Mark Greaney: On target

"I need a vacation," he said into the phone but mostly to himself.

"You need more than a vacation, lad. Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. All over the world, they are after you."

"Who?" Court lifted his head from the glass.

"Everyone. The Russian government, the American government, Sid Sidorenko's Nazis. It's not like before; this is full-time. The CIA is putting out feelers all over the earth. They'll work with anyone, pay any price to find you. Please take my advice. Wherever you are right now, whatever you are doing… run. Get up and go and go and keep going. Don't tell me where, for God's sake. They will get to me to get to you. Don't tell a soul. They are close, and they will find you if you do not run straightaway."

"What about the ICC?"

"The ICC? I haven't seen anything about the ICC hunting you. I would bloody well know it, too. International organizations are an intelligence sieve. No, that particular organization may be the only group not pursuing you at the moment."

Court looked up at the lights of the Gran Melia up the street through the rain on the Plexiglas. He said, "I understand."

Fitzroy continued talking, fast and nervous. He sounded as if he were the prey instead of Gentry. "And forget every stash you have; don't access your bank accounts; ignore all the cash you've made that's not in your pocket right now. They are putting their foot down on the Swiss, desperate for information on your finances. The Swiss will balk for a time, because that is what they do, but the Swiss will fold up soon enough, because that is also what they do. Do what you must for money, but stay off the grid. Run, keep going. Absolute paranoia is your only chance for survival."

"Yeah." The Gray Man's head moved on a swivel now, up and down the street. The drugs in his brain seemed to evaporate with the infusion of adrenaline.

"Six months, nine months, whenever you have to, you don't call me, but you contact someone who knows me, find some way to get in touch, and I'll get back with you. If you want work, I will give you work. If you just need money, I'll find a way to get something to you to help out."

"Thanks, Don."

"I've done nothing, Court. My debt to you is not paid by this. Run now, go, and don't look back."

"I'm serious, I really appreciate-"

"Run, boy! Hang up the phone and go!"

"I'm gone," Court said, and he hung up the phone. He stepped out of the booth and looked up to the bright lights of the hotel for a moment, but only a moment, then he looked away.

Towards the darkness.

He melted into the foot traffic and disappeared in the evening crowd flow, like warm rainwater down the drain.

The man hunter knelt at the front of the canoe, scanned the far bank as it emerged around the river's bend. Thick green rain forest morphed slowly into a rustic brown village, a settlement of hard-packed dirt and wood and corrugated rust built along the water's edge.

"This is it?" he called back to the Indian steering with the outboard motor. Only by necessity had his Portuguese improved in the past months.

"Sim, senhor. This is it."

The man hunter nodded, reached for the radio tucked between his knees.

But he stayed himself. He needed to be certain.

Seven months. Seven months since the call came for him in Amsterdam. A rushed consultation with his employer, a flight across the Atlantic to Caracas, then a mad dash to Lima, and then south.

Ever south. Until he and his prey came to the end of the world, and then the chase wound back to the north.

Ever north.

He'd been on the target's heels, to one degree or another, for all this time. The longest hunt of his storied career.

And it would end here. One way or another, the hunt for Courtland Gentry would end here.

Outside of Quito the man hunter had come close. He'd even called in the wet boys, but they'd gone wanting for a target. Foolish of him; a false start could dull their fervor the next time. He would not cry wolf again. He'd caught fresh wind of the target in northern Chile, and a hint of him farther down the Pacific coast, but then he'd lost the scent in Punta Arenas.

Until Rio, and a lucky break. A visiting jujitsu student from Denmark had seen an Interpol Wanted poster while in his embassy to file for a lost passport. He'd run into another white student at a dojo in the favelas. Nothing to that, but the Dane knew his art, and the white man's fighting style showed hints of other disciplines-hard, brutal, warrior tendencies that he tried to hide from those around him. The Dane recalled the Wanted poster. It was no obvious match, but he felt compelled to contact the authorities. Something about the man in the dojo had uneased him. A look, an edge, a recognition by the white student that the Dane was sizing him up through his peripheral vision.

The man hunter got word of the sighting, arrived on a private jet mere hours later. The suspect did not show for class that day, nor the next. The man hunter brought in local reinforcements for the legwork, dozens of men combed the favelas with photos and cash. Many of the crew were roughed up or threatened on the mean streets of the lawless slums, one man even relieved of his wallet and knifed in the arm. But the canvass paid off, someone talked, someone pointed a finger, someone whispered an address.

The man hunter went to have a look. He was not a wet boy, he hadn't fired a weapon since his days in the Royal Netherlands Army, fighting the Angolans in the 1970s. But he did not want to spin up his gunmen-in-waiting on another wild-goose chase, so he left three armed men up the street as he went on alone. A horrid, run-down neighborhood, a shit-stained building, a piss-scented third-floor hall with a darkened doorway at the end of it. The man hunter's hands shook as he used another boarder's key and crept inside.

A dormitory, a human form moved in a blur off a top bunk bed, the man hunter's life flashed before his eyes. Then a backpack heaved upon the blur's shoulder and the blur was out a window, a full two stories down. The man hunter rushed behind him, watched his target land and roll onto another rooftop, float across an alleyway to another building like a flying squirrel, and then another leap and roll down to ground level.

The man hunter called down to his gunners, but they had seen nothing.

The target was gone, the bunk he'd vacated left no clues but the warmth on his tattered blanket.

That was ten weeks ago.

Last Sunday a call came from Fonte Boa, hundreds of miles north on the Amazon River. The man hunter had made lists of possible professions in which the target might find work. There were hundreds, from sheet metal worker to Legionnaire. Somewhere down the list marine salvage had been noted, due to his experience in diving and his raw courage. A small operation along a remote Amazonian tributary had employed a walk-up foreign white man, a queer occurrence in the Brazilian jungle to be sure. So the man hunter had flown to Fonte Boa and showed a photo to the boatman who delivered dry goods downriver to the settlements.

And now the man hunter was here.

He fingered the radio between his knees. One call and two fat helicopters full of gunmen would descend and fan out; they'd planned their attack with satellite photos and a grease board in the watcher's hotel room in Fonte Boa. One call would turn the pristine jungle to fire, and end the target the Dutch man hunter had been after for these seven long months.

But first the man hunter had to make certain.

A howler monkey on the bank splashed from a tree into the water, scampered back onto the bank and disappeared into the thick growth.