He stared at Court for a long time. “A familiar face,” he said. “Without the beard and the rainwater, perhaps I would know you?”
Court knew Szabo had never seen his face. He’d worn a balaclava mask when he took down Szabo’s lair with the Goon Squad in 2004, plus it had been dark and the action quick and confusing.
“Don’t believe so,” said Gentry, looking around the room for security threats. Wires hung off the walls like ivy, tables and shelves of equipment and boxes and books, locked file cabinets along the wall, a full-sized photography studio in the corner with a camera on a tripod facing a chair on a riser.
“An American. Thirty-five years old. Height five eleven, weight one seventy. You don’t carry yourself like a soldier or a cop, which is good.” Court remembered fragments from the man’s dossier. Szabo had been trained by the Soviets in electronic surveillance and forgery and other nonlethal black arts, he’d been used to spy on his own people by the Russians, but he had played for both teams, giving Moscow information on his countrymen while providing well-off Hungarians with escapes to get them through the Iron Curtain.
His marginal and conditional and halfhearted help of his own people had proven to be just enough to keep a knife out of his chest after the fall of the Soviet Union, though Gentry remembered reading that Laszlo had been no stranger to getting his ass kicked in retaliation for his association with Moscow.
“I’m just a man who needs some of your product. In a hurry,” Court said.
Laszlo stood up and reached for a cane leaning against the desk. He leaned heavily on it as he crossed the room to his visitor. Court noted the Hungarian’s slumped body and severe limp. This injury had developed since he last saw him five years ago.
After an eternity, Szabo arrived in front of Court, leaned well into his personal space. Put a hand up to the American’s chin and turned his head left and right.
“What sort of product?”
“A passport. Clean, not fake. I need it now. I’ll pay for the extra trouble.”
Laszlo nodded. “How is Norris?”
“Norris?”
“Sir Donald Fitzroy’s son, of course.”
“You mean Phillip.”
“Yes. Does Sir Donald still have the summer place in Brighton?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Neither would I, to be honest,” Szabo allowed with a sheepish shrug.
Court said, “I understand your need to establish my bona fides, but I am in a rush.”
Szabo nodded, hobbled to a little bench, one of a dozen in the room and each in front of a different table or desk covered with computers, microscopes, papers, cameras, and other gear. “Fitzroy has his own network. His own facilitators of documentation. Why would you be slumming with Laszlo?”
“I need someone good. And someone quick. Everyone knows you’re the best.”
The Hungarian nodded. “Maybe that’s just flattery, but you are exactly right. Laszlo
is
the best.” He relaxed. “I’ll do a great job for you; maybe you can speak to Fitzroy about the service. Put in a good word for Laszlo, you understand.”
Court knew to loathe men who referred to themselves in the third person. But he also knew to be polite when in need. “You get me out of here with clean papers in under an hour, and I will do just that.”
Szabo seemed pleased. He nodded. “I recently came into possession of a consignment of Belgian passports. New serial numbers, not reported stolen. Perfectly legitimate.”
Court shook his head emphatically. “No. Two-thirds of the stolen passports on the market are Belgian. They are guaranteed extra scrutiny. I need something less obvious.”
“An informed customer. I respect that.” Laszlo stood, leaned on his cane, and made his way to another desk. He strummed his fingers on a little notebook full of pencil scratches. Then he looked up. “Yes. I suppose you could pass as a Kiwi. I’ve had a few New Zealand passports for a long time. Most of my clients these days are Africans or Arabs . . . Can’t pull off a Kiwi, needless to say. Like I said, these books have been around a while, but Laszlo can doctor the serial number when I put in your information without tainting the hologram. No way it can be traced back to a missing lot.”
“Fine.”
Szabo sat back down and blew out a sigh that showed Gentry the movement was tiring and uncomfortable for him. “Five thousand euros.”
Gentry nodded, pulled the money from his pack, showed it to Laszlo, but did not hand it over.
“What about your appearance? I can photograph you as you are, or we can create something more professional.”
“I’d like to clean up first.”
“I’ve got a shower. A razor. A suit coat and tie that should fit you. You ready yourself while Laszlo works on the papers.”
Court walked down a hall and sniffed his way to a bathroom that reeked with body odor and mildew. The shower was equipped with soap and razors and shears, all laid out for operators and illegal immigrants and criminals who needed to camouflage their nastiness for a few minutes in order to pose for a photograph intended to portray them to cops and border control agents as little Lord Fauntleroys. For the first time in three months Gentry shaved his beard. He’d laid his Walther on the little shelf with the shampoo and the razors. It was covered with lather by the time he finished.
Gentry cleaned up his shavings. He saw each brown hair as DNA evidence, so he spent more time collecting his beard than he had cutting it off.
He looked at himself in the mirror while he combed his brown hair to the right in a wet part that would disappear when it dried. He was aging in the face, the creases of sun and wind and life itself deepening into his skin. He could tell he’d lost weight since he’d begun the Syrian operation, and soft bags of discoloration hung under his eyes.
When he was twenty-six, he’d once gone four days without sleep. He’d been tracking an enemy agent in Moscow and was following him to a dacha in the country, when Court’s piece of shit two-door Lada broke down in the snow. The Gray Man had to stay on the move overland to keep from freezing to death.
Now, at thirty-six, he feared he looked much worse after four days of work than he did back then when his extraction team pulled him, half-frozen, out of the ice and into a helicopter.
