Diary of an Assassin (18 page)

CHAPTER 48

Billie woke in the passenger seat as they were driving by a farm. She had grown up on a small farm out in Nebraska and being around barns and horses and seeing herds of cows gave her a type of comfort:
the relief of home.

She hadn’t meant to sleep but exhaustion overtook her after about an hour and her body
had shut down. When she woke they were heading in a different direction than when she had gone to sleep. She glanced at the man in the driver’s seat. He was staring forward, expensive sunglasses covering his eyes. He didn’t acknowledge her.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

He drove another ten minutes, passing two exits that had gas stations, until he found a rest stop. He pulled off and parked next to a semi and a mini-van, which had a family stretching and having snacks in front of it. He unbuckled his seatbelt and then walked around the car. He opened the door for her. She stepped outside and felt the breeze on her face as she stretched her back.

Gustav took her arm and led her up the sidewalk.

“I can walk,” she said.

He didn’t respond and continued up the sidewalk
, into the women’s bathroom. He opened a stall door and pushed her inside before shutting the door and leaning against one of the sinks. She slid her pants down and sat.

“I can’t go with you in here,” she said.

She glanced under the stall and saw his shoes by the sink. He walked out of the bathroom, stopping at the door for a second, and then the door shut behind him and Billie exhaled like she had just come up for air in a pool.

She pulled up her pants and
hurried to the windows that were up high over the sinks. She stood on the counter and reached up. She could just barely reach it if she stood on her tip-toes. Her foot slipped out from under her and she fell to the cold linoleum. Her shoulder and hip radiated with pain but she didn’t make any noise. She just watched the door. When the man didn’t come in, she climbed back up onto the sink.

Stretching her body upward again
, she managed to reach the latch and open it. The window only opened about three inches and she frantically tried to push it further, mumbling, “Please, please,” to herself.

Suddenly the door opened behind her.

Billie turned to see a woman give her an odd glance. She jumped off the sink.

“Please,” she said, sobbing now, “please. Please help me. Please help me.”

The woman looked concerned and put her hand on her arm. “What’s the matter, dear? Do you need money?”

“No, no. The man I’m with…the man I’m with kidnapped me. He stole my car and kidnapped me. Please call the police. Please.”

The woman sat in shock a moment and then pulled out her cell phone and put her arm around Billie. She dialed nine-one-one and waited as it rang.

The door flew open and Gustav stood there. The woman was startled and nearly dropped the phone. Gustav walked toward her. Billie screamed and
hid behind the woman, who began to say something and then yell for her husband. Gustav grabbed her by the chin and back of the skull and spun her head violently around. Filling the bathroom with a loud crack.

Billie screamed
. He grabbed her and pinned her against the wall. He took out his pistol and put it to her cheek.

“No, no
, please please please. Don’t kill me. Please.”

“Every person you try
to have help you will die. You killed this woman. Do you understand?”

“Yes…yes,” she said, crying, “I understand.”

“Now stop crying and let’s go.”

He grabbed her arm again, leading her outside. As they stepped out, a man stood there with two others and some children.

“What the hell you doin’ in the women’s room?” one of the men said.

Billie didn’t even see
her captor hesitate. He simply lifted his pistol and shot one of the other men through the eye. He pointed the pistol at the others standing there and they held up their hands in surrender. The children didn’t even realize what had happened. He lowered the weapon and continued pulling her to the car.

CHAPTER 49

Henri sat at the coffee shop for just under an hour before he saw Vanessa walk back in wearing a black dress and high heels. She looked stunning. Once, a long time ago, before Collette, they had had something. It was brief and passionate. A
couple of weekends, if he remembered correctly. Weekends spent in a hotel room and on the beaches of Nice. She was an idealist then too.

At night when they would
lie nude in bed, and the moonlight would be coming through the windows and the sound of the ocean filled the room, she would talk. She would talk for hours sometimes and Henri would just listen. She spoke of the American Republic and how it was the greatest nation that had ever existed. How every nation that had come before, from Babylon and Ur to the British Empire, was founded on the notion of one group’s superiority over another. Of collectivism. That the individual was always expendable for the needs of the state. Then she would explain why the Founding Fathers of the United States were the first ones to reject that notion. The individual was an end unto themselves in the United States and if America ever fell, freedom on the planet would fall along with it.

He also remembered that they were to meet in Paris and that she never showed up. She let him know days later that something had come up. But he always wondered if the life he had was meant to be shared with her. If his children were her children and she just let career get in the way.

“Ready to go?” she said.

“Yes. I feel suddenly underdressed.”

“You look fine. Let’s go.”

Henri rose and they began to walk out of the coffee shop. “You seem excited.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”

“I’ll drive.”

They got into Henri’s rented Nissan Z and he pulled away from the curb. He put an address into the GPS, which directed them to turn around and head to the interstate entrance.

“Could’ve picked a bigger car,” Vanessa said.

“All the cars in France are smaller than this. Large cars and trucks are uniquely American.”

“So who is he?
”

“He was a general in the Army. One star I think before he went into intelligence. I’ve never thought of him as a decent man but he is very efficient.”

