Марк Грини - One Minute Out

“When they come . . . how will you get me out of here?”

I have a plan for this, but I don’t want to tell her about it yet, because I don’t want her to freak out. I say, “Don’t worry. That part is easy.” And this is true, as long as she doesn’t freak out.

Pushing concern for this out of my mind, I rise from the bench and head off in the opposite direction of the park, with plans to double back behind Talyssa’s building and climb through a window so I can make my way inside the courtyard.

• • •

Jaco Verdoorn dozed in the cabin of the Gulfstream jet, sitting in the middle of a team of nine men, most of whom were also asleep. It was only ten p.m., but this brief rest between jobs was likely all this team was going to get for a while, so the men were taking advantage of it.

In Verdoorn’s lap was an open dossier on his target in the Balkans. Courtland Gentry, former CIA officer, now on the run from the Agency.

His information came from the SSA, the State Security Agency of South Africa, his former employer. SSA had the file because the Americans had shared it years ago, when they first deemed their former employee a threat and issued a “shoot on sight” sanction against him.

Verdoorn had spent nine years in the intelligence realm and had been involved in his nation’s hunt for the infamous Gray Man, to no effect, but to great and lasting frustration to the forty-one-year-old. He knew the dossier in his lap from back to front, had all but memorized it.

But now he was back in the game, hunting the Gray Man again, and he couldn’t have been happier about it.

Verdoorn had left his nation’s intelligence services four years ago to found White Lion, a private security concern registered on the island of Crete. White Lion had paperwork to show a robust list of clients, but in truth they only worked for one organization now, the Consortium, and one man, Kenneth Cage.

All the shell companies that acted as White Lion’s official clients served some sort of purpose in the Consortium, and White Lion billed them for work such as convoy operations in Nigeria, personal protection in Ukraine, and professional risk-management consulting in Germany.

Verdoorn had a staff of dozens, all hard men well aware of the organization they serviced and the industry in which it did business, but tonight he flew south towards Croatia with only his nine best assets. These were all former South African military officers, all highly trained with weapons and tactics, but beyond this, each and every one of them had learned the art of invisibility.

It was Verdoorn’s own fascination with and study of the Gray Man, years ago when he was put on the hunt, that made him mandate to his assets that they dress, behave, and operate in the field not as members of an intelligence service or a military unit but as regular members of the public. To this end they made dozens of adjustments to normal operating procedure regarding dress, communications, equipment, tactics, and the like.

They didn’t work in teams of two or three, an instantaneous tip-off to some watchers. No, Verdoorn’s assets each operated alone when on surveillance missions, while remaining in covert communications with one another.

These nine men, plus Verdoorn, were elite specialists in the tradecraft of remaining clandestine, and Jaco Verdoorn had employed this team on dozens of operations for the Consortium around the world.

The Gulfstream hit some turbulence, and this woke Verdoorn up. He looked out the portal at the night sky—he imagined they were somewhere over Austria about now—and he thought about going to the galley for a bottle of water.

Just as he was about to release his seat belt, the phone next to Jaco Verdoorn flashed. He scooped it up. “Yeah?”

It was the cockpit. The first officer was a White Lion pilot who, previous to joining the security firm, flew Saab Gripen fighters for the South African air force. “Call for you, sir.”

“Send it through, Jimmy.”

And for the next ten minutes, the president of White Lion corporate security and the director of operations of the Consortium spoke with Kostas Kostopoulos, the regional director of the Consortium in the Balkan states.

• • •

The Gulfstream only had seating for nine in the cabin, but there was a belted seat in the aft lavatory, and here Rodger Loots slept, only somewhat annoyed to be assigned to the lav seat because he’d worked in conditions a hell of a lot more austere than a sleek corporate jet, even considering the fact he was sitting in the shitter.

Loots stirred with the buffeting turbulence, then looked at his watch. It was twenty-two fifteen, and he figured they must be somewhere over Austria by now.

Just then the PA in the lav chirped, and he heard his boss’s commanding voice. “Rodge . . . front and center, yeah?”

Seconds later Loots squatted down next to Verdoorn in the center of the cabin. “What’s up, boss?”

“We have a new target.”

“Damn. Was hoping we’d get a shot at the Gray Man.”

“We still might, actually. A woman who works for Europol is down in Dubrovnik asking questions about the Consortium.”

“By name?”

“By name.”

“Shit.”

“She went straight to the local cops, who we have in our pocket, and said she was part of an investigation into trafficking involving the pipeline and the Consortium.”

“Shit,” Loots repeated.

“Shit is right, but the police chief, who is with us, checked her story out with The Hague.” Verdoorn looked down at his notepad, now sitting on top of the Gentry dossier. Reading the notes he’d jotted down while talking to Kostas, he said, “Talyssa Corbu is an economic crimes analyst from Romania, she’s got nothing to do with trafficking, and, according to her employers, she is currently on a personal hiatus at work due to some sort of a family emergency back home in Bucharest.”

“What the hell is she doing in Dubrovnik, then?”

“The Hague thinks she’s trying to crack some case open to get advancement. Something about money laundering. Sounds like she’s bloody bonkers.”

“So . . . she’s workin’ off book?”

“Totally. Swingin’ in the bloody wind. I looked at the names of the merchandise in the pipeline now and don’t see any relation to her. This seems like it is, in fact, her bid for a pat on the back and a shot at advancement.”

“So since she’s on her own, we need to remove her.”

“Bladdy right. The fact that she knows about the Consortium means she’s a dead woman. She’s staying in Dubrovnik. The cops have followed her and confirmed she’s alone, but the timing with the Gray Man activity over the border in Bosnia is too convenient for my taste. She’s workin’ with ole Gentry, I’m sure of it. She’s the face and he’s the brawn in whatever little scheme the two have cooked up.”

“What’s our role, boss?”

“The police chief in Dubrovnik wants this woman picked up tonight and disposed of. The Greek is sending a team of Albanians to take her from her pension and put a knife in her, then splash her in the Adriatic. But Kostopoulos has agreed to order them to hold her at a safe house till I get there. I want to question her before they put her on ice.”

“We should grab her off the street ourselves. You know how it is with the Albanians. They’ve got the will . . . good hard heads for this sort of thing, decent shooters. But they’re not the sharpest tacks, are they?”

Verdoorn shrugged. “No, they’re not. But taking the woman off the playing field at the first opportunity is the right call. Whatever intel she has, it’s a danger having it out there in public. I’ll go to the safe house and interrogate her myself, see what she knows about Gentry and who else she’s talked to. I’ll squeeze her hard, pass her back to the Albanians for disposal, and then we’ll go after our man.”