A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1) (36 page)

Gorilla untied the rope holding the right arm in place and gently let it fall so that Gioradze's wrist was dangling directly over the tin bucket. Next, he placed the edge of the blade halfway along the man's right wrist, steadied his hand, and in one swift motion he dragged the blade sideways, opening up the vein. The cut was deep and true and at once, the blood began to seep from the man's wrist and down into the bucket.

Gorilla estimated it would take roughly five minutes before Gioradze would bleed out completely, maybe less if you counted in the amount of blood he'd already lost from the gunshot wounds. The blood flowed forth, spilling into both the bucket and dribbling onto the surrounding floor. In the dark of the room, it looked like a pool of shiny black oil.

Gorilla watched intently, he thought he owed the man that at least, and a few minutes later when the bucket was almost full, Gioradze slumped forward. He tensed momentarily and then the life left his body. Gorilla reached forward, closed the man's eyes and gently rested his head to one side. He opened the door and was met by the old man, sitting in the lounge. The old man's eyes were rheumy as if he'd been weeping.

“Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute,” said Gorilla. He almost made it outside – almost – before the feeling got the better of him and he threw up the limited contents of his stomach onto the stone doorstep of the kitchen entrance.

* * *

Once he'd recovered, Gorilla set to work. His first task was to make the call to the number in France. He picked up the phone receiver in the living room and stared at the piece of paper with the phone number written on it.

This could go either way. He weighed up the options and reasoned that Gioradze had probably told the truth under interrogation, and even if he hadn't, what choice did he have now? Don't phone in the code and the operation is finished. Do phone it in and the man on the other end smells a rat and it's the same result.
Fuck it, let's just get on with it,
he thought.

He dialed for the operator, heard the click as she came online and read out the international number. He waited, clutching the receiver fiercely, the earpiece emitting a series of clicks and tones. It seemed like minutes passed, but he knew in fact, it was probably only a few seconds.

“Your call is about to be connected, caller,” the operator announced. She sounded as if she was working from inside a metal chamber, her voice tinny and echoed.

“Oui,” said a male voice from the earpiece. It was strong, and authoritative.

Gorilla remembered Gioradze's accent and tried his best to imitate it. It had been gruff and guttural and he knew that it was best to keep it brief in case the accent slipped. “Ciseaux.”

There was a pause and then the voice said, “Merci” and hung up. The code was complete.

Gorilla gently placed the receiver back into the cradle. All he could do now was hope that the ruse had been successful. His next priority, he decided, was to conceal the bodies. There was one man outside in the grounds of the house, one in the cellar and Gioradze here in the kitchen. They had to be moved, and quickly, and then centralized in one location. The most obvious and unobtrusive place was the cellar.

Gorilla spent the next thirty minutes dragging and lifting the bodies and carefully laying them out on the cellar floor. He found an old tarpaulin and covered them. Finally, he made safe the Uzi's and then did a brief check around the outside of the property for any obvious damage that might be seen, once daylight came. When he'd finished, he made his way into the living room to talk to the old man who was wrapped in an old blanket and sat by the fire. He looked exhausted.

“What should I do now, Herr Gorilla?” said Scorpius, faintly.

Gorilla was busy packing away the Remington into its carry bag. “Nothing, just act like you normally would if tonight hadn't happened. Are you alright about the bodies in the cellar?”

Scorpius looked at the flames dancing in the hearth. “Herr Gorilla, I survived the horrors of Berlin after the fall of Hitler when the Soviet forces invaded. A few corpses of men sent to kill me… please, I will not even lose a wink of sleep.”

But Gorilla didn't believe him for a minute. Corpses don't sit well with anyone, not even corpses who had recently made an effort to end your life. Gorilla thought it was just the old man trying to hide his fear and decided not to press him about it any further. “Good. I will leave in a few moments and you will never see me again. I was never here; do you understand?”

The old man nodded.

