Devlin Sub Rosa: Book Three of the Devlin Quatrology
Page 9
“Winter's coming; the water's getting chilly and the snowbirds are almost all back.”
“And a lot of 'em came early, what with all that cold weather up north.”
“Yup; bet it's gonna be a really bad winter. So much for global warming.”
“I think they've changed that to 'climate change,' Gordy.”
“Ah, right; politically correct idiots. Actually, it should be 'global cooling.'”
“Didn't you put that in 'Defiance'?”
“No, but I should put it in the third one. Thanks for the reminder.”
“No problem.
“So how's Sondra coming on 'Defiance'?”
“Talked with her yesterday, made one fix she forgot, changing 'Dallas' to 'Dallas.'”
“What? She had her real name in there?”
“Yup, but she fixed it while I was on the phone with her; took like ten seconds. Something called 'global search and replace,' she said.”
“Seems everything is 'global' these days.”
“Y'got that right, Ro.”
“So is it done?”
“Yup; she's uploaded it, and I should be able to get some shipped next week. Hope they're here in time for the boat parade. Marti said Gayle wants to get a copy then, and if they get here sooner, Marti's chomping at the bit for one.”
“So's Nor- – I mean Dallas … and me, of course.”
“Of course. You'll get the first one outa the box. I wonder if readers'll be able to tell the differences in style between Sondra's and mine.”
“Don't you mean Sondra's and Jake's?”
“Oh, good one, Ro; good one.”
“So ya wanna try the water?”
“Okay. But this early in the day, and with the east wind, it may be too cold for me. Remember what a wuss I am on that.”
“I know, I know; a gloating wuss.”
“Y'got that right, Ro. But, ah, okay; let's give it a try.”
“Kewl.”
“Okay, here we – oh, geez! It's holy water again.”
“Holy water?”
“Yeah. When people get in, I hear 'em hollering 'Jesus Christ!'”
- 39 -
June 18, 2013
9:38 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“And you were okay with that?”
“CIA assassins, mob hitters, not all that much different when you think about it, really think about it.”
“I'm not sure I” –
“Believe me, Pam, it took me a long time to sort that out, too, but when I really dug into it all, it really wasn't that much different. Just the clients and the motives. Politics, crime, business; all have nasty guys involved, and assassination is often their first solution to any and all problems. Not the most creative guys. And we supplied the hitters.
“But those weren't the first private jobs I did. The very first one came to me right after I'd resigned from the Agency, but it came through a contact I'd first made back when I was with them. Business, not political.”
“Was Gordy with you on that one?”
“Nope; he was still with the Agency, biding his time. He didn't leave until early '73. This was me, on my own.
“It was the fall of '72, and the target was the chief operating officer of a regional shipping line in Greece. The client was – well, let's just say he owned another shipping line and had a lot of beautiful women in his life.
“I tracked the target for two weeks and finally took him out while he was on a business trip to Rome, disappeared his body and then collected my fifty thou fee.”
“Dollars?”
“Yup; didn't go to euros till '03 or '04.
“Six months later, my client took over the regional line, and that gave him a near-monopoly in the Med, along with his other worldwide lines and his other businesses.
“Then, in '75, the family of the former owner of the regional line contracted for me to hit my former client, and I managed to do that, making it look like respiratory failure with just a quick, undetectable injection of a distillate of a very rare South American snake venom, which came to be our DP053/7. It took a slow and painful week to work, but when the end came, nothing showed up during the autopsy.”
“So no need to disappear the corpse.”
“Right.
“By then, I'd acquired several assassins' names and reputations, somewhere between ten and twenty, and I've forgotten which one they hired me under. I think it was as The Asp, but I'm not sure – oh, venom; right, it was The Asp.”
“What about Sydney? Where we visited after the Ballarat job. Was that private, too?”
“Nope; that was my last job for the Agency, July of '72, right after the Hoover hit, and right before I resigned.”
“Because of the knife wound?”
“Nope; but that gave me a reasonable excuse, especially when it took nearly six weeks to heal.”
“That bad?”
“Missed the femoral by about an inch; if it'd hit it, I woulda died.”
“So what happened?”
- 40 -
June 22, 2013
6:57 a.m. local time
Undisclosed location
“Okay, Doc; truce, okay?”
“Ja, okay, Herr Joel. So you found somesing viz Guggle?”
“Yeah, your General Fardunkoff was real, and he was killed by an unexplained bomb in July of 1954. And from what we found, he would probably have wanted to go to war with the US. A real nutjob.”
“Nutchob?”
“Yeah; crazy.”
“Ah, nutchob, crazy, nutchob, crazy. Okay. Nutchob.”
“And I read up on that butterfly effect thing, but it's way too vague and tenuous.”
“Tenuous?”
“Yeah, tenuous; flimsy” –
“Flimsy?”
“Uh – weak? Slight?”
“Ah. Veak, ja. Ten-yoo-us, veak, tenuous. Und flim-zee?
“Right; flimsy.”
“Flimsy, veak, flimsy, veak, tenuous. Okay.”
“He needs to see a stronger link between cause and effect, Doc.”
