A man sat alone under the lamplight, hunched over the desk, listening to the rain on the nearby shuttered window while he worked. He looked up from his project when he heard a noise over the water dripping off the roof. It was the sound of footsteps in the private courtyard outside, and then the echo of a door slamming shut.

The man rose silently and moved to the window, opened the shutters a few inches, and looked down, his right hand hovering over the grip of the Glock pistol in his waistband.

He saw the origin of the noise instantly. The old woman from apartment 2C stood in the rain, lifted the lid to a garbage can, and poured a full pan of used cat litter into the can. She closed the lid again and returned to the door to the stairwell, and it slammed behind her several seconds after she headed back inside.

Courtland Gentry scanned the entire scene below him now, slowly and carefully, then took a calming breath. He closed the shutters, returned to his chair, then leaned back over his project.

There were a few items lying on the table next to his backpack. Coiled climbing ropes, a gun-cleaning kit. The blue badge given to him by the man in the cemetery lay on the desk before him, under the bright light. Next to it was a passport-quality photo of himself: a two-inch-square shot of him wearing the same clothes he wore now. A charcoal suit coat, a white shirt with a spread collar, and a black tie. Taking his time to check the image carefully, he determined it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to pass normal scrutiny.

The apartment was all but bare; no personal items lay about, only items needed for today’s operation. On his left, just five feet from where he sat, a blue tablecloth was attached low on the wall with pushpins, and a few feet in front of it a camera sat on the seat of a wooden chair. A fluorescent desk lamp stood on the wooden floor pointed towards the tablecloth. Five minutes earlier Court had turned on the light, pressed the ten-second delay on the camera, sat on the floor in front of the blue background, and stared into the lens until the camera clicked. After that he flipped the light back off and printed the image out on the color printer in the corner that he’d purchased for this single two-inch-square image.

Now he took a pair of tweezers and used a craft store glue stick to affix his picture in place on the ID, then pressed down on it with the bottom of a plastic cup from the kitchen, taking his time to make sure it was secure so the corners would not peel.

While he waited he did a few neck rolls to relax. He wasn’t a fan of the arts and crafts work that came with his job; he was slow and meticulous with it, and this sort of thing stressed him out. Only by necessity, and only over a long period of time, had he gotten good at it.

Court had served for over a decade in the Central Intelligence Agency, then five more years in the private sector as an assassin for hire. When CIA was running him, he could order up docs, credos, credit cards, and fully backstopped legends with little trouble. But working as a solo act, he’d had to either find private “paper hangers” or create what he needed himself.

Sometimes he was forced to rely solely on his clients to provide the documents for his needs, but today was something of a hybrid situation. His client had been able to procure an authentic badge that would get him into the event he needed to infiltrate, but Court didn’t trust his client enough to pass over a photo of himself for them to complete the project.

He’d do the work himself to maintain his personal security.

Court had become something of a hybrid himself. He was back with the CIA in an ad hoc contract role, but he retained the autonomy to accept freelance work when he so desired. And today was one hundred percent freelance. Langley had no idea where Court was, or what he was doing, and that was by design. Court didn’t know if they’d approve of today’s mission, and he didn’t give a damn.

For a long time he’d wanted to do something to support the fight against the Syrian regime, and this was his way of doing it without going into Syria. A mission into Syria, Court had determined via study of the situation and his many years of personal experience as an intelligence and operational asset . . . would be a fool’s errand.

He’d taken this job from a handler based in Monte Carlo who, for a twenty percent finder’s fee, served as a cutout in the initial negotiations between the contractor and the client. Court decided the work asked of him looked like it would be difficult but doable. As an additional bonus, the job was in Paris, and Paris was probably Court’s favorite city in the world.

But now he couldn’t help but worry about the amateurish behavior of his clients. Yes, they seemed to have some top-flight intelligence about his target tonight, but their operational tradecraft was all wrong.

Still . . . the job itself felt right, and that was why Court was here. He’d recently completed a mission in Southeast Asia with flying colors, but the operation had left him angry, empty. The United States had come out the ultimate victors, thanks to Court’s actions, and that was the plan, but it was an ugly op, and Court’s own actions on the mission left him feeling angry and conflicted. Now he wanted to feel positive about what he was doing, like back in the days before his reconciliation with the Agency.

Court believed in this Paris job, so despite his misgivings about the danger, he would continue on.

He’d earned the moniker Gray Man for his ability to remain low profile, in the shadows, while still completing his arduous assignments. He had the skill to succeed. He believed in his plan, and he believed in his skill to make it through tonight to see the sunrise tomorrow; he told himself all he had to do was keep his eyes open to avoid getting burned by his employer’s bad practices.

This was his first work in two months; he’d been lying low, first in Slovenia, then in Austria. He’d spent his time training and hiding, reading and thinking. He was in as good physical shape as he’d been in years, and he’d focused intensely on the physical side of his development recently, because he had concerns he had lost a step mentally. No, it wasn’t PTSD or concussions or early-onset dementia that threatened to slow him . . . it was something much more debilitating.

It was a woman.

He’d met her on his last operation, spent just a few days with her, but still he could not get her out of his mind. She was a Russian intelligence officer, now in the hands of the CIA and buttoned up in some safe house back in the States, and this meant there might be even less chance of him seeing her again than if she’d been working at the Lubyanka in Moscow.

If ever a relationship was doomed to failure, Court acknowledged, it was this one. But he had feelings for her, to the extent he wondered if he was the same person he was before he met her. Had he lost that step? Would he hesitate in danger? Was he open to compromise now that there was someone out there who actually meant something to him?

As he worked on his forged ID badge, Court considered all this for the thousandth time in the past two months. And for the thousand and first time, he admonished himself.

Jesus, Gentry. Turn that shit off. Thoughts like these will get you killed.

This was no life for a man in love. Court saw himself as an instrument, a tool, mission-focused in the extreme. The woman on his mind was on the other side of the globe, embroiled in her own issues, no doubt, and he knew he’d do well to forget about her so he could operate at one hundred percent.

He knew he needed to remain mentally sharp. Especially today, because shit was going to get crazy before the night was through.

The man in the darkened apartment shook off concerns of his diminished mental alertness and climbed into a black two-piece motorcycle rain suit, pulling the rubbery material over the Armani. Then he hefted a pair of black backpacks, locked the door to his apartment on the way out, and made his way down the dark and narrow staircase towards the street.

* * *

? ? ?

Paris shone in the afternoon sun, the buildings and streets still glistening from the rain shower that blew out of the area a half hour earlier. Cars rolled by the majestic seventeenth-and eighteenth-century architecture of the 8th Arrondissement, just north of the Seine and within a few blocks east of the imposing Arc de Triomphe.