Gemini Man--The Official Movie Novelization

by Titan Books

  Well, Dormov wouldn’t have to worry about that, nor would he be spilling his guts. And Monroe would only have to tolerate the hyperactive kid until the next stop, where he’d be getting off if everything went according to plan. He was certain it would. He was working with Henry Brogan and Henry never failed to come through. When Henry was on a job, he was like a machine. Nothing rattled him or distracted him; he had focus like a laser and a sense of timing that was practically supernatural. The jumpiness Monroe always felt at the start of a mission was, in fact, sheer anticipation.

  Today, however, that kid running up and down the aisle chattering away with her little-girl curls bouncing around her face was driving him crazy. Was she six? He wasn’t good at guessing kids’ ages.

  Or any ages, he thought, remembering how he’d assumed Henry was in his late thirties. When Henry told him he was fifty-one, his jaw had dropped. How could anyone look that good in their fifties?

  Dammit, where were that kid’s parents? The train would be pulling out any minute, why hadn’t they corralled her already? Oh, right—everything was different in Europe, including methods of parenting. Monroe had heard somewhere the French started giving their kids wine with dinner when they were three years old. The practice probably extended to every country where they spoke French, like here in the Liège province. He looked at his watch as the girl pattered past him for the millionth time, her mouth running like a motor. Too bad dinnertime was still hours away—a little wine would calm her down. She might even sleep all the way to wherever. Which, now that he was thinking of it, might have been why the French gave their kids wine in the first place.

  Across the aisle and three rows down from him, one of Valery Dormov’s bodyguards was fussing over him, had been ever since they’d boarded the train. Maybe he’d been a nursemaid in a previous incarnation. He wouldn’t let up even though Dormov kept waving him off and telling him he was fine.

  The bodyguard’s unrelenting solicitude was getting on Monroe’s nerves as much as the girl was. It was torment just having to listen to him asking him over and over if Dormov wanted something to eat or drink or read, did he need a pillow, was his seat okay. Nyet, nyet, nyet, the old man said, waving one hand. If it had been anyone else, Monroe might have actually gotten up and told them to leave the poor guy in peace. Dormov was hardly a poor guy, and he would rest in peace soon. The thought put a smile on Monroe’s face.

  The little girl ran past Monroe again going the other way. If the train didn’t get underway soon, he thought, he’d have to start running up and down the aisle himself just to blow off steam. Still, it didn’t really matter if they ran late, just as long as Henry was on time. And he would be.

  As if in response to his thoughts, the train gave a jerk and began to move forward. At the same moment, a female voice came over the PA system, making an announcement about travel times, destinations, and passenger safety and, since it was all in French, it sounded enchanting and a bit seductive. Monroe had been told that Belgians had a softer accent than they did in France. His ear wasn’t good enough to tell the difference. Henry’s probably was, though; he was that kind of precise.

  He looked out the window. “Car number six,” he said, his voice quiet and clear. “We’re moving. Four alpha. Repeat: four alpha. Window seat, his team on all sides.”

  * * *

  Some miles to the south and east, Henry replied, “Copy that.”

  His eyes were still on the tracks in the distance, specifically on the spot where they disappeared into a tunnel cut into a hill. The entrance to the tunnel was somewhat lower than his vantage point. Moving quickly but without hurrying, Henry got out of the driver’s seat and went around to the rear to raise the hatch before pausing a moment to check the time on his wristwatch. He’d bought it on base when he was still in boot camp because it looked right to him, like the kind of watch a Marine would wear. It was still working and he still liked seeing it on his wrist. Then he opened the hard case in the back of the SUV.

  The Remington 700 sniper rifle was old and sturdy, like his watch, like himself, and they were all still going. The moment he began assembling the Remington, a sensation of calm control bloomed inside him and flowed outward from his core into his head and his hands, into the air around him so that he breathed the same imperturbable, perfect balance that made up his mind and body. And the Remington.

