Chapter Text
The door bell rang, and in the palatial, monochrome apartment which overlooked the sand the sea of LA, the front door was opened to reveal a delivery man, unable to prevent himself glancing in with curiosity, and then at the man himself.
“Delivery for Mr Cavill.”
“I’ll take it.”
In signing for it, Henry could not ignore the man’s curiosity, and in signing the back of a receipt, sent the delivery man off with a further smile. Henry closed the door, and walked across the vast foyer and into the living room, floor-to-ceiling windows and a large TV and a sectional sofa.
Into a smaller, but no less small room he popped, and Henry closed the door in this room which he had previously set up for VR, and now, a coffin-like pod in the center of the room, with which Henry unwrapped the package and plugged in the necessary devices for extra surge protection. Standing back, he flicked the switch and the pod opened in a huff of stream, and Henry, in his baggy sweats and bed-tousled hair, set his hands on his hips with a smile.
He climbed in, and the coffin began to close, and on the display of the lid which shut over him with a hum, Henry touch-swiped from a library of games, and then he closed his eyes, hands crossed over his chest, and then the steam began again…
The flash of lights surrounded the Palais de Walewska, from the paparazzi desperate to get in from behind the tall black gates, and the clink of champagne far off from those on porches and outside the foyer, and the diamonds the women sported in their ball gown dresses, white-teeth smiles as they posed for a photographer who stood, steadily enough though shaking.
Henry entered through the black gates, marveling inwardly at how the black suit tapered to his every fit, that running his hand through his hair made it feel flattened to him like the firmest gel, and he felt he was on the red carpet - indeed, on the red carpet leading up to the chateau, and here he was in Paris.
He could feel, along with the stares from women who recognised only his beauty and not his name, the nudge of a silenced pistol in his jacket pocket, and nodded to the ladies, inwardly glad that they knew not that he was Henry; only someone debonair.
He walked up the front steps, and there amid a crowd, Viktor Novikov came down the stairs, escorted by a bodyguard. Novikov shook hands with a senator of some sort, and Henry saw all; as comfortable in this skin as he had been as Napoleon Solo, and then Novikov moved on.
Henry found it easy to follow him, for soon he was in a large corridor where beyond, a model’s runway had been set out, flashing disco lights and dripping diamond chandeliers, playing to thumping music the eggshell-blue dresses the models wore with serene abandon, and the cries of the crowd for more.
Past the bar Henry walked, and out into the fresh air once more, a garden strung with elegant lights and those couples for private conversations, and he walked round the porch where again, few could resist turning their heads, and perhaps suspected him “one of Margolis’ models”.
Henry turned here into another door to the mansion, where a pair of bodyguards sized him up, and one held out their hand expectantly. Henry, with unruffled demeanour, produced an invite, and was so waved through, and into a narrow corridor he walked, turning through a pair of double doors, and then he saw the staircase proper which would lead him further up into the mansion, where a pair of bodyguards were patting down a guest.
Henry removed his silenced pistol into a rubbish bin, flexing his palms and approaching the duo, patted down as briskly as airport security, and then on his way up the staircase, through another set of double doors where the grand staircase continued at a turn, and yet another pair, this time bodyguards with submachine guns patted him down twice to be sure.
Henry, showing all the mild disdain for such fetter, nodded nonetheless all the same with the politeness he knew well, and went further upstairs into the top level, through a set of doors which a waiter bade him, and then he was in the lion’s den, a circular arrangement of chairs facing a podium, and Henry took one, and there studied the tablet which glowed while, in a low but clear voice, the auctioneer announced the items for sale.
The double doors at the far end of the room opened, and out walked Dalia Margoulis, elegant in her stride as well as demanding, she clicked her fingers and pointed to Henry, who acted as surprised as she, for certainly this was not in the behavior expected of her.
“You, my dear,” Dalia smiled, turning as quickly on her heel, and Henry, rising with a tug on his tie, looked quickly around at the attendees of this auction to see if by their expressions he might understand a little this completely out of character action.
