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.
The H?tel Potocki on Avenue de Friedland was a structure that would have stood out as a magnificent showpiece in most any other city on Earth, but here in Paris, the Potocki was just another beautiful building on just another beautiful block full of beautiful buildings. It had been built as a palace two hundred years earlier for a family of Polish nobility who made it their life’s work to erect ornate residences all over Europe, and they’d spared no expense to illustrate their wealth and power to the Parisians. Even today it remained one of the most elegant mansions in the city, rented out as a high-dollar venue for parties, events, and private get-togethers of the elite.
This afternoon the entrances to the building were surrounded by crowds, all holding their camera phones high in hopes of catching images of the attendees of the exclusive function inside. In addition to the hundreds of onlookers, photographers and reporters milled about, limo drivers stood by their freshly polished vehicles in nearby lots, and private security manned the streets and sidewalks.
But the real action was inside. Through the monumental bronze doors cast by Christofle, up the grand marble staircase, and in the opulent Salle des Lustre, some three hundred well-dressed men and women sat around a long glowing runway that ran below and between rows of crystal chandeliers. The room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and thumping music and flashing lights gave an energetic, almost manic feel to the scene.
The announcer proclaimed the arrival of the winter collection, the crowd leaned in, and, one at a time, lithe models began marching authoritatively out onto the catwalk wearing dramatic velvet capes, thigh-high boots, and embroidered chiffon dresses.
The hum of the crowd was unmistakably approving.
In the ninth row, to the right of the runway, sitting at the southern end of the room and holding a camera and an iPad, a man in a charcoal Armani suit sat next to an elderly woman with a small poodle nestled in her arms. The man’s eyeglasses were as refined as his silk tie and handkerchief, and he looked on at the procession traversing the catwalk just like everyone else, craning his head, nodding along with each new look, and tapping notes into his tablet.
The man had avoided the majority of the cameras, and even the lights from the runway did not reach to him in his seat. He was just a face in the crowd. No one in the room was focusing on him, and other than the guard who scanned his pass and the roving waitress with the silver tray of champagne flutes, he’d had no interaction with anyone in the building, though he’d entered a full ninety minutes earlier.
As a new model stepped out from the wings and proceeded down the catwalk, the man in the Armani suit focused intently for a moment, then looked away.
Not her, he told himself.
He took a moment to look around the room again, and not for the first time in the last hour and a half, Court Gentry told himself that this was probably pretty much what his version of hell would look like. Through the too-bright lights he saw the vapid eyes, and through the too-loud music he heard the insipid discussions on inane topics all around him in multiple languages, conversations that he felt made him dumber by the minute for having been forced to listen to them.
The focus on the clothes and the colors and the style and “the scene” was nearly a foreign tongue to him, but he understood enough to know he didn’t give a damn about anything being discussed, anywhere in the building. He couldn’t imagine anything more annoying than the crowd he sat in, the words from their mouths, the oohs and ahhs about a bunch of clothes no one off a runway would ever wear, anywhere, and no one who’d ever eaten a sandwich in their life could fit into in the first place.
Everyone else here insisted on referring to this as Paris Fashion Week, but still, Court was pretty sure he was in hell.
This was the Zuhair Murad show of the Haute Couture Collection, and Court had done just enough study on the designer and his work to pass relaxed scrutiny as a member of the alternative fashion press. His cover was as a freelancer, sent to get impressions and images of the periphery of Fashion Week for an online style magazine, to chronicle the guests and the clothes and the “scene,” whatever the hell that was.
Court looked around. A coked-up sixty-year-old man with a horror-show facelift and eyeliner danced in his chair on the other side of the runway, sloshing half his champagne on the leg of the nineteen-year-old boy seated next to him.
To the extent Court had a scene at all, this sure as shit wasn’t it.