Diary of an Assassin (12 page)

CHAPTER 29

Rhett stood just inside the Giacconis’ home. He listened to the old house. An air conditioner clicked on upstairs and he could hear the soft crunching of what he guessed was a cat in a litter box. He slowly closed the door behind him. Slipping off his shoes, he walked to the upstairs living room in his socks, the pistol held low.

In the living room was an old, large screen television and all the furniture had plastic wrap. A worn rug was strewn over the carpet and it
had caked-in hair from at least four or five cats. Two of them lounged on the couch and one was still scratching in the litter box in the corner. He stepped into the kitchen.

A pot of coffee was on the stove but it was cold. He walked to the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony.
He didn’t see anyone in the backyard. Two bedrooms occupied this floor as well as a bathroom and he checked them all. No one was here. He had never known the Giacconis to leave their doors unlocked.

He walked downstairs into the dark. The blacklight was off. Rhett
turned on a flashlight app on his phone, and scanning the room, he saw that it was empty. The light from the flickering blue screens of the monitors still seeped in from the adjacent room and he went inside. Anthony sat in his wheelchair, facing the screens.

Rhett said quietly, “Anthony. You all right?”

There was no reply.

He walked over and put his hand on Anthony’s shoulder. He didn’t move. Rhett pulled him
back a little bit and saw the black blood that had congealed in the massive wound where his right eye used to be. The round had entered through the eye socket and bounced around inside the skull without enough velocity to exit. An attribute of a good .22 caliber weapon: the type favored by people in his line of work.

Rhett felt a change in the air pressure around him. It was just above him and was sl
ight enough that he might not have noticed had his senses not been more attuned from the stress of the situation. It took a moment before he realized a round had just missed his head. He experienced it in slow motion: the change in pressure, followed by the small whizzing sound, like a bee, and then the shattering of the standing floor lamp behind him.

Rhett leapt to the floor and fired three rounds into the darkness as he crawled on his hands and knees. He jumped through the threshold of the door just as a hot round
grazed his calf. He spun and lay on his back, his weapon pointed into the room, his breathing slowed to perfect his aim. He began to crawl toward the stairs.

Another three rounds fired from the darkness, little flashes of light seemingly coming from different directions. Rhett jumped up the stairs, the pain in his calf shooting through his body.
He climbed the stairs with his gun pointed downward into the darkness. As he reached the top, two rounds went into the step just below him.

He rolled backward and to the front door. He stood, leaning on his good leg, his weapon pointed down the stairs. A voice came from the darkness.

“Hello, Isaac.”

Rhett’s eyes went wide
and his breathing quickened. He knew that voice.

Fear and uncertainty filled him
. He was deciding what to do when the door behind him opened. Stephanie stood there, a look of surprise on her face.

“Get down
!” Rhett shouted.

He grabbed her head and pulled it down just as two bullets embedded themselves in the doorframe where her face had been. He pushed her out of the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

“We need to go now. Start the car.”

He threw her the keys and pointed his weapon at the house, backing away across the lawn as Stephanie pulled the car out and stopped at the curb to wait for him. He
had only been half certain she wouldn’t just drive away.

He got into the passenger seat and they peeled off down the road.

CHAPTER 30

Henri stood in the airport’s atrium and waited for security to check his credentials. The flight to DC had been long with a five-hour layover in New York. He had used the time to catch up on his reading and attempted to sleep a little but couldn’t. One thing that did impress him was the quality of restaurants the American airports now had. In Europe, fine restaurants at airports, or at least higher quality restaurants, were expected. The last time he had been to America some ten years ago, the only thing one could get was greasy fast food.

The building was unassuming: a
gray-and-red-brick, twelve-story building near the capital. It was in a row of buildings that held administrative offices. A passerby would think nothing of it, but Henri knew what was inside. He understood that the world didn’t work the way most people thought it did. That there was a class of people in each government that did things and understood things in a way that was incomprehensible to most men.

“Sir,” the guard said, walking back up to him. “Mrs.
Hailstorm will see you now.”

“Thank you.”

He was led to an elevator and then taken to the top floor. The offices up here were much different than those on the bottom floor. Here, attractive paintings decorated the walls and the furniture was a nice leather, or at least a nice imitation leather. Henri was taken through glass doors and another set of metal detectors before being allowed past the receptionist. Up on the wall, in metallic lettering, it said, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

Henri was led to a corner office. Behind a large desk sat a beautiful woman in a gray suit. He sat
across from her as the guard shut the door.

“You know, the last time I saw you,” he said, “you were wearing a gray suit as well.”

“It’s unassuming,” she said.

He grinned. “Why are you playing in my country’s affairs, Vanessa?”

“Your country’s affairs affect my country’s affairs.”

“Does French
intelligence know what you’ve done?”

“I didn’t think there was any reason to get them involved.”

“They won’t like it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s done. What can they do now?”

