Gemini Man--The Official Movie Novelization

by Titan Books

  This was the heart of the house, where he spent most of his time off the job, so it had a few unconventional features. Against the wall it shared with the kitchen, he had set up a cabinet with almost all of his tools, arranged in a way that appealed to his aesthetic sense while satisfying his need for order and efficiency. Screwdrivers, wrenches, wood chisels, reamers, pliers, sockets, screws, nails and everything else were arranged not only by size but for convenience, depending on frequency of use. He’d had an absolute blast organizing them, using the 20/80 rule—twenty percent of the tools were used eighty percent of the time, and vice versa. Maybe now that he’d retired from assassination, he could consider a new career designing displays of tools in hardware stores. He loved hardware stores, always had, even as a kid. Hardware stores followed the 100 rule—one hundred percent of the stock was useful for getting things done.

  Nearby was the workbench with a large magnifier lamp. He had positioned it so he could see the TV easily and wouldn’t have to miss any Phillies games while getting things done. He had been keeping an eye on his beloved Phillies while he had been working on the birdhouse. He turned to look at it hanging outside the window behind him and his mood lightened even more.

  He had built the birdhouse on a whim. Or maybe it was more like a private joke with himself, at least when he’d started out. Building a birdhouse was the kind of thing a nine-year-old would do to get a scout badge, not how a trained government sniper relaxed between assassinations. But to his surprise, Henry had found the act of construction—cutting the wood, gluing it together, sanding it, and applying weatherproofing and varnish—to be unexpectedly gratifying. When he was done, he felt as if he had discovered something new about himself. Who knew that a hitman could have that kind of experience in his fifties (very early fifties; barely into his fifties, and dammit, how had that happened?).

  When Henry had finally hung the thing up, his sense of accomplishment had deepened. He had actually built a house with his own two hands. Yeah, okay, it was a little house, not a boathouse or even a garden shed—he had hired someone to build both those things. Still, he had created a shelter for living creatures that would settle in and make it their home, at least until they migrated. How many other snipers were that constructive when they were off the clock? Probably none.

  He watched the birdhouse stirring a little in the breeze then frowned. Something wasn’t right. Maybe he was just having some residual bad feeling from Liège. After missing the shot, he had felt like the whole world was ten degrees out of true.

  No, that wasn’t it. There really was something off.

  It took another moment before he spotted the problem—two splinters sticking out from the upper left junction of the roof and wall. Henry knew most people wouldn’t have seen them, and even if they had it wouldn’t have bothered them much, if at all.

  But they weren’t birds looking for a place to nest. On the birds’ level, those splinters must have looked like a couple of sharpened stakes. A prospective resident who got caught in a sudden gust of wind and didn’t stick the landing could get stuck. Maybe that was why it had remained empty since he had hung it up. The devil was always in the details, even for birds.

  Henry went to the tool cabinet and opened the drawer where he kept small squares of sandpaper, organized in order of coarseness. He chose a square from the middle, then swapped it for the next finer grain and went out to repair the birdhouse.

  He finished and looked around for prospective tenants—Okay, I fixed up the fixer-upper. Better move in fast before some nasty-ass kingfisher snaps it up and you have to raise your chicks in an open-air nest above a thorn bush, he announced silently. But instead of bird calls, he heard the alarm on his cell phone, telling him a car was approaching the house.

  Henry knew who it was. He had been bracing himself for this visit, had actually expected it to have come sooner. Maybe traffic had been especially heavy. He started to walk around to the front of the house, then remembered the sandpaper and went back into the living room, ignoring the honking horn. If the entire company of archangels came to his door to tell him it was Judgment Day, his ass was grass, and the good Lord Himself was the lawnmower; they would have to wait till Henry put everything back where it belonged. There was a place for everything and he made damned sure everything was in its place before he did anything else. His house, his rules.

