Diary of an Assassin (14 page)

CHAPTER
36

Rhett negotiated on a mid-sized SUV with a dealer, who had a ponytail. They had spent the night at another hotel, and Rhett had sat in a chair facing the front door. Without any sleep, he felt exhaustion in his muscles and an encroaching headache signaling a migraine later on. When he was in his twenties, he could stay up for two or three days straight with little ill effect. Now time had taken away that asset. Time would slowly chip at all his physical strengths and he hoped he wouldn’t have to rely on them his entire life.

He would have to register the car and provide identification
to the dealer. He would have preferred not to, even with fake identification, but Stephanie insisted they not steal a car.

As they pulled off the lot and onto the main road, Rhett looked to Stephanie in the passenger seat. Her head was against the window
, and she was absently staring at the passing shops and gas stations.

“I thought we should buy you some new clothes,” he said.

“Sure.” She looked to him. “This man that’s chasing us. You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do
.”

“How well?”

“Well enough to know that we need to find a way out of the country as quickly as possible.”

“You still have your passport. You could just hop on a plane and leave any time.”

He shook his head. “He’s too smart for that. He’ll have men at the airports. He’s probably alerted Homeland Security that I had something to do with Paul’s death. That’s what I would do if I were him: get the government to do my work for me.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s…extremely dangerous. Unstable. People are in my line of work for only two reasons: patriotism if they’re young and naïve, and money if they’re older. He doesn’t care about either. I don’t think he cares about anything. It’s about the hunt for him. That’s it.”

“He didn’t try very hard to come after us at the motel.”

“No. He’s playing with me. But eventually, he’ll get bored. Where are we going?”

“Upstate. Get on the interstate here.”

As they drove, Rhett listened to soft jazz music and Stephanie slept. He found himself glancing to her every so often. He told himself it was just to make sure she was okay.

They stopped at a gas station after a couple of hours and Rhett went inside for some drinks after setting up the pump. He walked around the store, stretching his neck, and
then urinated in the filthy bathroom, using a paper towel as a type of glove so he wouldn’t have to actually touch anything. When he went out front again, he noticed the newspapers on the stand. The
New York Times
had an article about Stephanie and her disappearance. He quickly skimmed it. The police were now saying she was their prime suspect in the murder of her husband. Paul’s family was offering a reward for information on her whereabouts.

Luckily, the picture they used was at least a year old and with her hair dyed and cut short, on just a glance, she didn’t look the same.
He paid and went out to the car. He finished pumping before sitting down next to her.

“I think we should leave the state,” he said. “
There’re towns in Texas and Kentucky you could disappear in and no one would find you.”

“I don’t want to just disappear. I want my life back.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“I have to try.”

“Where is it you want to go exactly?”

“There’s a man named Clarence Fillmore. He’s one of my biggest donors and
he’s been there with me through everything. He has money and contacts, and I know he’s going to help me.”

“And if he calls the police instead?”

“He won’t. I know him.” She glanced away to a car that had pulled up and then back to him. “You don’t have to come with me. You’ve done enough already. If you just want to drop me off and leave, I understand.”

Rhett tapped the steering wheel with his finger. He
did this a long while before starting the car and pulling away from the station.

CHAPTER 37

Henri came to a stop at the Garden Line Motel on the New York/Pennsylvania border near Lake Eerie. It was morning now and a light fog hung over the streets, the glow from the streetlights illuminating no more than a few feet and leaving the rest in darkness. He stepped out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, looking over the motel. On the ground, black with tire marks and dirt, was yellow police tape.

Henri walked up to the courtyard and looked around. He
approached the front door and entered the motel. An older woman stood behind the counter.

“Hello,” he said.

“What d’ya need?”

He pulled out a photo of Isaac Rhett. “I am looking for this man.”

“Haven’t seen him.”

“Would you mind looking at the picture please?”

“Hey, asshole, I said I haven’t seen him.”

Henri pulled out his Interpol badge. “Please look again.”

The woman glanced down at the badge, not long enough to read the agency, and sighed. Interpol, technically, had no jurisdiction in the United States without cooperation from the local agency. But few, if any, people understood this.

“Haven’t seen him. We’re dealing with enough problems.”

“What happened here?”

“What
, you haven’t talked to your cop buddies? My clerk was shot.”

“Really? When was this?”

“Night before last. The detectives was all over my motel, talkin’ to people and scarin’ the shit outta ’em. I told ’em to take it easy and not go around bangin’ on people’s doors, but they did anyway. I’m thinkin’ of filin’ a complaint.”

