47- Tourist Disguise

  But first it was necessary to put together a disguise. He chose something inspired by a German tourist he had seen in the hotel’s lobby. It took the better part of forty-five minutes to prepare, but the final “look” was quite convincing. It consisted of a bollehatte, a reddish beard, a loud shirt that Abaza Tirk had been happy to get rid of, a pair of knee-length shorts that matched the blue hat, and some sturdy sandals.

  With his disguise in place the assassin went out on the street.
...

  Marla stared through the scope at the mostly young, upper-class men and women who continued to stream past Al-Fulani’s home on their way to fashionably late dinners or one of the alcohol-free nightclubs that had sprung up within the Ville Nouvelle. Spotting one particular individual in such a crowd would be hard enough, but her target’s tendency to use disguises would make the task that much more difficult, since each face had to be examined thoroughly before Marla could move on to the next.

  As the hours dragged on, having examined and rejected hundreds of faces, Marla was beginning to wonder if 47 would ever appear when a man matching 47’s height and build casually strolled into her field of view. A German tourist, judging from his clothing. But that meant nothing. When Marla put the spotting scope on the man’s face her suspicions were confirmed! Beard or no beard, that was the man she’d seen in Yakima and Seattle! The very sight of him caused her heart to pound with excitement as her quarry turned to eye the mansion.

  That was the moment when a second German tourist—dressed in identical fashion—arrived from the other direction.

  Now, with two look-alikes on the street below, and both in motion, it would have been nearly impossible to tell Cooper how to distinguish between them. And to do so quickly enough to ensure the results she wanted. So Marla gave the only order she could logically give.

  “The German tourists! The ones wearing the loud shirts! Kill both of them!”

  Cooper’s rifle was silenced, and there was plenty of background noise, so no one heard the subsonic 7.62 mm NATO round as it sped through the space that the first German tourist’s head had occupied a fraction of a second earlier, and slammed into the second one.

  The force of the impact threw the tourist to the ground and people ran every which way. Marla came unglued as the first man disappeared.

  “You were too slow!” she shouted angrily. “You were supposed to kill both of them and you let one get away!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Cooper countered crossly as he continued to sweep the street below. “There wasn’t enough time to acquire both targets.”

- Hitman: Enemy Within, Chapter 6