A little anxious that he had no weapon, he nonetheless strode into the small drawing room which the double doors were closed behind him for, and here were a pair of chaise longues facing a coffee table, a bodyguard in black practically one of the corners of the room which had windows looking out onto the runway far below, while Dalia turned and gestured.
“Please, let us sit and talk business, Mr… ?”
“Solo.”
“Solo?”
“Napoleon - Solo.”
Dalia’s laugh while tinkling, did not quite meet her eyes. She sat down, and he opposite her, and in all the times he had played this in a VR headset, he certainly expected in person to be even better; but had not factored in the artificial intelligence which surely had prompted Dalia to recognise him. How else could Agent 47 enact such an effective hit?
“You,” Dalia stared at him, taking a sip of champagne from the glass on the table, and smacking her lips with a smile, “You must be in my show. I demand it.”
“Your, er, show?”
“Yes,” Dalia sprung up, and leaned over the table. “You will be a model. You can replace that tawdry Helmut Kruger.”
In Henry’s hesitation, Dalia sat beside him, and as quickly as she opened her mouth, wide as her eyes, her excitement plain and clear, she collapsed into his lap, the exit wound bleeding over his pants, and Henry threw himself to the ground, as quickly as the bodyguard in the room spun, pistol aimed through the window, where Henry remembered on this level was the attic, and the shooter at large had had ample opportunity to take out either of them just moments before.
His heart thudded, he pulled at the rug, and in Dalia’s body leaving his, he crawled across the carpet as more bodyguards rushed in, adding to the crescendo of cries, and Henry pulled himself into the auction room where the VIPs were already fleeing, champagne glasses shattering in panicked drops and heels clacking on tiles, screams, guards running in from avenues, and Henry, in the auction room at last, could pull himself to his feet, looking out onto the far balcony where he could glimpse the back garden on which a black helicopter rested, and knew instinctively he did not know how to pilot it.
He ran, across the room and before he could exit through the door he came, he wavered in wide eyed horror to see the helicopter rotors spinning, and then it rose in the air, and then he tore himself into the corridor as a series of bullets tore into the people and the walls, and Henry rushed down the grand staircase, seeing the two who had frisked him earlier spinning around with a cry, and then he was rushing through the mansion, civilians and models and guards alike running, and the sound of gunshots smashing windows and walls and people.
Down the grand staircase into the foyer which looked out onto the back garden, and in the cries of civilians and the reloading of weapons, he saw palace security mowed down, and a half dozen people wearing masks, lined up not unlike the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, marching into the mansion. Henry eyed the trash can which held his pistol.
“There!” cried one, and as quickly, Henry turned tail, past the kitchens steaming with abandoned food and bubbling pots, down the black and white tiled corridor, consulting his memory through the haze of adrenaline, wrenching open a door which had one staircase leading up and another down, and choosing the latter, bursting into the basement kitchen where a man in whites spread alarm, and spoke in rapid French, and Henry glanced both ways, seeing palace security coming towards him with pistols, and then he turned right, through an avenue of barrels stacked on either side, and there ahead of him, a small archway with stairs twisting down in darkness, and with his teeth grit, there clashed with a security officer whose expression was angry, and Henry tussled with him, uncomfortable, frightened, overcoming it, his peak physical condition nonetheless allowing for an advantage of sorts, and then with a punch which would’ve called for a boo with an audience at the ungentlemanly sort it was, he left the guard panting, he hurried down the darkened stairs, and at its end, pulled open a door, and there met the brightest white, a gleam of restaurant kitchen appliances, and at the far end, the night’s cityscape with the Chrysler Building in view.
From the far corner, came a woman whose surprise was evident in the clutching of a bag of flour; at once her face was covered, her shriek reveberated in the small space, and in the hastening of Henry’s reaching out with one hand to not startle her, he swore he could recognise something familiar in the way her eyebrows moved.