Raymond Benson - 2012 - Hitman: Damnation (21 page)

 
          
The
assassin turned his head.

 
          
A campfire.
A man and a
woman,
bundled up, sitting close to the warmth. They weren’t Caucasian.
Nepalese, most likely.
Maybe Tibetan.

 
          
The
woman glanced at him and muttered something. They both got up and moved closer
to him. They spoke a language 47 didn’t understand.

 
          
He
tried to raise himself, but the pain shot through his back and he nearly cried
out. The woman spoke comforting words and gently pushed him down. He was lying
on a fur blanket. She said something else, crawled away, and then returned with
a bowl of hot liquid.

 
          
Yak
butter soup with grain barley on the side.

 
          
Although
it tasted absolutely horrible, Agent 47 consumed it voraciously, as if it was
his final meal on earth.

 
          
 
 
*

 
          
The
Nepalese nomads sewed up the bullet wound and nursed the assassin for two weeks
in their private ice cave on the side of
Kangchenjunga
.
From what Agent 47 could fathom, the couple had left civilization quite some
time ago. Perhaps they were hiding from the Chinese in Tibet. The husband made
monthly trips down to one of the villages to stock up on food and supplies.
Their home was well furnished and comfortable—for a cavern. Agent 47 thought
the couple might be a little crazy from the seclusion, but at least they knew
how to care for him.

 
          
At
last, 47
was
well enough to leave. The Nepalese man
accompanied the
hitman
down
Kangchenjunga
.
Using the couple’s climbing
equipment,
a seven-hour
trip took twice as long due to 47’s discomfort. At the end, though, Agent 47
found himself on solid, flat ground. He paid the man from the money he had in
his pocket. At first the hermit refused, but the assassin insisted. They parted
ways with a handshake.

 
          
The
pain was still severe. Simply walking was a chore.

 
          
He
checked in to a hospital in Kathmandu and discovered that he was suffering from
a spinal disc
herniation
. His sciatic nerve was under
constant bombardment from the pressure. The doctor told him that
anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers were the best approach but that 47
should get plenty of bed rest for about six weeks. The
hitman
took the man’s advice, checked into a fleabag hotel, and dosed
himself
with
oxycodone
and
naproxen sodium tablets.

 
          
After
two weeks, he limped like a cripple to an Internet café and tried to contact
Diana. Every line of communication to her was broken. He checked the secure
server where he picked up messages from the Agency. There were several for him,
asking him to contact ICA if he received them. They most likely assumed he was
dead. Tellingly, there was no mention of Diana.

 
          
It
took fourteen weeks before Agent 47 was finally pain free. He thanked the
doctor and left Nepal with a three-month supply of the painkillers. The
hitman
had found that he liked the effects, which had
nothing to do with managing discomfort. He had begun to have strange dreams,
even nightmares, and the
oxycodone
tended to control
them. For some reason, the pills didn’t dope him up but rather made him
clearheaded and confident. It was only if he tapered down the dosage or stopped
altogether that he experienced a nervous, anxiety-producing reaction.
Best to continue taking them.

 
          
Agent
47 made his way to Mexico and holed up in Guadalajara. He knew an arms dealer
there who replaced his ATM
Hardballers
, complete with
the pearl handles, just like his long-lost
Silverballers
.
It took a month to re-create the leather briefcase with the fleur-de-lis
insignia on it.

 
          
All
that time, the
hitman
periodically attempted to find
Diana. There was still no trace of his former handler. He ignored all messages
from the Agency. He had no desire to go back to them. He’d had enough of the
ICA. Six months after the avalanche, the Agency stopped sending him missives.

 
          
Although
damaged and not up to the high standard Agent 47 liked to maintain, he was free
to do what he wanted.

 
          
NINETEEN

 
          
Benjamin
Travis drummed his fingertips on the desk in his office and once again played
the message from the Agency’s client.

 
          
“Stand
by.”

 
          
That
was it. No further instruction, no explanation, or no indication that the
second hit—the one on Charlie Wilkins—would still be ordered.

 
          
Travis
had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t the U.S. government that had ordered
the hit on Dana Linder. If that were true, why would they purposefully instruct
the assassin to leave a weapon at the scene that incriminated the American
military? The gun’s serial number had been traced to a soldier in Texas who had
reported the rifle stolen. Television and newspapers were full of accusations
that President Burdett and the CIA were behind the murder. Wilkins himself had
been quick to point a finger. The most vocal proponent of the current
administration’s involvement in the tragedy was the man known as Cromwell.
“It’s time for a new revolution in America,” the mercenary announced on
national television. Since the Linder killing, the New Model Army had stepped
up the frequency of strikes at various targets and delivering the message to
the public: Rebel.