“Ach, ja, engineer, cement – nein, concrete sinking.”
“He doesn't believe in twists of fate. Too abstract.”
“Random chance; that I believe in.”
“Ach, ja, random chance; zis I know.”
“Yeah, I understand that.”
“Like ze unpredictable consequences of my killing zat general.”
“But we would never know.”
“Right, Joel.”
“Because we'd never know what didn't happen, only what did.”
“Ja, ja, you got it, Joel. Like if some – vat vas zat again? If some tvist of fate had let zat schwartze vin ze US election in '08.”
“Bayner, you mean?”
“Ja, ja, Rona; I sink zat is ze name. Ze -- how you say – ze black guy, Bayner, ja. Zey vould haf zeir first black President instead of zat white Irish guy.”
“O'Bama.”
“Ja, ja, Rona; O'Bama.”
“But what random chance could have changed that?”
“Ze election, Joel?”
“Yeah.”
“Or twist of fate.”
“Okay, Rona. Or twist of fate.”
“Could be anysing: a broken shoelace, a missed bus or train, a taxi broken down, any little sing.”
“Or voter fraud.”
“Ja, Rona, das auch – I mean zat, too.”
“Or some damn little Amazonian butterfly waving its little teeny wings.”
“I think voter fraud is more likely, Joel.”
“But there's no way to prove that what you say is true, Doc.”
“Zat is true, Joel, udder zan my journals. Zere is no vay to prove a counterfactual.”
“A what?”
“Counterfactual, Rona, something that's contrary to the facts, just like it says.”
“Like that World War Three stuff?”
“Right; no way to prove that he's telling the truth.”
“J
a, udder zan my journals.”
“So, Doc, where are they?”
“I do not know, Joel; zey vere viz me at zat monastery vere your peoples rescued me. I haf not seen zem zince zen.”
“Ah. Well, we should be able find them, then. Right, Rona?”
“We'll see.
“So, Doc, why did you fake your kidnapping?”
“Because – no, no, no, I did not fake it.”
“Ah-ha. C'mon, Doc, don't lie to us. We know you faked it.”
“Nein, nein, nein, I did not.”
“Sorry, Doc, we know you did. We followed the money trail, and it led right back to you.”
“No, no” –
“C'mon, Doc. Rona knows and I know. So quit lying right NOW!”
“No, no, don't hit me!”
“I'll do more than that if you don't 'fess up right now.”
“I – I” –
“Rona, get the scalpels.”
“Roger, Joel.”
“Nein, nein, no, no, I'll tell you. No scalpels.”
“Okay. Just the truth, no snow job, nothing but the truth.”
“Okay, okay. But do not send me back, please.”
“Convince us, and maybe we won't.”
“Zey are Nazis.”
“Who are?”
“Ze people I escaped from.”
“Explain.”
“I told you I vanted to find a vay to kill Hitler before he could come to power.”
“Yeah.”
“Vell, venn zese people schtarted funding my research, all I knew vas zat zey gave me vatever I needed or vanted, set up a laboratory for me in ze Azores; no idea who zey vere or vat zey vanted.”
“When was that?”
“Ach, let me – 1993, years before I killed Fardunkoff. Und after I did zat, I schtarted having nightmares.”
- 41 -
June 18, 2013
9:46 a.m. local time
St. Tropez, France
“Let's see. The target was a double that I'd recruited in '68, but then I was told he'd tripled and was playing us, feeding us soft intel and passing everything he could about our ops back to the KGB. Vladimir and I had built a very friendly, cooperative relationship over the four years, but I was assigned the hit and I went after him.
“Almost got him in LA, but he ducked the surveillance team and hopped a commercial flight to Australia. I got an assist from the Air Force and got there ahead of him, used a disguise he'd never seen and watched him come through the gate in Sydney about seven in the evening, followed him out to the taxi queue and took the cab behind his.
“He headed to Centennial Park, got out between the Lily Pond and the Duck Pond, sat down at one of the picnic tables and stared out over the pond, away from my cab as it came to a stop not thirty feet from him. I'd turned my jacket inside out in the cab, but even so, when I got out and headed toward him, he turned and called out my name – well, the name I'd always used with him. He spoke in Russian, the language we used whenever we met.
“'Mark, my friend, come sit with me.'
“'Vladimir, you know I can't do that,' I replied.
“'Yes, Mark, I do know that,' he said, pointing a pistol with a silencer at me and waving me over with his other hand. 'But you must if you wish to hear the truth.'
“'The truth, Vlad? That you've been a triple agent? I know that,' I said as I sat down a couple feet from him.
“'I know you know. But you may not know that I am actually a quadruple agent.'
“'C'mon, Vlad, you a quad? You don't expect me to believe that, do you?'
“'Of course not; I do not expect you to believe anything I tell you, Mark, not one single thing. Nor do I believe anything you have told me, nor anything you may tell me now. In our business, one cannot trust anyone or anything, sometimes not even oneself.'
“He looked around, carefully quartering the area in the fading light of dusk.
“'I know that you have been sent to kill me, and because I am – how you say? – burned out, I will allow you to do that, but not before we speak. We do not have much time, so listen carefully.