“In a few days, you will receive a call from a firm of builders, who will give you a date for when they will be coming to fix the windows, doors and to remove some old pipe work from the cellar. You understand?”

Again a nod. “I understand – pipe work. What if someone from the village enquires about my broken windows and doors in the meantime?”

“They won't. But if they do, simply tell them it was storm damage from tonight's gales, hence the need for the builders. The builders when they finish will leave your house in perfect condition.”

Scorpius nodded. “And what will you do now, Herr Gorilla?”

“I have to finish cleaning up,” said Gorilla, jerking a thumb towards the sea outside the rain spattered window.

* * *

Aldert Verhoeven sat in the galley of
The Thamilia
nursing a cup of scalding hot coffee laced with a slug of brandy. He checked his watch: 2.30 am. They were late, damn them! Gioradze had assured him that the whole thing would take no more than an hour. That had been just under two hours ago.

He would give them another thirty minutes, then he would scuttle out of here. They'd been lucky so far, having attracted no notice from either the coastguard or any passing ships on shipping lanes, probably due to both the stormy conditions and the lateness of the hour. He'd been monitoring Channel 16 on the radio, to see if
The Thamilia
had attracted any attention from other crafts and been reported to the coastguard station at Pendennis Head, but again, there had been nothing. For now.

But now he was sure his luck was running out and he didn't wish to tempt fate any further.
He who hides and runs away, gets to live another day,
was his smuggler's motto and one that had stood him in good stead over the past twenty years in his smuggling career. He glanced again at his watch. 2.45 am. Fifteen more minutes and then he was gone, back to Barfleur. Fuck Gioradze, fuck those French thugs and fuck the…

It was distant, but unmistakable; the noise he'd been straining to hear for the past few hours, the putt, putt, putt of a small engined boat. Verhoeven was an experienced smuggler and knew that darkness was the covert operator's friend. So no lights, no signals, nothing.

He made his way to the stern and saw the inflatable craft approaching. Fifty feet… thirty feet… twenty. They had been lucky, no coastguard or police launches in the vicinity, allowing them to have free reign. The small rubber boat covered the last fifteen feet and then the engine was cut, the craft smoothly and silently left to glide towards the mother ship.

Verhoeven waved his hand to guide the ship towards him; in the other he held a rope to tether the two crafts together. Through the darkness of the night he saw a small silhouette of a figure stand up. Judging by the man's size, he guessed it must have been Gioradze. “It's about time! You're late. Where are the others?”

He was answered with the blast of a shotgun. In the vastness of the ocean, it would have caused no more than a pop sound and the brief flash from the muzzle radiated out no more than a few feet. The round took Verhoeven in the head, killing him instantly. His body sagged back onto the deck.

To all intents and purposes, and with the last of the mercenary team killed, the attempted hit against an old man living on the coast of Cornwall might never have happened. Certainly, there were no living witnesses to argue otherwise.

* * *

An hour later, after returning to shore and destroying the inflatable, Gorilla made his way back to the concealed Spitfire in the nearby copse, packed away the shotgun into the boot and drove the mile to the nearest public telephone box on the outskirts of the village.

He checked his watch. It was just past 3.45 in the morning.
Good, a perfect time to wake Masterman up.
It serves him right,
he thought.
Keep me up for days on end will you, Colonel? Well, two can play at that game.

He dialed the secure number which he knew would be transferred to Masterman's private line at his house in Chelsea. Hearing the ringing tone, then the pips, he pumped in as much spare change as he could to feed the device.

“Yes.” It was the familiar voice of Masterman. Rather annoyingly, he sounded wide awake, damn him, almost as if he'd been sitting waiting over the phone like a vulture ready to swoop on its prey.

“It's Gorilla.”

“Of course it is, who else would be phoning at this time of night? How's my car? No scratches? Better hadn't be or I'll kick your backside all the way back to where I found you!”

“No, no scratches, a bit muddy, nothing a good hosepipe couldn't sort out.”

