Victor Kemp had already created a substantial empire in 1978. Nominally CEO of an energy company, he oversaw an international underworld conglomerate with tentacles in high-stakes gambling, arms trading, sex trafficking, money laundering, bio-weaponry, genetic engineering, cyber-terrorism, and the buying and selling of information. The man could have procured an army, sabotaged a fail-safe system, or overthrown a government. Any number of formidable men were in his pocket or in his debt.
A cosmopolitan man, Kemp retained apartments in New York and Paris, along with a house complete with wife and daughter in London. He kept company with a very attractive Brazilian woman, an international real estate broker by whom he fathered two sons. He was wealthy, but wealth was never more than a means to an end for Victor Kemp. He used it the same way he used intimidation: to accrue power, including the power to purchase people to do his bidding.
I didn’t know any of this. I was focused on my studies, content for the first time. I loved university life. A few years older than my classmates, I remained apart from most of them, save for a few carefully chosen liaisons.
While in the service, I’d discovered a talent for marksmanship, but I never expected to make use of it after I discharged. Then a vindictive drug dealer named Rico beat my roommate Greta nearly to death over a missed payment. Maybe if he and his associates hadn’t deposited her, bloodied and barely breathing, back in the room we shared, I would have let the authorities handle it. I didn’t know her attackers, but I had to assume they knew me. I must have determined they constituted a threat to my well-being. I don’t remember my thought process or even if I spent time thinking, which I realize is a little too convenient.
Kemp, on the other hand, never forgot and he never forgave.
What I can say with certainty is that on October 30, two weeks after Greta’s beating, I pulled my Remington M-700, a gift from an army buddy, out of my storage locker and headed to Nashville.
According to the news reports, four people in the middle of a thick crowd of patrons outside Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge were conducting a drug deal around midnight when the shots were fired. The dealer and his companion went down, one bullet each. The buyers, two college students, ended up traumatized but otherwise unscathed. Precision shooting, the police said. An experienced sniper.
Someone reported spotting a slender figure dressed in a fatigue jacket and carrying a duffle bag. The empty second floor storefront had been swept clean. The detectives had little to go on and even less incentive to focus on the crime. A bad man and his crony were taken off the street; they considered it a blessing in disguise.
The cocaine Rico sold came from a supply line that extended from Nashville to Biloxi to the Bahamas and all the way back to Colombia. By any measure and regardless of what intermediaries stood between, he ultimately worked for the Medellín cartel. His companion, I later learned, had been dispatched by Kemp as a favor to a Southern congressman with ties to the Dixie Mafia. That man’s role was to observe and negotiate, if necessary, in order to guarantee no one encroached on anyone else’s territory.
A bad man, but not a man who had anything to do with Greta’s beating.
It took Kemp four months to find me. No one assumed a female shooter, but Victor Kemp always thought outside the box. Given what I’ve since learned about him, I’m not surprised he located me in the days before computers, cameras, or digitized data. The search likely required patience, persistence, personnel, and plenty of money. He had all of those.
He didn’t send men to threaten me. He simply called one evening and invited me to dinner. When I demurred, he pointed out that a woman with the ability to hit not one but two targets in a crowd at night must be much sought after—or soon would be.
We met in Nashville on a warm and windy March evening. I wore a black stretch sheath, the only dress I owned, added a cheap locket, and pulled a comb through my hair. I can’t recall where we ate. Perhaps on the same block where I fired the shots that defined my future. That would have appealed to Kemp’s sensibilities. I remember two men standing at the door with not so subtle bulges under their boxy jackets.
The food might have been delicious; I know it was expensive. My appetite failed me. I would never learn to enjoy a meal with Victor Kemp, and I would have occasion to endure many of those.
When he stood to greet me, I saw a short but powerfully built man in his late thirties, his wrestler’s body encased in a well-tailored suit. Pale blue shirt, relatively subdued tie for the times. Wide soft hand with blunt fingers tempered by manicured nails. He wore his sable hair fashionably long. His face was broad and flat below thick brows and a much-broken nose. He would always bear the trace of a shadow, though he was nominally clean-shaven and fastidious about grooming.
His most arresting feature was a pair of eyes the color of a Siberian lake in winter.
He wasn’t conventionally handsome, although he radiated a feral sort of masculinity. I suspect any number of women and even some men found him appealing. I was never one of them. To me, he came across as a barely tamed monster in a suit.
We made small talk about the advantages of a higher education, especially at a prestigious university like Vanderbilt. He knew I was a few years older than my classmates, that my scholarship came courtesy of the Army, that I’d spent two years stationed in Berlin. He seemed to know a lot about me.
He smiled at one point, if you can call what he offered a smile. It was more a display of large bright teeth that looked as if they’d been sharpened.
“Miss Smith. May I call you Susan?”
I raised my shoulders. It was the name I’d adopted after I’d been put out on the street by my mother when I was fifteen.
“Susan Smith.” He spoke like a purring cat. “What an interesting name. Very plain yet very American.”
“Blame Mom,” I said. And instantly regretted those words.
“Of course, your mother. Although normally the father would bear some responsibility as well. Where did you say you grew up?”
“I didn't say.” I pulled my cheap shawl tightly around my shoulders. It felt as if the temperature had dropped several degrees. I cleared my throat. “Mr. Kemp, what can I do for you?”
“A no-nonsense woman of business. Very well, then.” His smile evaporated.
