A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1) (45 page)

The game that Ferrera had instigated, when it had finally played out to its lethal conclusion, would later be judged by the survivors and those on the sidelines to have effectively have been created out of a mere nugget of trivia, a kernel of information seemingly of no use to anyone.

Like most operations of the 'great game' it didn't come from a single source. Instead, it filtered down from a variety of avenues, like rice flung far and wide in the sky. Eventually, enough grains made up the meal upon the plate. A grain here, a grain there, none of them seemingly connected.

In a very real sense, the maelstrom began with the destruction of the CIA's Black Orchestra network in Poland. Black Orchestra was a long term intelligence-run network that had been born in the aftermath of the Second World War, when former Nazi's and anti-communist elements were played back against the encroaching threat of Russia. In time, and with many additions to its agent list, it had grown to become one of the foremost CIA networks behind the Iron Curtain.

Over the years, Black Orchestra had been handled by many case officers, most of whom had cut their teeth in the war against Germany. But over recent years, Langley had felt that a 'new breed' of CIA officer was needed to be the next ones to keep the flame alive and the network running smoothly. But as with most intelligence professionals, the case officers were routinely re-routed and moved on, either through age, retirement, or from having their accredited cover blown making them
persona non grata
.

There was also the relentless surveillance on the CIA's Polish Stations, which made it difficult for the station officers on the ground to operate on a day-to-day basis.

It was decided by the Soviet Operations desk at Langley that what was needed was a covert action team capable of operating outside of the Embassy and diplomatic protection channels. They would enter the various countries – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria – 'on the black' with no diplomatic immunity and would therefore be deniable. This specialist team of men and women would enter the target country under commercial or civilian cover, get in, meet their agents, empty a dead letter box and receive useable intelligence products from the informants, before getting out without anyone being the wiser.

These people would be self-sufficient, with impeccable cover stories and nerves of steel.

The Agency set out on a recruitment and training program, looking for people with the 'right stuff', before narrowing the recruits down to just twelve people; ten men and two women. They were to be the elite of the Agency's agent handling sections. All the candidates had some unique quality; languages, previous intelligence experience, a background in the commercial world.

Candidate number six was a tall, fit twenty-seven-year-old who had already been through the CIA's recruitment process. His name was Daniel Samuel Ferrera. He had been in and out of Poland several times to collect messages, meet contacts or to service a dead drop. This time was no different than before. A regular pick up at a dead drop site in Warsaw Zoo. It was business as usual.

* * *

Charles Ferrera had been at home, having breakfast when the call came. The voice was one he didn't recognize, someone from the Director's office, a woman who spoke in clipped tones and who was terse to the point of rudeness. “Chuck, don't come in today. Stay at home. You have a visitor coming to see you. Someone you'll know,” the voice said.

Confused, he took off his suit jacket, folded it neatly and sat at the dining table to drink his coffee and read through that morning's paper. It was a habit he'd slowly fallen into, following the death of his wife Theresa.

The house was a sprawling six-bedroom affair in the Georgetown suburbs. Since Theresa had passed away several years before, and his son had moved out to start his own life, he'd almost felt swamped by the scale of the house. His plan had been to limit the rooms he used; kitchen, lounge, bathroom and master bedroom – that way he didn't feel as alone or like a pea rattling around in a tin can. In fact, at times it felt cozy. It worked.

He was a Senior Executive Officer in the Near East/South Asia Division of the Directorate of Plans. He had cut his teeth, like most of them, being dropped behind enemy lines during the war and had carried on when the OSS was dissolved and went through its various incarnations, until it had been reformed into the CIA.

He was halfway through an article regarding the crisis in Cuba, when he heard a car pull onto the drive. There were footsteps, a pause, and then a confident knock on the door. Ferrera downed the dregs of his coffee and made his way to the front door.

Before him, looking fit, tanned and successful, was his comrade, brother-in-law and friend, Richard Higgins. Higgins, the Assistant Director of Plans at CIA, was second only to the big man in the Plans Directorate, the Director of Plans. He was also Ferrera's direct superior and an old-school cold warrior, not known for backing down or pulling his punches.

And yet this morning, as his colleague and friend sat in his living room, Charles Ferrera sensed there was something more, something hidden going on behind the dark sunglasses. It was only when Higgins removed them, that it was revealed they were being worn not to diffuse the sun's glare, but to hide reddened and tearful eyes.

