Santos entered his Jeep and pulled out into the rain. The top was on but he could never secure it all the way and trickles of water ran down his roof and dripped over his seats. He pulled onto the freeway before getting off two exits down and coming to a stop in front of an average-looking brown office building. He parked at a meter and went inside, running to avoid as much rain as possible but still getting soaked.
“Hi,” he said to the receptionist, slicking his hair back and brushing droplets of water off his shoulders.
“Good morning, Mr. Aras. Mr. Phelps is in his office.”
“Thank you.”
Santos passed through metal detectors and was wanded before being prompted for his identification by security and being scanned up to the top floor. He stepped off and walked down the small hallway, over its dirty gray carpet, to the office at the end of the hall. Mitchell was sitting at his desk, speaking to someone on a Bluetooth. He told them he would call back and clicked it off.
“What can I do for you, Santos?”
Santos sat down without being invited to. Mitchell pressed a button on a little remote and his door closed.
“Vanessa’s failed. The target has killed three civilians that we know of and kidnapped another. If he’s ever captured and starts talking—”
“He won’t. He was captured in Paris and didn’t give ’em horseshit.”
“He’s unstable. We have no idea what he’s going to do.”
Mitchell exhaled and leaned back in his chair. “Well, what do you wanna do?”
“I think Vanessa’s employment and clearance should be terminated. She takes risks when they aren’t necessary.”
Mitchell didn’t say anything.
“What?” Santos asked.
“She knows a lot.”
“Of course she does. She’s the CEO.”
“She knows a lot, Santos. The board wouldn’t be happy with someone with that much knowledge running around.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“She knows everything.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Mitchell? You want to kill her? She signed non-disclosure agreements up the ass. She’s not saying anything.”
“You came from the military. I came from the Justice Department. I know the laws. You can’t enforce a contract when the subject is a crime. What we’ve done—we can’t enforce those non-disclosure agreements and she knows that.”
Santos shook his head. “I don’t care. We’re here to eliminate threats to our country. When you recruited me, that’s why I joined.”
“She is a threat.”
“Not in that way and don’t you dare play double-speak with me.”
“She could destroy all of us. You included.”
“I don’t care. We’re not doing it. End of story. I’ll let her know she’s fired today.”
“No, I’ll do it. I hired her, it should be me.”
Santos nodded and stood up. “If you want my employment to continue, you can never suggest anything like that again. Understood?”
“Loud and clear,” he said with a smile. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He nodded and left the office.
Mitchell turned on his Bluetooth and dialed a number. Quietly, he said, “Vanessa Hailstorm, ASAP. Have it look like an accident.”
CHAPTER 51
Henri felt numb. He didn’t speak or move and wasn’t sure how long he had actually stood there until Vanessa called out his name.
“I’m upstairs,” he said. “You shouldn’t come up here.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. When he heard her steps ascending he knew he had been right: she was the type of woman that would do exactly what you told her not to just to show you that you didn’t control her.
“What’s going—”
She stopped midsentence and went silent. It was only a moment before she stepped out of the room and casually went down the hallway. Henri watched her. She stepped into a bathroom, and vomited. He listened to the water run a long while afterward, and when she came out she was dabbing her lips with a hand towel. She stood next to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. It looks like he even removed the skin.”
“Is that him?”
“The Messenger? I don’t know. I can’t tell with what’s left.” He took out the handkerchief he kept in his jacket pocket and put it over his mouth and nose. He approached the body hanging on the wall. On the floor in front of it were clothes. He ruffled through them and found a cell phone. Clicking it on, he checked the number.
“This is him,” he said.
“What’s his name?”
“Clarence Fillmore.”
“Why does that sound familiar?”
“He’s a rich man. Donates much to politics.” Henri stood, not looking at the corpse, the massive stains, or the pile of tissue and bone on the carpet. He turned away and walked back into the hall.
“Why would he do this? I don’t understand. This man was paying him.”
“Gustav is…complicated. He doesn’t think about money or career or anything of that kind. He only cares about what amuses him. He probably thought it was funny to kill him. Ironic. Particularly so brutally.”
She shook her head, glancing back once into the room and then away. “I had no idea. I had no idea, Henri. If someone would’ve warned me—”
“You could’ve asked me. You knew I had a connection to him. But it doesn’t matter now.” He looked around. “I’m going to make sure he’s not here. You should wait in the car.”
He went down the hallway without awaiting a response and checked the various rooms. All of them were elegantly decorated and furnished, each completely untouched. As if no one lived here at all. One room appeared like a game room with the heads of animals up on the walls and in the adjacent room were weapons behind glass casings. Henri walked around the room and examined all the weapons. A World War I rifle caught his attention and he opened the case and held it.
