“Sorry, boss.”
Inside the conference room, Hightower and Gentry sat down at the table. Sierra One immediately got down to business. “Something different this time. A solo op. Real James Bond shit. Free tuxedo included. You up for it?”
Court nodded slowly.
Hightower glanced down to a small notebook in front of him. “Just kidding about the tuxedo. Local civilian attire will do.” He coughed as he checked his notes. “Anyway, the Agency has liaison intel saying some Israeli deep penetration agent has worked his way into a cell of al Qaeda in Iraq. The cell is on a gun run in the Balkans, getting AKs and such from Serbian gangsters. They are meeting in a safe house in Trieste, just over the Italian border from Croatia.
“Unfortunately for this Mossad deep-pen agent, he’s been compromised, and he doesn’t have a clue. A group of Pakistan al Qaeda are meeting them in Italy, and shit’s about to get nasty.”
Court said, “We know the Israeli agent is compromised, but the Mossad doesn’t know?”
“Affirmative. Like I said, another partner nation gave us the heads-up. We can’t tell the Israelis, apparently, because we don’t want to tip them off that we have a liaison relationship with this other nation.”
Court asked, “Who is the other nation?”
Hightower made a face at Gentry. “If we were supposed to know that, Hanley would have told us.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, this entire thing in Italy is a setup to get this agent away from his area of operations, so he can be liquidated without it causing a rift between the two AQ divisions. The plan is for one of the Pak AQ operatives on the trip to smoke him in Italy, then blame it on the Serbs.”
Court said, “And I need to stop that from happening.”
“You are so much smarter than you look. Anyway, you’ll be driven to Dulles within the hour. From there you’ll fly commercial to Milan. In Milan you will take a train to Trieste.”
Court wrote nothing down.
“You will ID the Iraqi guys when they arrive at the port, identify the Israeli asset among them, and follow them to their safe house. As soon as it’s prudent get him out of there. Tell him he is compromised and take him to the train station. After that, he is the Israelis’ problem. Remember, he must not know you are American. He speaks Hebrew and Arabic only, and you speak neither, so things shouldn’t get too chatty between you two.”
“Guess not.”
Court still wondered why CIA didn’t just pick up the phone and call Israel and tell them to rescue their own dumb agent. Seemed to him like the CIA could have just not revealed where they got their intel. But that was strategy, and that was above Court’s pay grade.
As usual, Court just figured the graybeards knew what they were doing.
Hightower asked, “Any questions?”
“Just the obvious. Why me? Why solo?”
“Hanley’s orders, but it looked to me it was Jordan Mayes’s order, which means it was Denny Carmichael’s idea. My guess is we’re afraid Mossad will find out we are in the area if we roll in with the whole task force. I imagine the Israelis will have support personnel monitoring their agent while he’s out of the Middle East. Hanley thinks you can get in and out low profile, stay fast and light if you don’t have the high drag of moving with the Goon Squad.”
Court just nodded. It wasn’t how they normally operated, but whatever.
“Got it.”
Hightower said, “No kit but what you’ll pick up in Trieste at a dead drop cache left by local Agency assets. They’ll leave you a suppressed pistol and the image of the Israeli asset you’ve got to recover. Remember, this is simple if you make it simple. Your job is to go save some asshole who can’t know who you work for. If anyone gets in your way, you are cleared hot to schwack them. We want you back in seventy-two hours, max.”
Court nodded with earnest. “Roger that, One. I’ll make it happen.”
40
Present Day
Jordan Mayes stood in his superior’s office briefing the stone-faced director of National Clandestine Service on the early-morning convenience store shooting in the center of Washington, D.C. The killer had clearly been Gentry; no one had any doubts. From the description of events it seemed to Denny like Gentry had just happened to stumble upon an armed robbery and then do the only thing he knew how to do, which was shoot dead all the threats.
Carmichael didn’t need to see the video. He knew his ex-operator’s capabilities. A man of Gentry’s caliber against untrained bandits was as sure as a knife cutting through butter.
When Mayes finished with the play-by-play of the Easy Market shoot-out, Carmichael asked, “What do we know about his escape?”