Diary of an Assassin Read online

  “I appreciate that,” she said, lightly touching his hand. “You’re a good friend. But I’m fine.”

  He shrugged and took another drink.

  CHAPTER 4

  Rhett waited in the alley and watched the steam rise from the Manhattan sewers in the cold morning. A non-profit was set up near some dumpsters and he watched people file in and out of the front door. It was a single glass door covered in handprints, the dumpsters just off to the side. He wondered how people even found this place if they needed to come here.

  Manhattan was not his city. He disliked crowds and disliked filth even more. Compared to his Saint Thomas with its clean sandy beaches, Manhattan seemed to him soiled with a stench that permeated everything, even him.

  A van pulled to a stop behind him, driven by a man with jet-black hair and a gold chain around his neck. In the passenger seat was a smaller man, eyeing Rhett like he had never seen another man before.

  The driver stepped out and approached him, his hands in his pockets as his eyes flitted to the non-profit and back.

  “You got our money?” the driver said.

  “It was wired to you this morning.”

  “I couldn’t get it.”

  “It has a hold. The hold will be removed as soon as the merchandise is delivered.” He glanced into the van, his eyes sweeping the driver. “I don’t know either of you. Where’s Johnny?”

  “He had to be in Philly. His pop’s really sick.” He glanced around again. “Come on back.”

  At the back of the van, the man opened the doors, revealing two steel suitcases.

  “Open them,” Rhett said.

  The first cradled a rifle in six separate pieces. Pure chrome with an infrared laser scope, it shimmered in the dull light of the alley. The next suitcase contained a pistol in four pieces. Also shining chrome.

  “Remove the hold,” the man said.

  Rhett watched his face: a bead of sweat was rolling down the forehead. Rhett didn’t take his eyes off him as he pulled out his phone slowly and dialed a number. After he entered in another, longer number, a message reported, “Funds released. Thank you,” loud enough for the man to hear. The man smiled.

  “Fifty thousand,” he smirked. “Who has that kind of money for a couple a guns?”

  “People that need guns I suppose.”

  The man reached into his pocket and removed a package of cigarettes. He put one to his lips, and as he patted his pockets for his lighter, his eyes never left Rhett’s.

  “We done here?” Rhett said.

  “Those guns are expensive. It would be a shame if they were stolen. Maybe you want I can drive them to your hotel for you.”

  Rhett glanced to the driver and then reached for one of the suitcases, his other hand slipping into his jacket. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  As he pulled the first suitcase out, the man in the passenger seat swung around, a Smith & Wesson pistol in his hand. Rhett drew his .22 and fired two shots, hitting the man in his left hand, the Smith & Wesson falling to the van floor.

  The driver swung with a right. Rhett ducked and came up with an elbow into his jaw. It snapped his head back and Rhett kicked him in the groin and swept his legs out from under him before he had recovered. The passenger, grunting from pain, scrabbled for the pistol. Rhett jumped in and grabbed his hand, shoving his finger through the small bullet wound in the back of his other. The man screamed and Rhett bashed his open mouth with the butt of his .22, cracking several teeth.

  The other man was on his feet and pulling a pistol out of his waistband. Rhett fired a single round, shattering his collarbone. The man shrieked and fell back in pain. The passenger threw a lightning-fast punch and caught Rhett on the jaw. He punched again and again, landing blows to his neck and face.

  Rhett brought his arms up and covered his face. He got up to his knees and spun around with a hook, connecting with the man’s temple. He fired two rounds into the man’s shoulders and then swung with everything he had into his jaw, breaking it and knocking him unconscious.

  He leapt outside the van and rolled to his feet, coming up with the pistol pointed at the driver, who was slouched against the vehicle, delirious from pain. Rhett stashed the weapon and removed both suitcases from the back before bending down over the man and checking his wound.

  “Normally I would’ve just killed both of you, but you’ve caught me at an odd time. You’ll live by the way.”

  Rhett turned to leave, a suitcase in each hand, when he saw a small child standing behind the glass door of the non-profit, staring with an open mouth at what he’d just seen. Rhett looked to the van and then back to the kid and said, “That’s what happens when you don’t stay in school.”

  He went around the corner to a Cadillac and drove away.

  June 16th

  We were in the forests of Virginia, somewhere in the south of the state. I couldn’t say exactly where because they wouldn’t tell us. We were doing maneuvers in pure mud because it had been raining for three days straight.

  A woman was in training with us. It was a big deal in those days and we had to respect her. At least I respected her. She was brunette and slim, with the muscles of a bodybuilder and the deep blue eyes of a model. Her name was Heather and she, out of the class of six, had by far the toughest job. Because while the rest of us helped each other through the training, she felt she had to prove herself by doing it all on her own.

  As we were finishing up a ten-mile run through the mud with fifty-pound packs on our backs, we stopped suddenly and dropped to our stomachs. Targets appeared up in the forest. We took out our L115A3 AWM rifles. Probably the best sniper rifles known to man. They were a British make and I always thought it odd that we were Americans, signed up with an American agency, on the premise of patriotism, using British weapons. It wasn’t until later that I realized it spoke a lot about the agency: they used whatever tool worked. Pride and emotion played no part in their decisions.

