User:Asyndeton/Sandbox

The Ambler Warning
Hal Ambler is an ex-government agent being held against his will on Parrish Island, just off the coast of Virginia, where all mentally unstable government officials are confined to prevent them from divulging any secrets they may know. One day, with the help of a nurse, he manages to escape the island and return to the mainland. Ambler decides to return to his home in Washington DC but this proves a foolish venture, as he narrowly escapes re-capture twice. Ambler tries searching for himself on several databases but finds no record of himself.

In search of safety, Ambler goes to a house he owns in New Jersey, only to find no evidence of it ever existing. Whilst there, he encounters private soldier employed by people who wish to enlist Ambler's services. As Hal interrogates this man, someone else kills him and so Ambler flees. He goes to a motel and when he stops to wash his face, he does not recognise the face that looks back at him in the mirror. During his slumber, Ambler dreams of a mission where he, under the alias of Tarquin, and his team killed Wai-Chan Leung, a monster who was headed to become the next president of Taiwan.

Having taken several of the man's belongings, including his BlackBerry, Ambler messages the man's employers to say he needs a meeting. They agree and tell him to meet at Philadelphia International Airport. After contacting someone that Ambler believed he went to college with and finding out that this person has no memory of Ambler, he begins to wonder whether or not he is of sound mental state. Ambler goes and meets the man, Arkady, that is sent. Arkady tells Ambler that his employers need to check whether Ambler can be trusted and so they want him to kill someone for them. Ambler can tell that Arkady is telling teh truth and so agrees.

When the time comes, Ambler identifies his target and is secretly gven a gun with which to accomplish the task. He quickly deduces that the gun is empty and that it is all a test, since the people testing him would not entrust this kind of mission to someone of uncertain loyalties. He pulls the trigger but the gun doesn't fire; a man on a motorbike then takes him to a car. There he meets a man he worked with several times, a blind interpreter codenamed Osiris. Osiris then takes him to a hotel, where they continue their conversation in the swimming pool. Whilst there, Joe Li, the assassin that tried to kill Ambler at his house in New Jersey, arrives in search of the pair of them. He reports exclusively to General Chao, who works for Liu Ang, the president of the Republic of China. After searching all other likely places in the hotel, under the guise of a janitor, Li heads towards the pool. As soon as Ambler spots him, he can tell that the janitor is not genuine. After diving beneath the water to get a closer look, he sees blood emanating from Osiris' body. Ambler then decides to hide underneath Osiris' body for safety. After realising that it takes the assassin up to six seconds to reload his gun after firing, Ambler makes a dash for the changing room, takes his clothes and leaves.

Ambler's next port of call is the Gaithersburg, Maryland; specifically, the home of Laurel Holland, the nurse who had helped him escape. At first Laurel does not want him to come in but she then changes her mind. The two of them talk, at first about their lives in general but they soon move on to the topic of Parrish Island and the fact that Ambler is beginning to doubt whether or not his life happened the way he remembers. Laurel firmly asserts that he looks different due to plastic surgery, that the recordings he has had heard of himself sounding like a madman were made while he was drugged and that he cannot find himself in databases because the people in on the conspiracy have removed him from them. When Laurel finds people from Ambler's past for him to contact though, he meets with the same response as he did previously; Laurel's explanation for this is that they are all in on it. She then confesses that she doesn't know and that she shouldn't have pushed him so hard.

As Ambler begins driving away, he sees a van and immediately realises that people have been dispatched to pick up Laurel. He sharply turns around and returns to her house, hearing her screams. After a brief struggle he manages to get Laurel into his car and drives off, eventually leaving her with a woman from her past, who would not be thought of as a likely person for Laurel to turn to.

Hal has another dream of his life as Tarquin. It is again of when he was in Changhua, preparing to give teh go ahead to kill Wai-Chan Leung. As he stands before him, Ambler's intuition for knowing when something is wrong kicks in. He does not see the monster described in the Stab dossier he had been given. Tarquin soon says to the technician whose job it is to detonate the bomb not to do it. However he ignores Ambler and detonates it anyway. As Tarquin watches Leung die, he does not see anger but sadness in the man's eyes. He is suddenly brought back to the present day by his phone ringing. He answers to discover that it is Osiris' employer, requesting a meet in Montreal, to which Ambler agrees.

Following instructions, Ambler goes to Dorchester Square in Montreal. He is quickly redirected by a young boy to 'Les promenades de la Cathédrale,' a vast shopping centre beneath Christ Church Cathedral. There he is met by the man who wants his services, Paul Fenton, an industrialist who owned an electronics firm with contracts from the government. Fenton takes him to a shop in Les promenades that he owns, which is actually more of a safe house. There, Fenton offers Ambler a job in a company of his that employs highly skilled ex-military agents in the private sector. Fenton says that his company, and others like it, do the dirty work that the government cannot.

Hal has misgivings about working for Fenton but does not voice his concerns, wishing to keep Fenton on side for the time being. Fenton then takes him to a meeting of the G7. As Ambler walks with him, Joe Li watches. Though his mission is to terminate, he deliberates whether or not to do so, since he does not know who Fenton is. Soon after entering the building, Hal hears screams and is told by Fenton that Kurt Sollinger, a trade negotiator, has just been killed because five years ago to the minute, the US Deputy Treasury Secretary was killed and Sollinger had paid for the hit. Fenton then tells Ambler that he wants Amblerto kill Benoit Deschesnes, a French government official providing countries such as Libya and Iran with his expertise on nuclear matters.