The Rogue Agent (The Agent Series) Read online

  One

  In a Chelsea apartment overlooking the Hudson River, a spent prostitute passed out beside him, Gateno stared at his syringe.

  It was an antique made of steel and thick glass that he had found in a flea market in Paris’s seventh arrondissement decades ago.

  He remembered that day well, the steady smile he had worn as he’d wandered the city, the satisfaction that had run through him like a current of electricity.

  The night before, at the age of twenty-six, he’d made his first professional kill.

  A flawless effort—he recalled every detail of that, too, thought of it often, in fact, much in the way another man might remember his first woman.

  Fondly, proudly, nostalgically, even wistfully.

  An act of self-discovery, and something he had wanted for a long time.

  Generally, women were of little interest to Gateno, no more than a pleasant distraction in which he indulged once or twice a month. This prolonged period of time between sexual encounters was a carryover from his stint in the French Foreign Legion, when women had been few and far between and always enjoyed in exchange for cash.

  Most of the habits that defined him had been acquired during those formative years—fighting as a mercenary in wars in which he’d had no political stake, doing so alongside men with whom he’d sweated and bled but ultimately knew little about.

  A time of monklike isolation, physical and psychological demands, and skills acquired and sharpened. Most important, it had been a time of sanctioned violence.

  Gateno had attempted to replicate as much of that as he could in his postservice life, though of course he had ultimately replaced certain hardships with comforts, some of which bordered on luxury. The loft apartment—the top floor of a renovated building across from the Chelsea Piers—was one such comfort.

  Arched windows, polished plank floors, exposed brick. A sweatshop a century ago, but all traces of that had been erased.

  A far cry from the desert conditions he had endured as a young legionnaire, or the years spent in a student-district hovel in Paris as he worked to make a name for himself.

  It wasn’t until he had branched out to America and performed well there as a freelancer that his standing in the industry of death had been secured. He’d earned a reputation for never confronting a physical boundary that he could not cross.

  As well as for having no moral center to hold him back.

  There was no one he would not kill—man, woman, child.

  An orphan by the age of seven, for a long time he had wished that he’d been killed along with his parents. He would have preferred that over the life of poverty and degradation into which he’d been thrust.

  How could one who had learned to devalue his life ever come to value the lives of others?

  This ingrained amorality, combined with his ability to breach any perimeter, helped Gateno quickly rise to the top of his profession.

  Once he had the means, his existence gradually shifted from the mere act of surviving to the ceaseless collecting of pleasures. And as each pleasure he sought was ultimately spent, he found himself consumed with the pursuit of another.

  The naked prostitute beside him now was an indulgence in both pleasure and luxury—buffed and polished and sweetly scented, she was as eager to please as she was beautiful.

  Dark-haired, like his long-lost mother, with a delicate face and soft skin and swimmer’s build.

  The service he used sent only the best.

  His greatest indulgence, however, wasn’t women for hire but rather the cocktail of illicit drugs he self-injected every afternoon.

  A mixture of morphine, cocaine, and codeine that brought him to a state of exquisite indifference.

  A godlike indifference.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, he stared at his waiting syringe.

  Beside the antique was its carrying case—roughly the size of a paperback book, fashioned from worn black leather, its cover embossed with a gothic eagle, its broad wings spread wide and head turned to the left.

  The Hoheitszeichen—the national symbol of the Third Reich.

  It was a relic from a time long before he was born, but a cherished one, more for its rareness than its politics, though he did admire the cold savagery of the men who had followed that symbol, pledging to live and die by it.

  So it served as a reminder of both the expectations of those who employed him and what was made necessary by his taste for certain luxuries.

  Gateno had waited until four thirty before he began the ritual of preparing his syringe.

  He took his time, enjoying the process before finally injecting himself and settling back, and was well into his state of heightened indifference when one of his several cell phones rang.

  He took the call and stepped away from his platform bed. The drugged woman stretched across it in a tangle of sheets was sleeping, but there was no point in taking the risk of speaking in her presence.

  Even an unconscious mind gathered and retained information that could later be retrieved under hypnosis.

  Naked, Gateno walked to the large floor-to-ceiling window at the front of his apartment, not realizing till he was a few steps from it that the overcast April day he’d spent screwing a prostitute had given way to a rainy evening.

  Heavy drops broke against the thick panes of glass.

  He stood at the window and looked down at the rush hour traffic on Eleventh Avenue.

  A river of blurred car lights flowed eight stories below.

  Only one man had the number to this particular phone, so there was no need to bother with pleasantries.

  “Go ahead,” Gateno said.

  “I need you to meet me.”

  “Where?”

  “There isn’t a lot of time. Come down to the piers. Start walking, I will find you.”

  Gateno was dressed and out his door in less than five minutes. His tailored raincoat and gentleman’s umbrella protected him from the falling rain, but there was a chilled mist churning in the air that coated his dark face as he crossed Eleventh.

