Agent in Place

Agent in Place is the seventh novel by Mark Greaney, published on February 20, 2018 by Berkley Books. It is also the seventh book in the Gray Man series. The novel puts its main character Court Gentry, known as the Gray Man, at the forefront of the civil war in Syria, as he helps take down the Syrian president. The book debuted at number 7 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Two months after his CIA operation in Hong Kong, now-freelance agent Court Gentry is hired for a contract job in Paris, France by the Free Syria Exile Union (FSEU), a direct action group of Syrian exiles, through former French intelligence officer Vincent Voland. His job is to kidnap Bianca Medina, a 26-year-old Spanish fashion model and Syrian President Ahmed al-Azzam’s mistress, and then deliver her to the exiles so that they can gather information from her about a secret meeting between President Azzam and the Supreme Leader of Iran in which she was present. They believe that the revelation of Azzam’s secret talks with the Iranians would anger the Russians, who were Syria’s allies in the civil war, for betrayal, and would cause discord among the three parties and lead to the destabilization of Azzam’s regime.

Court manages to capture Medina from her private apartment and rescue her from assassins sent by ISIS in the process. After delivering her to the FSEU, led by husband and wife doctors Tarek and Rima Halaby, he berates them for giving him faulty information about the attackers and then leaves them, finished with his job. The attackers were found out to be provided intelligence on Medina’s whereabouts (albeit presented as her being a concubine of the emir of Kuwait, who was an enemy of ISIS) by Azzam’s powerful wife Shakira, who wanted the Spanish model killed after finding out about their affair and fearing that she might replace her one day as first lady of Syria.

The Halabys try to secure Medina’s cooperation, but their plan becomes complicated as Bianca reveals that she gave birth to a child with Azzam, who was named Jamal after his father. She further insists that she would rather go back to war-torn Syria and care for her child rather than betray Jamal’s father. Medina was later kept in an FSEU safehouse owned by French domestic intelligence (DGSI) as suggested by Voland.

Desperate to earn her cooperation, the Halabys retask Gentry with another job: spirit away Medina’s infant son from Syria in what is considered a suicide mission. Court initially refuses, citing the impossibility of their plan. He later rescues the Halabys from being tortured for Medina’s whereabouts by two French police officers sent by Swiss bank consultant & Shakira’s right-hand man Sebastian Drexler. Court then agrees to rescue Medina’s son as well as his babysitter, named Yasmin, from Damascus after she allows him to do so.

Meanwhile, Shakira sends Drexler to Paris in order to find and eliminate Medina; however, this coincides with a rescue mission for Medina that President Azzam assigned for him. Upon arriving in Paris under a stolen identity, since he was wanted by the Interpol, and Voland in particular, for his crimes as a former field operative), he decides to leave the Azzams after fulfilling the operations by faking his death. Drexler then forces French police captain Henri Sauvage to continue working for him in hunting down Medina, after all his colleagues had been killed by Gentry and Drexler’s henchmen working for Syrian intelligence (Mukhabarat), led by Malik.

Court secures a job inside Syria as a mercenary for a German-based private security outfit that is working with pro-regime army Desert Hawks Brigade, which will provide his cover as he works on rescuing Medina’s son. He then arrives at the city of Latakia, and takes part in a convoy of Mukhabarat officials which, after surviving an ambush by local al Qaeda outfit al Nusra, proceeds to the capital of Damascus. Since communication devices were not allowed in the military camp where he was staying, Court later steals a phone from an Arab soldier on a night out with his fellow contractors in order to contact Medina, instigating a barfight in the process. After she gives him the location of her house, he infiltrates her home and then extracts Jamal and Yasmin from Medina’s neighborhood amidst gunfire from pursuing Syrian forces.

Meanwhile, Sauvage identifies the location of the FSEU safehouse where Medina is being kept, which he relays to Drexler as well as Malik and his men. They infiltrate the estate, making Voland surrender himself to them and killing Tarek in the process. Rima manages to let Medina escape and then sets fire to the house; she was also killed. As Drexler and his henchmen leave the burning building, Sauvage and Malik find Medina running away and then capture her.

Court calls Voland and informs him of the successful extraction, but the French intelligence officer tells him what had happened in the safehouse. Gentry becomes livid, but he later offers to gather intelligence on President Azzam in order to cause an assassination on the Syrian president from his enemies, in an effort to salvage the failed operation. Voland agrees to let Gentry be his agent in place in Syria, as long as he arranges for the extraction of Jamal and Yasmin out of the country. Court then lets Jamal and Yasmin stay in the home of Syrian doctor and friend of the Halabys, Dr. Shawkat Saddiq.

Court decides to maintain his cover as a mercenary. Amidst clearing a ruined refinery with his fellow mercenaries, Court gathers information about President Azzam’s upcoming trip to a Russian military base in Palmyra from a Desert Hawks battalion command post stationed there. Afterwards, Court tries to alert the nearby enemy to his team’s presence in order to leave his post in the impending gunfight and then hastily contact Voland about the intel. However, he was captured by a Special Forces unit, who was helping the Free Syria Army in fighting ISIS, in the ensuing firefight.

Meanwhile, Drexler, Sauvage, Medina, and Malik and his men arrive in Athens, Greece to smuggle themselves back to Syria. As they prepare to board the ship for Damascus, Drexler tries to carry out his plan, which is to kill his companions and then escape the Mukhabarat operatives who were waiting for them. However, his plan goes awry as Sauvage shoots him, knocking him unconscious; still, the French police officer was also killed by the Swiss. Meanwhile, Voland, who had tracked the group to the Greek port, rescues Medina from the firefight. Drexler is then left to be captured by the Syrian operatives waiting in the ship bound for Syria.

After identifying himself to his captors as an American who had military experience, Court manages to call his boss in the CIA, Matthew Hanley, to obtain authorization for the assassination of President Azzam. He then infiltrates the Russian military base with a Syrian interpreter provided by the Special Forces.

Development The book had a working title of Weaponized, and was originally centered on Court Gentry trying to stop the transport of sarin gas into Syria. But Greaney felt: “That was already going on, and I just felt like by the time this book comes out, the Syrian government gassing their people was going to have been going on for years. Once I changed that, ‘Weaponized’ no longer meant anything to the story.” The title Agent in Place was suggested by his editor Tom Colgan, who thought fit the story, since the term refers to an operative who has penetrated into an intelligence target, which is Gentry’s role in the novel.

The author researched for the novel on location in Paris, France and did some research on the Civil War in Syria. Greaney points out that Agent in Place is different from previous Gray Man novels: “Court’s motivations are different this time out. He has new allies and new enemies, and you’ll meet some new characters you can expect to see in later installments.” He furthermore stated, “It’s a spy novel and an action novel, but at its core, it’s a story about valor and vengeance, and the perseverance of the human spirit despite the horrors of war.”