“Yep. We’re exfilling Syria. Getting the hell out before anyone knows we were here.”
“I thought you said you’d be here a couple more months.”
“Yeah . . . well, that was before.”
“Before what?”
“Sir, if you don’t know, then you’re pretty much the only man on Earth that doesn’t.”
Court thought he understood. “He’s dead? Azzam’s dead?”
A slow smile grew on Anderson’s face. “Ahmed Azzam is dead as dirt. State TV confirmed it this afternoon. Killed by terrorists while personally leading the fight on the front lines of Palmyra.”
The American nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what went down.”
Robby turned somber now. “Yusuf and Khalid didn’t make it.”
Court nodded. “They are heroes of their nation.”
“No doubt about it.” Robby looked into the night for a moment.
The man said, “Someone gave you the okay to come get me?”
“Affirm. I’ve got orders to get you to Incirlik, Turkey. After that, you can do whatever you want.” He smiled. “I suggest a vacation.”
“You won’t believe this, but this was my vacation, Captain.”
Robby looked at him like he was insane, then handed him a bottle of water.
Court said, “You got a sat phone?”
Robby moved to the bulkhead and took a phone out of his backpack. He handed it to the man on the gurney. Court dialed a number, then looked at Robby, who took the hint and moved away.
After several seconds the line went live. “’Allo?”
Court put a finger in his left ear and held the phone hard to his right. “It’s me.”
Vincent Voland did not hide his shock at hearing the American’s voice. “Mon dieu, you are alive!”
“Tell me about Jamal and Yasmin.”
“They are in Jordan, with me, and they are safe.”
Court blew out a long sigh of relief.
Voland said, “You did it, didn’t you?”
“You mean Azzam? No, I didn’t, but apparently it got done.”
“Right,” Voland said incredulously. Clearly he believed the Gray Man had assassinated the Syrian president, but he didn’t press. Instead he said, “I have someone else here who wants to say hello, but first, I need you to believe me.”
“About what?”
“I gave you some bad information when we last spoke, but I was acting on the best intelligence I had at the time.”
“What are you talking about?”
The phone was silent for several seconds, and then Court heard a woman’s voice. “Monsieur? This is Bianca. I want to thank you for everything you have done for my son.”
Court couldn’t believe it. “You’re alive?”
“Yes. I am, Jamal is, and Yasmin is, as well. All thanks to you and Monsieur Voland.”
Court just laid his head back onto the gurney and stared at the ceiling of the Blackhawk’s cabin. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
EPILOGUE
It was a nice summer evening for Sebastian Drexler at the chateau in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. He sat on the deck and looked out at the stars, watched deer and rabbit run across the hectares of private land, and enjoyed a Cheval Blanc Bordeaux from 1970.
Things were nice, but they weren’t perfect. This wasn’t his chateau; it belonged to Meier Privatbank, but he was living here now. For the past month he had been in charge of the protection detail watching a client of the bank, a woman with a Swiss passport that claimed her name was Ara Karimi, and she was a refugee from the Syrian war.
No, things weren’t perfect at all. Ara Karimi was, in truth, Shakira Azzam. The woman had arrived in country on a private jet with her children right after the death of the president of Syria, and through special circumstances arranged by the bank, she’d not had to appear in person at any consulate or embassy to obtain her documentation. She’d just flown into the country, gotten a few stamps on her visa and passport from an immigration official who was “a friend” of Meier, and then she’d come here.
Drexler had been on the same flight from Syria, and although she had been the last person in the world he’d wanted to see before he was put on board the ship in Greece, once he got to Syria and found out Azzam was dead, she became his ticket home to Switzerland. Her life was in danger during the tumultuous days after Ahmed’s death, and she was one of Meier Privatbank’s most important clients. They wanted her safe from harm, and Drexler was uniquely positioned to make that happen.
Accidentally so, but he was there, nevertheless.
He’d gotten the family out in an SAA plane to Lebanon, and from there they used the Swiss documents to make it into Europe. The kids had immediately been relocated away from the mother, for everyone’s benefit. The two daughters were given new identities and sent to boarding school in Lausanne.
And now Drexler was back home in Lauterbrunnen, which was good for him.
But far from perfect.
Shakira sat in front of him now on the deck, the bottle of wine between them. She was carrying on about her plan to retake the reins of leadership in Damascus. As he looked at her, regarded her new short black hairdo, the Botox she’d gotten in Bern that puffed out her lips and fattened her eyelids, and the tanning she’d done to turn her skin several shades darker, he had to admit she looked different, but to him she was still the same Shakira. Drexler nodded along, engaging in her power fantasy just to keep her happy, because keeping her alive and happy was his job.
He felt confident in his skills to accomplish the former. Less so, the latter.
* * *
? ? ?
Drexler had been ordered by the bank to protect Shakira for the first few months of her exile. To this end he had a dozen men on the property at any one time, and he had every manner of alarm and sensor known to man.
He did not, however, have fighter planes in the sky, so there was no one to prevent a skydiver from stepping off a limestone cliff thousands of feet above the U-shaped valley where Lauterbrunnen sat, dressed head to toe in black, and then HAHO jumping, steering his parachute precisely so that he came down silently on the back deck of the chateau, not ten meters from where Sebastian and Shakira sat with their wine, plotting her return to power.
A pair of security men stood in the attached living room, and they saw the billowing black chute as it appeared over the man as he landed behind Drexler, and they pulled firearms and moved towards the windows.
But the man under the collapsing canopy saw the men and he was faster and more sure of his mission than they. He shot them both with a silenced Ruger Mark II integrally suppressed pistol, three times each in the chest and throat.
Both men died before they fired a round, and the gun that killed them was no louder than an electric typewriter clicking out a few letters.
Shakira and Drexler both stood and faced the man who expertly dropped his chute with one hand on his quick-release, while holding his pistol on them with the other.
“Don’t make a sound,” the man said, and Drexler remembered the voice.
“You.” There was marvel in his tone.
“Me,” the man said, executing a magazine change of the Ruger so fast Drexler had not even been able to take advantage of it.
“What do you want?” Shakira asked. She didn’t know who this was.
The man said, “The kids. Are they here?”
Neither she nor the Swiss man standing next to her answered the question. Drexler said, “You are the Gray Man. You’re quite famous.”
“And you are Sebastian Drexler. You’re quite an asshole.”
* * *
? ? ?
Court held his pistol on the woman, and although she didn’t look much like the photos he’d seen of Shakira al-Azzam, he knew it had to be her.
Drexler said, “You decapitated the Syrian government. But there’s a new ruler, he’s an Alawi, he’s Ba’ath Party, and he says he will continue the war. What the fuck do you think you’ve accomplished?”
Court said, “Ask Ahmed. Ask Shakira.” A pause. “Go ahead, ask her. I’ll wait.”