“'You know that I have been in the KGB since before you were born, and in my nearly thirty years, I have learned that you and I and all our fellow agents are little more than pawns in a complex chess game, run not even by our two nations, but by a group of men who believe they are destined to dominate the entire world. In fact, our two countries are also pawns in their game. It is a massive game, with massive consequences.
“'For years, I thought I worked simply and directly for the KGB, but then I discovered another KGB inside, and another inside that, and yet another inside that one, like those nested dolls Mother Russia is famous for. And I also discovered that your CIA is the same, and the innermost doll does not report either to your President or to your Congress, but is run by various members of this cabal.'
“'But, Vlad' –
“'No buts, my friend. Do not believe me, but I know you will see this for yourself as you continue your career with your agency. I love you like a son, Mark; I would not be telling you this otherwise. I would simply shoot you and walk away.
“'You are one of the many agents this cabal has its eyes on; they know you are very skilled and may well be useful to their agenda.'
“'I am? How do you know this?'
“'Because I was ordered to recruit you back when you thought you were recruiting me.'
“'I don't believe you.'
“'Again, Mark, I do not expect you to. But you will see the truth of what I say as your time goes on, if you keep your eyes open.
“'Perhaps this will help. I know that you murdered the FBI man, Hoover.'”
“He knew that?”
“Yup, Pam, and this was only a few weeks afterward.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. I tried to keep a blank face, but that one caught me completely off guard.
“'What makes you think that, Vlad?'
“'Because I passed the order from the cabal to your inner agency, and I did it through you.'
“'Me? How? When?'
“'It was buried in one of the files I brush passed to you in March.'
“'March? In Venice?'
“'Yes.'
“'And this cabal wanted him dead? Why?'
“'Because he was about to expose several of its members, or so the – how do you call it? – the rumor vine said.'
“'Rumor mill.'
“'Ah, yes, rumor mill. I had no solid proof of that, of course. This cabal survives because it is faceless, nameless and' –
“'And paranoid.'
“'Yes, paranoid. They did the same thing to your President JFK.'
“'What? Kennedy?'
“'Yes. The cabal was upset with him.'
“'Why?'
“'Because of his very public stance against secret societies and because he was planning to shut down the drug smuggling operations that they'd induced the CIA to start up in the mid-1950s.'
“'Drug smuggling?'
“'Yes, Mark. In Asia and South America, marijuana, cocaine and heroin.'”
“That was the first you'd heard of that, Jake?”
“Yup. I'd heard rumors about the CIA and drug ops, but that was the first time I'd heard it so directly.”
“And Vlad said it was ordered by this cabal that he knew about?”
“Yup. He also told me that the cabal, through the CIA, financed Timothy Leary's research into LSD and other hallucinogens and his whole 'Tune in, turn on, drop out' mantra, financed and promoted a lot of rock bands in the '60s and '70s, basically got the whole drug culture going.”
“The CIA did all that? I can't believe” –
“Not just the CIA, Pam; the cabal behind them.”
“According to Vlad.”
“Yup, according to Vlad.”
“And JFK was going to shut that all down?”
“Yup, at least the CIA part of it.”
“Again, according to Vlad.”
“Yup. So then I asked him about Oswald, and he said, 'Was what you call a – oh, what is the American word? – a patsy? Yes, a patsy. I ran that operation myself, both of the shooters.'
“'Both?'
“'Yes, the one in the window and the one on the meadowed hill'--
“'Grassy knoll.'
“'Ah, yes; grassy knoll. As well as Comrade Oswald.'
“'No.'
“'Yes.'
“'Yeah, right. And Jack Ruby, too, I suppose.'
“'No; that was a total surprise to me. It was probably one of your people. You were in what you call high school in Minnesota at the time, yes?'
“'Senior; still ingrained in my memory, social studies class, when we heard the announcement.'
“'Mr. Hilborn's class, I believe.'
“'What? How do you' –
“'The cabal has a thick file on you, my friend, far beyond your file at the CIA or in my agency, and I saw it long before I met you.'”
“They were watching you way back then, Jake?”
“Yup. And from what I've learned since then, they're still looking for recruits as early as sophomores, sometimes freshmen, in high school, piggy-backing on the CIA's research. But now they're much more sophisticated.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. Anyhow, that was a pivotal moment both in our conversation and in my life.”
“I can imagine. What happened next?”
“Well, I started to believe what he was telling me, but I was so taken aback by all those little factoids that I made two mistakes that almost got me killed.”
- 42 -
December 14, 2013
5:27 p.m. local time
Bonita Springs, Florida
“Oh, look, Granny, there's the first boat! Grampa Dave, can you put me up on your shoulders so I can see better?”
“Sure, I can, Riley. Ready?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, here goes. Woah, you've gotten bigger, haven't you?”
“Yeah. Mom says I'm 54 pounds now.”
“And how old are you again?”
“Oh, Grampa, you know. I'm almost seven. Oh, here comes the dragon boat! Look, Grampa, look! It's spitting fire again!”
“That is pretty cool, Riley. Ow! No, no, no, no bouncing.”
“Oh, sorry, Grampa. I just love the dragon boat.”