  Heather pulled out her weapon and began to assemble it. She took out her night-vision goggles, as it was late now. Taking a step forward, she slipped on the mud and fell to the side, and, I’d learn later, broke her ankle.

  The rest of us fired off our shots. Five clean shots through the hearts of the paper targets. We packed up and began the jog again. All of us except Heather. She packed, but couldn’t walk. The other men looked to each other and to me.

  “Leave her,” they said, and they began to jog away. I started to run and then glanced back at her, covered in mud, slogging through the forest with a broken ankle. No woman had ever looked so beautiful to me before.

  I went back and put her arm around my neck. “I don’t need your help,” she said. “Maybe not,” I said. “But you’re going to get it anyway.”

  She looked at me and then didn’t say anything for a while. When she did speak all she said was, “I’m Heather.”

  “Isaac.”

  “I know,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  At least the morning was warm, Rhett thought as he woke at the Four Seasons. In his bathrobe, he looked out the windows at the city. He’d been here twice before, one time for work…and one time with his wife.

  He remembered it was snowing and she looked so beautiful as snowflakes sparkled on her eyelashes. They walked down the street, in awe of the city and the life they had ahead of them. She had just finished her medical degree and was going into pediatric medicine. Rhett was moving with her to Chicago where she would complete her residency. It was just the beginning of their life, filled with hope and possibility…then she was ripped away from him.

  He turned away from the window and showered, dressing in jeans and a sports coat. He headed downstairs and opted to take a taxi instead of driving the Cadillac, which he had rented with one of his fake identifications and credit cards.

  “Where to?” the cabbie said.

  “Hamilton Hotel. The construction site.”

  “You got it.”

  Rhett noticed the cabbie took the long
est route but didn’t say anything. It gave him a moment to think and watch the city. Cities, he believed, had energy and personality. Some cities he’d been to, like Bangkok, had dark energy. Something taken from the acts that the citizens allowed to occur there every day. Some cities had good energy that made one feel uplifted just by being there. Though often disgusted by the city, today, he couldn’t tell where Manhattan fell.

  He arrived at the site. Crowds were already gathered. They would be breaking ground today for the hotel, and the mayor and two members of Congress would be there.

  Rhett paid the cabbie and got out. He mingled with the crowd as the mayor delivered a speech on the future of New York and how they were the most progressive state in the nation. He read through some stats of the city and the improvements that had been made. It was essentially a reelection speech.

  Then he introduced Stephanie Johnson, congresswoman of the fourteenth district. She met applause and shook a few hands before taking the podium. Rhett watched her as she told a story about her first time in Manhattan. The crowd laughed. The woman was a natural up there. Her story wasn’t forced in any way, and he could tell she enjoyed what she did.

  Rhett pulled up her dossier on his phone.

  She’d been born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a single mother. Her father had abandoned them before she was born and she had never established contact with him. She had one sibling, and her mother worked two jobs and attended law school at night. She eventually became a successful contract litigation attorney and was able to send Stephanie and her brother to a private school. When Stephanie graduated high school, she attended the University of Connecticut and then NYU for law.

  Stephanie was married at twenty-five to Paul Johnson, another successful attorney, who, Rhett saw, had a short criminal history of two drug possession cases and a DUI. He worked at a large law firm and was able to avoid any sanctions by the state bar, receiving only a short suspension and some drug and alcohol counseling.

  A photo of Stephanie was included. This had been snapped by the tagger—the man or woman who did the research and put the dossier together—and Stephanie was unaware she was being photographed. She was waiting on a street corner for something, wearing a skirt and a red blouse. She was staring off in the distance, her face pointed in the direction of the camera. Rhett gazed into her eyes. They held something. He wasn’t entirely sure what. Maybe pain. A hidden pain that she refused to show the world.

  Applause erupted around him and he looked up to see Stephanie smiling at the crowd. He looked into her eyes. Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to hide the pain he had seen in the photo. It was still there, like a weight that she couldn’t push off herself.

  He listened to the rest of her speech and watched the security detail that had accompanied her. It was a private firm. The Secret Service wasn’t assigned to members of Congress unless they were running for the presidency, were the speaker of the house, or were a majority leader of the senate.

  Her security detail were laughing and not paying attention to the crowd. Rhett listened to the lieutenant governor begin his speech as Stephanie took a seat.

  After that the mayor broke ground by cutting a ribbon and pushing a shovel into the dirt, posing for the half dozen photographers.

  When it was over, Rhett watched as the security detail followed her to a car. One of the men slipped into the driver’s seat and the other the passenger. Their heads were buried in their phones and they were completely oblivious to what was going on around them. They drove away, Stephanie in the backseat on her cell phone, staring out the windows, which Rhett could tell had not been reinforced: she was completely vulnerable.

  The lieutenant governor was coming through behind him and Rhett stepped back. As he came by, he grabbed Rhett’s hand. One photographer, an overweight man with glasses, caught the moment.