“What was the problem between you two?”

“It was over the direction of Starlight. On
e group, led by him, wanted to make it private. To sell our services to raise funds and continue our anti-terrorism activities. Funding was always a problem. The CIA and DIIF allotted us funds from their budget every year but it shrank every time and our expenses grew.”

The GPS dinged
, indicating for him to get into the far right lane.

“So he and his group thought privatizing the organization’s resources was the solution,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

“And you were against it?”

“Yes, for the reasons you see before you now. When money is involved, everything changes. Why do you think the CIA, FBI, DEA
—why do these positions, extremely important positions—pay almost nothing at all? Because they don’t want anyone joining for money. It has to be patriotism. Otherwise you will not be able to suffer in the job like you must suffer.”

“Obviously he won.”

“Yes, he did. He convinced enough people. I don’t know how, but he convinced them. Probably with money. He was wealthy even then. That’s when I left.”

They drove another hour and spoke of mundane things: what television shows they watch
ed, how the French viewed American politics…why the Founding Fathers had allied with France and why the two nations remained strong allies until the Bush administration and the debacle in Iraq.

Eventually they left the interstate and were driving through lush, green country. Cyprus trees and grasslands that stretched out past the horizon surrounded them and Vanessa watched them with
a detached curiosity. Nature usually held little fascination. Its beauty was lost on her. She preferred sidewalks and skyscrapers. Surrounded by these was where she felt the most comfortable.

They drove into a neighborhood, if you could call it that, of massive houses with driveways that
wound up hills. A gated community with limousines and luxury cars. There were a few places like this in France but they were mostly the chateaus of the large vineyards. Seeing such ostentation made Henri uncomfortable.

The GPS brought
him to a gate that appeared to be made out of a shining brass. He got out to ring up to the house on the intercom but noticed the gate was unlocked. He pushed it open and got back into the car.

“That gate supposed to be unlocked?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve only been here once before.”

They drove up a driveway that
seemed to go on for miles. It wound up a hill to a mansion, the size of which shocked Vanessa.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

He glanced to her and then back to the mansion. “I think he’s gay,” he said.

“I wasn’t—”

He grinned and she playfully punched his arm.

They parked
on white gravel in front of the home and got out. The day was warmer than it had been the entire time Henri had been here and the air this far upstate was fresh and smelled like grass. Henri walked to the front entrance, Vanessa behind him. The front door was wide open.

“He expecting you?”

Henri pulled out a 9mm pistol from his waistband. “No.”

He pushed the door the rest of the way, ensuring that no one was standing behind it. He held the gun low with both hands as he
surveyed the mansion. He stepped inside and listened. There were no sounds. He took a few more steps into the foyer. A massive dining room was off to the left and to the right a hallway leading to a spacious room with white leather furniture and a grand piano. He stepped gently into the room with the piano. A staircase wound up to the second and third floors, massive paintings hanging on the walls above him.

He walked around the furniture to the sliding glass doors that looked out over
the property outside. It seemed to go on forever, an alien landscape of rolling hills and rich emerald trees. Henri stepped away from the doors and began up the stairs.

Looking back into the foyer, he saw Vanessa standing there with a pistol in her hand. It was a
prejudice, he knew, but he wasn’t fully comfortable with her having a weapon. Women with guns was something he didn’t see very often. Or perhaps he wasn’t entirely certain she wouldn’t shoot him if she had a good reason.

Upstairs on the second floor, he turned to the left where several rooms ran down the length of the mansion on both sides of the hallway. Double doors, white with gold trim,
stood on the right and he pushed them open.

He stood in awe, unable to comprehend what he saw.

CHAPTER 50

Santos Aras sat in a large conference room
, while outside, Washington was gray and wet. It had stopped raining for only a few brief moments and now it started again and came down in sheets that pelted the window like insects smashing into a windshield.

The conference table held
seven people from the State Department and three from Homeland Security. A man was standing at the front showing a PowerPoint, a technology that Santos thought was outdated by at least ten years.

He closed his eyes a moment, his mind drifting, and realized he was falling asleep.
He shifted in his seat and reached for the coffee in front of him, taking a long drink. It was lukewarm and black without any sweetener.

The briefing seemed to go on and on
, and Santos kept his eyes on the rain outside. He knew there were people out there that weren’t protected from it. People that had to take the full power of nature and find a way to keep going. He wondered how, in the middle of such abundance, people were actually starving. His own feeling was that they were simply too weak or too imprudent to take what they wanted. He had no patience for weakness.

“Any questions?” the man at the front said.

Santos perked up, hoping no one had any. One woman raised a finger in the air and said, “Does this apply to all department heads or just those dealing with security?”

The man
dove into a longwinded answer and Santos zoned out again. He took out his phone, unable to hide his boredom, and began checking his email and Facebook updates. Finally the man stopped talking. He waited a few moments for any more questions before calling the meeting.

Santos yawned
, finished the coffee, and then stood up. He walked outside quickly, hoping to avoid any chit-chat, and managed to sneak onto the elevator before anyone else. He pressed the button for the parking garage and then the door-close button as people tried to approach him.

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 dropl
ets 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.”