  He was approaching Pier 39 when he saw the man he expected to see.

  Not the man who had called him, but that man’s personal driver and bodyguard.

  Gateno knew him as Karl, and whether that was the man’s real name didn’t matter.

  What did matter was that Karl was a brute—average in height but bull shouldered, with a torso like a keg and thick legs to support it.

  Short but strong arms, hands like a butcher.

  Contradicting the man’s physical build was a pair of intelligent eyes.

  Eyes that burned, eyes that were sharp.

  Gateno did what he always did when he came face-to-face with Karl. He visualized the ways in which he would kill him if that ever became necessary.

  A single shot to the forehead; a stiletto repeatedly plunged into his solar plexus; the edge of his hand landing with force just above his Adam’s apple.

  Gateno never met a man without imagining how he would kill him.

  Killing an enemy was easy—an innate hatred of the “other” carried one to the required mind-set.

  Enraged, one could tear a man to pieces.

  But to kill on demand, without provocation or violent emotion, required a different frame of mind, and seeing in his mind’s eye the killing of those he encountered was the first step toward that.

  The two men stared at each other for a moment. Finally, Karl nodded and turned, prompting Gateno to follow.

  The man Gateno had come to meet was known to him only as the Benefactor.

  It was the Benefactor who had first brought Gateno to America, not as the solitary assassin he would later become but as part of a hit team sent to kill a deep-cover intelligence officer in his own home.

  An audition, as such, and one that Gateno had easily passed, even though the job hadn’t gone exactly to plan.

  But while facing mission failure that long-ago night, Gateno had adapted, taking charge of the situation and
in doing so setting into motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to his new employer’s desired result—a fact the Benefactor had been quick to recognize.

  You’ve got a bright future ahead of you, the man had said to Gateno afterward.

  It had been nothing short of a turning point in Gateno’s life.

  Now he followed Karl to meet once more with the man to whom he owed so much. After a brief walk, Gateno spotted the Benefactor standing midway down a pier, holding an umbrella and facing the river.

  As Gateno approached, he turned.

  The Benefactor was always a well-dressed man. Beneath his dark raincoat was a Tom Ford suit—his trademark. He usually wore shoes handmade from Italian leather, but tonight, against the rain, he had on a pair of black mountain boots, no doubt handmade as well.

  He was tall, in his early sixties, his dark hair graying at the temples.

  This was the only man Gateno feared—not because Gateno couldn’t easily kill him, which he had as a matter of habit envisioned countless times, but because the power this man wielded was the kind that would not cease with his death.

  It was common knowledge that, in the event of this man’s untimely demise, his killer would be hunted.

  Hunted by men like Gateno, dozens of them dispatched on capture-or-kill missions.

  Without question, it would be better for whoever did one day kill the Benefactor that he allowed himself to be killed instead of captured.

  But Gateno had no intention of being that man, so he cleared his mind of these thoughts.

  He needed to focus now.

  Greeted with the usual nod, Gateno nodded back.

  Karl was a few feet behind him. This, too, was typical, though Gateno wondered whether it was really necessary since the steady hiss of the heavy rain would likely prevent the brute from hearing his employer speak.

  The Benefactor laid out what it was he needed Gateno to do tonight, then asked whether the instructions were clear.

  Gateno told him that they were.

  “I dislike having to ask this of you,” the Benefactor said. “It’s akin to using a Ferrari to haul garbage. But it is necessary if we are going to begin tying up these loose ends once and for all. Once my enemy is weakened, and once his witness is dead, then we can make our move against his people.”

  Gateno nodded. “I understand.”

  “You have crews standing by?”

  “Always.”

  “You needn’t waste your best men on the first attack. The second, however, cannot fail. I’ll leave the details up to you, but I would prefer that you lead the second assault yourself. There is no room for error here.”

  “Of course.”

  “How soon can you have your teams in place?”

  “I’ll need two hours to assemble the right men for each job.”

  “You have it, but no more than that.”

  Gateno sensed that there was more to come, so he waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  “I will need to ask one more thing of you,” the Benefactor said.

  “Name it.”

  “You will need to leave when this is done. Immediately. Not just the city, but the country as well. As a matter of history, wars begin with a single shot, and it’s a war we’re starting. As a result, you will likely find that you’ve become a most-wanted man. There will be those who’ll make it their mission to know what you know. For my sake as well as yours, this cannot happen. So I’d advise you to choose a location where you are known to no one. I’m afraid a less-civilized corner of the world would be the best option. Few would think to look for a man like you—a man with your tastes—in some South American slum or African hellhole.”

  Nothing like this had ever been requested of Gateno. Since he wasn’t certain what to say, he said nothing.

  “You will be compensated for your inability to work,” the Benefactor said. “A generous monthly stipend by wire transfer. I cannot tell you for how long we will need you to remain unseen, but a message will be gotten to you via our usual means when the time is right for you to reemerge.”

