The closer I could get to her, the closer I’d be to Charlie Wilkins.
SIXTEEN
More than three hundred people gathered in the sanctuary after the announcement was made throughout the compound that Wilkins was going to speak again that day. Agent 47 dutifully followed the crowd and sat in a pew near the back. He saw Helen McAdams sitting in the front row. Mitch Carson paced the sanctuary foyer and greeted members that he knew personally.
When Wilkins got up to address the congregation, Agent 47 was immediately struck by the man’s charisma and charm. On television, the reverend was extremely engaging; in person, he was magnetic. His voice was smooth and rich in timbre. The shock of white hair caught the overhead lights just right, providing a subliminal divine illusion. The assassin figured the reverend had personally spent some time with his lighting designers to achieve the effect.
“My friends and fellow followers of the Will,” he began. “This evening we’re holding an impromptu memorial service for Philip McHenry, who went to his maker during the night after a long illness. Many of you probably knew him as a quiet groundskeeper and maintenance man who always had a twinkle in his eye.”
He went on for two or three more minutes, performing a eulogy for someone to whom he had most likely never spoken except for an occasional “Hello, how are you?”
Agent 47 tuned out the details of the fallen maintenance man. They weren’t anything he particularly wanted to hear. He spent the time looking around the room, studying the members. They were of all ages, including several families with children. There were more women than men. Harmless, friendly people, except for the man standing at the exit looking more like a guard than a church usher. Several bodies down from Helen sat a man wearing a military uniform. He was a colonel in the U.S. Army.
Maybe.
The hitman was jolted out of his musings when he heard the reverend say his name.
“… and a Mr. Stan Johnson joined the Church of Will today, and he’ll be taking over for Philip. Mr. Johnson? Where is Mr. Stan Johnson?”
47 hesitantly raised his hand.
“Oh, Mr. Johnson, there you are. Please stand up! Don’t be shy. We’re all friends here.”
The bald-headed man stood awkwardly and waved reticently. He caught Helen smiling at him.
“Welcome, Stan. I’m sure everyone will introduce him or herself to you in the next few days. Good luck remembering everybody’s name!”
Laughs. Applause.
47 quickly sat down.
Wilkins took a sip from a glass of water that was sitting on the podium. “Now, my friends, as you know, I’m running for president.”
Cheers. Hoots and hollers.
“I’m holding a big campaign rally in D.C. a few days before the election. I’m looking for Church volunteers to ride in some buses from here to the rally. I know some of you have been looking for a way to protest against the current administration and show your support for me, so here’s your chance.”
The congregation erupted in bigger applause.
Wilkins quieted them down with his hands. “Now, unfortunately, there won’t be enough seats to fill every request. So it’ll be a lottery. If you want to go, there’s a little form to fill out. Mitch Carson will have a drop box in the cafeteria. Names will be drawn until all the seats are filled, okay?”
Everyone thought that was fair.
He then changed the subject and went back to Philip the maintenance man for a benediction and final word. Wilkins spoke about the importance of the community’s spirit and its ability to coexist as one big, happy family.
“We all have the Will,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”
That made sense to everyone but Agent 47.
The ceremony ended with a prayer. After that, the congregation stood and made their way out, 47 among them. With respect for the service’s purpose, people spoke in low voices. Once they were outside, several men stepped up to the assassin and shook his hand.
“Welcome to Greenhill, Mr. Johnson.”
“Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Johnson.”
Although Agent 47 had expected some degree of non-anonymity during his stay at the compound, he hadn’t anticipated this. Nevertheless, he played the introverted farmer and smoothly deflected earnest attempts at conversation. 47 wasn’t worried. The more well known he was at Greenhill, the more people would trust him.
“Stan!”
He turned to see Helen moving toward him.
“Well, what did you think? Charlie’s great, isn’t he?”
47 nodded. “Even more charismatic than he is on TV.”
“Sorry he put you on the spot. He tends to do that with new people.” She laughed a little. “You looked kind of uncomfortable.”
“I’m a bit timid. You’ve probably noticed.”
“That’s all right. I’m pretty quiet too. In high school I was always the girl that no one would ask to dance.” She forced another laugh. There was a moment of awkward silence. “Are you going to put your name in the hat to go on the buses to Washington?”
The hitman shuffled his feet. “Oh, I don’t know.”
She squeezed his arm and leaned in conspiratorially. “Well, I have to go. I get a seat no matter what.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“It’s all right. Everybody’ll know anyway.”
“Well, then maybe I will put my name in the hat.” He had no intention of doing so.
“Great!” She looked at her watch. “Hey, you know, I just realized how hungry I am. How about you? Want to come with me?” When he hesitated, she added, “I mean, if you want to. I didn’t mean—”
Smiling, he raised his hand to stop her excuses. “I could eat.”
“Oh! Okay, then, uh … let’s go to the cafeteria! It’s dinnertime.”
He sensed that she was taken aback that he’d accepted.
The food was surprisingly good. Agent 47 had expected it to be the kind of fare served in high school cafeterias, but it was several steps above that.