  The car horn honked again. He went out to see Del Patterson finish parking his land yacht (badly, as usual) before he leaped out of the driver’s seat and rushed at Henry brandishing the resignation letter he’d sent the day before.

  “You can’t do this!” Patterson said by way of hello.

  “Yeah, good to see you, too, Del,” Henry replied. “Come on in, sit down, make yourself at home while I get you something to drink.”

  Moments later, Patterson was perched on the edge of the sofa in the living room. The cheerful daylight was lost on him. He was still clutching the letter when Henry came in from the kitchen with a beer and a Coke.

  “I have to quit,” Henry said. “In almost any other line of work, you can lose a step. Not this one.”

  “You’re still the best we’ve got—the best anyone’s got,” Patterson said. “And believe me, I keep track.”

  Henry put the Coke on the coffee table in front of him. Patterson glared up at him with the expression of a man who had been pushed to his absolute limit and wasn’t taking any more shit. The black-framed glasses would have made another man seem bookish, like an absentminded professor; they gave Patterson the look of a no-nonsense authority whose decisions were final.

  “Not a soda. Not today.” Patterson crumpled the letter into a ball, dropped it on the table, then batted it away.

  Henry’s eyebrows went up. “You sure?”

  “Are you really retiring?” Patterson said evenly. Henry nodded. “Then I’m sure.”

  Henry moved the Coke aside and gave him the beer. When he had first met Patterson, it had been obvious the man was fond of a drink and as time went on, he had grown even fonder. For a while, it had looked as if Patterson was going to take up drinking as a lifestyle. And then one day, without fanfare, explanation, or apology, his drink of choice had become Coca-Cola.

  Everyone including Henry had wondered how long it would last, waited for Patterson to say something about it, but no one wanted to come right out and ask him. An agent who had suffered with the same problem inquired as to whether he was now a friend of Bill W., and reported that Patterson seemed genuinely mystified by the question.

  Henry finally decided he had to know; his life could depend on it. Patterson told him that his job required him to be on call 24/7. Therefore, he had to stay clean and sober for the sake of his agents. And that was all he was ever going to say about it, Patterson added; talk was cheap, actions spoke louder than words, and the subject was now closed.

  Henry had been satisfied. Everybody had their own reasons for doing whatever they did. If this was how Patterson managed to avoid going down a very dark path to destruction, then it was what it was and Henry was glad he didn’t have to think about it any more.

  Now Patterson would probably claim he had driven him to drink, Henry thought. He sat down next to him on the sofa, refusing to flinch from the other man’s death-ray glare.

  “Lots of guys can shoot,” Henry said. “Marine STAs, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs—”

  “They aren’t you.” Patterson made it an accusation, as if this was yet another way in which Henry had failed him. “They don’t have the history you do.”

  “Yeah, I think the history might be the problem,” said Henry. “I’ve got too much of it. We both know shooters don’t get better with age, they just get older.”

  “Then who’s going to finish training Monroe?” Patterson demanded, his expression pained. “Guy’s called me three times already asking me to talk you back in.”

  Henry sighed and shook his head again. “I wish he hadn’t done that.”

  Patterson sat forward, his
face urgent. “Henry, we’ve been through a lot together, you and me. We made the world safer. If we hadn’t done the things we did, good people would have suffered and bad ones would have profited, good things would have gone bad and bad shit would have gotten worse. What we do is important—it matters. But I can’t do anything unless I’m working with someone I trust and I’m not going to trust a new guy the way I trust you.”

  Henry shook his head again, more emphatically this time. “I’m telling you, Del, something felt different on this one. That’s why the shot was off—even the ground beneath me didn’t feel right.”

  Patterson looked around as if there might be something in the room to support his counter-arguments, then spotted the birdhouse outside the window.

  “So, what now—you’re just going to build birdhouses?” he asked Henry.

  “Del. There was a kid right next to him. If I’m off by six inches, she’s dead,” Henry said, talking over him. “I’m done.”