“Well, make sure you clean it before you bring it back. How's our problem? Resolved, I hope,” said Masterman, his mind diverted from the car.

Gorilla started his situation report. “The targets are down, Scorpius is safe and his cover is still intact. Minimal damage to the property, but we'll need to send a cleanup team in quickly, to remove the bodies and fix up some damage before the locals get wind of it.”

“Fine, I'll sort that out today.”

“Good. There's also a boat moored off the coastline, about a mile out, which will need to be hauled away.”

“No problem. I'll have our tame coastguards confiscate it… and the captain?”

Gorilla glanced outside the phone box. It was silent and dark, the storm having long since subsided. “Unfortunately, he didn't make it. He decided to pay a visit to Davy Jones's locker.”

Masterman didn't exactly burst into tears at the news. “Anything else?”

“Yes. I managed to take the team leader alive as instructed. I gave him the drug cocktail and ran with it. As much as I didn't like using it, I have to admit it was very effective. To cut a long story short, the next target is in Paris.”

“So, Cirius, the soldier. How and when?” asked Masterman.

“Next Sunday. The man tonight was called David Gioradze, a mercenary who works with Marquez. It seems they were both contracted by an American called Mr. Maurice Knight. The plan was for Gioradze to send a simple code to their base just outside Paris. That would be the cue for Marquez to take out Cirius on the Pont Neuf, of all places. I've taken care of that, hopefully the false code worked.”

“Ha, they're ambitious chaps, I'll give them that. Good work, Jack.”

Gorilla nodded. “Thank you, sir, I'll write it up in more detail when I get back to London. At the very least, it's bought me a few days before I get back to Paris in time to cut off Marquez's head.” Gorilla could hear Masterman breathing, thinking, weighing up the options. That's what made Masterman such a good leader of the Redaction Unit, his ability to improvise at a moment's notice and to take the strategic initiative away from his enemies. “Are you still there, sir?”

“Mmm,” said Masterman. “Just thinking things out, seeing which way the wind blows. Get yourself back to London – quickly! We may have just come across a small window of opportunity to smoke out the last of the hit-team. How's your partner shaping up, by the way? Is she useful?”

Gorilla thought it better not to interrupt and tell Masterman that following the attack on Nicole, she'd more than justified her place at the operational top table. Instead, he decided to play the issue down. “She's done just fine. She wears skirts which are far too short and her legs have the male population gawping at her. So it can be a distraction when I need them looking at her, and not at me. Good and bad,” he said.

“Good. She's going to get a chance to earn her wages.”

“How so?”

“We can't move Cirius, at least not permanently, but we can move him into a position so we can drag this killer out into the open where he has to stick his nasty little head above the parapet. Then you can bloody well chop it off for him. Leave it to me; I'll need to move a few people around so that all my ducks are in a row. Oh, and Jack, do yourself a favor and buy a bloody big bouquet of flowers on your way back to London.”

Gorilla was confused. “What for?” he asked.

“To say sorry to my good lady wife, for waking her up at such an ungodly hour as this!”

* * *

Gorilla made it back to London around lunchtime. There was a quick stop at the Pimlico office, to drop off the gear and to park Masterman's Spitfire. He changed back into his suit and left a note on his desk saying he would be on temporary leave for the next twenty-four hours and out of touch. His body was exhausted and all he wanted was to rest.

He made it back to his Maida Vale apartment, took off his clothes and flopped down onto the bed; covering himself with the sheets to block out the daylight. But sleep didn't come easy. That day and through into the night in the safety of his bed, Jack Grant dreamed of arms tied with rope, howling storms, a bone handled cut-throat razor dripping with blood, the slicing of flesh – but most of all, blood.

No, sleep didn't come easy for him that night at all.

“Is it a coincidence, or something more?”

“You know as well as I that in this business, there is no such thing as coincidence, only enemy action.”

