But far from perfect.
Shakira sat in front of him now on the deck, the bottle of wine between them. She was carrying on about her plan to retake the reins of leadership in Damascus. As he looked at her, regarded her new short black hairdo, the Botox she’d gotten in Bern that puffed out her lips and fattened her eyelids, and the tanning she’d done to turn her skin several shades darker, he had to admit she looked different, but to him she was still the same Shakira. Drexler nodded along, engaging in her power fantasy just to keep her happy, because keeping her alive and happy was his job.
He felt confident in his skills to accomplish the former. Less so, the latter.
* * *
? ? ?
Drexler had been ordered by the bank to protect Shakira for the first few months of her exile. To this end he had a dozen men on the property at any one time, and he had every manner of alarm and sensor known to man.
He did not, however, have fighter planes in the sky, so there was no one to prevent a skydiver from stepping off a limestone cliff thousands of feet above the U-shaped valley where Lauterbrunnen sat, dressed head to toe in black, and then HAHO jumping, steering his parachute precisely so that he came down silently on the back deck of the chateau, not ten meters from where Sebastian and Shakira sat with their wine, plotting her return to power.
A pair of security men stood in the attached living room, and they saw the billowing black chute as it appeared over the man as he landed behind Drexler, and they pulled firearms and moved towards the windows.
But the man under the collapsing canopy saw the men and he was faster and more sure of his mission than they. He shot them both with a silenced Ruger Mark II integrally suppressed pistol, three times each in the chest and throat.
Both men died before they fired a round, and the gun that killed them was no louder than an electric typewriter clicking out a few letters.
Shakira and Drexler both stood and faced the man who expertly dropped his chute with one hand on his quick-release, while holding his pistol on them with the other.
“Don’t make a sound,” the man said, and Drexler remembered the voice.
“You.” There was marvel in his tone.
“Me,” the man said, executing a magazine change of the Ruger so fast Drexler had not even been able to take advantage of it.
“What do you want?” Shakira asked. She didn’t know who this was.
The man said, “The kids. Are they here?”
Neither she nor the Swiss man standing next to her answered the question. Drexler said, “You are the Gray Man. You’re quite famous.”
“And you are Sebastian Drexler. You’re quite an asshole.”
* * *
? ? ?
Court held his pistol on the woman, and although she didn’t look much like the photos he’d seen of Shakira al-Azzam, he knew it had to be her.
Drexler said, “You decapitated the Syrian government. But there’s a new ruler, he’s an Alawi, he’s Ba’ath Party, and he says he will continue the war. What the fuck do you think you’ve accomplished?”
Court said, “Ask Ahmed. Ask Shakira.” A pause. “Go ahead, ask her. I’ll wait.”
Drexler looked to Shakira, and then back to Court.
Court said, “Yeah. I know it’s her. You can’t go posing for Vanity Fair and then try to hide your identity.” Court scanned the living room, made sure no one was there. He said, “Yeah, I didn’t bring peace, love, and understanding to Syria overnight, and that sucks. But the new guy in charge knows the old guy in charge got fragged for being an asshole. It might not make much difference, but the status quo in Syria wasn’t exactly working for anyone.
“Maybe I didn’t end the war, but I helped kill Ahmed, I pissed off the Russians and Iranians, and I killed a bunch of jihadis.
“I chalk this up in the win column, even before today.”
“What’s today?” Shakira asked.
“Today is when I kill Sebastian Drexler and Shakira Azzam.”
Drexler cleared his throat. Flashed his eyes into the living room. It was empty still. “Was this all for money? Or have you bought into the lies of the West?”
Court said, “Half million dead. Millions injured. Millions displaced. Those lies?”
“All lies,” Shakira said, and Court could hear the cracking of terror in her voice now.
Drexler said, “You’ve won, Gray Man. You’ve already won. Why not take your victory, along with the spoils?”
“Meaning?”
Drexler said, “Listen, man. My bank can provide you with—”
Court fired once; the .22 caliber round slammed into Drexler’s right knee, dropping him to the deck floor. He grabbed at the wound in pain.
Court said, “I promised Voland that I’d make it hurt. I’ll give you a few seconds’ agony, then end it for you.”
“Fuck you!” Drexler cried out as blood appeared between the fingers clutching his knee.
Court pointed the gun at Shakira now, and although she did not move a muscle, he could see her face redden several shades as the panic began to well in her.
She said, “Sir . . . I could make you a very rich man.”
“Did money buy you happiness?”
“It . . . well . . . it helped a great deal.”
“At the end of the day, you’d have been better off poor back in the UK. The world would have been better off, as well.”
She saw the bribery wasn’t working, so she said, “As you know, I have children. Two daughters. I am all they have left.”
The man with the pistol held it steady. “There was a version of me who would have cared. I don’t really know where that guy went . . . but he’s gone now.”
“Let me show you photos of them. They are wonderful—”
“They’ll have money, and whatever security that it will buy. And they’ll probably have some sense that a great wrong was done to them. I hope they channel that rage into something productive, but I can’t help them. I can only exact revenge for all those who are dead because of you.”
Her voice grew with each word as she tried to alert security men to the danger. “Revenge? Revenge? Is revenge really worth any—”
Court shot Shakira Azzam through the heart. She fell back and landed next to, but facing away from, Sebastian Drexler, and their blood pooled together. He shot her still body twice more.
Court said, “It’s not worth much, no. But it’s worth more than you.”
He started to shift back to Drexler, who had not moved and seemed resigned to his fate, but the door into the living room opened fifty feet away. A man saw Court standing on the deck and pulled his weapon. Court shifted to him to fire, and as he did so Drexler leapt up on his good leg and dove over the top of the deck railing.
It was two stories straight down to a steep hillside below.
Court shot the guard, but another came behind him a moment later. Court himself rolled onto and over the railing, scaled quickly off the other side, but stopped on a lower balcony. Here he ran to the northern side of the balcony, out of sight from where he’d climbed from above, and climbed down from there.
Court had to drop the last several feet and he landed in a roll, blunting the impact of the drop. He began sprinting away, pulling a pair of night vision goggles from a dump pouch on his hip as he ran.
He knew Drexler could not have gone far, even if he survived the fall, but where Drexler went over would be full of security men in moments, so Court ran off in the other direction.
* * *
? ? ?
Twenty minutes later he stood in the dark on Schlitwald Strasse, and a black BMW coupe pulled up next to him. Court climbed in, and the vehicle began moving again.
The man behind the wheel said nothing at first, and Court appreciated that, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
Finally Vincent Voland turned to him. “So? It’s done?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Shakira’s done. Drexler got the pain you wanted him to feel. Maybe more.”
“But?”
“But I don’t know.” Court turned to the Frenchman. “I’d be locking my doors, if I were you.”
“Merde.” Shit. “Did he . . . did he say anything? What about her? Did she speak? Tell me, what did they say?”
Court said, “I don’t remember, really. ‘Don’t shoot,’ probably. That’s usually what you hear. Trust me, you rarely get anything too profound.”
Voland was clearly frustrated. “I see.” It was silent between the two men as they drove along the narrow valley road. “Listen. I have been asked to reach out to you by members of the French government, who would like to pay you for everything you have—”
“Don’t insult me, Vincent.”
“No insult intended. They want to hire you again, they have more work, and you are the only man they will trust with it. It’s a show of good faith, nothing more.”
Court shook his head. “When I get out of this car at the train station, you’ll never see me again.” He turned to the older Frenchman. “And if you do, it’s only because I’ve been sent.”