  Patterson’s expression said he had finally heard him and he was devastated. Henry had known this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. In their line of work, there was no wiggle room, no time or space for socializing. Your focus had to be on the job, the whole job, and nothing but the job, not the people on your team. You had to be able to take it for granted everyone would be in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. It was all planning, nothing left to chance, no wasted movement, no nonsense, no slip-ups, so that nobody died who wasn’t supposed to. Every time Henry thought about how it was only by virtue of sheer luck that he hadn’t killed a child—a child—he felt shaky inside.

  “You know, when I started in the Corps, it all made sense all the time,” Henry went on. “My job was to take out bad guys. Art of the Kill—whatever worked. But in Liège—” he shook his head. “The truth is, in Liège, there was no Art of the Kill. I just got lucky. I didn’t feel the shot, not like I should have.” He paused, took a breath.

  Patterson was starting to look more resigned than hurt. He was a pro; he understood.

  “It’s more than being older. I’ve made seventy-two kills,” Henry said. “That many, it messes with you deep down. It’s like my soul hurts. I think I’ve reached my limit of lives to take. Now I just want peace.”

  Patterson gave a heavy sigh. “So what do I do now?”

  The question threw Henry completely. Patterson was the handler—he made the plans and called the shots. Patterson was supposed to tell him what to do, not the other way around.

  Henry spread his hands and shrugged. “Wish me well?”

  CHAPTER 4

  There were bigger, fancier, more powerful boats moored at the Buttermilk Sound marina but as far as Henry was concerned, none of them was as classy as the Ella Mae.

  Made in 1959, she was one of the smallest vessels at the marina, but her hull was polished wood. In Henry’s opinion, this put her several levels above the fiberglass bath toys anchored here, no matter how big or fancy or expensive they were. Her wood hull meant she was higher maintenance, too, but in Henry’s experience, that was true of anything worth having.

  Henry steered Ella Mae over to the dock with the fuel pumps and filled the tank. When he was finished, he straightened his Phillies cap and headed for the booth in front of the marina office. To his surprise, there was someone new on duty today, a pleasant, smiling woman, dark-haired, pink-cheeked, and heart-wrenchingly young, wearing a Buttermilk Sound polo shirt. She removed her earbuds as he approached.

  “Good morning!” she said in a cheerful, sincere voice that made Henry think she actually believed that.

  “Hey,” Henry replied. “What happened to Jerry?”

  “Retired.” She beamed. “He couldn’t take any more of this bustling place. I’m Danny.”

  “Henry.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this young, even when he’d been this young. “I owe you $23.46.”

  “So what are you fishing for?” Her eyes widened as he handed her a hundred dollar bill.

  “Peace and quiet. And mackerel.”

  She kept smiling as she made change. “So I guess you’ll be heading to Beecher’s Point?”

  Jerry had never been so nosy. Maybe she thought getting acquainted was part of good customer service. “Is that what you’d recommend?” he asked, a bit archly.

  “Seems like a nice enough day for it,” she said.

  Before Henry could respond, a bee flew past him. Reflexively, he took off his hat and snapped it sharply, catching the bee in mid-buzz. It fell to the deck.

  “Wow,” Danny said as she got up to peer over the counter at the dead insect. “Not much of a live-and-letlive guy, I take it?”

  “I’m deathly allergic to bees,” Henry told her. “So, are you a student? Or just a fish-whisperer?” He jerked his chin at the textbook on the counter; the cover photo was one of those arty shots that made jellyfish look ethereally beautiful.

  “Working my way through grad school,” she said. “Marine biology.”

  “UGA, Darien?” he asked.

  She made a small fist-pump. “Go Dogs.”

  “Well, be careful,” Henry chuckled. “There are some dogs on these docks, too.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” she assured him, her voice brisk, as she put her earbuds back in. Henry loped back to the Ella Mae, feeling like a prize fool. There are some dogs on these docks, too—what the hell was that? If he was going to go around giving fatherly advice to young women, he should get some felt slippers, a cardigan with leather elbow patches, and a goddam pipe. Maybe he’d better run back and tell her to look both ways before crossing the street on her way home. She might need the reminder, being so young and all.

