, really. I need a man found, but that is not your problem. I have nearly one hundred pavement artists either on call or already on the job combing the area of operations at this very moment. Once found, I will need this man neutralized. This will be your objective.” The image in the monitors at the twelve remote locations changed. A color photo of a clean-shaven Court Gentry in a sport coat and wire-rimmed glasses appeared on the screen. Lloyd had taken it from a forged passport in his CIA file. “This is the Gray Man, Court Gentry. The photograph before you is five years old. I am afraid I do not know how he might have changed his appearance. Don’t let his normalcy fool you. He was the best scalp hunter who ever worked for the CIA.”
Someone mumbled something in Spanish. Lloyd understood only one word: “Milosevic.”
“Yes, I thought some of you may already know this man by his reputation. Rumors abound regarding his operations. Some say he killed Milosevic, some say he did not. Some say he was responsible for the events in Kiev last year… Most reasonable minds recognize that to be impossible. Nevertheless, I know enough about specific jobs that he has carried out, both working for the U.S. government as well as his private work, to assure you Mr. Gentry is the most formidable singleton operator you will ever encounter.”
A new disembodied voice spoke. “Looks like a faggot.” From the accent, Lloyd immediately turned his attention to the South African feed.
Lloyd’s altered voice reverberated through the speakers. “He will be the faggot who walks right up to you and slips an ice pick between your ribs, pops your lung, and stands above you while you choke to death on your own blood.” There was anger in the American lawyer’s voice. “You kill him, and then you can tell me what a fucking joke he is. Until you kill him, you keep your goddamn juvenile comments to yourself.”
The South African feed fell silent.
Lloyd continued, still glaring at the silhouettes in Pretoria. “The Gray Man is trained in long-distance sniping, in close quarters battle, in edged weapons, Krav Maga, the martial art used by Israeli Special Forces. He can kill with a long gun, a short gun, or no gun at all. He can take you out from a mile away, or you can die with his breath in your ear. He has extensive training in explosive ordnance and even poisons. There was a rumor going around the CIA that once in Lahore, Pakistan, he used a blowgun to take down a target in a restaurant, while he went unnoticed by the target’s security detail.” Lloyd paused for effect. “Gentry was at the next table. Kept right on eating his meal as the target dropped dead.
“As soon as we finish here, you will all board aircraft. We will send a dozen teams in a dozen planes to a dozen airports along the route we expect Gentry to take across Europe in the next forty-eight hours. I will oversee and coordinate the activities from here, and I will pass on any intelligence I may be able to obtain. Each team that takes part in the hunt and survives will be paid one million dollars plus any expenses incurred. The team that kills Gentry will be paid a bonus of twenty million dollars.”
“What’s America going to do if we kill him?” asked a man with a booming African voice.
Lloyd turned to the Liberian feed, but he was not certain. “This has been addressed by the leaders of your organizations. This man is already marked for death by the U.S. government. There is shoot-on-sight sanction at the CIA. He has no friends, no close family. No one on this earth will cry for him when he dies.”
Next someone spoke in an Asian language. When he finished, a translator asked, “Where is he now?”
“He flew to Prague last night. I have our agents asking around at hotels for him, but there is no way to know if he is still there.”
“Which team is being sent to Prague?” someone asked.
“The Albanians. They are closest.”
“That’s hardly fair!” shouted a South African.
Lloyd, in silhouette, took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No offense to the Albanians, but I don’t think the first team he encounters will be the one that gets him.”
There was grumbling on the Albanian feed, but it was quickly extinguished with hisses.
“We will kill Gentry in the next two days, yes. But we will likely do it through attrition. Many of you may die.” He paused a beat, a halfhearted attempt to act like he gave a shit. “That said, we don’t know that the Albanians will get the first crack at him. He may well have moved west by the time your plane lands. If that is the case, if we do pick up his trail past Prague, we will put you back on your plane, and you will take up a new ambush point closer to the final destination. There is no clear advantage to being farthest east, I assure everyone.”
Lloyd sat up straighter in his chair. His silhouette appeared thin but athletic. “Let me finish by saying this. Do what it takes to get the job done. I could not possibly care less about collateral damage. If you can’t stomach a few dead kids or dead pensioners or dead puppy dogs, then don’t get on my goddamn airplane. Your job is to kill Court Gentry. Do that, and you will make millions for your organization and garner the thanks of the Central Intelligence Agency. Fail, and you will most likely die by his hand. You would be well served to avoid worrying about anything else.
“Any questions?”
There were none.
“Then, gentlemen… game on.”
At four fifteen in the morning a LaurentGroup security officer from the firm’s massive truck farm in Brno, Czech Republic, showed Gentry’s photo to a sleepy hotel desk clerk at a narrow four-story inn in the Stare Mesto, the old town of Prague. The old man behind the hotel counter looked at the photo for a long time, said he could not be sure, but upon taking payment of five hundred crowns from the beady-eyed stranger, he changed his tone. He was certain the clean-shaven man in the picture and the bearded tourist in his attic room were one in the same.