“Richard, what is it?” Ferrera said. His own voice sounded pensive and worried.

Higgins began to speak. “Chuck, I'm sorry to have to tell you this…”

Later, as he tried to review the conversation in his mind, Ferrera could only remember fragments of what his friend had told him. Daniel… A black operation in Poland… A confirmed fatality… The Polish network rolled up… The body disposed of by the KGB.

Daniel…

The noise which came from him had started as a mewling sound, and quickly degenerated into a desperate roar of pain. All pretense of control was gone; instead it was replaced by the noise of a wounded animal. He slipped to the floor, his hands ripping at his hair and his fists beating on the floor. Higgins held him for a while, both men curled up, trying to gain control of each other and failing.

He had wept at Theresa's bedside all those years ago when the cancer took her; he had been strong then, for the boy, for Daniel. But the wrenching away of his son, the suddenness, the brutality of it was too much to comprehend.
We never know,
thought Ferrara.
We never know that when we say goodbye to someone for even the most mundane of reasons, if we will ever see them again.

As the moment passed, the two men wiped away the tears which had been streaming down their faces for the past twenty minutes, uncontrollable sobs which racked body and soul. They sat back and regarded each other, one the father, one the uncle.

“Tell me everything,” said Ferrera.

* * *

Charles Ferrera always thought of his son in the moments before he slept and how God had given him a blessed life. He'd enjoyed an affluent lifestyle, a good career, and had a caring and loving wife. But it was his only child whom he prized, far above all these other things.

He was a second-generation Italian immigrant from Bologna. Grandfather Enzo Ferrera had been a shrewd businessman who had succeeded in taking his small import/export company specializing in a reciprocal trade between America and Italy, and turned it into something he was eventually able to float on the stock market.

The family had earned their wealth and were the new breed of immigrants to America. They were rich and successful. The money had paid for Enzo's grandson, Charles, to buy his way into Yale and establish the Ferrera family into the upper echelons of American society.

At the beginning of his first term, Charles Ferrera had been roomed up with a young man by the name of Richard Higgins. It was on their first spring break when Higgins invited his friend to spend a week with them at his family's home in Connecticut, where he'd been introduced to Higgins' sister, Theresa.

It had been love at first sight for both of them; he the tall, dark haired, good-looking Italian boy and she the willowy blonde debutante. Their courtship was brief and with university completed, they'd decided to marry as quickly as possible. Charles tried his hand at journalism – his grandfather and father had wanted him to take over the family business – but he felt commerce was too restricting. He had a world to explore and wanted to make his own mark upon it.

In 1935, their only son Daniel was born. Charles was actually in Europe at the time, reporting on the growing economic and military rumblings from Germany. He returned home two months later. His thoughts of work and the rest of the world were thrown aside as they dealt with the new addition to the Ferrera family. Having a son changed Chuck Ferrera. He'd seen a hint of the violence that was coming, violence that would engulf every nation on the planet, and he was determined to protect his son from it at all costs.

Seven years later, with the world at war and America's part in it becoming more prevalent, he was approached by his wife's father. Retired US Army Colonel William Higgins had heard, through his private old boys' network, of a new organization being built from the ground up and thought it would suit Charles perfectly. “Top secret at the moment and they're looking for bright young fellows with language skills. It's a lot safer than getting your head blown off in a trench,” his father-in-law had said.

Unfortunately, that wasn't to be an accurate appraisal.

The organization Ferrera was recruited into was the Office of Strategic Services, and his first operational foray into the field was assisting the partisans in Yugoslavia. He'd been dropped behind enemy lines as part of a five-man team, there to liaise with Tito's forces and to recruit informants. Ferrera was the radio man. The team leader was Richard Higgins. It had been a bloody and frenetic operation, but both men, comrades in arms, had survived, thanks to the trust each had for the other.

The rest of the war had been a whirlwind for Ferrera and Higgins. Operations in Italy, Greece and eventually France in the lead up to D-Day had ensured the two men had become well embroiled in the secret war against the soon-to-be defeated Germany.