  Henry calibrated the Remington’s telescopic sight, attached it to the bipod on the barrel, then lay down on his stomach enjoying the way his body warmed to the position. It felt like coming home; it always did.

  “Speed?” he asked.

  “238 kilometers per hour and holding steady,” said Monroe’s voice in his ear. Henry smiled.

  * * *

  Monroe shifted in his seat. It was as if his skin were on too tight. He transferred the book he’d been pretending to read—or trying to pretend to read—from one hand to the other and back again.

  “You sound excited,” Henry said, as calm and matter-of-fact as ever.

  “I do love capping bad guys,” Monroe said, shifting again. If Henry had seen him, he might have knocked him out with the butt of the Remington. Had to, for your own good, he’d say later when Monroe came to. You were going to give the whole thing away.

  Monroe forced himself to stare down at the book instead of stealing another look at Dormov and his bodyguards. This wasn’t his first rodeo; he knew damned well you had to be careful not to look at the target too much. They would notice and get the idea something was up. Then he looked anyway.

  Dormov was finally starting to show a little impatience with the helpful bodyguard, waving him off without bothering to turn away from the window. It wouldn’t be much longer now. Knowing that made Monroe even jumpier.

  * * *

  The train appeared on the track eight hundred yards from the hilltop where Henry lay on his belly.

  He loaded a single bullet into the Remington. One shot was all he’d get. If he couldn’t do it in one shot… but he always had.

  He tapped the stock twice and took aim.

  * * *

  “Wait. Wait.”

  Henry could practically hear Monroe’s knuckles whiten. He was about to tell him to unbunch his panties when Monroe said the magic words:

  “Civilian in play.”

  Henry froze and the universe froze with him. Except for the goddam train speeding toward the tunnel as if it were desperate to reach safe haven.

  * * *

  The good news was the little girl had finally stopped running up and down the aisle. The bad news was she was now standing in the aisle right beside Dormov and his party, staring at them as if transfixed. Dormov stared back at her, apparently disconcerted by her unabashed curiosity.

  She’s going to stand there and save his life, Monroe thought, horrified. The little shit’s going to save this bastard’s life. She’s going to blow our only chance to prevent a foreign power from getting hold of classified material, and she’s going to do it just by being a goddam little kid.

  Monroe was about to get up and find some pretense to make her move even if he had to knock her down, when her mother finally materialized to take charge of her. There was a strong resemblance between the little girl and the pretty young woman dressed in a white blouse and blue skirt but somehow her mother had managed to remain invisible until now. She took her daughter by the shoulders and ushered her away, admonishing her gently in French that sounded musical to Monroe.

  Monroe’s sigh of relief cut off sharply when the two of them took seats in the next row, the girl sitting directly behind Dormov. She was far too close for Monroe’s comfort but it didn’t matter as long as she was outside the kill box.

  “Clear,” Monroe said under his breath.

  * * *

  Looking through the scope, Henry felt himself dare to resume breathing. “Confirm that,” he said as the first car entered the tunnel. And do it fucking now, he added silently.

  “Confirmed. Clear. Go to green,” Monroe said
, his voice tight and urgent.

  “Copy.” Henry’s finger curled around the trigger and squeezed.

  * * *

  The moment of the shot was always the moment, The One True Moment when the universe was finally in order, when it finally made sense. All cause was aligned with effect, everything was in the right place, and every place was in the right position in relation to his own. He knew when the bullet left the barrel and visualized the path it took through the softly sunlit air all the way to the train, where, like everything else in the universe, it would be exactly where it was supposed to be.

  Except it wasn’t.

  * * *

  Henry took his eye from the scope. The immutable calm, clarity, and conviction that always enveloped him on a job had vanished. Everything in the perfectly ordered universe had slipped out of alignment; The One True Moment had not come together. There was no calm around him. He was only a guy holding a rifle, lying on his belly in the dirt below an uncaring sky somewhere in northwestern Europe.