“Did they find the man who did it?”

“No. And they took my surveillance video, which I want back. I use the same tape.”

Henri nodded. “Did the video show who shot your clerk?”

“How the hell should I know? I haven’t watched it.”

“Of course. Eh, did the detectives leave a card?”

“Yeah, hang on.” As she bent down and ruffled through a drawer, Henri glanced behind her and saw the blood stains on the wall and carpet. “Here it is.”

Henri copied the case information into his phone. “Thank you very much.”

As he was walking out, she yelled, “Hey, when do I get my tape back? And who’s going to come and clean up this mess?”

He ignored her and went out to his car. As he did so, he noticed a group of men sitting on the steps leading up to the second floor. He checked his watch: it was just a little past
7:00 a.m. and they were already drinking beer.

He approached them. “Good morning,” he said. “Were you gentlemen here when the front
-desk clerk was shot?”

“We already talked to the cops, man.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Told
’em we didn’t see nothin’.”

“Ah, but that’s not true
, is it?”

The men didn’t say anything. Henri ha
d studied criminology and one of the most interesting aspects of it was the growing distrust of police in the United States. Many people identified more with the criminals than with the police and saw them as the bigger threat. In some cities, such as Baltimore, prosecutors only had a thirty percent conviction rate for the simple fact that the juries didn’t trust the officers testifying on the stand.

Henri pulled out his wallet
, withdrew two hundred dollars, and held it out. “It stays between us.”

The man took it. “Yeah, we seen somebody.”

Henri took out the photo of Rhett. “Was it this man?”

“Nah, nah that ain’t him.”

He opened his phone and flipped open a file, expanding a photo of Gustav Fabrice. “Was it this man?”

“Yeah, that him right there.”

Henri nodded. “What kind of car was he driving?”

“Red Cadi. Nice.”

“Cadi?”

“Cadillac.”

“Oh, of course. Thank you for your help.”

On the way
to his car, he stopped at the sidewalk and looked across the street, scanning the storefronts and the other motel located just down the block. He got back into his car and began heading to the nearest police precinct.

September 1
st

We stood in formation with thin Kevlar vests on. It was raining and the water soaked us and got in our eyes. The sky was the color of smoke and filled with clouds. The forest floor sank beneath our feet and I shivered though I tried not to show it. Heather stood next to me, her teeth chattering.

Gustav stood before us with a pistol. “This is a Desert Eagle .45 caliber pistol. It is wet and it is covered in mud. For a gun to fire, it requires three things: oxygen, fuel
, and an ignition source. The firing pin is the ignition source and the gunpowder is the fuel.” A small puddle had gathered in front of him. He bent over and put the gun in the water until it was fully submerged.

“
So we’re missing oxygen. Will this gun still fire?” He looked to the recruit to my left, a man named Christopher. “Recruit, will this gun fire?”

             
“Sir, no, sir.”

“Would you bet a thousand dollars that this gun won’t fire?”

              “Sir, yes, sir.”

“Would you bet your life?”

              Christopher hesitated.

“Ah, see. It’s amazing how much we know until something serious is at stake. And then all our knowledge gets thrown out the window, as you Americans like to say.”

              He fired the pistol and the round went into Christopher’s Kevlar vest, and he toppled over with a groan. It took him a moment before he straightened up.

“The oxygen is in the gunpowder. There are things that you cannot perceive but that
are true. Be wary of your surroundings and always have an open mind.”

             
The next day, after a twenty-mile run with fifty-pound packs, we worked explosives. We made nitroglycerin out of products you could find in almost any home. Glycerin left over from a batch of homemade soap mixed with gasoline or crushed kitty litter. By the end of the day, we were all black with soot and exhausted to the point that we couldn’t move. Heather walked back with me to the bunks and asked if I wanted to get a drink. I said I did.

             
We went to a nearby bar about five miles from the compound and ordered nachos and beers. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Why did you say yes to this? You could have been in the intel section and sat behind a desk. I heard you have a medical degree too. You could have been a doctor for any agency you wanted.”

She looked at me and said, “Everybody said I wouldn’t make it. So I had to prove them wrong.”

              When we got back to the compound, we passed the driving course and the town, which we called Taintsville for reasons I couldn’t say, but everybody guessed it was a joke started by the first class. The town had about twenty houses, a school, a police station, a park, and a few restaurants. They were filled with realistic props and their point was to train us for urban warfare.