After he dried off, he pulled his rain-soaked pants back on. He was careful to keep the soggy bandage in place on his leg. He cinched his belt and climbed into his boots and socks. He dressed in a white dress shirt Laszlo had left out for him that was too small for his neck, tied the cheap tie with it carefully, a big knot covering the open collar. A blue jacket that felt like cardboard bunched at his shoulders. He didn’t even try to button it. Court slid his pistol onto his hip, tossed the extra mags and his multi-tool in his pocket, and went back into Laszlo’s lab.
Szabo sat in a wheelchair at a drafting table, leaning over an open passport with a razor. He looked up at his customer for a long moment. “Quite a metamorphosis.”
“Yeah.”
“Sit for the picture, please.” There was a small plastic chair on a riser in front of a blue background hanging from the ceiling. A digital camera on a tripod was connected to a computer on a desk a few feet away.
Court stepped up on the hollow wooden riser and sat in the chair. He fumbled with his coat and tie while Szabo rolled the wheelchair into position behind the camera. “We need to think of a name for the passport. A good Kiwi name.”
“It’s up to you. Whatever is fine.”
The camera flashed, and Gentry began to stand.
“A couple more, please.”
He sat back down.
“I have a name for you. Don’t know if you will like it.”
“Anything is—”
“It’s flashy. Dramatic. Mysterious.”
“Well, I don’t think I need—”
“Why don’t we call you Gray Man?”
Gentry stared blankly into the camera as it flashed in his face.
Shit.
Szabo glared at him.
Gentry began to stand.
He felt movement in his seat. He had shifted his weight to his feet, but his heels felt like they were dropping, Before he could react, his arms flew up to his sides, his borrowed coat bunched up higher on his neck, and his knees raised in front of his eyes. He was falling backwards, the plastic chair sliding back with him. The light around him vanished, and he dropped into darkness, finally landing on his side, his fall cushioned by something soft and wet.
The impact, though cushioned by padding, still knocked the wind from his lungs. Reactively he leapt to his feet, pulled the pistol from his hip, and spun in all directions to both engage any threats and get his bearings.
It was a brick-lined pit, a cistern of some sort. Looking up, he saw he’d fallen twelve feet or so from where the riser had opened up to swallow him. Before he could reach for it, the chair raised into the air, its leg held with a thin chain. It clanged back over the edge of the riser and disappeared. A Plexiglas trapdoor closed above him, sealing him into the dank container.
Slowly, Szabo leaned over the side, looked down through the plastic at his captive, and smiled.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” shouted Gentry in utter frustration.
“I presume you are armed. Beasts like you usually are. You might want to think before firing a weapon in there.” Szabo used the tip of his cane to tap the clear lid over the hole. “Two inches of hardened Plexiglas; you’ll be dodging your own ricochets.” He then tapped his forehead with a bony finger. “Don’t be stupid.”
“I don’t have time for this, Szabo!”
“On the contrary. A little time is all you have left.” Szabo backed away from view.
THIRTEEN
Gentry ripped off the jacket, the tie, the shirt, and looked around the pit. It was a seven-foot-wide circle, seemed to be some sort of old sewage well. A cylindrical wall of stone around him too sheer and slick with mildew to climb. The mattresses on which he’d fallen were smelly and rotting. There was a drainage problem to be sure. He looked under the mats and discovered an old iron water pipe. He wrapped his hand around it and found it to be hot. Budapest’s thermal baths were a tourist draw; this pipe likely pumped hot springwater from one location to another. Water pushed through it, dripping and steaming a little where it disappeared into the wall.
Court looked up and around. This would be a particularly awful place to die.
Ten minutes later, Szabo returned. He stood over Court and smiled.
Gentry said, “Whatever you are planning on doing—”
“I remember you. You thought I’d forget? Two thousand four. Central Intelligence Agency super special A team.”
Court knew Szabo had not seen his face in the operation in ’04. Still, he shouted, “That’s right, and my field team knows where I am right now.”
“Pathetic. You aren’t with the agency anymore.”
“Where did you hear that?”
The sixty-year-old Hungarian disappeared for a minute. He returned above the pit, placed a sheet of paper facedown on the glass six feet above his prisoner’s head.
Gentry looked up at his own face, an old head shot taken by the CIA for some dirty documentation. Above the photo were the words, “Wanted for questioning by Interpol.” It was just a photo and a description. His name was not given.
“American government men sat in a car outside in the street, seven days a week, for an entire year after you, shall we say,
resigned
your position with the agency. They actually thought you’d come to Laszlo for help. Their presence was bad for business, Mr. Gray Man.”
“Szabo. This is serious. Look, I know you. I know you’ll let me buy my way back up. Just name your price. I can call a man and get money wired—”
“Sir Donald can’t purchase your path to safety. I don’t want his money.”
Gentry looked up at the man above him. His voice lowered. “I’d hate to hurt a cripple.”
“You were the one who crippled me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You shot up my darkroom. You thought I’d forget?”
“I didn’t shoot
you
.”
“No, you were shooting at the Chechen, hit a container of ammonium persulfate. Knocked the powder into a bath of aluminum water and . . . bang! The Chechen is dripping off the ceiling, and poor, helpless Laszlo is burned, the nerves of his lower body damaged from inhaling the toxic fumes.”
Shit. Court shrugged. “Whose fault is that? You were helping a terrorist enter the West. The CIA should have sent me back to finish you.”
“Maybe they should have, but I’ve since made friends with the good men of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the FBI came to talk to me, the agency came. They were the ones who told me you were the leader of the group that blew up my warehouse and ruined my legs. Believe it or not, these days, the local CIA station and Laszlo have a reasonably good working relationship.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe that? You always did play all sides.”