  He’d missed the shot.

  He didn’t know how he knew, he just did.

  * * *

  Monroe was unaware of Henry’s frame of mind. The entire carriage was in an uproar. The little girl’s mother was screaming as she held her daughter in her arms, one hand over her eyes even though the child couldn’t see anything, not even the hole in the window beside Dormov. Dormov himself sat with his head cocked at a rather inelegant angle while blood dribbled down onto his shirt from the gunshot wound in his throat.

  The bodyguards sat frozen in place as if the shot had turned them all into statues, even the one who had been so attentive, and they were still frozen when the train emerged from the tunnel. There was going to be hell to pay when they reported to their superiors. They’d had one job and they’d failed spectacularly.

  Tant pis—for them. A bad guy had been capped. Now Dormov would never spill his guts about everything he’d gained from thirty-five years of government-funded research in America. Everything Dormov knew about chemical-biological warfare had died with him. Disaster averted, everything was as it should be. All was right with the world.

  “Alpha, mike, foxtrot,” Monroe said cheerfully.

  * * *

  Henry removed the tiny earpiece without responding. Normally Monroe’s sign-off was the cherry on top but he wasn’t feeling it today. He was on automatic pilot as he disassembled the rifle, without the satisfaction he should have felt after eliminating a terrorist—and a bioterrorist at that, thus making the world a safer place. Something had gone wrong, and for now, he and Monroe had nothing more to talk about.

  CHAPTER 2

  Henry had been around the world more times than he could count, first as a Marine and later for his current employer, but unlike many other well-travelled people, he did not subscribe to the belief that one place was pretty much like another. Anyone who did, in his opinion, wasn’t paying attention. Every place he’d ever visited had characteristics and features found nowhere else, with one exception: abandoned buildings.

  If someone had blindfolded him and taken him to an abandoned building anywhere in the world, then put a gun to his head and told him to guess where he was without looking out a (broken) window, he’d have been dead. There always seemed to be the same detritus on the floor, the same wood fragments from stairs or railings, the same scattering of shattered glass, and the same trash indicating it had been the site of more than one underage drinking party as well as shelter for someone in transit from nowhere to nowhere else. The abandoned building where he was now was no exception.

  Abruptly he realized he had been standing over the crate marked fish oil like a man in a trance, holding the components of the Remington as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Maybe he should take a few of those tins home with him, boost his brainpower with omega-3, instead of just using them to camouflage a weapon. Probably wouldn’t help his aim, though, he thought ruefully as he stuffed the Remington’s parts into the packing material.

  “Shipping to the same place?” Monroe asked cheerfully from behind him.

  “Yup.” In spite of everything, Henry couldn’t help grinning. Monroe had that effect on him. The guy was like a beagle—always glad to see him, full of good spirits. He was young, of course, but not that young. Most DIA agents his age had already begun to have their shiny-happy worn off but not Monroe, not yet. Henry wanted to believe that Monroe might be tougher in that respect than the average twenty-something. In which case, the agency would only work that much harder to wear down his spirit. You just couldn’t win.

  “Gotta say, that was your best ever.” Monroe had a look of ineffable happiness on his young face as he joined Henry next to the open crate. Yeah, a human beagle. “Windage, minute-of-angle, redirection from the window. I was—”

  Henry hated to burst his bubble but he had to. “Where’d I hit him?”

  “Neck. On a moving train.” Monroe showed him his iPhone.

  Henry drew back, horrified. “You took a picture?”

  “Me and everybody else,” Monroe assured him.

  An image popped into Henry’s head of a crowd of people who were so busy jockeying for position around the dead man that none of them, including the conductor, called for help, and felt even more revolted. What the hell was wrong with people? Bunch of ghouls.

  “Delete it,” he ordered Monroe. “Jesus.”

  “Henry, four shooters whiffed on this guy before you got the call and they were all studs. Then you ring him up on the first try.” He put a hand over his heart, pretending to sniff back a tear. “It got me kind of emotional.”