“We have a couple of gourmet chefs on the premises,” Helen explained as they sat at a table by themselves at one end of the gymnasium-sized dining hall. “They make it a point to bring in fresh ingredients and prepare healthy choices for the members. Some of us are vegetarians. The carnivores get the best beef and chicken, all grass-fed, no chemicals or preservatives added.”
“I’m impressed,” the assassin said. He had chosen spaghetti, meat sauce, and meatballs, with a Caesar salad and a Coke. Helen had baked salmon topped with horseradish and bread crumbs, and steamed vegetables.
“So tell me why you’re here, Stan. Why the Church of Will?”
Agent 47 had prepared his cover story well and effortlessly launched into it, with the appropriate character traits he had rehearsed. “Well, it’s not much of a story, really. My dad had a farm in Iowa. I grew up on it, so I knew how to be a farmer from an early age. No brothers or sisters. I think my parents wanted more children after me, but for some reason my mom couldn’t conceive. Anyway, I went to an agricultural college after high school. Both of my parents died in a fire while I was there. I went back to manage the family farm. It did okay for a while, but it went belly-up two years ago.”
“You poor thing. I’m sorry about your parents.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened with the farm?”
“You know, the bad economy and everything. And the winters were awful. A lot of crops were destroyed. The government didn’t help the farmers. Like most people in the country, I started to get fed up. I went to a few protests in Des Moines and one in Chicago. And then I started watching Will You? on television, and that did the trick. I realized I was feeling sort of lost in the world. I knew I needed a jump start in the spirituality department.”
“I know what you mean. Will You? is a great show, isn’t it?”
“I enjoy it a lot.”
They continued to eat in silence for a few moments, and then she asked, “Stan, what about a
family of your own? No wife or children?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Girlfriend?”
47 took another sip of Coke and looked directly at her. “I’m afraid not. I’ve never been very good at that sort of thing.”
Helen smiled. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Neither have I.” She chuckled nervously and continued to eat.
After another pause, Agent 47 found that she was studying his face. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She took a breath. “Well, there’s something about your eyes that seems so familiar to me. They’re very intense.”
He shrugged and laughed self-consciously. “They’re just the eyes that came with me.” The killer then looked at his plate to avoid more unnecessary eye contact. He had noticed that Helen had the same well of loneliness in her own eyes that he did, and 47 did not care for the conversation to linger on the subject. A shyness act would cover his discomfort.
At that point, Colonel Ashton marched through the cafeteria, tray in hand, followed by two or three other men and Mitch Carson.
The assassin whispered, “Who’s he?”
“Oh, that’s the Colonel. We call him the Colonel. His real name is Bruce Ashton. He’s not a real colonel. In fact, he’s not in the military, but he acts like he is. I think he was a colonel in the army but he’s retired. I don’t know his whole story.”
“Is he a member of the Church?”
“He is. But he’s also just been appointed Charlie’s director of security for his campaign travels. That’s what the Colonel does for a living. Some kind of security business overseas in the Middle East.”
“I see.”
“I don’t have many dealings with him.”
47 nodded. “So tell me more about you, Helen. Why are you here?”
It was her turn to be diffident. “I don’t know. Like you, I was feeling lost, I guess. My parents are gone, no brothers or sisters. So I suppose I’m all alone in the world too. I also had—”
She hesitated and looked away.
“What?”
“Never mind.” She unconsciously pulled at the sleeves of her blouse, hiding the angry red marks.
47 did his best to appear sympathetic. “It’s all right, Helen. You can tell me.”
“Oh, I just had some, um, medical problems, that’s all.”
He waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, the hitman said, “Well, I hope you’re better now.”
“I am.” She smiled at him, but 47 didn’t believe it. Helen McAdams was definitely a vulnerable soul.
After yet another beat of awkward stillness, she asked, “Would you excuse me? I’m going to run to the ladies’ room.”
“Sure.”
She got up and walked away. Agent 47 finished his meal and studied the cafeteria crowd. How many of them were lost souls too? Did they all have unhappy pasts? Were they all looking for that “eureka” moment when their lives suddenly became meaningful? Did they really think they’d find it here?
Colonel Ashton and his entourage had finished their meals and stood. Agent 47 watched them as they left the dining hall. The assassin grabbed his tray and took it over to the conveyor belt below the sign that read: Place trays and dishes here. He then followed Ashton and stood outside the door, watching the mercenary get into a Jeep with the other men. They drove away toward the restricted area.
Secrets, 47 thought.
Greenhill had a lot of secrets.
SEVENTEEN
It was my first night in the studio apartment at Greenhill. The middle of the night, actually. Usually I had no problem sleeping, but tonight I couldn’t. Not sure why.
Everything had gone according to plan. I’d established a believable cover. I’d made friends with someone on the inside. Now I had to wait until the Agency told me I could go ahead and kill Charlie Wilkins.
How long would I have to wait? The election was in less than a month.
