Robert Knox (also known as The Inventor) is the CEO of Kronstadt Industries. He appears as one of Agent 47's targets in the HITMAN™ 2 mission The Finish Line.
Background[]
At age 21, his family finally pulls a few strings and gets him a PhD stipend at Caltech, where he starts developing robotics and artificial intelligence. Here, Knox also meets a young post-doc, Florence Underwood, with whom he gets romantically involved.Florence unexpectedly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a beautiful baby girl. Sadly, Florence dies from sepsis following the birth, leaving Robert Knox alone to raise a child and pursue his career at the same time.
Coming out of Caltech with a handful of patents, Knox starts Kronstadt Industries. His skill as a businessman has not improved though and over the next years, Knox' skill at manipulating people through threats, lawsuits and straight bribes keeps the company afloat. His technical skills and reputation catch the attention of a powerful group of people and one morning, after having shaken hands with a strange, non-descript man, Kronstadt wins an incredibly lucrative contract with the US army to develop robotic soldiers. Three years later, Kronstadt Industries goes public and the stock market explodes. Suddenly, everyone in tech and money know who Robert Knox is. His bold personality finds that the public eye is one that pleases him immensely.
Over the next decade, Knox carefully crafts an image as a maverick CEO, willing to not only risk things to get his company (and critically its shareholders) a big chunk of the exploding medical and robotics tech share, but also willing to go along with whatever publicity stunt his PR Director comes up with. Knox, a charming eccentric, starts dating Hollywood actresses and soon finds himself on regular covers of tabloids and enthusiast magazines. He finds an interest in race car driving and quickly forms a team of his own, using Kronstadt patents to boost the performance of the cars. One day, while experimenting with a new nitrogen boost applicator while driving his prototype car, something goes wrong. Knox is horribly burned and despite the best efforts of GAMA surgeons, he carries the scars from the accident to this day. Another race driver, Maxwell Rutter, who was involved in the accident, sued Knox for damages but lost the trial. Rutter now works for the Global Innovation Race and is known to hold a grudge against the Knox family.
With the recent CEO killings, Knox feels the ground burning beneath his feet and so makes another bold life decision. He contacts the terrorists through a dark web connection and offers them a deal. Spare him and get the digital keys to the kingdom - backdoor access to everything Kronstadt has a finger in, including a lot of security systems used by big companies. Knox is betting on the deal to go through any day now.Personality and Behavior[]
During the course of the level, Robert does a circuit around the upper floors of the Kronstadt building. His route takes him between the firing range with the robot, the engineering laboratories, to his private office and assistant's office on the top floor, and back down again. He has a tense relationship with his daughter Sierra. If Sierra wins the race, which can happen if the player manipulates the outcome, the two will meet in the podium building.
His eyes are very sensitive to dry air as a result of his accident, forcing him to keep the ventilation system in the office humid. If the system is changed, he will rush to the restroom and apply eyedrops, which 47 can poison.
An engineer, Robert takes a personal interest in his personal vehicle, which is on display in the showroom on the bottom floor of the center. If there is a problem with the car, he will immediately run down to examine it himself, presenting a sabotage opportunity.
Robert is also is an aficionado of Florida Man's food products. He will pause on the balcony outside the firing range to look towards the food stand, waiting for Florida Man to begin serving; if he sees the stand open, he will head downstairs and outside to eat. This presents an opportunity for Agent 47 to acquire the proper disguise and poison Robert.
Trivia[]
- In the driver's lounge (or the paddock, if the race is still going on), a friend of Sierra's can claim that Robert Knox simply told Sierra "Don't screw up" when she was introduced as the company's new CFO, and he discovered that she had been secretly working for the company for years.
- It is rumored that Robert Knox killed his business partner Konstantin Zhukov in Kronstadt's early days, so that he alone would prosper from its success. The threat of this information being published in a tell-all book by Zhukov's son Pavel causes Knox to contact the assassin Mark Faba to eliminate Pavel before the book's release.
- According to the aquarium guards, Robert Knox enjoys spending time looking at fish in the aquarium.
- Robert Knox is determined for Kronstadt to win the Global Innovation Race, and has three different methods of cheating to achieve this. Despite his attempts, his team will place second in the race if 47 does not interfere.
- He has installed an illegal steering assist AI into the car's engine, which Maxwell Rutter is eager to find because its use is grounds for elimination of Team Kronstadt.
- He has modified Sierra's racing suit with biochemical injections, so it doses her with dopamine reuptake inhibitors and increases her adrenaline without her knowledge.
- He has arranged for a Kowoon mechanic to place a bomb on Moses Lee's car, so if the Kowoon team pulls ahead, Knox can pull the trigger and take Lee out of the race. If 47 interferes, he can place the explosive on Sierra's car and outsource the assassination to Robert Knox.
- The left side of Knox's face is heavily scarred from an old racing accident. In the early years of the Global Innovation Race, Maxwell Rutter was about to come in first, so Knox sabotaged himself and Rutter by rear-ending Rutter's car, giving himself facial burns and Rutter spinal damage.
- Knox's facial scars somewhat resemble those of Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda, which were also sustained from a racecar crash.
- Despite Knox's estranged relationship with Sierra, if he is manipulated into killing Sierra with his car bomb, he will immediately be shocked and drop the detonator. He will then assume that Sierra's murder is Providence's way of teaching him a lesson before attempting to flee Miami via helicopter.
- Even though he cares about his daughter, he still allows her to wear the new racing suit, which he mentions "the radiation[...]in the long term will most likely be minor". This shows he is willing to put his own daughter's life on the line to further Kronstadt Industries.
- He can see through Agent 47's disguise when he is disguised as Timothy Yu in The Undying Elusive Target mission.
Gallery[]