“I don’t feel like going back yet,” she said. We found a house in Taintsville and went inside. I sat on the couch and tried the remote for the television but it didn’t work. She sat next to me and put her head on my shoulder
, and we stared at the black television screen as the rain pattered on the windows outside. I let her sleep for a long while.

             
On the way to our bunks, I saw Gustav up in his room. The door was open a crack and I glanced in. He was nude and on his knees, doing some kind of stretching. I thought somebody was in the room because he was having a conversation, but I didn’t see anyone else there.

CHAPTER
38

Rhett slept in the passenger seat while Stephanie drove for the last hour. When he awoke they were in a section of the state he didn’t recognize: a place reserved for only the most wealthy. The mansions looked like plantations of the old South and each one was set far enough back that no one inside could be bothered by any noise from the street. It had stopped raining and the well-manicured bushes glistened from the remaining water.

They pulled
up to a gate. Stephanie got out and approached a comm box, which she used to call up to the house. The gate opened a few seconds later, and they drove up the long, winding driveway to the massive home.

At the door a maid offered to take their jackets
, but since they weren’t wearing any she just shuffled them inside the house. She led them up to the second floor and to a large balcony overlooking the property. Rhett saw a portly man sitting at a table having tea and finger sandwiches. He was on the phone and hung up on seeing them. He rose to his feet.

“Stephanie! What the hell is going on? Do you know the FBI is looking for you? I called your office fifty tim—”

“I know. I need to talk to you.”

“Who is this?” Clarence said, looking at Rhett.

“A friend. Please, can we sit down?”

“Sure.”

As Stephanie sat down at the table and began going through everything that had occurred, Rhett wandered around the various rooms. One was a trophy room with the heads of assorted animals up on the walls. A stuffed lion claiming one of the corners. Rhett went to it and ran his hand along the mane. Up above loomed the mounted head of a rhino.

In another room
he found every rifle, sword, and shield that man had used through the centuries. A Roman gladius was encased in glass on the wall next to a German World War II Ruger next to a Mongolian spear. Rhett studied each one. They were in exquisite condition. He was there about half an hour before coming across a curved long sword from Arabia. Its edge was crusted with a black material that looked like blood.

“You’re a weapons man?”

Rhett turned to see Clarence standing at the doorway.

“You could say that.”

“Look at this,” Clarence said, waddling over to a case on the far side of the room. He pulled out a rifle. “This assassinated an SS soldier who gave orders for a village to be cleared in Southern France, where my family is from. My great uncle went out to his barn—and this is a man that didn’t have any military training; he was just a farmer—he went out to the barn, pointed the weapon, and fired two rounds. One of them went through that German’s temple. They killed him after that. They set the barn on fire and when he ran out, they shot him.”

“This is an amazing collection.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “So it sounds like you two are in a bit of trouble.”

“You could say that.”

“Well, you did the right thing coming here. Can I ask you something, though? What do you care what happens to her?”

“I guess I don’t.”

Clarence looked at him a moment. “Guess not.” He put the rifle back in the case. “Well, she’s in good hands. Your obligation is over.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“You’d be surprised, as I first was, how much justice money can buy. We’ll clear this mess up quickly. I mean, she’s clearly innocent.”

“Maybe I should stay?”

“No reason for it. Unless you feel there is.”

“No, no it’s fine. She should get back to her life without me hanging around.”

“I would think so.” Clarence sat down in a chair that was against the wall. “I’m not going to ask about your background or how you met her. She wouldn’t tell me. She just said you helped her when she needed it. But I think I can guess. So I’ll take over now. She’ll be fine. To be perfectly blunt, she asked that you leave. I don’t think she wanted to tell you herself because of how much you’ve helped her.”

He nodded. “Tell her
goodbye for me.”

“I will.”

Rhett walked into the hallway. The maid was there, and she smiled as she led him down the hall. He glanced back once but didn’t see Stephanie anywhere.

I
n the driver’s seat, he turned on the car but couldn’t bring himself to put it in drive. He kept glancing back to the mansion. He sat maybe five minutes before pulling down the driveway.

About halfway down, he heard a spit
, and a hole appeared in his windshield.

Another spit and
searing pain radiated from his shoulder. He ducked in his seat as bullets shattered the windshield and rear window. They began piercing the car doors and one got through and hit him in the chest. The car swerved to the right, the impact from a tree sending him into the dashboard. He reached for the pistol in his waistband when a face appeared in the driver’s side window.

“Hello, Isaac. How have you been?”