A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1) (42 page)

Dempsey nodded. It seemed reasonable, but he still wasn't sure where Stanhope's story was going.

“Higgins was staying at a nice hotel over on Pohjoisesplanadi. I had his room number, so I made my way up and knocked on the door. No answer.”

“Maybe he was asleep. Jet lag?” suggested Dempsey.

“That's what I thought, so I let myself in,” said Stanhope, not a bit sheepishly. “I used my regulation lock-picks. I always had the knack with them.”

“And?”

“Nothing. He wasn't there. Clothes, suitcase, bag; everything else was still in place, but no Higgins.”

“Maybe he'd had the same idea as you and hit the bars?”

“That's what I thought… maybe. It's just that Higgins didn't seem the type. He's too much of a square, plus he didn't know the area. I went back down to reception and asked if Mr. Higgins in room 708 had left that evening. The night porter said that no one had passed him and he'd been on duty since late afternoon. Wherever Higgins was, he'd snuck out and hadn't handed his key in to reception.”

“Maybe he'd decided to meet up with a woman,” said Dempsey. Stanhope scowled. “Don't make me laugh. Something wasn't right. I was more worried that a senior CIA officer had gotten into some kind of trouble than anything else. I sat across from the hotel in the car until just after one in the morning. It was freezing and just as I was about to call it a night and raise the alarm at the Embassy that our visitor had gone missing, who should turn up, walking down the street, but Higgins, carrying an attaché case.”

“Well, he'd obviously been somewhere. Perhaps someone else at the Embassy had hosted him?”

“That's what I thought at the time. The next day, I was due to pick him up and drive him to the airport. I mentioned that we'd tried to call him the previous night to invite him out for a meal with the station officers. He shrugged it aside.”

“Where had he been?”

“Well now, that's the thing. He said he hadn't been anywhere. He reckoned he'd had a light supper and then turned in for an early night. Said he hadn't left the hotel at all,” said Stanhope.

“Which is evidently not true, as confirmed by your brief spell of breaking and entering,” said Dempsey.

“Exactly. A top CIA officer sneaks out from under the nose of a local station, disappears for several hours, turns up in the middle of the night carrying a briefcase and then says that he'd spent the night tucked up in bed. FUBAR!”

Dempsey considered Stanhope's version. “Okay, so he got up to something, but it's hardly a criminal offence.”

Stanhope laughed. “Troy I would have agreed with you totally, if it hadn't been for the next forty-eight hours' worth of events, when we got our operation cancelled by the same man and then our agent turns up dead. Higgins was the last CIA man to see him alive.”

Dempsey looked incredulous. “You're saying there's a connection. That's pretty wild, Joe. You're a man of the law, where's the proof of any of that?”

Stanhope shook his head, resigned to the fact that his theory would only ever be a theory. “That's the problem. Theories I have, actual proof I have none. But my guess is, that's why you're here. Something's happened back at Langley, something serious enough to have the Director send you in undercover and poking around. I don't know what that thing is, and I guess you're not going to give me the inside information about whatever it is you're investigating, but you've got to admit that what happened in Helsinki over those few days is certainly intriguing.”

The sudden realization hit Dempsey like a shot from a heavyweight boxer. Higgins had deep sixed the proposed defection operation of Anatoli Galerkin.

His final report had claimed the KGB man was obviously a plant and untrustworthy, this despite the vehement protestations of the CIA case officers who had dealt with the man. That and the fact that the Russian showed up dead. Could it have just been coincidence, or was it something more? Was it murder? Had he been eliminated in order to keep him silenced?

Why would anyone, let alone a senior CIA officer, want to silence a potential defector in place from a rival service? Obvious really – the man was set to expose someone.

Was Higgins a traitor? A deep cover KGB spy?
But no, that didn't sit right,
thought Dempsey. If this was a run-of-the-mill double agent inside CIA type operation, then maybe. But this was something else, something new, a hybrid operation. If it wasn't to protect a source, then the only other reason could be that the man had useful intelligence he wanted to trade, intelligence that someone else wanted to get to first. Get to, and perhaps keep.

It was all mixed up in his head, he needed time to let it settle and then analyze it calmly. He turned his attention back to Stanhope, who was standing looking out at the traffic moving down below.

“So what did you do next?”

Stanhope shrugged. “Just what I told you. We fought against the decision about Galerkin for a while and demanded that the Directorate of Plans conduct a thorough investigation into how the operation was cancelled. But of course, by that time it was all over. Galerkin was dead and we were told to button it. I pushed for a few more weeks, but no one wanted to listen. Eventually I was getting lots of reprimands from Langley that weren't doing me any favors.”

Stanhope spat onto the gravel roof in disgust. “By that time, I'd had enough, handed in my resignation, and worked my required time out. Two months later, I moved back here to join the family law firm. As for Galerkin, he was as tough as old shoe leather and all business. I'm not sure he did guilt as an emotion. He just wanted to get his wife and unborn child to the West.”

Dempsey nodded in sympathy.