He opened the room’s closet. Inside were more weapons. These appeared to be the heavy weapons Clarence didn’t want anyone to see. There were Kalashnikovs and armor-piercing bullets along with a shoulder-mount that fired rockets. Henri looked at the shoulder-mount. He had never seen anything like it. It looked like the stinger missiles the CIA provided to the Afghani freedom fighters during the war with the Soviet Union, but it was much more compact and could probably fit into a gym bag.
On the opposite wall of the enormous closet hung various bulletproof vests. Henri took one. It was so thin it could’ve been made out of cloth. But he felt the sturdiness of it in between his fingers. He took off his shirt, slipped it on underneath, and then put his shirt back on. He scanned the rest of the closet before returning to the room and going over the weapons in more detail.
Several pistols were up in a display and he went over them one by one. On the far left side, made completely out of glimmering titanium, was a Heizer DoubleTap handgun. He had seen the older models in museums but never an updated one. It had two barrels stacked on top of each other and carried two chambered rounds with two rounds in the clip. It was a .45 caliber and fired both rounds simultaneously. This particular one had a small laser scope, the size of a pen, mounted on the top.
Henri took it out and tested the laser scope. He examined both barrels by looking through them and seeing if they were straight. The gun was heavy and felt good in his hand. He went back into the closet, searching a shelf that contained boxes upon boxes of ammunition. He found .45 caliber and loaded the weapon, tucking it into his waistband. He snatched an extra box of ammo and left the room.
Vanessa stood at the railing, looking down at the piano and out the glass doors to the trees swaying in a breeze.
“We should go,” Henri said. “I’m going to call the local police so the maids don’t see him like this tomorrow.”
Vanessa continued to stare off in the distance when she said, “
How do you stop someone like this?”
“By dying and taking him with you.”
Vanessa looked at him and he gently touched her arm as he began to walk toward the stairs. She followed behind him. Before leaving, he looked around the main floor one more time. On the marble floors just inside the home was a shoeprint. Henri bent down to look at it. It was bloodstained and the blood was on the outside edge of the shoe. Next to that was a faint outline: another shoeprint, much smaller.
She’s still alive, he thought. He rose and quickly went to the car.
“Where we going?” Vanessa said.
“The airport. That’s where he will be.”
CHAPTER 52
Mitchell Phelps finished his day with a final email to the director of security at the United Nations building and then turned his computer off. While the computer shut down, it flashed to his screensaver: his ex-wife and two children, which she had taken with her. She’d been gone almost six months and he never bothered to change the screensaver. He thought about leaving a Post-it note on his computer reminding him to do so, but didn’t.
He turned his chair around and looked out over the rain-soaked city. It was gray and wet and dark. He wondered if the weather affected everyone like it affected him. It ate at his soul and it was subtle. Oftentimes he wouldn’t even notice the change and then suddenly it would dawn on him that he was depressed. The anti-depressants helped, as did the liquor, but they were a temporary fix. Maybe he could move somewhere sunnier. Like California or Florida.
As he thought about it, he rose and walked to the liquor cabinet on the far wall. He poured himself two fingers of whiskey in a crystal tumbler with ice, and then walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He looked down at the cars as they passed by on the street.
“This city is different when it rains, no? More solemn. Quiet.”
Mitchell turned around to see a man standing in his doorway. A young woman was next to him and he was holding her arm. He led her to one of the chairs and forced her down.
“And who the hell are you?”
“You know who I am.”
Mitchell stood silently. He finished his whiskey and walked back to the liquor cabinet, pouring himself another. Returning to his desk, he sat down across from the girl. She had a blank expression on her face, like she wasn’t even there, and he turned his attention to the man.
“What are you doing here?” Mitchell said.
“You know what I am doing.”
“No, I don’t know what you’re doing. As far as I knew, you were in fucking Paris.”
“The Messenger is dead.”
Mitchell didn’t say anything. He sipped his drink and looked at the girl before looking back to Gustav.
“Why would you kill him?”
“Why not?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“And you already know the answers to all these questions.”
Mitchell looked into his glass and shook it softly, making the ice ting against the edges. “He was a civilized man. A man that loved his country and fought his entire life to protect it. He didn’t deserve that.”
“Yes he did. We all do. It’s an illusion. All of it. We fight shadow wars and hide them from people because we think they are necessary. They are not necessary.”
“War is necessary. It always has been.”
“Vietnam was necessary? Korea? Iraq? War is a chance for the powerful to talk and the poor to die. Nothing else. If those that made the wars had to actually fight them, I don’t think we would have quite so many, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I? I’ve seen bodies piled up so high you couldn’t climb over them, widows crying over husbands they would never see again. Children watching with blank eyes. The bodies were nightmares on wax. They were the demons in our minds come to life. And not a single one of them wanted to be there. Not the victims or the murderers. They fought out of duty. Duty just means you don’t know why you’re doing something.”
