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Tudor thought a moment. With a sly smile he said, “To hell with humanity. Tell me you were serious about the Gray Man.”
Fitzroy smiled himself. “Very serious.”
The Welshman looked around a moment, then back to Fitzroy. Softly, he said, “I don’t know the targets. I don’t know how Lancer is tasked, specifically. He is in direct communication with the operations center of my client.”
“Tell me about how you came in contact with the client.”
“A cutout, as I said. This was a different arrangement than any I’ve ever had. I was given three locations, two in the U.S. and one in Mexico, asked if I could provide enough manpower to eliminate a minimum of five targets, all within a seventy-two-hour period.”
“Why did it have to be in three days?”
“I presumed it was because once the killing started, those people targeted would know they were in the crosshairs. They had to be eliminated quickly before they adopted protective measures.”
“But…” Fitzroy said, “there have been nearly a dozen related killings that I know of.”
“Apparently the client hired other assets around the world to do the others.”
Fitzroy just said, “Go on.”
“I provided Lancer, and I was paid a finder’s fee. Normally, that would be the end of the transaction, but Lancer reached out to me the other day because he wanted more money, and I acquired it for him by contacting the cutout.”
This wasn’t enough information for Fitzroy. “I’ll need more than that.”
Tudor paused a moment, unsure. Finally, he said, “There is more, Don, but you must come through with Gentry.”
“Go on.”
“I hired out another asset, ostensibly to a different party, nothing to do with Lancer. A woman. Not a tip-of-the-spear type, but rather an intelligence analyst. This was her first assignment for me.”
“What about this woman?”
“She made contact with me. She said she’d been sent to Singapore to set up and work dispatch in an operations center of an organization. She had some…reservations about what she was being asked to do.”
“What was she being asked to do?”
Tudor looked at the floor a moment. “The OC where she works is controlling the targeted killings. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into, and I confess I did not, either, or I wouldn’t have sent her. As I said, she’s not from the deep end of the pool when it comes to danger. She wanted help getting pulled out of there, but I told her I couldn’t pull her safely without some actionable intelligence I could use to earn her rescue. Her best chance was to get some information on what was going on, and then I’d take it to colleagues at MI6.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her to run on her own?” Fitzroy asked.
Tudor shrugged, almost apologetically. “Because I can use the information, naturally. Use it to get me back in the good graces of British intelligence.” He smoothed out a wrinkle on his slacks. “The work I do…the assets I have. I can be useful to the Crown, I know it. I just need Legoland to know it.”
“Do you know where, exactly, this woman is?”
“She doesn’t know where in Singapore. They were taken to the OC in a closed vehicle, they live there on-site. She managed to reach out via text using her workstation and a secure messaging service, but she says she has to be bloody careful she’s not caught. The office is crawling with security. Cameras are everywhere.”
“What type of security?”
“She thinks they are locals, but she doesn’t know.”
“When do you expect to hear from her again?”
“Tonight. Any minute, in fact.”
“Well then,” Fitzroy said, “how about we wait together?”
•••
Carlos Contreras had listened to the conversation, and he wondered if the man in the house was talking about Operations Center Gama. He had no idea if Gama was in Singapore or not, but this seemed to be a part of the larger operation he was conducting, so he told himself it had to be the case.
