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going to—”
    “Herr Lewis. Please do not threaten Sir Donald. He is my employer. By duty I will be obliged to relay whatever you say—”
    “I’m counting on it. I want you to tell him word for word. He touches the account, looks into it in any way, and I will show up at his door.”
    “Herr Lewis, please—”
    “You have the message, Paulus.”
    “I know he will fulfill your wishes. And I will handle the account as agreed. My standard commission will apply to the funds.”
    “Danke.”
    “ Bitte schön. Sir Donald is very fond of you, Herr Lewis. I am not sure why you two parted ways, but I hope maybe someday the two of you could sit down and—”
    “Good-bye, Paulus.”
    A frustrated pause. A polite good-bye. “ Auf wiedersehen , Herr Lewis.”
    Gentry stowed his sat phone in his canvas bag. Then he focused all his attention on a new threat ahead.
    Court had noticed it three hundred yards out: a large black car on the docks. At two hundred yards he could just make out men leaning against the vehicle, all wearing dark gray. At one hundred fifty yards he counted four of them, could tell they were big. At fifty yards he had them pegged as Slavic, wearing suits, and their car was a limousine of some make.
    These would be Sid’s boys, here to pick him up and take him for a ride, and this made Court furious. He’d planned on getting off here in Gdansk, losing himself for a few days on the Polish coast, and then contacting Sid via the Ural Mountain Tours Web site when he was good and ready. Sir Donald, his ex-handler, never made him work face-to-face, but these goons, sent by his soon-to-be ex-handler, had no doubt come here on a babysitting mission to make sure Gentry came along peacefully to kneel before the throne of his liege.
    “Fuck this shit,” Court said it aloud at twenty-five yards. The men were up off the hood of the limo; cigarettes were thrown on the ground and crushed out. Court could see the glint of thin gold chains around their necks. Russian mob boys. Who else? The men stepped up to the edge of the dock, coming to the water’s edge to prevent him from running away when the ferry landed.
    As if.
    Court looked up and down the landing to see if there was any place to run to.
    Nope. Shit.
    Gentry stepped off the swaying launch and up onto the floating wharf. He stood in front of the four goons. No words were exchanged. The only communication between them was through the looks of five men filled with testosterone, all of them on the job, none of them here particularly willingly. Court’s old CIA Special Activities Division team leader, a foul-mouthed ex-SEAL named Zack Hightower, referred to it as “eye fucking,” a crude but accurate description of men simultaneously sizing up one another and projecting their own power and prowess through their cold stares.
    Slowly Court opened his peacoat to reveal the butt of the .380 Makarov on his hip. One of the younger Russians stepped forward and yanked the gun free of its holster, sneering at Gentry during his backwards draw stroke as if he had discovered the weapon himself. He then patted Court down front to back, pulled a knife from the foreigner’s pocket, and slipped it into his own. He looked through the canvas bag on Gentry’s shoulder, yanked out the satellite phone and pocketed it, but he did not find anything else of interest. Satisfied he’d disarmed the Gray Man, the Russian stepped back, and with an impatient gesture, he beckoned the American forward to the car.
    Court unslung his bag from his shoulder, then tossed it underhanded to one of the men to carry. The bag hit the thick man on the chest, and he let it fall to the ground in front of him; his “eye fuck” stare neither wavered nor diminished.
    Court could not help it. He cracked a smile, stepped forward, and scooped it up with a chuckle, then walked to the black limo and opened the back door of the car and climbed in.
    An hour later he was airborne. A Hawker 400 light corporate