The older man pulled a face of displeasure, his tone growing angry. “The bigger picture is that several of your agents from the
BEAR
network have been murdered.”

They'd been walking for the past hour, battling through the snowdrift that had turned the pathway into a treacherous blanket of white ice. The snow clouds had receded, giving way to a bright clear day. Vladimir Krivitsky, KGB officer, had been forced to borrow a pair of snow boots from his host when he'd been told they would be going out for a walk to “discuss matters of some urgency.” His host was General Yuri Sakharovsky, Chief of the First Chief Directorate, the KGB's overseas Intelligence arm, and his direct superior.

The recall from his
Rezidentura
in Istanbul to Moscow, he was sure, meant only one thing. He was either going to be promoted, or killed. And since he knew he'd done nothing out of the ordinary over the past year, that only left execution. What for, he had no idea. Normally, these sorts of things were due to a power struggle within the KGB, one faction fighting another for promotion or control of a Directorate. Then it would be trumped up charges, torture, the Gulag or a bullet to the back of the neck.

He'd been greeted from the Aeroflot flight by a non-descript car and whisked away from the city out into the countryside. The driver, a tough-looking Siberian hulk, had told him they would be travelling to a private Dacha outside Moscow, where he would be meeting General Sakharovsky.

When Krivitsky asked for what purpose he would be meeting the General, the Siberian simply glared at him before turning his attention back to the road. With no further information forthcoming, Krivitsky decided to sit back against the leather seats of the car and wait to see how it played out.

When they arrived, the General had been waiting at the foot of the steps to his hunting lodge. He'd been taciturn and simply waved Krivitsky inside. The General had poured them both a hearty glass of vodka and they'd toasted to each other's good health, Russian style. They decided to walk out on the forest path and stretch their legs, let the cold air awaken their brains and try to solve the mystery. They crunched along, Krivitsky in his borrowed snow boots and the General trying to keep pace with his furious junior officer.

Sakharovsky, for all his bullish and harsh manner had been a devout protector of Krivitsky, dating back before the Poland incident. He liked the man's ruthless and aggressive manner. “I didn't want to discuss this at the office. There are too many ears listening, and too many ambitious people plotting.”

The General then gave Krivitsky the news no case officer ever wants to hear about his agents in the field. “Vladimir, it has come to our attention that over the past three months, several agents from your
BEAR
network have been murdered.
Sloth
has been butchered in an apparent sex-murder,
Giant
has been killed in a hit and run, and
Ursid
has been obliterated in an explosion caused by a warhead from an RPG! We want to know, from you, their senior controller, what is happening?”

Krivitsky had taken the news like an old boxer, reeling from a body blow. He bent his head down and for a few moments, he lost his balance. It was as if a shard of pure ice had penetrated his heart. He'd swayed, and the pain in his chest had been so intense, he thought he would never be able to breathe again.

But that had quickly given way to a venomous fury which turned his neck and face to a crimson red. The rage enveloped him; if he'd had a gun he would have killed any wild animals he could have found out here in the forest. Killed them and then ripped them apart with his bare hands… but no, never mind… he would vent his fury the next time he was back in Istanbul, he would work it out of his system as he had before. Buried in shallow graves were several prostitutes who he'd had his way with before dispatching them and concealing their bodies in the Turkish countryside. He would find a young one, one who would struggle; he liked it when they struggled…

The General was speaking to him. “I said, when was the last time you had a meeting with any of them?”

Krivitsky simply shook his head; he couldn't remember. He tried to clear his mind and focus on the news, looking for any clue as to how this had happened. He'd been the prime architect behind the
BEAR
network and he and his officers had worked hard to infiltrate the ranks of various western intelligence, military and government organizations over the past decade.