Not that their partnership had ended with the dropping of the bombs in Japan in 1945; far from it. They had immediately switched from the wartime intelligence organizations of the United States to the newly created civilian version. The two men were now secret warriors, through and through. They had acquired a taste for covert operations and neither relished the thought of returning to their pre-war occupations. They were, and would be forever more, post-war cold warriors.

The lifeblood of the Central Intelligence Agency ran through their veins.

* * *

To a son, a father can be a hero, and the irrefutable truth is that son's follow their father's footsteps, whether they admit it or not.

To Daniel Ferrera his 'pop' was the greatest living hero he'd ever known. He read comic books with his classmates, stories of cowboys, aviators, explorers and spacemen. With each new edition he would say to his pals; “Those guys are okay, but none of them stand up next to my Dad!”

Daniel knew his father was involved in
some
kind of secret work, what it involved he didn't know, but there was certainly a lot of travelling, working late and whispered telephone conversations. In a sense, not knowing what his father did made it all the more exciting and mysterious.

But the best times were when the two of them would travel up to their lodge in Vermont, on the rare times when Charles wasn't away on operations, and go hunting, fishing and walking in the mountains. It was their time together, time that allowed them to bond. On one of these occasions when he was fifteen, Daniel had asked his father: “Pop, are you a spy?”

Charles Ferrera had turned to his son as they walked the mountain paths and smiled. “No, I'm not a spy, I'm the guy who tells the spy what to do,” he'd said. When Daniel had asked what his father meant, Charles simply shook his head and laughed. “All in good time, little man, all in good time. Let's get cleaned up for supper.”

Ten years later, it was inevitable that Daniel would be drawn into the intelligence business, and while Charles hadn't exactly pushed Dan into applying for the Agency, he'd certainly made it sound like an attractive career prospect. He had done nothing to discourage him. Hell, he'd even opened a few doors for his son. Why the hell not? What was the point of being a senior operations officer at CIA, if you couldn't search out new talent?

And talent was what Daniel Ferrera had in spades. He was young, intelligent, good-looking and patriotic. He had also inherited his father's skill and courage for operating in the field. To Charles Ferrera, his son was the role model for a new generation of CIA officer: elite, resourceful and brave. With an army of men like that, the CIA would be a force to be reckoned with across the intelligence community.

But all that had ended with a bullet on a cold winter's day in Poland.

Three months after the news of Daniel's death, and at the end of his compassionate leave, Charles Ferrera was moved from active operations to a desk job. The Agency 'shrink' had declared him fit for duty, but with the caveat that he be kept away from front-line operations for the foreseeable future.

For Ferrera, it had been another blow. Following the death of Daniel, he'd hit the booze. It had been hard going. His neighbors had tried to stand by him as best they could, but after finding him lying in the gutter outside the family home, covered in vomit and urine, they'd quickly distanced themselves from him. When he was finally sober enough to return to work, he'd been hit with the third hammer blow. A desk job! Not operational, for a man who had parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe and run agents behind the Iron Curtain, was very much like having a thoroughbred racehorse pulling a milk-cart. It was purgatory.

So with his son murdered, his wife having long since passed away and now being tied to a desk in Langley, he'd hit the bourbon once more. He was a man lost.

And yet deep down inside in the pit of his stomach, he burned. Burned with a violent fury, burned with the frustration of a man unable to right a wrong, burned at the injustice of the way his child, his boy, had been ripped from him. His anger grew over how the great and powerful secret arm of the American government had been impotent in its reply to the Russians.

“Stan knew the risks, Chuck,” sniveled the new Director of Central Intelligence at the 'welcome back to work' meeting he was required to attend six months ago. The new DCI had been brought in to shake up the Agency. Senior staff viewed him as an 'interferer' who knew little about intelligence operations. “We have to remain professional and not let our personal feelings – no matter how repugnant and distasteful we view the Russian Service's actions – cloud our judgement. Stan would have known that.”

“It's
Dan
, Mr. Director.” It came out as a whisper, barely audible over the Director's pep talk.

“We simply can't be seen to be using the Agency as a vehicle for personal vendetta's, and this talk of retribution, of us trying to close down possible Soviet networks that you seem to be encouraging. It's the stuff of fiction, not the responsible actions of one the best intelligence services in the world. Stan was one of our best young officers he would have gone far—”

“It's
Dan
.
Daniel,
” Ferrera said in a flat statement, still with respect in his tone.