He took down half his whiskey in a single gulp. “What do you want exactly? Is it money?”
“I just want an understanding. We are evil. We are the monsters that hide under children’s beds and we cloak ourselves in flags and tell ourselves that what we do is for the greater good. The greater good always means that an atrocity is being committed against someone.”
“It’s always been this way. You can’t change it. Neither can I.”
Mitchell placed the glass down with one hand as the other slipped under the desk to the revolver that was held in a plastic holster. Gustav didn’t move, his eyes never leaving his or looking down. Mitchell slowly began to pull the pistol out.
“I can make you a rich man,” Mitchell said. “Richer than a king. You could go off wherever you want and live the rest of your life as an emperor.”
He pulled out the pistol and pointed it over the girl’s head. She screamed and ducked as her hands came up. Gustav simply moved to the side as Mitchell fired three rounds, each one missing. He stood to get better aim and then fell back into his chair. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t rise when he glanced down and saw the stream of blood pouring out of him. A hole was over his heart and blood ran down with each contraction. It gushed over his desk. The blood coursed down his pants and his socks felt wet.
So much blood rained out of him so quickly he hardly felt any pain. He just sat there, unable to draw breath, and stared at the man, who came over and sat on the desk to look at Mitchell.
The girl sat up now, crying, her face in her hands. “Why do you make me watch?” she said desperately.
“I want you to see,” he said. “See how mortal we are. Everyone believes in immortality in a vague way, but if you watch enough death, you lose this. I am giving you a gift. One that customarily comes with a lifetime of horror. I give it to you now and you will carry it with you.”
“You don’t make sense,” she screamed. “What do you want from me!”
He laughed as he rose and took her arm, leading her out of the room. Mitchell could hear her crying in the hallway as they went to the elevator. He wondered how many people he had killed to get up here.
He strained to turn his computer back on to look at his screensaver one more time. As he reached down to the power button, he toppled over and found himself on his back, staring at the ceiling. His eyes began to dim. He could still hear the rain falling outside and he listened to it for as long as he could before the spirit slipped out of the flesh and left him.
CHAPTER 53
Henri drove as fast as he could to the airport. He left the car in short-term parking and opened Vanessa’s door. They ran inside the terminal. JFK was busy and the lines to everywhere were long. Henri ran to a TSA officer and showed him his badge, asking to speak to the supervisor right away.
He was led to a backroom where three men sat around eating food out of cartons. Henri pulled up a picture of Gustav on his phone and placed it on the desk.
“This man is a fugitive from the law. He is wanted for the murder of two people and the FBI is looking for him. He’s going to be passing through this airport. Please call the state police and they will verify. His name is Gustav Fabrice.”
A large man seated near him with a gray mustache and a prodigious belly looked at the phone as he chewed. “All right. We’ll check it out.”
Henri waited just outside the office and leaned against the wall with his arms folded. Vanessa couldn’t sit still and quietly paced as she returned calls and checked emails on her phone. Henri would notice as nearly every man that walked past stared at her. She was strikingly attractive but it was more than that. She carried an air that suggested she could take care of herself and of any man she chose. Henri had once read that every man was looking for their mother in a mate, someone to take care of them and make them feel better when they needed. Vanessa looked like she was capable of doing anything.
The portly man came out wiping his lips. In his hand he held a color
photo of Gustav. One that was at least six years old and clearly used for a passport.
“We’ll put him out there,” he said. “He ain’t gettin’ on any a my planes.”
Henri offered a few more details and then left. He waited in the terminal and after a few minutes saw several New York State troopers arrive. They spoke to TSA and then took posts around the metal detectors, the only way to the planes. Henri took a deep breath and sat down. He pulled out a coin, which he absently spun between his knuckles. Vanessa sat down next him.
“We should get flights back to DC,” she said.
“You go. There’s no reason for you to be here.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“He’s a monster I helped create. I’ll stay until they have him in custody.”
“What makes you so sure he’s coming through here?”
“He never liked the United States. He couldn’t stay here for very long. He’ll leave.”
“He could just go to Paris or Belgium or disappear in Saudi Arabia and we’d never see him again.”
“I don’t think so. There is only one place I think he feels completely comfortable.”
“Algeria?”
“Yes. A dusty province outside Algiers.”
“You sound like you know the place.”
“I know it well. It’s where I first met him.” She looked at him like she wanted him to continue, but he didn’t say anything. “What about you? Is it back to work after all this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think my bosses are very happy with me right now. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have this job.”
“What would you do if they let you go?”
“I honestly don’t know. This is all I’m good at.”
“You are a lot of things, but good at only one profession is not one of them. You could always go back to working for congressmen.”
She scoffed. “For forty thousand a year?”
Diary of an Assassin Page 16
