In 1999, an unnamed man is initiated into the International Contract Agency (ICA) and demonstrates exceptional aptitude as an assassin. The ICA is unable to verify his background or uncover any information about him, which disturbs Erich Soders, the ICA's training director. With the help of his handler, Diana Burnwood, the initiate passes a final test that Soders had rigged against him. The director reluctantly approves the initiate for field duty and washes his hands of the matter. The man tells Diana to call him
"47" and leaves to await further instructions; this prologue leads into the events of
Codename 47, the first game in the series. Twenty years later, 47 completes a series of contracts provided by Diana, who has risen to a senior position in the ICA. At first, the contracts appear to be unrelated, but Diana gradually uncovers information that an unknown individual referred to as the "Shadow Client" has covertly coordinated these contracts to attack a secretive organization called "Providence", whose existence and total control over global affairs were thought to be a myth. The Shadow Client uses the ICA and 47 to kill Providence agents, making the ICA appear culpable and hiding his own involvement. The game ends with Diana being approached by a representative of Providence, who requests that the ICA deal with the Shadow Client.
Plot The Shadow Client performs an assassination for Viktor Novikov, a fashion mogul and head of the international spy ring IAGO, and receives a copy of all of IAGO's files as payment. Using the files to identify Providence's secret operations, the Client sends an anonymous warning to
MI6 of an impending IAGO auction of a stolen
non-official cover (NOC) list that will take place at a
Paris fashion show by Novikov's label, Sanguine. As a result, MI6 hires 47 to prevent the sale; he assassinates Novikov and his business partner, IAGO's true leader, Dalia Margolis, at the fashion show. The Client sets two more ICA contracts in motion to disrupt Providence's activities without exposing himself. He first discloses a secret project to develop a deadly
weaponized virus to a disgruntled shareholder in the Ether Biotech Corporation, knowing that the shareholder will then hire 47 to assassinate Silvio Caruso and Francesca De Santis, the scientists in charge of the project, and destroy the virus prototype housed at Caruso's private lab in the fictitious Italian town of
Sapienza. Providence dispatches an agent to investigate the incident; the Client ambushes and kills him, and takes a key in his possession. The second contract involves the Client disclosing an impending military
coup in Morocco to Hamilton-Lowe, an international contractor with lucrative Moroccan government contracts. The company hires 47 to eliminate General Reza Zaydan, the mastermind of the coup, and fugitive bank CEO Claus Hugo Strandberg—both of whom are undercover Providence operatives—in
Marrakesh. As 47 completes the contract, the Client breaches a Providence vault in
New York City and steals valuable information on Providence's assets and operatives. The leaders of Providence realize that a coordinated attack has been launched against them. The Client puts a third ICA contract in motion to reveal another Providence member, the reclusive media tycoon Thomas Cross. Cross had ordered a coverup that enabled his son, famed
indie rock singer Jordan Cross, to escape legal consequences for the murder of his girlfriend Hannah Highmoore by disguising her death as an apparent accident; the Client reveals the truth to her family. The Highmoores hire 47 to kill Jordan Cross and Ken Morgan, the Cross family lawyer and fellow Providence member who oversaw the coverup, while both are staying at a private resort in
Bangkok. Deploying forces from a
private militia under his control, the Client kidnaps Thomas Cross from Jordan's funeral and kills him, then steals billions of dollars from his offshore bank accounts. The ICA, realizing an unknown party has benefited from the Cross contract, re-examines 47's previous contracts and discovers the Client's role in setting them up. The ICA learns of a training camp for the Client's militia, based in an old industrial farm in rural
Colorado. Seeking to eliminate the Client for his manipulation, the agency orders a premature operation due to the intervention of Soders, a member of ICA's executive board. 47 is sent to the camp to eliminate the militia's leader,
eco-terrorist Sean Rose and three other key militia members. 47 discovers a secret room filled with the Client's research, revealing both the connections of the previous contracts to Providence and the Client's obsession with 47 himself. Diana also discovers that Soders is a mole for Providence and has been manipulating the agency on their behalf. The Client, who has been secretly tracking 47, uses this opportunity to go into hiding. 47 assassinates Soders and his Providence liaison,
yakuza associate and fixer Yuki Yamazaki, at a hospital in
Hokkaido, where Soders is set to receive needed medical treatment in exchange for a list of all active ICA operatives. Subsequently, Providence uncovers the Client's role in the attacks. An unnamed Providence member approaches Diana on a train, seeking to hire the ICA to target the Client. Diana refuses but starts to reconsider when the Providence member offers to reveal information about 47's past.
The Sarajevo Six In this alternative storyline, 47 receives contracts to assassinate the six former members of Sigma, a
deniable operations paramilitary unit of the
private military contractor Cicada, who committed war crimes during the
siege of Sarajevo but evaded prosecution by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 47 tracks each Sigma member—starting with the group's former commander and working his way down—to all six of the main mission settings, with the events and characters of each location serving as backdrops. As the missions progress, security increases and the targets become more paranoid and cautious, increasing the difficulty. For the final contract, 47 is sent to a hospital in Hokkaido to both eliminate the final Sigma member, Taheiji Koyama, and retrieve files documenting the unit's operations from the hospital's records. If 47 chooses to approach the target, Koyama will reveal that he financed the contracts, wanting to get justice for Sigma's victims. Now that he is dying from a terminal illness, Koyama instructs 47 to publicize the files after killing him. 47 honors Koyama's request, but both he and Diana conclude that public indifference will likely relegate Sigma's atrocities to obscurity.
Patient Zero A
doomsday cult that masquerades as a self-help group, named "Liberation", is using an upcoming exhibition at a luxury resort in Bangkok to provide cover for a
bio-weapon attack. 47 receives a contract from a mysterious billionaire using the alias "Locksley" to eliminate the cult's leader Oybek Nabazov and his second-in-command, Sister Yulduz. As 47 makes his escape, Diana notices a series of digital messages being transmitted from the resort's network, which are revealed to be
signals meant to activate the cult's
sleeper agents worldwide as a contingency once Nabazov's death is confirmed. The ICA identifies two sleeper agents, Brother Akram and celebrity author Craig Black, who are meeting at a private event in Sapienza to exchange a weapon identical to the one in Bangkok, which 47 retrieves after eliminating the targets. ICA intel then confirms the origin of another signal, which leads to a mercenary camp in Colorado where Dr. Bradley Paine, a
CDC specialist and secret cult member, has already begun infecting personnel. Forced to maintain his distance to prevent infection, 47 assassinates Paine with a sniper rifle, along with four victims of the Nabazov virus. Diana's analysts intercept a memo, indicating Japanese authorities have recently detained a man on a flight to Australia who showed signs of infection, and have ordered him to be quarantined at a hospital in Hokkaido. 47 infiltrates the hospital to eliminate the man, who is identified as Owen Cage, a radical virus researcher who helped design the Nabazov virus and infected himself with the intention of becoming
patient zero. An additional target is Klaus Liebleid, an Ether scientist overseeing the quarantine effort while secretly trying to extract as much information about the virus as he can, so that Ether can
reverse engineer Cage's work and profit from it. Despite Cage being kept in isolation, the virus can spread to other people and 47 must kill all infected individuals, if such a scenario arises, to eliminate the virus. During the debriefing, 47 and Diana note that the entire plot was beyond the scope of a cult, implying that Liberation was backed by a higher power. With the contract closed, the two move onto other targets. == Development ==