He worked till late in the night, then caught a few hours’ sleep before the end of the flight.
His plane landed in Milan before nine a.m., and Court breezed through customs using a CIA legend he’d been handed during the van ride over. With just his carry-on it was smooth sailing out of the airport, and he found himself in the train station less than an hour after touchdown.
The train from Milan to Trieste was six hours and passed first through Bologna. Court found his first-class compartment empty for nearly the entire ride, so he used part of his journey to continue working on memorizing the map of his destination city.
—
He arrived in Trieste just after four p.m. during a light February drizzle, and at a counter in the train station he rented a gray 2008 Peugeot four-door that looked like it would melt in nicely with the Italian traffic.
He found his safe house to be a one-bedroom apartment on the Via Valdirivo, just a few blocks from the port. The local station had prepped it for his arrival, apparently assuming he’d be spending some real time here. There was fresh milk in the fridge, along with meat and cheese wrapped in paper from the butcher. Court bypassed the niceties left by CIA station Italy, walked to the back bedroom, and saw a table, a bed, and a tall wooden armoire. He pushed the armoire away from the wall, just as he’d been briefed by Hightower the day before.
Behind the heavy piece of furniture he found a quality but nondescript briefcase. He brought it over to the bed, sat down, and opened it with a four-digit code—again, provided to him the day before.
Inside the case he discovered a small manila folder, which he placed to the side so he could see his equipment: a full-sized Beretta 92G semiautomatic pistol, an Advanced Armament silencer, three fifteen-round magazines, and a case of fifty rounds of expanding full metal jacket subsonic ammunition.
He was a fan of this brand and model of suppressor, but neither the gun nor the ammo were his top choices.
But they would do.
Court knew if Zack were here he’d bitch about the ammo, and maybe about the pistol, too, but Court was trained to see weapons as tools, nothing more. If the tool could accomplish the task, then it was the right tool for the job. He didn’t need to wield a specific weapon to make a personal statement—it was all about the job.
Also in the case were a night vision monocle and a pair of small but high-quality binoculars. Court shoved these in the pockets of his blazer, then he placed the gun on the table. He stripped, reassembled, and function-checked it, determining it to be in good condition.
After charging the magazines with ammo and loading the Beretta, he slid the gun into a small plastic hook device that would hold it inside his waistband.
And only when all this was done did he open the manila folder. Inside he found an eight-by-ten surveillance photo of a man wearing a white polo shirt, sitting at a café table. The man smiled into the camera, well aware he was being photographed.
This was the man he was sent to rescue.
The Israeli agent had a trim black beard and he appeared to be in his mid-forties, but his deep-set eyes and high forehead were conspicuous enough that Court felt sure he could recognize him even if he was clean-shaven.
The picture had been taken on the street, somewhere in Jerusalem, Court saw immediately, due to the fact that he could make out the Tower of David in the background.
He folded the picture in fourths, then tucked it into his back pocket.
He then stood from the bed, leaving the case right there, and he left the apartment. The meat and cheese and fresh cream sat untouched in the refrigerator.
Gentry wasn’t here for an Italian holiday.
—
Thirty minutes later he stood on the open fourth floor of an office building undergoing construction and he leaned into the late afternoon breeze coming off the Adriatic Sea. Through his binoculars he peered out over the Port of Trieste. Less than a quarter of a mile from shore, a small dry-goods hauler dropped anchor in placid water.
Court knew from his briefing the day before that the Casablancan Queen had left port in Nemrut Bay, Turkey, on Tuesday. On board, according to sources, were two al Qaeda operatives from Iraq, one of whom was actually a Mossad asset. They were here to meet five more AQ men from Pakistan, and then together open negotiations that AQ hoped would lead to a mutually beneficial weapons deal with Serbian gangsters. Court’s job was to tail these men to the Serb safe house, obtain positive ID on the agent, and then, at the earliest possible opportunity, he was to make entry on the safe house and rescue him.