 
          
Sitting
safely aboard the Jean
Danjou
II, back in the waters
of the Mediterranean near the Costa del Sol, Travis wasn’t too concerned about
the fate of his home country. He had turned his back on the United States long
ago. He’d been watching the political developments in America with detached
amusement until Jade reminded him that, should America fall, so would the world
economy. And if that happened, there would be fewer clients for the Agency.
Travis didn’t think that would be the case—perhaps there would be even more
clients—but a global financial meltdown would be bad for everyone. Nevertheless,
he fully expected Cromwell and the NMA to succeed. The state of the union was a
powder keg. Most recently, the National Guard and U.S. Army were called out to
control militia attacks. A full-out firefight had erupted in Virginia at the
Civil War battlefield site of Manassas. Seven civilians were killed. More than
half of the population staged protests all over the country, and twelve
thousand people marched on Washington. Just one or two more incendiary events
allegedly perpetrated by the government would be all it would take to bring the
crisis to a head. The assassination of Charlie Wilkins, if orchestrated by the
CIA, would certainly push the country over the edge into civil war.

 
          
So
if the current administration wasn’t the client, then who was?

 
          
Travis
had ordered Jade to utilize every intelligence apparatus the Agency possessed
to uncover the speaker’s identity. When he communicated, it was always by
phone. An electronic scrambler disguised his voice. The number from which he
called was never traceable. It didn’t help that the Agency’s own encryption
process for accepting email and phone calls was extremely complicated and
unshakable. Satellites bounced signals between several countries before a
client could deal with the ICA. This was also true for reverse traffic.

 
          
From
the analysis that he, Jade, and the team had performed thus far, Travis
suspected the client might be Cromwell himself. Who else wanted to see a
rebellion, and what more could cause that rebellion than the assassinations of
Dana Linder and Charlie Wilkins?

 
          
Travis
considered the state of the operation. Agent 47 was now ensconced at Greenhill,
supposedly infiltrating the community to get closer to the proposed target. The
client promised that the orders for the second hit would come within a couple
of weeks. Travis didn’t think the client would renege; he had thus far acted in
good faith. The money for the Linder killing came through, and the Agency had
received a nonrefundable down payment for the Wilkins part of the job. Travis
fully expected to go through with the second phase of the mission.

 
          
But
the manager wasn’t sure what to make of Agent 47. The
hitman
had a sparkling reputation, to be sure, but he was unpredictable. Given the
fact that the assassin was a clone and a warrior constructed from various DNA
strains and bloodlines, 47 was no doubt a machine of a man—and machines could
break down or malfunction. Travis had never met Agent 47 prior to their
face-to-face encounter aboard the yacht a week earlier, but Travis knew everything
about him. He had thoroughly studied the assassin’s history, and the
hitman
was completely unaware he had been used.

 
          
It
was vitally important that 47 never find out. Hence, finding Diana was a top
priority. Jade had a lead in the
midwestern
United
States. Perhaps that would prove to be fruitful. The Agency’s operatives just
might be successful in locating the traitorous woman. And once that was done,
Travis would send Agent 47 to be her assassin.

 
          
Luring
the
hitman
back into the fold had not been easy.
After a year of searching for the killer, the Agency’s operative Roget reported
that he had employed “freelancer” Agent 47 in Jamaica. So Travis set the plan
in motion. They paid Roget a substantial fee to deliver the wayward killer to
them via the remote-controlled plane. It wasn’t Travis’s fault that 47 shot up
the remote so the Agency couldn’t land the aircraft safely. At least the
hitman’s
ordeal in the Caribbean was a good test to see if
he was up to snuff.

 
          
The
assassin’s performance had impressed Travis and upper management enough to
decide that 47 could be reinstated. The masquerade aboard the yacht—allowing 47
to wander freely into restricted areas under the pretext of the “new honesty
and trustworthiness” of the Agency—was icing on the cake. Jade wasn’t convinced
47 had fallen for it, but apparently something worked. The
hitman
had agreed to rejoin. The current job—the Linder hit and the possible Wilkins
one—was to be a further assessment of 47’s loyalty and present skill level.
Travis had no doubt that, if 47 succeeded in this very difficult assignment, he
could cope with going after his former handler. The
hitman
was the only one who could kill Diana.

 
          
If
only she hadn’t managed to escape that hotel in Paris before Travis’s team
burst into her room, guns blazing. She should be in a grave. Instead, the woman
got away with too much of Travis’s classified material. She had threatened to
expose the project to the world, and he believed she could—and would—do it. So
why hadn’t she? That was a year ago. What was she waiting for?

 
          
Travis
figured that she still needed some sort of physical evidence. All she had at
the moment was the knowledge in her head. It would take more than that to
convince the world that Travis and the Agency were up to no good. Diana was a
dead woman as soon as she was found.

 
          
Now
Travis had to convince Agent 47 that his former handler had betrayed him on
that fateful day in the Himalayas. He had to plant the seeds of doubt and
mistrust in the assassin’s already suspicious mind.

 
          
And
it was working.

 
          
TWENTY

 
          
The
days passed into mid-October.

 
          
Agent
47 dutifully worked as groundskeeper and maintenance man, although most of his
jobs had nothing to do with that description. His supervisor was a young man
named Stuart Chambers. The
hitman
developed an
immediate dislike for him. Chambers took his managerial role much too
seriously. For the first few days on the job, “Stan” was given the most menial
and disgusting tasks, such as scrubbing out the men’s and women’s toilets in
all the restroom facilities at Greenhill. When that was done, Chambers ordered
47 to clean out the grease trap in the cafeteria kitchen. It was a revolting,
dirty job that put the assassin in a foul mood. After a week, 47 had still not
been given any tasks within the restricted area.