“You killed an employee of mine, Miss Smith. I don’t care about your foolish roommate with the bad habit or the dealer who had her beaten nearly to death. I don’t even care about my man, who had unrelated business with the dealer and who died because some college girl with a rifle decided to become a vigilante.”
I had an argument ready. I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. It was a gesture I would come to know well.
“You will let me finish,” he said. “I hold all the cards here.”
He made his proposal, which amounted to a blueprint for how I would live going forward. Immediately upon graduation, he informed me, I would start work in his New York office. My title would be corporate security manager. My primary task would be to keep his various subsidiaries safe from espionage. Since I was already up to speed on threat assessment, thanks to my Army training, he had every confidence in me. He could guarantee substantial bonuses. The company would provide me with a rent-free apartment in a nice neighborhood right in Manhattan.
“Perfect for a single woman.” He winked.
In addition to my legitimate job, he told me, I would moonlight as his assassin. I’d eliminate, remove, or discharge (“use any euphemism you like”) those individuals he and his associates deemed a hazard to their business ventures or alliances. My assignments would be sprinkled throughout the calendar year, dovetailing whenever possible with legitimate meetings I took with clients. Every target would be outside the city, often abroad. My skills as a long-distance marksman would almost always suffice. Almost always. Occasionally, close-up work would be required. I would be trained so as to fill in any gaps. I would learn to overcome any inhibitions I had.
“You don’t seem to have a problem with killing at a distance. That will be your primary task, although you won’t always have that option, I’m sorry to say.”
I sat in stunned silence.
“I understand you learned Russian as well as a smattering of German. Excellent. We’ll add another language. Probably Farsi or Arabic. Later on, perhaps Chinese. I have a highly qualified instructor in mind.”
He cast his frost-colored eyes over my shabby outfit and shook his head.
“You’ll require a complete makeover to appear as a successful business person. Really, what woman wouldn’t welcome that?”
Kemp paused to take several hearty bites while I pushed my food around my plate. He took a long draught of his Margaux.
“So, Miss Smith, tell me. Do you accept my offer?”
I swallowed. “Do I have a choice?”
He dabbed almost daintily at the corner of his mouth. Then he fixed me with his arctic stare.
“You really don’t.”
Nine months later, I graduated mid-year. In January of 1980, I began my new life.
My position near upper management would have appeared quite an accomplishment for a woman in the 1980s and ‘90s. I built on what I already knew about secrets and risks and created protocols that impressed my coworkers. Once or twice a month, I handled the “other” work. I went where I was told and did what I was designed by training and temperament to do. At least that’s what I convinced myself.
I had no supervisor. I reported directly to Victor. If anyone within the legitimate organization found this odd, they never said. I must have been the only mid-level manager with direct access to the boss. In twenty-five years, I never received a promotion, never became a senior officer or even a director.
As a long-range assassin, I still faced risk. I planned every detail, reviewed every action, and tried to account for every potential glitch with the help of specialists Victor assigned to me. There were never any guarantees. I nearly got caught a couple of times. Usually I managed to extricate myself without causing further harm. Usually, but not always.
I hated the rare close-up assignments; Victor knew it. No doubt he had other resources, other contractors better equipped and less squeamish. He was willing nonetheless to risk his high-value specialist. I think it was his way of exerting control over me.
As for whom I murdered, I must have decided they were bad people. Who else would populate that world? Let’s be honest, though. Most people would conclude my actions were immoral. I deprived someone of a father, a son, a lover, or a friend. My observations as to their fitness to live are irrelevant. If anything, they may reflect my shortcomings as a human being.
I did refuse a job once. Something in my research led me to doubt the victim’s guilt even in Victor’s morally relative universe. I said nothing about my reservations; I simply invented some physical issue. If my boss privately questioned my action, he never told me. Perhaps he believed I’d never willfully take such a chance.
Did the intended victim die? I'm certain he did. Not by my hand, though.
As promised, the company paid for both my apartment and wardrobe. The one-bedroom, located in a doorman building on the East Side, came fully furnished and tastefully, if impersonally, decorated. Kemp also sent me to a stylist named Dmitri. The man shopped for me and even custom-designed a few outfits. He helped me with hair and makeup. We got along well. We never discussed my work.
Dressing up helped me feel as if I were playing a part, and that may have shielded me from sinking into the moral abyss. I let myself believe I was simply a career-oriented single woman. Other times I pictured myself as the fictional heroine of a spy novel. Or I pretended to be an employee of the CIA, something I’d actually considered as a career choice. At the same time, I learned to become the other characters I occasionally needed to impersonate.
When the reality of my double life began to intrude, I willed my mind to go blank. I tried meditation, although I never became good at it. I perfected ujjayi, a yoga technique that teaches the practitioner to slow her breathing. At first, I intended it as an exercise designed to banish my pervasive anxiety. Instead, I perfected an ancient practice popular among peace-loving yogis to prepare for a kill shot.
I never slept with Victor Kemp. The very thought makes my skin crawl. Fortunately, he didn’t believe in mixing business and pleasure. I dated appropriate and eligible men he always prescreened and sometimes preselected. I even became engaged to one of them, which amused my employer no end. He had instructed me to live my life as a modern woman, someone who could juggle my work and social lives. Love was not to enter into it. On that point, he and I agreed. Until we didn't.
I can’t say whether I had a choice in what happened next. The heart always seems to have a mind of its own. I let my heart persuade me that love and marriage and even a family were all possible. That despite my unresolved past and encumbered present, I might have a normal life.
I should have known better. Assassins don’t get happy endings, even retired ones.