Stanhope looked at him. “The next thing to ask, would be what was Higgins doing in the unaccounted for hours of that night? Where had he been, who had he been meeting, and most importantly of all what was in that attaché case that he had clutched to his chest?”

“So you came all this way to see me. I'm honored.”

They were sitting in one of the standard Arc Deco hotels that ran along the front of Miami Beach. It was all pink and blue pastels. The bar was mostly empty, except for a few Cubans and their women. Evening dinner time was over and now the night animals had come out to play.

“Cut the crap, Paul, I'm here because I have to be, not because I want to be,” said Dempsey. He was nursing some kind of cocktail that he had no intention of drinking. The thing looked like a garden in a glass with a multi-colored straw sticking out of it.

“Fair enough. So to what do I owe the pleasure, seeing as you're not actually a client,” said the tall, blond haired man in the snappy business suit. Paul was Paul Koening; former CIA officer who had worked with the anti-Castroists before, during, and after the fuck up that was the Bay of Pigs. He'd been kicked out of the Agency in the shake-up following Kennedy's assassination. Rather than up sticks and head back to Washington, Koening had decided to set up shop as a Miami-based private investigator.

It evidently paid well,
thought Dempsey, judging by the way Koening was flashing his cash. “You see many of the old team?” asked Dempsey. “Bump into anyone on a regular basis?”

Koening waved a vague hand. “Jeez, Troy, you throw a stick around here and you're practically guaranteed to hit someone who's visited Langley. Miami's crawling with spooks. And as for the Cubans, it's like Havana down here. Do you know the Diaz brothers?”

Dempsey shook his head.

“Well,” continued Koening, “they were part of the original hit-teams we trained up to take care of Raul Castro. Good operators, tough guys. They seem to have tired of being political and have gone into the murder for hire business. Drugs guys, mafia guys, anyone really. There's a lot of talent down here that we trained Troy. Not all of it is good.”

Dempsey downed his drink in one. It was sweetly sickening, but with a hell of a kick at the end.

Koening let out a laugh. “Man, you've spent too long drinking Tom Collins in DC.”

Dempsey pushed the glass to one side and returned to the conversation. “What about guys from DC, Paul? You run into any of those over the past few months, professionally speaking of course?”

For the first time, Koening's clubby persona had evaporated and was replaced by a look of mistrust. He shook his head. “No, no one that I'm aware of, Troy.”

Dempsey let the silence linger and then gave Koening a look that said 'I can wait all day for you to join the dots'. He had a list of Higgins' travel details over the past few years. The man had been all over the world on Agency business, including a trip to Miami several months ago. There was nothing unusual in that. Except that when he was meant to be down here on CIA business, he had evidently been meeting with a former CIA officer turned scumbag private eye. The phone records from Higgins' internal line had shown that. Not the details of the conversation, of course, just that the phone line in Miami belonged to Koening.

Koening blinked first. “Okay, what's this about? You make an appointment to see me using an alias, you travel all this way, and when I arrive, I find not some swinging dick whose wife is humping one of our Cuban brothers, but a CIA man I haven't seen for three years. What gives?”

“I'm not hearing a no from you, Paul. Not hearing a yes to be fair, either. All that I'm hearing at the minute is a lot of stalling.”

Koening held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, you know I can't discuss my clients, confidentiality and all that.”

“Richard Higgins. That name ring a bell, Paul?”

“Hey, hey, hey… Don't even ask. Client confidentiality, you must be aware of that, Troy. They still have that in DC. I don't have to answer shit; I don't work for the Agency anymore. I'm freelance.”

Dempsey leaned in close, threatening in his manner. “You listen to me, you dumbass. You never leave the Agency, even when you're buried six feet under you're still on the reserve list. You understand? Now Higgins – you've heard from him, yes?”

“You can't make it stick. I'm protected by a senior Agency official. I'm fireproof, Troy, so fuck you… arrrgghh!”

Dempsey had laughed and then jammed a big meaty hand into Koening's crotch. He grabbed, squeezed and most disturbingly, held on in a vice-like grip.

The color drained from Koening's face and he let out a low mewl, his breath coming in rapid pants like he was struggling to breathe underwater. “Now Paul, it might seem like you have the upper hand, but believe me when I say it only seems that way. You say you have the protection of a senior CIA man, well, who am I to doubt you? But you're not thinking straight, Paul, you don't have the whole picture, the big picture.”

Dempsey squeezed again, to emphasize his point. He glanced around; no one was paying them any attention.

The Cubans were too busy fondling the asses of their girlfriends to care what two businessmen were up to. “I can beat your pair of aces hands down, especially as I have the DCI himself in my corner. Now you better start being co-operative double quick, or I might have to have the IRS come in and audit your books and check everything is above board, or maybe have the feds snoop around and raid your business premises. Maybe you fancy doing a little jail time, I'm sure we could make that happen. Don't worry about the crime, we can think of something. Of course, that's the official way. Perhaps I could arrange for those guys, the Diaz brothers, to make you disappear permanently.”

