by James Quinn
It was the click that they heard first, that of a revolver being cocked, and then the coolness of the barrel as it was placed against the back of Eunice's neck.
“Well hello, little lady,” said a deep Louisiana accent, full of menace. “I think we need to have a talk.”
They were surrounded within seconds. Shadows came out of the darkness and cut off their escape route out of the alleyway. There were four of them; two behind Eunice and two behind Gorilla. All dressed in suits. Not businessmen; they were more strategically clothed to make them look semi-respectable. Eunice knew the type straight away. Tough guys, hired muscle. Criminals. All had the meaty faces and swollen knuckles of street boxers.
Deep Voice seemed to be the leader. He had been the one watching them in the club and he was the one with the gun and doing the talking. “Give me the keys to your car, that red Mustang you got, lady,” he said. She reluctantly handed them over and Deep Voice flung them over to one of his cohorts.
“A Mustang… nice. I'm gonna have fun with that,” said an ugly bald man to his right. “I'm gonna take it down to the track and burn it out.”
Eunice smiled. “Now, don't you be goin' doin' nothing too rough with my baby, fellas. That would make Mamma very angry.”
“After what you did to our boss, you'll be lucky if you're gonna be able to walk anytime soon, let alone drive,” said the lean man, who rested a restraining hand on Gorilla's shoulder.
“Yeah. You was seen running away from the club yesterday. Then the body of the boss turns up dead…”
“Shut your mouth, you guys. We don't need to tell them anything. They already know what they did. And now they got to pay the price,” ordered Deep Voice.
So that was it, thought Gorilla. Eunice had been correct. The shootout at the club yesterday must have been witnessed by one of these goons. They had put two and two together and assumed that Eunice and he had killed Guillame. And now they wanted revenge for their dead boss.
“Let's get them out of here,” said Deep Voice, motioning with the gun. “I got a date later tonight. I don't want this snuffing out to take all night! Chico, you get the Mustang. We'll pack these two into the trunk and take them out to the swamp. Do it there.”
Slowly, they all started to move and then Eunice did something very deliberate. She dropped her purse and slowly bent down to pick it up. Two things happened in that moment. The curve of her dress rode up along to the top of her thigh and, because of the angle, her cleavage was exposed to reveal that beautiful 'V' shape between her breasts.
The men did an internal “Wow!” and paused for a few brief seconds. It was all that Eunice Brown needed.
Her hand moved in a blur. One moment the purse was clutched to her hip, the next, her hand was inside and out and holding a black tube with a leather lanyard wrapped around her wrist. What followed would later have to be slowed down by Gorilla in his mind.
The two-foot sprung steel lead weight extended out of the handle and crashed down onto the wrist of Deep Voice, causing him to drop the revolver. The man howled in pain. Eunice whipped the spring cosh back in a deadly arc, until it smashed into the side of the gunman's skull, sending him reeling to the ground.
Gorilla was also on the move. He smashed a reverse elbow into the face of the man to the side of him, sending the thug back against the wall. Gorilla turned into him and hit him with a hammer-fist strike to the nose, spreading it across his face, a mass of blood and flesh. Just for good measure Gorilla kicked and punched the man all the way to the ground.
The lean thug had taken a swipe at Eunice, but he was too far out of range with his fists to make contact. Unfortunately for him, though, Eunice's spring-loaded cosh wasn't. She swung it forward as if she were throwing a baseball and the spring extension shot forward under its own energy, the heavy ball connecting perfectly with the man's skull. He dropped like a sack.
She whipped the cosh back to a resting position against her right shoulder and it was then that she felt the final man grab her from behind in a bear hug.
“I got you now, bitch,” he hissed into her ear.
Eunice tried to free herself but he had clamped his arms against her body, rendering the cosh useless. Even now, he was trying to drag her away from the fight scene.
“ARGGHHH!” cried her attacker as he suddenly let go. She spun out of the bear hug and saw what had caused him to release her. The man had fallen to the ground with his ankles opened up and blood pouring from the wounds.
Above him, glaring down, his face a mask of fury and holding one very bloodstained cut-throat razor, was Gorilla Grant. Gorilla had severed the tendons in the man's ankles. When he had tried to move, he had collapsed, his legs unable to support his bodyweight.
Eunice looked down at the man for a moment and then whipped the spring cosh in a short arc until it connected with the thug's head. There was the inevitable THOCK as metal connected with bone and then their last attacker was knocked unconscious.
Gorilla looked up at her, his rage coming down… slightly. “Nice spring cosh,” he said, wiping the razor on the suit of the nearest thug before folding it away.