  He glanced at his watch. Nope, there wasn’t any more time for making a fool of himself; he had somewhere to be.

  * * *

  An hour or so of solitude listening to Thelonious Monk while the Ella Mae swayed on the calm water smoothed out Henry’s disposition considerably. Out here there was no age or retirement, no missed shots or saying dumb-ass shit to pretty young women at the marina office. Just the hard-salt cool air, the ever-so-gentle rocking motion of the boat, and the unique sound of Monk at the piano. The way Monk played, you didn’t just hear the music, you felt it. The man attacked the keys, producing something that was more than music—music-plus. Only Monk could do it.

  Out here, Henry was able to relax in a way he never could on land. He didn’t care to be in the water at all, not one little bit. Being on the water, however—that was a whole ’nother story; Henry thought it had to be as close to heaven as a living person could get. He pulled his Phillies cap down low and let himself fall into a light doze—or what he thought was a light doze. When he heard the sound of engines approaching and sat up, he saw the sun had climbed a little higher in the sky.

  The engine noise grew louder, a deep, full sound; something big was in the vicinity. Henry leaned over the starboard side of the Ella Mae and splashed his face with seawater to wake himself up. As he turned to reach for a small towel on the passenger seat, he saw the yacht coming toward him on the port side.

  Henry recognized the make if not the exact model of the craft. It was favored by millionaires who were blessed with a sense of style as well as money. The small, canopied upper deck where the helm was located was just large enough to accommodate the pilot and a companion. Some pilots, however, preferred to have the helm all to themselves, like the man Henry could see up there now, throttling down the engines. He maneuvered the vessel alongside the Ella Mae, making it bob around like a cork on an incoming tide.

  The man cut the engines and smiled down at Henry. Henry recognized him even though he hadn’t seen him in over two decades and grinned back at him.

  * * *

  The lower deck of the Scratched Eight was downright elegant; wide, cushioned seating ran along the polished wood walls on either side, drawing Henry’s eyes to the wet bar, which was also polished wood. The bar seemed to preside over everything; next to it on the starboard
side, a set of stairs spiraled down below deck. Henry thought it looked like a mansion that had been converted into an ocean-going home-away-from-home. For all he knew, it could be—it was the sort of thing Jack Willis would do.

  Jack looked every bit the lord of the floating manor in an open white shirt, floral board shorts, and boat shoes. While the years hadn’t been as unkind to him as they’d been to others Henry knew, Jack had definitely aged. He was still as quick to smile as he’d been back in the day but the lines around his eyes were from worry, not laughter. His jawline had softened and he was thicker through the middle but he hadn’t lost all his muscle; he moved with the unconscious, easy physicality of a man who hadn’t spent most of his life sitting down.

  Henry felt a surge of awkward self-consciousness and wasn’t sure why. Jack had the same green spade on his wrist, so it wasn’t like either of them had to pretend with each other. Maybe it was knowing Jack would also be taking note of how he’d changed over the years.

  He had been astonished when he’d answered the phone the night before and heard Jack’s voice on the other end. He had disappeared from Henry’s radar when he had decided to go into business in the private sector. Jack had wanted him to come along but Henry had declined. Every now and then, Jack would send him a postcard, usually of some gorgeous beach resort with a short message scrawled on the back: Wish you were here—don’t you? Sure you won’t reconsider?

  After a while the postcards stopped coming and Henry figured Jack had finally decided to take no for an answer. The last thing he had expected was a phone call with a request to meet. Not that he’d been unhappy about it—as soon as Jack had given him the coordinates he had been looking forward to seeing him again. And now all of a sudden he was like some clueless boot who didn’t know what to do with his hands or where to look.