  When the groundbreaking was finished and the crowd had dispersed, Rhett waited across the street. He watched a photographer speak to a few other people before he walked away on the sidewalk: no car. Rhett followed him.

  The photographer continued on the concrete walkway, slipping past crowds, his head down over his phone. They were on 3rd Ave near 68th and Rhett was close enough to him that he could see the tattoo peeking out from his sleeve.

  The photographer turned into a bar and grill. Rhett waited a few moments and then followed him inside. The bar was dimly lit but had plenty of windows. Two flatscreen televisions were tuned to ESPN, and the photographer hunkered down at the bar and ordered a beer, staring blankly at the screens. Rhett sat one stool down.

  The camera was placed on the bar next to the man’s beer. Rhett ordered a Heineken and pretended to watch television.

  “How you doing?” Rhett said.

  The man nodded.

  “I’ve never been here before. Seems like a nice place.”

  “Listen, I’m not really looking for any friends and I ain’t a queer so there’s no reason for us to talk.”

  “Sure, sorry.”

  Rhett got his beer and then the bartender turned away, busy with some crates. Two other patrons sat in the bar but they were clearly alcoholics, completely focused on their drinks. Rhett pulled a small canister the size of a stick of gum out of his pocket. He got in really close to the photographer, almost as if they were kissing.

  “What the f—”

  As Rhett pushed the button on the canister, a small spray entered the photographer’s nostrils. His eyes almost instantaneously rolled back into his head and he started snoring. Rhett placed the photographer’s head down on the bar and grabbed the camera as he headed out the door.

  CHAPTER 6

  The night air had a chill to it and the moon was covered by clouds. Rhett sat on the roof of a small apartment building across the street from Stephanie Johnson’s home, a large multi-level condominium. The telescope was set in front of him on the ledge and the audio receiver was next to it, appearing like some miniature satellite dish. It could receive sound from over two hundred feet away and permeated through brick walls.

  As her husband, Paul, parked in a reserved spot up the street, Rhett turned the receiver on and put in his headphones. Stephanie sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee. It was one in the morning. Rhett peered through the telescope and could see that Paul’s tie was undone, his shirt untucked, and, even through a telescope, that he had make-up smeared on his collar.

  “Were you with your whore again?” she said mildly.

  “She’s not a whore,” Paul said as he went into the fridge. “But she does fuck like an animal.”

  Stephanie winced. “Do you really have so little respect for me? What happened to us, Paul? You used to love me.”

  “I know.”

  “Was it something I did, to make you fall out of love with me?”

  “You fell outta love with me a long time ago. If you ever loved me at all. I think you might’ve married me just to get away from that family of yours.”

  “I want a divorce. I saw an attorney and he’s drafting the paperwork. You can have the condo and the car. I don’t want anything from you.”

  “We’re not divorcing,” he said, placing some sandwich items on the counter.

  “We’re no-fault, Paul. It’s not up to you.”

  Paul swiped his arm across the counter, a jar of mayonnaise hitting the wall and shattering. He spun around and grabbed Stephanie by the collar, lifting her up and slamming her against the fridge. She was crying and begging as he slapped her across the face twice before letting her drop to the floor.

  Rhett’s grip on the telescope tightened till his fingers were turning white.

  Paul stood over her, wiping a splatter of mayonnaise off himself with his hand. “Clean up this mess and make me a sandwich.”

  “Get out!” she screamed.

  He laughed. “My name’s on the deed too. You get the fuck out.”

  As he walked away, Rhett followed him. He stood by the stairs, debating something, and then grabbed his coat and
went back outside and down the street to his car. Rhett turned back to Stephanie. She was on the floor, curled up with her knees against her chest. She was crying, her face buried in her arms.

  He lowered the telescope, tapping his fingers against it for several seconds. Pulling out his phone, Rhett opened her dossier and clicked on a telephone number. Stephanie sniffed a few times, pulling herself together before answering.

  “Hello?”

  Even to a number she didn’t recognize, she had to portray strength.

  “Hi, is Andy there?”

  “I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name.”

  “Oh, you sure? I was under the impression he would be there.”

  “No, this is the Johnson residence,” Stephanie said, standing up and beginning to clean the mess.

  “Oh. I’m sorry about that. I had a friend from a long time ago at this number. I guess I don’t know why I still expected him to have it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “My name’s William.” Stephanie was quiet a moment. “Sorry, I know it’s weird. I was just lonely right now and felt like talking to somebody.”

  “I’m sure they have chat lines for that.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure they do. Sorry again, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “No, wait, I was rude. I’m the one that should be apologizing.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “So who’s your friend that had this number?”

  “A friend that was there for me once when I didn’t have anyone else.”

  “Those kinds of friends are rare,” she said, standing up and going to her purse. She removed the divorce papers and put them on the kitchen table.

  “I know, but I didn’t realize that until too late. We met in high school, two nerds that got beat up together.”

  “I know the feeling. I was captain of the chess team.”