see his fat purple lip, and his black eye was totally exposed to them.
“What happened to you?” asked the first man in Russian. Court understood, began to respond, but then caught himself just before the first word left his mouth. Fuck. The Dilaudid was heavy in his brain; he could not operate effectively.
He shrugged his shoulders, perhaps too dramatically, and waited for the man to realize his mistake and ask again in English. When he did, Court said, “I fell out of bed. These silk sheets are slippery.”
THIRTEEN
Court was taken back in front of Gregor Sidorenko just after breakfast. This time the Russian mob boss was outside in his courtyard, a cold gray morning and a light but steady spittle of hard needles of sleet from the sky did not deter him from taking his morning tea in his robe in his bare gardens. He sat at a small metal bistro table under a red canopy, gold pajama bottoms and fluffy slippers intertwined due to his crossed legs. Two young men armed with machine pistols stood amid the bushes already defoliated by the long Saint Petersburg winter. The men watched Court closely, but Court knew that at the distance they kept from him, if they felt the need to shoot him with their little fully automatic peashooters, they would no doubt perforate their principal just as quickly as their target.
The American winced in the face of such lousy security protocol. To him, witnessing such amateurish tactics by men with guns was like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Gentry approached Sid with two of his minders. He’d been with the men an hour since the hotel and had not said a word to them since leaving his suite. With a curt nod to his employer he said, “Let’s do it.”
“What happened to your face?”
“Nothing. Did you hear what I just said?”
Sid hesitated, nodded, clapped his hands, and gave two thumbs-up, which somehow lost something in the translation from English to Russian. “Excellent. This will make my government extremely happy.”
Court continued, “Understand this. This is my op. You follow my instructions to the letter, or I walk away.”
Sid sat up straighter, nodded swiftly.
“I leave here alone. I need time to prepare and research, and I don’t need your Nazi freaks watching over me. In a few days I will contact you with an address. Your boys can come and get me.” Court pulled out a handwritten sheet and handed it across the bistro table to Sid, who took it willingly. “They will have this equipment with them. They will take me out into the country, a place of your choosing, and I’ll test-fire the rifle, check the rest of the gear. From that moment on I am operational. I will follow your instructions as far as getting into the Sudan. When I leave the airport in Khartoum, I will meet up with your agent. Together he and I will go to the coast. I will remain out of contact, in the black, until the operation is complete. I will notify you via sat phone, my own sat phone, that the job is done, and then we can talk about extraction.”
Sid was almost giddy with excitement. “Brilliant. I will do exactly as you say.”
For the next week Gentry test-fired and zeroed weapons, exercised rigorously on the hills and in the forests to the east of Saint Petersburg, did his best to build up his stamina by running, climbing tall trees, and carrying a rucksack filled with stones. He made daily visits to a tanning salon in Pushkin, an affluent suburb south of Saint Petersburg proper. He pored over maps and books and printouts regarding the players in the Sudanese region, from the smallest, most poorly equipped rebel group to the structure, tactics, and training of the NSS, the dreaded Sudanese National Security Service. He studied the history, the laws, the infrastructure, the roads, the ports, the location and disposition of the airports and the military garrisons.
He paid special attention to the Red Sea coast of the country, because this was where he would act, first as an assassin in the
“What happened to you?” asked the first man in Russian. Court understood, began to respond, but then caught himself just before the first word left his mouth. Fuck. The Dilaudid was heavy in his brain; he could not operate effectively.
He shrugged his shoulders, perhaps too dramatically, and waited for the man to realize his mistake and ask again in English. When he did, Court said, “I fell out of bed. These silk sheets are slippery.”
THIRTEEN
Court was taken back in front of Gregor Sidorenko just after breakfast. This time the Russian mob boss was outside in his courtyard, a cold gray morning and a light but steady spittle of hard needles of sleet from the sky did not deter him from taking his morning tea in his robe in his bare gardens. He sat at a small metal bistro table under a red canopy, gold pajama bottoms and fluffy slippers intertwined due to his crossed legs. Two young men armed with machine pistols stood amid the bushes already defoliated by the long Saint Petersburg winter. The men watched Court closely, but Court knew that at the distance they kept from him, if they felt the need to shoot him with their little fully automatic peashooters, they would no doubt perforate their principal just as quickly as their target.
The American winced in the face of such lousy security protocol. To him, witnessing such amateurish tactics by men with guns was like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Gentry approached Sid with two of his minders. He’d been with the men an hour since the hotel and had not said a word to them since leaving his suite. With a curt nod to his employer he said, “Let’s do it.”
“What happened to your face?”
“Nothing. Did you hear what I just said?”
Sid hesitated, nodded, clapped his hands, and gave two thumbs-up, which somehow lost something in the translation from English to Russian. “Excellent. This will make my government extremely happy.”
Court continued, “Understand this. This is my op. You follow my instructions to the letter, or I walk away.”
Sid sat up straighter, nodded swiftly.
“I leave here alone. I need time to prepare and research, and I don’t need your Nazi freaks watching over me. In a few days I will contact you with an address. Your boys can come and get me.” Court pulled out a handwritten sheet and handed it across the bistro table to Sid, who took it willingly. “They will have this equipment with them. They will take me out into the country, a place of your choosing, and I’ll test-fire the rifle, check the rest of the gear. From that moment on I am operational. I will follow your instructions as far as getting into the Sudan. When I leave the airport in Khartoum, I will meet up with your agent. Together he and I will go to the coast. I will remain out of contact, in the black, until the operation is complete. I will notify you via sat phone, my own sat phone, that the job is done, and then we can talk about extraction.”
Sid was almost giddy with excitement. “Brilliant. I will do exactly as you say.”
For the next week Gentry test-fired and zeroed weapons, exercised rigorously on the hills and in the forests to the east of Saint Petersburg, did his best to build up his stamina by running, climbing tall trees, and carrying a rucksack filled with stones. He made daily visits to a tanning salon in Pushkin, an affluent suburb south of Saint Petersburg proper. He pored over maps and books and printouts regarding the players in the Sudanese region, from the smallest, most poorly equipped rebel group to the structure, tactics, and training of the NSS, the dreaded Sudanese National Security Service. He studied the history, the laws, the infrastructure, the roads, the ports, the location and disposition of the airports and the military garrisons.
He paid special attention to the Red Sea coast of the country, because this was where he would act, first as an assassin in the
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