He ran through them all in his mind;
Kodiak
, the NATO officer in Paris;
Polar
, the engineer helping design state of the art rocket systems;
Sloth,
the British diplomat in Germany;
Giant
, the banker who moved secret operation money around for the KGB;
Grizzly
, the young GCHQ officer in the Middle East;
Ursid
, the covert arms dealer, and finally his crowning glory,
Nandi
, the aristocratic Italian politician who had a direct channel to the White House in Washington.

All provided him with secret intelligence, all keeping the KGB power-players off his back with up to date economic and military intelligence material. With the
BEAR
network in place, he was fireproof. Without it, he knew he would soon be pushed aside by any number of ruthless and power-hungry KGB officers, looking to oust the old guard.

His mind focused back on the General's question. “Personally? Not for several months. Most of the month-to-month running of the
BEAR
agents is left to my specially recruited officers in the individual
Rezidentura's
. I only visit a meeting if there is something of great importance to deal with.”

“Then perhaps they have been careless? A security slip, by one of your agents or their case officers. I don't mean to be critical, it happens, it is normal. But the question should be, what we do to correct it?” pondered the General.

Krivitsky frowned. If his officers had been careless and jeopardized his team of agents, he would personally hang the whole bloody lot up on meat hooks and throttle them with his bare hands. “That is true. Mistakes can happen. But if what you say is correct, how all my agents could be targeted when they have no connection, no link and as far as I am aware, they have no knowledge of each other – is an enigma.”

Neither one of them raised the possibility of a traitor within Russian intelligence, but then, really, neither one of them had to. In the espionage business it was always a real possibility, it hung over them all like a gypsy curse.

“Is it the émigré groups?” suggested Krivitsky, his mind racing around, searching out likely options.

The General looked doubtful. “I fear not. It is too targeted, too specific; besides the émigrés are too clumsy in their attempts; drunk on cheap vodka and schnapps most of them. This is different; it has an air of the professional about it.”

Krivitsky stopped and turned. “Then a rival service, murdering our agents? But that is against all the rules. It is a violation, except under exceptional circumstances.”

The General looked his colleague up and down and sneered. “I hardly think that you are in any position to judge anyone about that. Not after the scandal in Poland several years ago. Besides, we have a reputation within our service for encouraging assassination, don't you think?”

Krivitsky conceded the point. The General himself had a policy of using terrorist factions around the world to act as the KGB's defacto operational assassination arm. Not to mention his use of ruthlessly murdering anyone who stood in his way. “Is it connected, do you think? After all these years, are the Americans seeking revenge for Poland. Could they still organize something like this?”

“It is possible, Vladimir. The Americans can be brutal when they put their minds to it.”

“But they must know that we will not sit back and let them hunt down KGB agents,” Krivitsky growled.

“True. If left to fester, it could lead to an underground war on the streets and in the cities, on both sides of the Iron Curtain,” said the General.

“From the sounds of it, it already has.”

They carried on walking along the path, heads down, deep in thought. Eventually, it was the General who broke the silence. “I have decided to organize a team from the Directorate to investigate. To see if there are any hints, as to who is behind this.”

Krivitsky's head snapped around. “General, if you let me run the investigation, it could benefit both my network and the Directorate as a whole—”

“Who is taking care of the investigation is not your concern. They are capable men, handpicked by myself. Your task – your only task – is to protect what's left of your network. How you do it is up to you, but whatever you decide upon, you must do it quickly, for the sake of the remaining agents.”

Krivitsky was not an officer to shirk away from taking charge, nor was he one to delegate being the bearer of bad news to subordinates. He nodded to himself, at last sure of how to proceed. “I will go and meet with my agents directly.”

“Is that wise?”

“It shows that we are taking the threat seriously. It is worth the risk.”

“Where will you start?”

Krivitsky thought. He would travel to see his head agent in Paris. “I will travel to Paris, to see my oldest agent, the military man…”

* * *

It was the hammering at the door which brought him around from a deep sleep. It was constant, as if the person wasn't used to being kept waiting on the wrong side of doors.

