The pressure of the wadded necktie actually reduced the pain when he flexed his abs; without it, he would not have been able to stand. But he did stand, stumbled, steadied himself on the alley’s wall, and shuffled on. He heard voices behind him. Passersby had been alerted by the noise of the scuffle. Police and killers would be here in seconds. He stumbled around the corner to a shopping passage. The stores were closed for the night, and there were no window shoppers. With his body slumped over, his face white, he staggered away from the orgy of blood behind him.
He moved north off into the cold night, his life’s blood draining down his leg and dripping onto the paving stones at his feet.
Thirty seconds later, one of the Botswanans shoved his way through a panicking crowd and found the Korean’s body, the dark alley a blood-dripping horror show in the beam of light from the African assassin’s tactical flashlight. He called it in to the Tech.
“There is a dead man here. He is Asian. Nearly decapitated.”
Lloyd and Riegel stood behind the Tech as the Botswanan assassin’s accented English came over the speakers.
Mr. Felix entered the room, stood back in the shadows, and watched intently.
The Tech flipped a switch on his bank of electronics in front of him. “Banshee 1. Do you read? Banshee 1, how do you copy?”
There was a shuffling sound on the speaker. Lloyd and Riegel looked up in hope.
“He can’t come to the phone right now, don’t bother to leave a message,” said a mocking African voice. The Botswanan had obviously pulled the radio set off the dead Korean and was speaking into it.
Riegel said, “The Korean was probably the best man we had on this job. His organization is going to be furious he was lost on this operation.”
“Fuck ’em,” snapped Lloyd. “They should’ve sent us someone who could complete the task. When they gave us only one man, I knew their heart wasn’t in this game.”
“You are an idiot, Lloyd. Do you have any idea what that assassin has done in his career?”
“Sure do. He left a greasy stain in a Paris alleyway. The rest I couldn’t give a flying fuck about.”
Just then the Botswanan hunter came back over the speakers. “There is a blood trail leading north. We’ll follow it; we’ll find him.”
“You see,” said Riegel. “Banshee 1 served his purpose.”
Three minutes later, a watcher came over the net. “Fifty-four to Tech.”
“Go ahead, Fifty-four.”
“I’m in a fourth-floor window near the Place Saint-Michel. I believe I am tracking the subject on my camera. I can send it to you for verification.”
It took ten seconds to make the connection. When the plasma monitor in the control room sparked to life, the lights of Paris shone brightly, silhouetting the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Seine was a glimmering ribbon bisecting the city. The camera did not seem to be centered on anything in particular.
“Where is he?” shouted Riegel the hunter, wild from the chase now, frantically searching for his quarry. “Fifty-four, tighten up on the subject!”
“Oui, monsieur.” The image zoomed to the Pont Neuf bridge that ran over the river to the cathedral. A lone figure in a dark suit hobbled, stumbled, stopped, and stooped in the middle of the bridge. Clearly the man was wounded, fleeing, trying to cross from the Left Bank to the Île de Cité, the tiny island in the middle of the Seine upon which the cathedral of Notre Dame stands.
“Look at him. He’s toast!” shouted Lloyd with excitement. “Who do we have close by?”
The Tech answered before Lloyd finished posing the question. “The Kazakhs are thirty seconds out. You’ll see them coming up the bridge from the south. The Botswanans are close behind them, and the Bolivians are to the north of the Seine. The Sri Lankans are still ten minutes west.”
The video image widened enough to see the buildings on the Quai des Grands Augustins, the Left Bank road that rimmed the Seine. Several men sprinted along the road and turned right onto the bridge. One of them slipped on the wet cobblestones and fell, but the others held their footing and raced up the incline of the Pont Neuf.
“This is it!” Riegel proclaimed victoriously. “Tell them to finish him, get the body into a car and on the way to the heliport. We’ll have it ferried here for Mr. Felix to see up close.”
“That would be satisfactory, Mr. Riegel, thank you,” said Felix, standing like a statue behind the animated men in front of the bank of monitors.
The watcher’s camera tightened back in on Gentry. He’d turned around and was facing the Kazakhs, who were not more than forty yards away now. The injured American stood upright, though it obviously pained him to do so. He looked back over his shoulder to the other end of the bridge.
Lloyd said, “You won’t make it, Court. You can’t run anymore. You are so fucked.” There was mirth in his voice.
But Riegel muttered, “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Lloyd.
“Scheisse,” Riegel repeated himself in German.
“What’s wrong with you? We’ve got him!”
Just then, the Gray Man stepped to the cement railing. He looked back up to the men closing on him, twenty-five yards off.
“No!” said Lloyd, understanding Riegel’s worry. “No, no, no, no—”
Kurt Riegel pulled the microphone off the Tech’s table, jammed the button down, and shouted “Schiest ihn sofort!” He caught himself speaking German in his excitement. He screamed, “Shoot him now!”
But it was too late. Court Gentry tipped himself over the railing, fell thirty feet to the shimmering water, its crystalline surface exploding as his body crashed through it, his dark form disappearing as the current re-formed into a swiftly flowing mirror.
Lloyd spun away from the monitor. He put his hands on his head in shock. Then he turned to Felix, who remained silently behind.
“You saw that! You saw him! He’s dead!”
“Falling into water does not kill a man, my friend. I’m sorry. I need confirmation for my president.”
Lloyd turned back to the Tech and screamed loud enough to be heard all over the château, “Goddammit! Tell them to get their asses in the water! We need his corpse!”
The image on the plasma screen showed the Kazakhs converging on the portion of the Pont Neuf just vacated by the target not five seconds earlier. They all looked over the side. Five men were on the bridge. Two jumped over the railing and dropped into the cold, black water, while three ran back to the Left Bank.
Riegel belted out instructions to the Tech. “He’s injured badly, and that fall didn’t help him. Get the Botswanans there; move the Bolivians and the Sri Lankans, too. Put somebody in a boat in case his body doesn’t wash up immediately. Brief everyone to search both banks. Move all the watchers downstream to hunt for where he washes up. We need his body, and we need it now!”
THIRTY
At two thirty a soft rain began to fall. Five hundred yards east-southeast of the cathedral of Notre Dame, on the Left Bank of the Seine, the Jardin Tino Rossi was barren in the dark. Fifty feet from the cobblestone quay, a grassy embankment ran along next to a low stone wall. There, between a tree and the wall, a figure lay on its back, knees raised slightly and arms askew. Anyone who walked up to the waterlogged body would see it had obviously come from the river. Perhaps a defiant final jolt of strength had allowed its weak arms to crawl clear of the river’s edge into the soft, wet grass; maybe it even found its feet for a moment, but then those arms and legs must have given out wholly, and the body had collapsed on the cold ground.
There was no movement at all from the body, no sound either, until an electronic noise began peeping, muffled by soaked clothing.