But the Director was in full flow. “…and no amount of cloak and dagger games will bring him back, Chuck. We have an exciting new job for you, not operational, you understand, but still interesting enough to keep you active. Risk assessment for our overseas stations – a very valuable job, lots to do, lots to get involved with.”

The Director had risen from his desk and outstretched his hand, indicating that the meeting was drawing to a close. “Get your life back, Chuck, throw yourself into your work. It's what Stan would have wanted.”

It was then that Ferrera's anger had spilled over. “
His fucking name was
Daniel,
you moron!
”

And that was that. He'd stormed from the Director's office, driven into Georgetown and hit the bars. Martinis and bar nuts filled the rest of his day.

The following months had been a lesson in mediocrity, boredom, inaction, and loneliness. When he wasn't at work, he was getting drunk, and when he wasn't getting drunk, he would look in the mirror and see the face of an old, broken man staring back at him.

His only respite, if it could be called pleasurable, was to stand and stare at the memorial wall in the main reception at Langley and occasionally he would move forward and trace his finger over the star on the plaque that represented his son. With no grave he could visit, that small gesture, if nothing else, gave him some comfort.

* * *

Thump, thump, thump!

It was a beautiful spring day, that much he knew. He could just about see the sunlight shining in, through the cracks in both the curtains and his eyelids. He could see his alarm clock. 1.53 in the afternoon.

Thump, thump, thump!

He groaned. He'd missed work again.

Thump, thump, thump!

The banging on the front door had awoken him from his stupor. A commotion, tinged with the potential for violence. He staggered from the bed, took one last slug of 'Jack', and made his way down the stairs to fling the door open.

“So, you haven't done it yet. That's good to know,” said a very annoyed Assistant Director of Plans.

“Ugghh.” That was as much of a speech that Ferrera, in his hungover state, could manage.

“Eloquently put, Chuck. Jeez, it stinks in here. How much sauce have you put away?” Higgins took in the room. The half-naked man in front of him, the empty bottles, the gun on the floor where it had dropped from its owner's grip during the night.

“Done what?” said Ferrera. He was still working his way through the questions in his scrambled thought process.

Higgins entered the room, closed the door and gently sat Ferrera back onto the nearest couch in the lounge. “Oh, I think you know what.”

Ferrera slumped back onto the couch and groan softly.

“Oh, don't worry, I won't report it. I wasn't sure if I'd find you wrapped round some hooker or if I'd find your brains splattered all over the walls by the time I got here,” snarled Higgins.

“Huh… wrong on both counts,
sir
,” slurred Ferrera. He rolled his furry tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to work up a modicum of fluid.

It was then that Higgins lost his temper. “Oh, cut the crap Chuck, and put some clothes on. You need to pull yourself together and quick. You're slowly drinking yourself to death, you look like shit and you're basically finished at the Agency. Not even I can stop that happening now.”

Ferrera fixed the other man with a harsh, beady-eyed stare. “So why should I care, then, huh,
huh!
My boy's dead, family is finished, job's down the crapper.
What's left!
”

The slap, when it came, rocked Ferrera. It contained such contempt and together with the dismissive look on Higgins' face, Ferrera wasn't sure what had just happened. Then the tears came. He held his head in despair.

Higgins crouched down so that they were at eye level. When he spoke, his voice was soft, gentle and reasonable. “Chuck, you're sitting here in your own piss, contemplating suicide. All those things you once hung onto are finished and the sooner that registers, the better. Your life will never be the same again. But if you want to stand any chance of getting payback for your boy, for Daniel, then you need to shape up quickly.”

“You said yourself I'm finished at the Agency, the DCI himself has deep-sixed the plans I drew up to attack those Soviet networks.”

A slow nod from Higgins. “All that's true. But I've been thinking. I don't think the opportunity for justice is with the CIA. It's far too narrowly focused for that. The Agency have become a bunch of ass-kissers in Washington, headed I might say, by our revered, at least in his own mind, new Director of Central Intelligence.”

Ferrera shook his head. He still wasn't connecting the dots; maybe it was the booze gripping him.

Higgins placed a gentle hand on his friend's head and caressed it. “Don't worry about it now. I'll explain in time. Even I'm not sure what I mean yet. The first thing we're going to do is get you well again, somewhere away from Washington. There are too many memories here, too many distractions and too much booze. Don't try and resist or I'll have the goons from the Office of Security drag you out of here.”