  Gateno knew the system.

  A fictitious obituary would appear in a Monday issue of Le Monde, both the print and online editions. The name, birthplace, and date of birth listed in the obit would serve as a code that would instruct him what to do next.

  “I would not ask this of you if there were any other way,” the Benefactor said. “We need your particular skills and unerring professionalism tonight. And then we need you not to exist.”

  If this man hadn’t given him a chance two decades ago, recruited him and seen in him what no one else had, Gateno would likely still be in that student-district hovel, another Algerian refugee eking out a bare-minimum existence as a thug, forced to take greater risks for significantly less gain.

  Or worse, having long since surrendered his reason to a twisted interpretation of religion, he would be in some desert terrorist camp, as willing to kill as he was to be killed.

  Die for a cause, just to give his miserable life something that resembled meaning.

  So what else could he do but accept the terms put before him?

  Pay the homage due to the man who had always lived up to his name.

  “I work for you,” Gateno said. “I will do whatever you need me to do.”

  The Benefactor extended his gloved hand, and Gateno took it.

  Later, Gateno prepared for the job.

  He fieldstripped, lubricated, and reassembled his Walther PPK.

  The weapon was chambered for the nine-millimeter Kurtz cartridge, and though that round was commonly believed to be near the low end of the lethality scale, Gateno had countless kills with it to justify his continued use.

  Though it wasn’t a pistol one would bring to a firefight, he was an assassin, and the PPK had been the assassin’s weapon of choice throughout its ninety-year history.

  In keeping with his fondness for specific artifacts, Gateno had chosen a Walther that had been manufactured in Germany in the late thirties and bore on its Bakelite grips a symbol identical to the one on his syringe case.

  His obsession with antiques, however, did not extend to his preferred ammunition.

  The Walther was loaded with state-of-the-art hollow points, plus-P rated for increased feet-per-second out of the muzzle.

  The rifle he would use tonight in his role as team leader was a Barrett Model 82A1, chambered in .50 BMG and equipped with a SIG Sauer infrared scope.

  The epitome of the modern-day sniper rifle.

  Another current tech he had come to embrace affected the precaution he’d taken since his first professional kill. He’d made a record of every job—the target, the where and how and when, as well as the identity, or as much of the identity as he knew, of the person who had ordered the kill.

  The digital age had made securing those records easier.

  And it would be just as easy for him to retrieve his records, should he need them at some point to barter with the authorities for his freedom.

  Or, in another circumstance he did not like to imagine, for his very life.

  Signing in to his encrypted online storage account via his personal smartphone, he opened an existing Word document and added tonight’s details to it. Saving and closing the document, he signed out.

  His last act before leaving was to load his syringe with a lethal dose of liquid valium and inject the woman lying motionless in his bed.

  That drug, combined with the heroin already in her system, was more than enough to guarantee death.

  She had seen his face, and her body contained countless samples of his DNA, so there was no choice in the matter.

  Not that he had any misgivings about killing another prostitute.

  As the fatherless son of one, he felt as if doing so were his duty.

  He waited as her breathing grew labored—waited to watch her breathe her last—and then, understanding that he would not return to this place, gathered his essentials and exited.r />
  Once he had driven out of Chelsea, he contacted his courier and instructed her to arrange for the removal and disposal of the body.

  She had been recommended to him by a fellow former legionnaire—a man he trusted with his life. And she had worked for Gateno since his arrival in New York, providing him with the things he needed to enjoy his life, as well as the basics.

  As was always the case wherever Gateno went, it was preferable that as few people as possible saw his face.

  Anonymity was a must, so even simple things like trips to the market were out of the question.

  Cashiers had memories, and the city was a net of security and surveillance cameras.

  And then there was the mixture of drugs he required, as well as the women he occasionally needed.

  Gateno made that call, and upon ending it, he experienced the same intense sensation he felt every time he had closed one chapter of his life but had yet to begin the next.

  It was a limbo defined by acts of intense violence.

  He was prepared to throw himself into this temporary void with the devotion of a zealot, as was his custom.

  More than that, violence was at the core of his nature—the thing he daydreamed about and the tendency that colored every action he took.

  It was also at the root of every desire he pursued.

  The next few days, and what they would require and what that would unleash in him, were the very things for which he lived.

  Two

  Cahill was waiting for the call.

  He’d been told to expect it, had gotten ready by five and had been sitting in the dark since then, his burner phone within quick reach on the table beside his chair. But it was just after nine now and still no word yet.

  Standing by was the least favorite part of his job.

  He preferred to be in motion, rushing to complete his mission, because there was a sense of purpose that came with that, and purpose tended to clear all other thoughts from his mind.

  A recon marine once, he’d long ago learned the art of pushing himself to the point where everything else fell away.

  Thought, emotion, pain—until all that remained was his will.

  It was a skill he had maintained and honed in his civilian life.