“Thanks. It was my Pappa's. He was in the OSS during the war. It's a cosh that they gave to agents who were dropped into Europe. He always said that it would save my life one day,” she said, slipping it back into her purse.
“Miss Brown, I think we need to get out of this town?”
“Mr Grant, I think you are right,” she said sweetly. “I believe we have a plane to catch.”
She glanced down briefly at the bodies that they had disposed of that night.
“No one messes with my Mustang,” she said, as they walked calmly away with her arm linked through Gorilla Grant's. They were just a normal couple on a normal night out on the town.
Chapter Ten
Athens, Greece – September 1973
They had surveillance on her for nearly three days before she received the telephone call that set their alarm bells ringing.
Eunice had put in a request via Gibbs to the CIA Station in Athens. They needed a van, some directional microphones, cameras – the whole bag of tricks to conduct long term surveillance. CIA/Athens had kicked up a fuss. They weren't too keen about handing over their expensive kit to a 'freelancer', even if she had once been Agency.
Then the word had come back from Langley and the Station Chief and his officers had been told in no uncertain terms to pipe down. This was an operation that outweighed anything that CIA/Athens was doing at the moment and so Nikita Brown had received everything that she had asked for.
They had done an initial reconnaissance of the area and had found two possible spots that gave them direct line of sight of Thallia Dimitriou's apartment in the fashionable Kolonaki district of the city. Gorilla had dressed in old workman's clothes that had been filched from the CIA Station's wardrobe and he had driven the van. He parked it at the end of the street near the corner so that they had good access routes to escape in case they were discovered. The vantage point also gave them a good view of the target's apartment.
Eunice had taken the first twelve-hour shift while Gorilla got his head down to sleep. Not that it was easy, even with the air conditioning. The heat in the city was uncomfortable, to say the least. But they worked their shifts. Gorilla had the days, Eunice had the nights.
The first day, little had happened. Eunice had taken some shots on the camera as Thallia Dimitriou had left her apartment block and Gorilla had been the footman to see where she went. The second day was the usual dreary day hated by surveillance operators the world over. The 'honeymoon' period is over and the operator knows that he isn't going to get a quick result and is there for the long haul.
However, on the third day Eunice had been trying out the parabolic microphone, pointing it up at the apartment window as Thallia walked to and fro in the room. The microphone was a dish about a foot in diameter, with a directional microphone at its centre. The operator would listen in via a pair of headphones and record any
thing as needed.
The microphone picked up the ringing of the telephone and then muffled voices. Eunice pressed the headphones tighter to her ears and tried to move the directional mike into a better spot. She closed her eyes, concentrating. Voices… one female, one male. A brief outline of a conversation, most of it garbled, but a time and a place managed to make it through the static.
“We gotcha, lady,” said Eunice to herself. It was the best information that they had and they would just have to make do. Her only hope was that the meeting time or location wasn't changed at the last minute. So they had a rendezvous time, a location and some brief details. Gorilla and Eunice reasoned that this could be their chance to 'acquire' the target.
They hoped so, and both operators knew from long and bitter experience that time was running out.
Gorilla and Eunice sat in their car in the underground car park of the Hotel Electra the next night and began the next phase of their covert surveillance. At least it was cool underground with all the stone and concrete. Anything was better than being stuck in that surveillance van again in the heat.
They had arrived at least forty-five minutes before their target was due to show, partly because they wanted to pick an advantageous spot so that they could see but not be seen, and partly to get the pulse of the environment. They wanted to watch the comings and goings and see if there was any other surveillance.
A variety of luxury cars came and went. Some contained guests and some were chauffeurs dropping off VIPs. Then there was a lull in the traffic for a while before a sporty-looking MG came gliding into one of the spaces near to the elevator.
“I think we have our target, Eunice,” said Gorilla.
“Wait, Jack… Look! Who's that?” said Eunice, indicating a figure that had emerged from the shadows on the opposite row to where Thallia Dimitriou had parked. “The client, maybe?”
A large, bearded, bear-like figure in a dark business suit stood waiting behind one of the concrete pillars. He was shuffling from foot to foot. The big man could see the woman in the sports car, but he couldn't see the vehicle that Gorilla and Eunice were in. They were on his blindside.
“Shit!” said Gorilla.
“Who is he?” asked Eunice, searching her memory to see if she knew the face.
But Gorilla was already reaching beneath his suit jacket for the ASP and the silencer and fixing them together. “He's no client, he's the competition! We seem to have another freelancer taking part in this contract. It's getting awfully crowded.”