Ferrera looked up and nodded his acquiescence. He'd cause no trouble. Higgins nodded, satisfied. “Then we're going to draft a letter, handing in your resignation on health grounds, which I'll take to the DCI personally; that way, you'll at least get a good resettlement package. Finally, I'm going to hide you somewhere remote, somewhere isolated, so we can dry you out and get your brain cells working again like they did in the old days.”

“And then what?”

“Why, that's the simple part. Then we start planning,” replied Higgins.

And it was then, on that day when he'd reached rock bottom, that Charles Ferrera experienced a moment of clarity. Not an epiphany, nothing so biblical or as all-encompassing as that, but he came to realize in the nexus of that moment that he had wasted too much time in mourning his own son, his Daniel.

He'd mourned, he'd cried, he'd indulged in self-pity and despair. He'd been a sham. What type of father simply sits back and lets a bigger aggressor snuff out the life of a child, without extracting some kind of retribution? His Italian ancestors would have demanded revenge so that honor could be restored. He lay back, relaxed and somewhere deep in his mind, he sought out a glimmer of hope.

A month later, on the day he was due to retire from the CIA, have lunch with the Director and receive his Certificate of Merit for long and faithful service, Charles Ferrera didn't show up for work again. This time it had nothing to do with him being drunk; he was simply too disgusted with the establishment to which he had dedicated his working life.

* * *

The American Central Intelligence Agency, like any large government institution, is a bureaucracy and over recent years, there had been a growing culture of neat, tidy men with short haircuts and Brooks Brothers suits. They had a narrow focus and an even narrower mindset of the world. What had started out after the war as a sleek and lean organization, had grown and grown until it was like a fat man spilling out of his suit, and like most over-large, obese and unaccountable secret societies, it could, if you had the right insider knowledge and technical know-how, be quite easily manipulated.

This was Richard Higgins' beginnings of a plan.

Following the aborted Polish operation, Higgins had been put in charge of investigating what had gone wrong in Warsaw Zoo and the murder of Daniel Ferrera. Put in charge of it, hell, he had requested it vehemently. He would track down those responsible for the death of his nephew, come hell or high water.

Not that Higgins despised or hated his Agency, far from it. Oh sure, it was weak at times, ineffectual, overly-complex and always pandering to those jerk politicians. But despite all this, he loved the CIA, as a teenager who has loved his first girlfriend will later love and respect her as a wife. They had a history. Which in a sense made it all the harder for him to betray the trust he had afforded the CIA.

That summer, Higgins was the lion that didn't roar. He sat and waited, watching and brooding. He oversaw the Agency's operations as usual, but because of his seniority at the CIA, he was also able to observe and manipulate. He followed leads and noted sources and assets which could be beneficial.

“I've got the authority to investigate the Polish operation,” he told Ferrera. “I'll follow the seam and see where it leads. See if I can find out who was behind it, who was the team leader, who was the gunman, but more importantly
why
Daniel was shot. You keep your head down and get yourself strong again.”

For months, there had been nothing. Only what they knew from official sources. There had been a shooting of a Western spy as part of a Russian/Polish counter-intelligence operation. One confirmed kill, with the body being disposed of in a Warsaw funeral directors. The spy was there on the 'black', without diplomatic cover and was therefore deniable by the US, hence the CIA's distancing itself from the whole sorry mess.

For Higgins, the leads led nowhere, and he knew he was hitting a wall. Nothing was coming out of Soviet Operations; nothing from the CIA station in Warsaw and the death of a junior officer in the Directorate of Plans was fast losing momentum and fading fast. There was a war on and in war, there are always casualties. The young CIA man would receive a star on the CIA's memorial wall and the family would receive the sympathy of a grateful US government and nation. Besides, said the naysayers, Poland was a Cold War backwater. Now Vietnam, that was where the real cut and thrust of intelligence work was going to be over the next few years. Real fighting, a real war!

And then, just as both Higgins and Ferrera feared the trail had gone cold forever, they experienced a piece of luck that changed everything. It came in the shape of a disaffected Russian intelligence officer, who had made an offer to the CIA station in Helsinki.