Dempsey released his grip and watched as the other man sagged forward, relieved that the pain in his groin had disappeared. “I'm just going to the bar to get a real drink and when I get back, and hopefully your balls have stopped killing you, we're going to talk.”

* * *

When Dempsey returned several minutes later carrying a bourbon, the color had returned to Koening's face. Dempsey took a sip and turned his gaze towards him.

“How do I know you're not bullshitting me, Troy?”

Dempsey laughed. “Paul, in all the years we've known each other, when have I ever bullshitted you? You know me, straight down the line. What I'm telling you is fact. You want to challenge that and take a risk, then you better start settling your affairs in this world.”

“Alright, alright…”

“Now, you were telling me about Richard Higgins and how he initially made contact with you. What was it, a phone call?”

Koening settled himself in his seat, his balls still aching. “No, that would have been normal practice, right. I got a knock on the door of my apartment late on a Saturday night, about eight months ago and who's standing there but the Assistant Director of Plans. Shit, I thought the Agency was going to reinstate me.”

“So what did he want, Paul? Obviously you're not back on the books. To come all this way to see you, it must have been important.”

“Yeah, well at the minute everybody seems to be travelling across country to see me,” said Koening. “He said that he was running an off-the-books op, something that was going to go down in Europe. They needed civilian personnel with no Agency connection. He said it made the op more secure that way.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought it was crap. I mean, since when did the Agency need to search out assets and staff in Europe? They're swimming with guys who will do jobs for them over there. But hey, Higgins was offering two thousand dollars for an introduction and some names. I'd be crazy to turn it down!”

“So what did he want specifically, Paul?”

“He wanted off-the-books people, residents in their own country who could provide a discreet 'surveillance capability' – they're his words, not mine. He wanted the names and contact details of private investigators in several countries. Guys who could do a little digging and poking around, ex-cops, ex-security people, that kind of thing.”

“And you have these names?”

Koening nodded. “Sure, I'm part of a network of private investigators. We all swap numbers; you need a guy in Europe or the Middle East or Asia to do a little tracing or find a missing person, one of our guys will fit the bill.”

Dempsey pondered on that. “What countries was he specifically looking for?”

“Britain, France, Italy, bits of Germany, Switzerland.”

“Did he say why?”

“Nope, he didn't and I didn't ask. My own guess was to track some people, prior to pitching a recruitment offer. But in these crazy times, it could be anything.”

It could be some research on some future assets,
thought Dempsey.
Or some people, some potential Russian agents with a big red cross on their foreheads. Some targets, some dead targets.

“So what happens now?” asked Koening, keen to discover his fate at the hands of the big Texan.

“Now you're going to give me the contact details of your PI network in Europe and then you're going to drop those memories of yours into a big black hole and forget that this ever happened. You understand?”

Koening nodded. He knew when to play the game and when to leave. “One thing I learned from working down here, Troy, is that Miami is the place to bury secrets.

* * *

The next morning Troy Dempsey presented himself at the offices of the Melmar Corporation, which had a series of buildings on the campus of the University of Miami.

What Melmar actually did, nobody knew.

It was in fact, the Miami-based CIA station operating under the codename of JM/WAVE and was there to provide a base for the continuing operations against Cuba. For Dempsey, none of that was of interest; he merely wanted a secure telephone and telex line so that he could pass back the information from Koening to Langley. He introduced himself to the Station's Comptroller and told him what he wanted. The office was small and quiet. Dempsey picked up a desk phone and punched in the number to Wellings' secure line at Langley.

“How's Miami?” asked Wellings.

“Swampy. Listen up, I got another piece of the jigsaw. I'm going to telex it through to the communications center, should be in about thirty minutes once I've figured out how this machine works.”

“Okay. I'll put in an immediate access request for when it arrives.”

“How about you? Anything turned up?”

Wellings sighed. “Nothing. I've spent the past few days searching through dozens and dozens of files that might turn something up. But as I'm not sure what I'm actually supposed to be looking for it's turning into a needle in a haystack situation.”

Dempsey sympathized. “We always knew it was going to be the fine details that would break this investigation open.”

“It doesn't help that Higgins' remit is to be a professional nosy-parker in other people's operations. I mean, that's what he's employed to do by the Director of Plans. Potentially, he could have accessed thousands of operations, everything from agent running, to technical, to defections. The list is endless.”

“Keep at it. He's not in it alone, there has to be a partner, maybe even two or three. That's what we want now, the next man along. The best advice I can give you until I return is to try to put yourself in the operational commander's shoes. How would you set this type of operation up; what would you need? Remember, they have access to pretty much all of the Agency's logistical contacts. How would
you
put in the plumbing?” said Dempsey.

They had the theory that Higgins was up to no good; something involving the death of a defector, an investigation into a shooting in Poland and a fictitious operation across Europe. Separately, they didn't add up to much. What they needed were the finer details about where it was going to lead them and bring all the threads together.