Shaw looked like shit, as always, J.W. noted, but the young man retained his air of superiority, less towards J.W. and more towards Big Mike, whom he still only knew as a bodyguard.
Now, the thirty-year-old cracked his knuckles, made eye contact with J.W., then nodded towards Scardino. “We talkin’ in front of the help?”
Westwood did not break eye contact with the young man. “No time for your cute shit today, Shaw. We need you to tell us both everything you’ve got. Now.”
Shaw looked back and forth between the two men. Finally, he glanced down and unlocked his iPad, then said, “You told me you wanted everything on Hanley and his associates. This shit was damn tough to get; let me start with that. I’m going to want more money from our friends; they—”
Westwood all but yelled now. “Fuckingtalk, Lewis!”
“Jesus, dude. Okay. First…Matt Hanley left his employment with CIA seven weeks ago; he has no official job, but he’s been handed access to Agency black fund accounts totaling well over twenty million dollars.”
Scardino looked to J.W. “Just what I suspected. He’s running an off-book program. I assume with the knowledge of Phillips or Watkins at CIA, maybe Olivia Anthony at DNI. Maybe all three.”
Shaw made a face at the Gauntlet man, a look of surprise, as if he couldn’t believe the dumb bodyguard could figure something out on his own. But he shook his head. “It’s gotta be one of the CIA guys. Olivia Anthony ismyboss. If she were involved with Hanley, I’d know about it, because I know everything that’s going on over there.” He then looked back down to his iPad. “Anyway, seen with Hanley recently is this joker.” He held up the screen, which was completely taken up with a full-page image of Zack Hightower’s official U.S. Navy photo.
J.W. said, “A sailor?”
Shaw shook his head. “He was a Navy SEAL. One of their Team Six guys, way back. An officer. He then joined the CIA and worked in Ground Branch. Snake-eater stuff.
“His name is Zachary Paul Hightower. He was in Kharkiv with Hanley in November. He was wounded in Russia. Treated at a hospital in Germany. Doctors there thought he was a JSOC operative, but in actuality, he was a…well…he was a nothing. A private civilian. Obviously, he was working sub rosa with Hanley at that time, and it stands to reason he is still doing so. That makes him part of this outfit.”
Shaw moved some pages around on the device, then held up a new picture. A man on a street, crouching behind a van, a pistol in his hand. His neck gaiter covered his face below the eyes. He said, “In this image, the computer matches the eyes, the separation of the eyes, the bridge of the nose with Zack Hightower.”
“Where is this?”
“This was the other night in Washington Circle. He killed three Gauntlet men in close-quarters battle, right there on New Hampshire Avenue.”
Scardino sat back in his chair, a smile widening on his face. “That’s one of the assets, then. Is it the Gray Man?”
“No,” Shaw said. He scrolled to another page, then held it up. A high-up view down into the windshield of a black Yukon. Looking down, it was the image of a man with a neck gaiter pulled up to his nose. “This was four hours ago, on Reservoir Road, very near the disarray in Georgetown. The facial recognition algorithm says it’s the same guy. Hightower. This very Yukon was left at the scene. Shot to shit. Dead Gauntlet men lying around it.” He glanced at Big Mike, who only stared back at him.
J.W. said, “This is one of Hanley’s operators, obviously. But how do you know it’s not the Gray Man?”
“Because…thisis the Gray Man.” Shaw found another photo on his iPad, held it up. It was a picture of a man walking down a hallway in a building with a woman.
“That woman is Irene Ortega, and that man is Courtland Gentry.”
“Who is…?” J.W. prompted.
“Who is the Gray Man.”
Both men leaned in, looked more carefully. “How do you know?”
“There was an ad hoc team set up at CIA a few years ago—the Violator Working Group—and its sole mission was to find and kill a CIA asset code-named Violator, who had turned into a freelance assassin and was referred to as the Gray Man. The group was disbanded a couple years ago. No one knows why, but I found some scuttlebutt that said Violator did a job for the Agency in Germany and the sanction on him was removed as a thank-you. Not sure how true that is, but the dates work out.
“Anyway, this picture.” He showed yet another photo of a man with dark hair in wire-rimmed glasses, seated and facing the camera in a sport coat. It looked like a slightly wider view of a regular passport photo, “This is Courtland Gentry, and this is, according to the Violator Working Group, the Gray Man.”
He swiped a couple of times back to his left. “Here is the same guy rescuing Irene Ortega in the same incident where Zack Hightower was outside shooting up a team of Gauntlet dudes.” He looked to Scardino.
Big Mike said, “The Navy guy…he looks like an operator. But this guy…he looks like—nothing.”
Shaw agreed. “That passport photo looks like a bus stop ad for a real estate broker. Of course, that was several years ago; he probably has changed in some ways.”
J.W. said, “Okay, this is all fine. But where are they now?”
Shaw smiled. “Hightower has no known next of kin. No wife, kids, nothing. But we do know where he is at the moment.”
“Where?”