  “Delete it,” Henry said again, growling.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll delete it.” Monroe showed him the iPhone screen. Now there was a photo of a cat with a word balloon over its head asking ungrammatically for a misspelled cheeseburger. “There, it’s all gone. Happy now?”

  Happy wasn’t the word Henry would have chosen—not even close—but knowing that Monroe wouldn’t be walking around with death porn on his cell phone didn’t make him unhappy. It was just too bad that he was about to bum the kid out completely. He didn’t want to but it couldn’t be helped. When you knew the truth, you knew it, and it was no good trying to deny it.

  Henry stuck out his hand. Looking surprised, Monroe hesitated, then shook it. “Just want to say it was great working with you and good luck.” He turned to the backpack sitting beside the crate and zipped it closed as the beagle went from oh-boy-oh-boy-I’m-so-happy to confused apprehension.

  “Wait a second,” Monroe said. “‘Good luck’? As in ‘bye’?”

  Henry shouldered the backpack. “Yeah. I’m going out of business.”

  For a second or two, Monroe was actually speechless. “But why?”

  The mental image of Dormov slumped in his seat with a hole in his neck flashed through Henry’s mind. “’Cuz I was aiming for his head.”

  Henry could practically feel Monroe’s dumbfounded stare on his back as he walked away. He had really hated doing that to the beagle but he’d had no choice. As soon as he’d pulled the trigger, he’d felt it in his bones that it had gone wrong and the revolting photo Monroe had showed him proved the feeling hadn’t been some kind of neurotic, I’m-getting-old brain fart. Way back in the beginning, he’d promised himself that the day he missed would be the day he quit and he could not, would not, break that promise. The next miss might not be close enough for government work.

  But damn, he was going to miss that beagle something fierce.

  CHAPTER 3

  If one place wasn’t pretty much like another (except for abandoned buildings), then it followed as the night follows the day that there was no place like home. And even if he was wrong about that and everything else, Henry was absolutely sure there was no place like Buttermilk Sound in the Georgia estuaries.

  Henry ambled down the long dock to the boathouse, careful as always to keep to the center of the weathered boards. Now that he was no longer with the agency, he was
going to spend a lot more time enjoying the pleasures of living near water. At the moment, however, there was one last thing he had to do before the mission in Liège was well and truly over.

  Inside the boathouse, he pulled the photo of Valery Dormov out of one pocket and a Zippo out of the other. The lighter gave Henry a flame as soon as he thumbed the wheel. He touched it to the photo, watching for a second as it consumed the Russian’s image before dropping the burning paper into a fishbowl on a shelf, where it joined the ashes of photos from previous missions.

  And that was that. Now he was retired.

  Henry turned to go back to the house and then paused. A goldfish bowl a little over half full of ashes. Was that really what his entire life’s work amounted to?

  Somewhere, a retiring office drone was being presented with a gold watch—or more likely a gold-colored watch—to commemorate the decades he’d spent achieving inertia at his desk. He would take it home and have a heart attack in front of the TV, passing away from the world as if he had never passed into it. At least he would leave a watch behind, something functional; by contrast, the ashes in that goldfish bowl wouldn’t even make good confetti.

  Henry shook his head as if to clear it. What was he thinking? Screw that—he had a watch and it was still running after a lifetime of use. And his watch wasn’t just counting off the hours until he died.

  He went back up the dock to the house. Dammit; missing that shot had taken the shine off everything.

  * * *

  The bright daylight in the living room lifted Henry’s spirits and chased away much of the residual gloom from Liège. It was open and airy, with a lot more window space than solid wall. He liked being able to see so much of the outside from indoors; even more than that, he liked to let in as much daylight as possible, especially after a job. Unlike the mission in Liège, a lot of his work was done under cover of darkness and he knew all too well what a lack of daylight could do to a person.