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“No. We tried that…it didn’t work. We need to attack into the threat.”
“Good. I’m starting to get as paranoid as you.”
“You chose the right time.”
She picked up one of the Uzis and ran her fingertips over its wet surface. “What did you have in mind?”
“Lancer. Lancer is the key to figuring this out.”
“Okay, but how the hell do we find him?”
Court smiled at her now, a stark difference from the worry that had been on his face prior. “Believe it or not, I just might know a way. Give me your phone.”
She reached back and began going through her backpack.
They followed the road around a bend. On the far side, Court saw an intersection in front of them. A one-lane paved road rolled both back in the direction of Flores and to the northeast.
He turned towards Belize and drove on through the rain, both his and Zoya’s heart rates slowly inching back down after the pandemonium they’d just experienced.
TWENTY-THREE
The seaside village of Vila do Bispo boasts only 5,800 residents and lies on a small peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean from the southwestern tip of Portugal. A beautiful but tiny white cottage sits on a hill, just a ten-minute stroll up from Ingrina Beach, but the man who lived alone inside the home had never once put his toes in the sand down by the water. He preferred his view of the ocean from the comfort of his cushioned chair on his back porch, usually with a glass of brandy in his hand and a book in his lap as he gazed into the blue distance by day and the twinkling waves of the moonlit Atlantic Ocean by night.
Sir Donald Fitzroy was English, in his seventies, with wispy white hair and an increasingly portly build. He was up late this evening, well past midnight, but the cool air on his porch invigorated him while the golden thirty-year-old Ararat Erebuni in the snifter on a table a foot from his hand kept the worst of the chill away.
The moon was out, stars sparkled, and the distant ocean glowed.
Fitzroy pulled a pill bottle out of his jacket pocket, fished out a single capsule, and then swallowed it just ahead of a swig of brandy.
His iPad sat on the tile coffee table in front of him, but he’d been ignoring it in favor of his dog-eared and worn copy of In Chancery, a John Galsworthy novel from 1920 about wealth and class struggles in England.
A ginger tabby stepped up into the light on the porch and immediately pressed its body up to Fitzroy’s leg, purring as he did so. The neighborhood cat had adopted Fitzroy shortly after the Englishman had moved here a year earlier. Sir Donald was reluctant at first about the relationship, but now he dutifully rose, stepped into the cottage, and returned moments later with a bowl of milk.
The cat began lapping eagerly, a cool breeze blew in from the ocean, and Fitzroy adjusted the collar of his cardigan to cover more of his neck.
He picked his book back up, turned a page in the Galsworthy tome, and then the iPad on the table beeped, indicating that a call was coming through his secure Signal app.
He looked at the incoming number. It meant nothing to him, but no more than a dozen people knew how to reach him through Signal, and of those people, he loved half of them, and the other half wanted him dead.
Either way, best I answer, he told himself.
Bringing the iPad closer, he accepted the call. In a tone carefully measured to show no concern he said, “Yes?”
“Guess who.”
Fitzroy took no time in identifying the voice. “My boy! Bloody wonderful to hear from you.”
Court Gentry replied, “Likewise, Fitz. How’s the family?”
He hesitated a moment, then smiled down at the iPad. “All good. Haven’t seen my granddaughters in over a year; personal security intervenes on love, as you know better than anyone. Still, I’ve snuck in a few phone calls to them. Kate tells me she’s going to be a veterinarian; it’s her calling, I’m certain. And Claire is tearing up pitches in London on her football team and dreams of becoming an actress. Can you imagine?”
“Easily.”
“Both make stellar marks in school, as well.”
“That’s great,” Court replied, a twinge of sadness in his voice that the Englishman instantly picked up on.
He said, “And all that…everything those two girls are…everything they have in life…it is all because of you.”
