don’t understand the compromise in Venezuela totally, but I think if you get into Caracas on your own, with no Agency affiliation, then you’ll be fine.”
Court sipped more water. Finally, he said, “What do you want with Drummond?”
“We want to know what he’s up to, if he’s working for another entity, either a state actor or a criminal enterprise.”
“He’s not working for the Venezuelans?”
“We don’t think so. He might be helping them out in exchange for safe harbor, but he’s not giving them the good stuff. Drummond has a skill set. Special talents that he could employ. Things that make him uniquely valuable. But we’ve seen no hint of these talents showing up in Venezuela’s intelligence community. No, he might be living in Caracas, SEBIN might be protecting him, but he’s been using his real skills for someone else.”
“No sightings of him at all in the past year?”
“Not once.” He added, “But he’s not the only one.”
Now the man in the hospital bed looked confused. “Not the only one, what?”
“He’s not the only member of the intelligence community to have dropped off the map in the last year. There is a pattern developing, men and women retiring, then disappearing. Americans, Brits, French, Australians, Israelis, and a South African. A dozen now, more or less.”
“Sounds like someone, either a state actor or a big corporate intel firm, has a headhunter out there picking up talent on the down low.”
“Yeah,” Hanley said. “It sounds a hell of a lot like that. But who? And why? And why did Drummond have to fake his death?”
Court said, “I want to know what makes Drummond so important to you.”
Hanley didn’t hide his annoyance now. “You know, kid, Zack didn’t ask all these questions.”
“And here we are.” Apart from the humming of medical machinery, the room fell silent.
Finally, the DDO nodded. “Touché. When he was at NSA, Drummond had access to certain . . . information. Game-changing information. The intel he had could possibly be weaponized. Damned dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. That’s all I’m prepared to tell you.”
Court wasn’t fazed by the paucity of information. On the contrary, he was accustomed to it. “And you think he might have passed on this information?”
“We don’t know where he’s been the past year, so we don’t know what he’s been up to. Get down there, get past SEBIN, stick a gun in Drummond’s ribs, and make him talk. Snag his hard drives, his phones, that sort of shit.” He rubbed his face again. “Look, it’s going to be tough, but you’re the Gray Man. You’ve got this.”
“Despite your rosy prognosis of my condition, we both know you’re getting me at fifty percent. Half a Gray Man.”
“I’ll take him. Let’s go.”
Court didn’t move. “And what do I do if Drummond won’t talk?”
“Drummond was assigned to us a few years back when we were looking for you. He pioneered some documentary and facial recognition software that we tried to use to track you, but you were too slippery.” Court said nothing. “When Drummond sees that the Gray Man has been sent, he’ll know his only chance for survival is to comply with whatever you say. He’ll spill it all.”
“People are unpredictable, Matt. Desperate people even more so.”
It appeared to Court that Matt Hanley hadn’t considered the prospect of Court failing on his mission. The DDO seemed to think about this problem for the first time, taking several moments, just sitting in the dim, before responding. Finally, he said, “If he won’t talk . . . if you’ve exhausted everything, and I mean absolutely everything—then get all the physical intel you can collect, and then remove the compromise.”
“Kill him,” Court said.
Hanley shrugged his linebacker shoulders once more. “Kill him.”
Gentry leaned his head back on his pillow, looked at the ceiling. Then he himself shrugged. “Sure, boss, why not?”
The patient winced with pain as he kicked his legs off the side of the bed. Hanley stood quickly and began looking for the younger man’s clothes.
THREE
The engine of the massive American-made International MaxxPro armored fighting vehicle growled like a lion eyeing its next kill as it rolled through the darkened streets of the port city of Aden. Traffic was light but consistent at ten p.m.; a curfew was in place, though many ignored it. The civil war here in Yemen had been raging for six years, but Aden was rebel-run now and currently spared from much of the fighting, and many locals took advantage of this uncommon calm to