—
Court pulled in front of the train station with his precious cargo after twenty silent minutes of driving. The only words exchanged had been a few sentences in Hebrew that Court did not understand, and to which Court did not respond. He heard “shalom” several times, but he ignored the man’s thanks.
He stopped the car, moved quickly to the passenger-side door, and opened it up.
“Imshi,” Court said. “Go away.” Court’s Arabic was limited indeed.
The man climbed out and, in Arabic now, asked, “Who are you? Who sent you?”
But Court just shook his head, pretended like he did not understand a word of it. The man nodded, then reached out with his right hand.
To move things along, Court took the hand to shake it, but the Israeli leaned forward and took him in an embrace.
“Imshi,” Court said after a moment.
The man stood back with tears in his eyes, he said, “Shalom” one more time, then he turned and headed inside.
Court drove off immediately, heading for the highway that would take him north along the Adriatic coastline, and he pulled out his satellite phone. After nearly a minute establishing a connection, Zack Hightower answered on the other end.
“Hey, brother. How’s the weather over there?”
“Nice and warm.” It was a simple code phrase to indicate mission success.
“Good to hear that. Come on home. Don’t dick around.”
“Roger that.”
Court drove the Peugeot through the early morning, returned it at the rental company’s office at the airport in Bologna, then climbed aboard a morning train to Milan. He arrived back in the airport twenty-four hours and twenty-five minutes after he left, boarded the Virgin flight to Dulles with the rest of business class, tucked himself into his window seat with a rocks glass full of Maker’s Mark, and fell sound asleep before the big Airbus leveled off over the German/French border.
Present Day
Court opened his eyes and found himself out of business class and back in his closet.
More than ever he was sure he’d done his fucking job on BACK BLAST, just exactly like he’d been told.
But it was no big mystery to Court as to why Denny Carmichael had chosen BACK BLAST to use to scapegoat him. It was the one op Court had performed during his Goon Squad years that hadn’t involved the rest of the team. Denny could tell Hanley, Ohlhauser, and the director of the CIA that Court went to Italy on an op, that he took a payoff from the Serbs, that he let a bad guy slip away.
And he’d killed some innocent guy instead.
Court looked at the dark ceiling of the closet above him, and he felt weak, impotent, and low. He had no idea how to convince anyone he was innocent of the charge Carmichael accused him of.
He closed his eyes, telling himself he needed to sleep awhile to be able to think straight.
But almost immediately his eyes fired back open.
A faint noise, something indistinct but vaguely familiar, grabbed his attention. There was no way he would have heard it without the Walker’s Game Ear increasing his hearing, but still, it barely registered.
While his brain was processing the origin of the sound, he heard it again. Soft but unmistakable.
A slight scratching.
A mouse?
No. Yes. He knew what it was now.
It was a plastic buckle, probably a FastTech, commonly used on tactical gear. Court had worn equipment adorned with FastTech buckles for the majority of his life, so he knew the sound they made when they touched other surfaces almost as well as he knew his own inner voice.
The buckle had brushed against the wooden wall on the little patio of his basement apartment, right next to the cement steps up to the driveway.
Now Court concentrated, listened beyond the ever-increasing sound of his own pounding heart, and he detected footsteps just outside his door.
He pictured the scene just six feet from where he now lay. A half dozen SWAT officers filed down the steps, then, one by one, they stacked up on the wall right outside his door. One of the men accidentally bumped his drop leg ammunition pouch on the wall as he moved into position, brushing the buckle against the wood.
Court reached for his gun.
49
Arthur Mayberry shook his head in disbelief, but Bernice Mayberry nodded her head as if she had known all along.
They both sat in plastic chairs in an all-night laundromat three blocks from their home. Arthur wore his pajamas and a blue jacket handed to him by an ambulance driver. He stared ahead, still unable to process what was happening around him, and Bernice sat next to him in her housecoat, equal measures scared and angry, but she had already professed herself to be wholly unsurprised by tonight’s events.