A window in my apartment faced the Main Street area of the compound. I parted the drapes and looked outside. All was dark. Streetlamps cast a dull glow on the “street.” Not a soul was about. Did everyone go to sleep at night? Was the place that disciplined? I’d never known of any area occupied by people who followed routine hours. It’s a fact that some humans are night people, others are morning people. Surely somewhere in the compound there was someone who was awake like me. I wondered if that person might be Helen. My friend.
It was ironic that I’d had a “dinner date” with her. Me. A dinner date.
It was strange, this feeling of having a friend. Even though it was all deceit, there was something genuine in the attraction between us. Of course, the person I presented to her was not really me.
I wasn’t sure who the real me was. I was never sure.
I suppose I’d always thought of myself as a kind of machine. A “thing” that does what I do without any feeling. But I did have flesh and blood. I did have nerve endings on my skin. I did have internal organs and a brain and a heart. I may have been created in a laboratory, but I was a human—I supposed.
So why didn’t I have the feelings that other humans had? I didn’t know.
Sometimes, though, I did feel as if feelings were straining to get out. As if some kind of barrier prevented them from bubbling to the surface.
Take the hit on Dana Linder. She was not a bad person, from what I could tell. Shouldn’t I have felt some kind of remorse or guilt for that hit? “Normal” people would. Sometimes I wondered if there was a way I could allow myself to feel those things. Was there a button I could push? A trigger?
Today I felt something when I talked to Helen. I’d never really spoken to a woman as a friend before. Diana was the closest I’d ever come to having a female friend. That didn’t turn out so well.
How long could I keep up the subterfuge with Helen? Where was this all going?
I didn’t know, but I would do whatever I had to do.
I was in Millennium Park in Chicago.
The baby stroller. Dressed as a woman. Sniper rifle in hand. Dana Linder was onstage. I was about to raise the gun, put her within the crosshairs, and squeeze the trigger.
But there was no one else in the park. It was just her and me. Dead silence. Not even wind or birds.
I put my eye to the scope. And the figure wasn’t Dana Linder at all. It was the shadow. The Faceless One. Death.
And suddenly I was not in Chicago. I was no longer pointing the rifle at Death on the stage of the pavilion.
I was back on that mountain in the Himalayas. The snow and ice beneath my feet were crumbling.
Death was watching me with anticipation.
I woke up in a sweat. Another nightmare. Hadn’t had one for a while. Odd that it would happen now. I wondered what it meant.
The clock said it was nearly five in the morning. I must have eventually fallen asleep.
I shook the remains of the dream from my head and got out of bed. Went to the bathroom, found my bottle of pills, and took two.
And my thoughts went back to that fateful day in Nepal.…
EIGHTEEN
The cliff edge trembled violently as rock and ice debris showered around him. Agent 47 couldn’t move forward because of the hail of gunfire from the Chinese man’s QBZ-95. Going backward would mean falling with the imminent avalanche and being buried alive beneath tons of ice and snow.
Once again, the assassin aimed the Silverballer at the dangling bodyguard, exposing himself in the man’s line of fire. But the turbulence was too strong. The entire mountainside acted as if it was about to topple like a house of cards. The ice beneath his feet lurched and threw 47 sideways, just as he felt a searing stab of fire penetrate his left side. As he fell hard on the craggy surface, he had the presence of mind to realize that the shaking ground had saved his life. The Chinese man’s round had indeed pierced the fleshy part at the edge of his waist, but had 47 been standing upright, the bullet would have gone through his abdomen.
Agent 47 crawled forward. Blood trailed on the white snow behind him. The tremors grew more intense as the boomer did its job. If only he could get far enough away in time.…
The rope holding the Chinese men finally gave way. They both shouted a death call.
Agent 47 watched them plummet until they were mere dots against the gray misty mountainside.
He kept moving. The outward edge of the cliff was just a few feet to his right. Still intent on the success of his mission, the hitman dared to peer down to see what Nam Vo and his party were doing.
They were still in place, not really sure what all the commotion above them was about and oblivious to the oncoming holocaust.
Then the sky and earth opened and the ice cliff completely collapsed, carrying Agent 47 with it through blinding lights and into deep and total darkness.
Morphological experts and the news media recorded the catastrophe as a large “slab avalanche” that measured 4,600 meters in length and 18,000 meters in volume, making it one of the biggest in the Himalayan region. It was blamed on a natural trigger. Nam Vo and his expeditionary team were wiped away, and their bodies were never recovered.
Although he didn’t know it at the time, Agent 47 was very, very lucky.
He had fallen with the bulk of the sliding snow and ice for about eight hundred feet when his body struck an upward incline of rock upon which was packed new, soft snow. The impact caused the assassin to bounce toward the mountain face instead of away from it. Unconscious, Agent 47 rolled like a log into a rock-solid crevice from which the ledge protruded. He would have plummeted deep into the fissure had its walls not been so narrow. Instead, his body wedged inside a bottleneck, several feet from the opening at the top. He was cut off and protected from the deadly maelstrom that lasted nearly thirty minutes.
Raymond Benson Page 11