Henri exhaled and looked out the window to the gray sky. “Why him?”

“That’s classified information. You know better than to ask.”

“You don’t know him like I do. He’s not normal. Even for the line of work he’s in.”

“Nobody’s normal. But like I said, it doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Besides
, he’s just a tool. One that I can discard after he’s completed what I need him to complete. I’d be happy to turn him over to the French government afterward.”

“Did you ever see his apartment?” She shook her head. “One of my men needed therapy after we searched it. He collected things. Fingers, skin, bones. His kitchen knives, the handles
, were made of bones from victims.” He leaned forward. “I know what you’re doing. You think you can control him, but you can’t. Some people in the world were only put here to destroy. They care nothing for money or logic or society. When he’s done doing what you asked him to do—and he will do it because he has some deviant view of honesty and bargains—after he’s done, he may find it entertaining to kill you next. That’s what he looks for: entertainment.”

“Are you done?”

Henri leaned back in his chair. “Yes, I’m done.”

“Good. I have a lot of work to do. The guard can escort you out. If you’re hungry
, there’s a great Italian restaurant not four blocks south of here.”

Henri rose. As he left, he glanced back once and said, “Perhaps you should consider tighter security for a while.”

CHAPTER
31

Stephanie drove
as fast as she could through the residential streets, kicking up speed on the freeway, but she had to slow down several times because of a backlog of traffic. When they were a few miles away, Rhett said, “It’s fine. Slow down.”

“What happened?” she said.

“Someone was there I wasn’t expecting.”

“Who?”

“Someone I thought was dead.” He was quiet a moment. “We need to find a way out of the country. He won’t stop.”

“What about your friend and his mom?”

“They’re dead.”

She was quiet a moment. “
You’re cut.”

“What?”

“Your forehead is cut.”

Rhett reached up and touched the top of his head. He pulled away
, a smear of blood on his fingers.

“Looks like he missed,” she said.

“No, he doesn’t miss. He let me live.”

“Why?”

“It’s…more fun for him.”

“Fun? He thinks this is fun?”

Rhett checked his calve. The cloth of his pants had been torn away and he was cut and bleeding but the round hadn’t entered. “Get off this exit.”

Driving off the ramp,
they found a Rite Aid up the road a little and they pulled in. Rhett ran inside and was back out within minutes with razors, scissors, and hair dyes. A motel was up the street from the nearest gas station, and they drove to it and got a room.

“You need to change your hair,” he said as they walked into the room. “Cut it short and color it black or red. I got both.”

“Where are you going?”

“I left my phone at that house.”

“Wait, you’re not going back there, are you? We just barely got out.”

“I need that phone.”

“Why?”

“It h
as information on it. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Rhett drove around the neighborhood twice before
stopping a block away. He got out and glanced around. It was nearly noon by now and the people that weren’t at work were inside having lunch and watching television. A few kids had come home from school and he watched them walk up the street and waited until they were safely inside their homes.

He walked up the sidewalk until he arrived at the house. No police. He walked across the lawn and tried the door: it opened.

He stepped inside and pulled out his pistol. Taking a deep breath, he was about to go downstairs when he saw his shoes on the carpet next to the door. He had abandoned them last time. He put them on. Then he took them off again. He was nervous for the first time he could remember since he was in his twenties.

The basement was just as dark as before
, and he put his back against the wall and slid to where he could see the blue light of the monitors. Anthony’s body was slumped over now, the stench of fecal matter burning Rhett’s nostrils. Bowels and bladder released mingled with the copper smell of blood and the hot plastic from computers that had been running nonstop for months or years.

Rhett crouched
, making his way into the room. He slid along the back wall into the darkness and held his breath. The only thing he could hear was his heart. He traced the walls with his back, circling the adjacent room behind the computers before coming back to them. He went to the light switch on the wall, and flipped it on.

The rooms were empty. He was gone.

Rhett lifted Anthony out of his chair and placed him on his back on the floor. He closed his eyes and put a sheet over him before rising and turning to the desk. Going through the drawers revealed a few passports but none for Stephanie. His phone was still hooked up to one of the computers. He disconnected it and slipped it in his pocket.

Outside, he
walked back up the street to the yellow Mustang. He went by the house and realized he held his breath as he drove past.

CHAPTER
32

As Rhett walked in, Stephanie sat on the hotel room bed watching the news. Her hair was cut short and dyed a bright red. It was uneven but the lack of precision looked like it was intended. Her bangs came down over her eyes and he thought she looked a lot younger.

“I like it,” he said, walking to the fridge and looking for an orange juice.

“Who was that man?” she said softly.

“What man?”

“The one that has you so frightened.”

Rhett stopped and glanced to her. “Who says I’m frightened?”

“I can see it.”

Rhett
grabbed an orange juice and sat down on her bed. “His name’s Gustav. I knew him a long time ago. A different lifetime it seems like. He’s the best there is at what we do.”

