When Sir Allen’s hands were tight behind his back, fixed with plastic restraints, Coyle tapped him on the shoulder with the pistol’s silencer, leaned into his ear from behind, and said, “Keep it up. Keep producing. I’ll call you this time tomorrow.
“When I kill the Gray Man, you will know that you, and the precious intelligence service you served, are both safe.
“Until that day,” Coyle added, “go very carefully with everything you do.”
He sat the old man back in the leather chair, putting him right in frontof the body on the floor by the fire. As he turned towards the door, Coyle said, “Twenty-five years ago, I wasyourtool.
“Now, ya fecker…yermine.”
The Irishman became a shadowy figure again when out of the firelight, and then he melted off down the hall.
Nineteen
Hampton Roads Commons is a collection of four two-story office buildings surrounded on one side by a concrete manufacturing company and on the other by a discount shopping district, all positioned just a half mile east of Hampton Roads Executive Airport in Norfolk, Virginia.
The back side of building three of the commons, making up suite 3107, still had a For Rent banner over the darkened windows, but a tenant had taken possession of the facility a few weeks earlier, and delivery trucks and moving vans had been arriving almost every day since.
There was no other signage identifying the occupant here, but on the other side of the building sat an office annex of the Virginia Department of Health and an independent marketing group that sold small appliances to chain stores in Virginia and North and South Carolina.
The drab parking lot in the rear was wet from an icy morning rain, and only five vehicles were parked in front of suite 3107 at 7:40 a.m.
But then a yellow-and-black Yamaha sport bike growled into view from around the side of the building, kicking up frigid spray as it turned in the direction of 3107, then pulled next to the cluster of vehicles: a black Chevy Suburban, a burgundy Subaru Outback, an old Dodge Ram, and a pair of sensible import sedans.
The biker wore a black helmet with its smoked visor down, and hecarried a small gray backpack. He wore an insulated raincoat and blue jeans, brown hiking boots and gloves.
The man parked his Yamaha, turned off the engine, and put his gloves in his backpack, but he left his helmet over his head, the visor still down, as he put the pack back on, kicked off the bike, and then walked to the door of the suite.
Court Gentry never expected he’d find himself at the office of Hanley’s new organization, but after returning from Nicaragua and then spending his first night on his boat docked at Bay Point Marina, he’d gotten a text from Hanley ordering him to report to a specific address for a meeting with his new team.
Hanley hadn’t instructed Court to keep his face covered here at the TerreCom Industrial Consulting office, but he didn’t assume he’d know most any of the other people Matt had working for him, so he wasn’t about to stroll around here on full display.
He pushed a buzzer by the door, then looked up at the camera on his right and gave something of a sarcastic “hang loose” gesture with his hand.
A moment later the door below the camera opened, and a woman stepped out. She was in her fifties or early sixties and wore her curly brown and gray hair down and slightly in disarray, but there was both a calmness and a confidence to her that the younger man easily picked up on.
She was professional but placid, easygoing.
“Good morning, sir.” She offered her hand. “I’m Erin Childers, Matthew’s assistant.”
Court shook her hand, but with the gesture came a challenge. “You just open the door to anyone with a covered face and a backpack?”
“I know who you are.”
“How’s that?”
“The motorcycle.”
“What about it?”
“I bought it for you.” She smiled; it was a motherly smile, good-naturedly indulging a child who thought he had outwitted her. “Plus, I know what you look like, Brian. I did your papers.”
She was telling him she’d forged the identification of his alias, Brian Webb.
He conceded the point, but still, he looked past her into the darkness of what appeared to be a small lobby. He said, “You’re the Subaru, right?”
She looked to the car, then back to him. “Thatismy Outback, right.”
“Hanley is the Suburban. Who drives the pickup, the Volvo, and the Camry?”