Grant flicked a look at his alarm clock; two in the afternoon! Monday! Christ, he'd been asleep for over eighteen hours. He felt as if he'd been beaten around the head with a wet fish, his mouth was as dry as a boot and his stomach was a rumbling earthquake of hunger.

Still the banging on the door continued.

The 'thumper' seemed to have tired of rapping with the knuckles, and had now decided to use the bottom of the fist in a thumping motion.
I can't take much more of that,
thought Grant, and admitting defeat dragged himself out of bed, through the hall and pulled open the door.

“Ah, so you are in. I tried phoning. Got no answer, so decided to come calling. Bloody hell, Jack, at least put some clothes on.” Masterman took in the apartment and aside from his semi-naked protégé, it was neat and tidy as befitted a bachelor pad which had been vacant for several weeks. The only evidence it had been used was the hint of a rumpled bed, peeking out from the next room.

And no booze on show,
thought Masterman. That was a good sign that his man's mind was focused and still in the game. He made his way to the lounge and settled back on the leather sofa. “Well, while you've been catching up on your beauty sleep, the secret wheels of power at SIS have been grinding, ever so slowly forward.”

Grant dragged a dressing gown from the bedroom and set off to make a pot of coffee. “So what's next?” he called from the kitchen.

“You leave on the evening flight to Paris,” said Masterman. He heard Grant groan from the kitchen.

“Full circle.”

“Full circle indeed, exactly back where you started.”

“I'll need—”

“What you'll need has all been taken care of. Miss Quayle has all the immediate logistics in hand. She's quite a resourceful field agent. By now, she should be at your hotel in Paris, making a little home-away-from-home for you both. We've chucked the apartment, time for a change of scene for you two. Don't want people getting suspicious about your comings and goings. She has your flight details and will be ready to meet you with open arms at Orly,” said Masterman.

Grant returned with two mugs of coffee and handed one to Masterman. “So it's Sunday. We know the hit was meant to be on Sunday? Is that still confirmed?”

Masterman nodded and took a sip of the coffee. “As confirmed as we can make it. Cirius is expected to meet his KGB control at the usual time and at the usual place; the Pont Neuf. He, of course, knows nothing about the expected assassination or the fact that we have you there, watching his back. Better that way.”

Grant agreed. Cirius might be a very brave man, but the thought of walking into a killing zone was enough to spook even the bravest of soldiers.

“What we don't know of course, is where Marquez, the assassin, will attack from,” said Masterman.

Grant had been thinking about that, playing it over in his mind. How would the assassin think? “He'll do it long range. In such a busy location, he won't want to get too close. He'll want to keep his distance.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that's the way I'd do it. Is there anything on the telephone number in Auver-sur-Oise?” asked Grant.

“That was a good lead, excellent work on your part. Toby and his team traced the phone number to a privately-rented chalet. Paris Station had one of their agents take a trip up there. They did a little snooping around. It was empty. Cleaned out, spotless. Rented through a local letting agent. They'd paid cash for a six-month lease. This Marquez character must have left as soon as he'd received the code you telephoned through. The safe-house had served his purpose and he's abandoned it, which means he's somewhere in Paris, planning and plotting.”

“He's a slippery fucker, isn't he? Any more information on him?”

Masterman shrugged, as if it was a matter of no consequence. “Aside from what we already have, nothing much. What we do know, is that he's obviously in the market for contract killing if the price is right. It seems he's been used by several different intelligence services over the past decade or so, most notably the Americans. There are rumors of hits in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, all against major targets. To be fair, as one professional to another, he's done remarkably well.”

Grant grunted. Freelancers; you'd never catch him being a freelancer. Redaction was a pig of a job sometimes and the only thing that made the killing easier was the knowledge that you were serving a greater good. The greater good in this case, was the service of his country, but these cash bandits would whore themselves for the biggest pay-check. Never in this life, never him. No chance. “Anything further on what happened in Cornwall?” he asked, focusing his mind back to the events of the previous few days.