“Kill people.”

He nodded, not realizing she meant it in a derogatory way. “The last time I saw him I was in Algeria. It didn’t end well for either of us.” He looked to her and then to the television. “Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”

“Where would I run to?”

“I don’t know. You seemed pretty adamant about running to the police.”

“You said they couldn’t help me.”

“They can’t, but I didn’t think that would stop you from trying.”

She was quiet a moment.
“How do you do it? How do you kill people for a job like it’s nothing?”

“That’s all I was trained to do. It’s the only thing I’ve been really good at my whole life. That’s an odd irony, isn’t it? They always tell you to do what you’re good at and what you love. What if what you’re good at and love is evil
?”

“
You saved my life when it put yours at risk to do it. I don’t think evil people do things like that.”

“M
aybe not. I don’t know if it really matters.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Let’s go somewhere
. I need to feel normal.”

“I saw a Mexican grill across the street. We can go there.”

She jumped up and went into the bathroom to change. She was clearly in a better mood and Rhett was amazed at the things that would make people happy once they’d been deprived of everything they knew.

“So you didn’t
save people from hitmen your whole life,” she said from the bathroom. “What did you do before?”

“I was recruited by the CIA when I was eighteen.”

“What did you do for them?”

“Paramilitary unit. Black ops, things like that.”

“Do I even want to know what kind of things the CIA is doing behind our backs?”

“Probably not. Making sausage and everything. Better just to eat it and be content than know where it comes from.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So you were a lawyer? What was that like?”

“Awful. I couldn’t wait to get out of it. I think every lawyer is looking for an exit strategy the second they enter the profession.”

“Seems like it would be boring.”

“Well I wouldn’t say that. I was interested in some cases. But as a whole, yeah, I was stuck behind a desk doing paperwork for bosses that were more interested in getting me in bed than in my work. And the clients were worse than my bosses. People expect miracles from a system that doesn’t have any.”

Rhett was silent a moment.
“I’m sorry about your husband.”

“
I’m sorry for him too.” She stepped out of the bathroom. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

As they walked out, Rhett saw a man in the hall and waited until he passed before letting Stephanie follow him to the lobby. At the front desk, the clerk nodded to them as they walked out into the parking lot. Rhett got a good look at the motel’s exterior. It was run down and several people hung out on the small balconies with beers in their hands. Some were sitting on the stone steps. He suddenly felt embarrassed that he had brought her here.

“We’ll check in somewhere nicer tonight.”

“I don’t care. I’m just so excited to actually sit down and have some real food.”

The Mexican grill was packed
, and a mariachi band was going around to the different tables and playing for tips. They ordered and sat down, each of them having a Corona and finishing it before their first bite. They asked for another round.

“I think it’s sweet you still wear your wedding ring,” she said.

“Just habit I guess.”

“So, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but do you live here in the
States?”

“
I live in the Virgin Islands.”

“Wow. I’ve never been. That sounds great
, though.”

“Three
hundred and forty-two days of sunshine a year. No snow, very few storms…I couldn’t ask for a better place.”

“Is that where you’re going when this is all over?”

“For sure. I’ve been all around the world and there’s nowhere I’d rather live.”

“Maybe I can visit sometime. You know I’ve never bee
n to a beach? How weird is that?”

“The ocean is a mystical experience. We’re deeply connected to it. The salinity
content of the ocean is the same as the salinity content of our blood.” He glanced to the waiter and held up two fingers, reminding him they’d requested more beer. “So what do you do for fun if not go to the ocean?”

“I go skiing a lot
. I’d rent a cabin by myself for a weekend and spend the whole day skiing and the night reading by a fire and sipping hot coco.” Suddenly she looked withdrawn. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling herself together.

“You have th
e right to be upset.”

“This just doesn’t make any sense.”

“We live in two worlds, two mutually exclusive worlds. You’re being exposed to the other now, the real world. How things really are. It’s disorienting. Like culture shock I think.”

“
There aren’t two worlds. There’s just this world and the people who keep secrets in it.”

“Do you want to know the saddest thing I’ve ever learned? Martin Luther King Junior. He was being followed by J. Edgar Hoover’s men in the FBI
, like most people with some celebrity were in those days. I worshiped King. I thought men like him came along once in a century. Then I found out that Hoover had recordings of King cheating on his wife with multiple women. He did it frequently apparently. I was never able to look at him the same. And I completely understand that we’re men and we have flaws and I forgive him for that because he brought so much good into the world. But I never saw him the same. I got a glimpse of this other world and it changed me forever. Changed the way I saw things. That’s happening to you too. You just don’t realize it yet.”

She exhaled and took a long sip of
her second beer, which the waiter had brought over along with their food. “I’m going to miss Modern Family if I stay in this new world. I really liked that show.”

Rhett smiled as he picked up his fork and began to eat.