so that she could easily identify areas susceptible to avalanches.
“Hello, 47,” she said into her headset. “Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear,” came the reply. There was no inflection of warmth or pleasure that he had recognized her refined British accent. Typical of the hitman. He was a man of few words and absolutely no emotion.
“Is the target in place?” she asked.
“Can’t you see them?”
She moved the camera down the cliff and spotted the Chinese climbing party, some six or seven hundred feet below 47’s perch.
“Affirmative. How was the climb?”
“Cold.”
“All your carabiners and belay devices worked all right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you done much mountain climbing, 47?”
“Where do I place the boomer?”
She smiled to herself. Agent 47 always cut to the chase. “The computer is calculating that as we speak. Wait … okay, here it is. You’re very close. Move about forty yards to the east. You’ll find yourself on a ledge of what looks like ice, but it’s really very compact snow. That’ll do nicely, and it’s right over the target’s head.”
“I see what you mean. Give me a few minutes to work my way over there.”
Diana watched the tiny figure use a rope, a pickax, and a series of carabiners to maneuver sideways across the face of the cliff. She admired how 47 seemed to be able to do anything. He was a superb athlete, trained to work in all the elements. Of course, he was genetically engineered to be a superman of sorts. Diana often wondered how strong his tolerance for pain and fatigue really was. The climb must have been terribly difficult, especially alone. Luckily, he wasn’t so high in altitude that the helicopter she had arranged to pick him up couldn’t reach him. If he had been another thousand feet farther up, 47 would have had to descend Kangchenjunga the hard way.
Then she saw them.
Diana furrowed her brow and squinted. She quickly maneuvered the mouse and zoomed in closer.
Two men. Almost directly above 47.
“47, I see two hostiles, maybe two hundred feet at one o’clock.” She focused the camera on the men as tightly as it would go. “They’re Chinese, all right.”
“I’m not surprised,” 47 said. “I suspected the target sent a scouting party up the mountain to precede his own expedition. He wanted to make sure the path was safe. They don’t like Nam Vo too much around here. Do they see me?”
“I can’t tell. I don’t think so … Wait—they’re on the move. They must know you’re there.”
“How much time do I have before they’re within shooting range?”
“Plenty. Just get the boomer in place and get the hell out of there. The helicopter will—”
A movement on one of the camera monitors caught her attention. Someone had come out of the elevator on her floor. No—two someones. They paused for a moment as the stairwell door opened and two more men came into view. They were dressed in suits and appeared to be ordinary businessmen, until one of them dropped a large bag on the floor and opened it.
“Diana?” 47 asked. “Are you there?”
“Hold on a second, 47,” she snapped.
One of the men pulled out four Kevlar vests, which the quartet began to don.
No!
The Agency had found her.
No time to lose. She immediately severed the satellite link, pulled the plug on her laptop, and rose from the desk.
The men on the monitor armed themselves with assault rifles, M16s from the look of them.
Diana quickly grabbed her laptop and small traveling bag, which was packed and ready to go. She moved to the fire-escape window, opened it, and tossed the computer outside. The machine fell six floors and smashed to pieces on the ground below. She glanced back at the monitors on the desk and saw that the men were creeping quietly toward her room. Diana then tossed her bag out the window and watched it drop to the pavement. No damage; there was nothing inside but clothes, passports, and money.
As the men kicked in the hotel-room door, Diana was already out on the fire-escape landing. The tall redhead, dressed in an expensive Versace suit, scampered in her bare feet down the metal stairs toward the street below. She heard shouts above her.
Faster!
She took three steps at a time. When she got to the first-floor landing, one of the men shouted, “There she is!” Diana took hold of the railing, deftly catapulted her body over it, and dropped twenty feet to the ground. She landed hard on the soles of her feet, winced with the pain, and kept