Eunice glanced down at what he was doing. “Wait!” she said. “We don't have to kill him!”
Gorilla frowned. “Trust me on this, Eunice, there is no way that this guy will let us get close. I know him. We have to take him out. He's a killer. It's the Bulgarian, Brodsky.”
The Bulgarian's name was Dimitar Brodsky. He was a heavyset, bearded man in his thirties with the look of a glowering bear. Brodsky was an operative of Service 7, a unit of the Bulgarian Secret Service responsible for the kidnapping, assassination and use of disinformation against Bulgarian dissidents and anti-communist activists in the west.
In his five years in S7, he had risen quickly to become one of its best assassins, so much so that the KGB had requested that he help them out with a little problem here or there in Europe from time to time. And when the Russians asked, the Bulgarian service jumped!
Not that Brodsky minded. The Russians usually gave him a little extra on top of his regular wages. Last time, it had been a suitcase full of Chinese narcotics that he was free to sell on the black market. And sell he had. He had made a nice chunk of money, which was just as well because Brodsky liked spending. Western suits, shoes, watches, expensive prostitutes.
His work brought him to the West frequently and he liked to treat himself to its riches. Of course, the secret account that the KGB had helped him set up in Switzerland made that possible. After all, what was the use of doing a little moonlighting for the Russians if you weren't actually allowed to spend what you had earned?
So it came as no surprise that he had been approached directly by the KGB to take on his most challenging operation for them yet; the hunting and termination of one of the so-called legends of the business. Legends… pah! In Brodsky's experience it was all hyperbole. He cared nothing for reputations, because the truth was that you were only as good as your last mission and, from what he understood, the so-called 'Master' would be an old man by now and had been off the radar for years.
Anyway, it was all irrelevant. The KGB had given him a good start point, a lead, someone that they knew who had been connected to Caravaggio. Brodsky may have come late to the game – in fact, he was sure that there were other contractors already working this operation – but he knew from experience that he had the skills to catch up quickly.
Which was why, today, he was in Greece and had made an appointment to meet with the best, and most exclusive, forger in the Mediterranean. The forger, according to the information given to him by his KGB handlers, was Caravaggio's personal paper artist, confidant and whore.
Brodsky considered this an excellent place to start.
The attempted kidnapping of Thallia Dimitriou, the forger, by the assassin Brodsky, took place at the Hotel Electra in the centre of Athens. She had been contacted by telephone the previous day at her apartment and was asked if she was in the market for a high-end contract to deliver forged papers within the next month. She had accepted in principle, but had assured the client that she would need more information before she could accept completely. The client had agreed and had booked a private suite at the exclusive Hotel Electra so that they might discuss business.
Her client for the evening was reputed to be a professional smuggler who needed to move some 'stones' across from Africa to the USA, and he needed the papers to be able to travel undetected and for some possible import. At least that was the story that she had been given in the telephone call to her private number yesterday afternoon. In truth, she cared nothing for the reason. The thing she cared about was if the client could pay.
Thallia Dimitriou was late forties, but with the youth and beauty of a woman fifteen years younger. She had the svelte figure and oval-eyed, dark beauty of the classical Greek woman, and the sensual grace of the professional courtesan. She had been a diplomat's daughter and as a young woman, she had travelled the world, studied art in Paris and Rome and had taught herself the skills of the tattoo artist throughout her twenties. In her thirties, she had been seduced by the mysterious Caravaggio who had played Pygmalion games with her mind and her body. For nearly a decade, she had been his willing slave.
She drove her car fast through the streets, comfortable in the knowledge that she would arrive on time, but also enjoying the freedom of driving her MG. The hotel was a luxurious palace in the centre of Athens, from the side rooms of which the lucky guests could see the Acropolis lit up of an evening. She drove to the side of the hotel, past the main reception area and down into the underground car park.
She had no sooner exited her car and headed towards the lift when she felt a strong hand grab roughly at her arm. Brodsky jammed a pistol into her ribs. “Miss Dimitriou, please don't struggle if you want to live. I have a room in the hotel, we can have a little talk there. Don't make any untoward movements or try to alert any –”
In her peripheral vision, she was aware of a black metal tube pushing its way forward to her rear. It moved past her at head height, aimed at the kidnapper's skull. It spat twice and the noise was that of a steel brush against steel, a sweeping swoosh, nothing more. Thallia caught a gust of wind from the shot and then felt the weight of the man who had grabbed her suddenly disappear. She heard the body hit the concrete floor and then felt her other arm being taken in a confident but gentle grip. She hadn't even missed a step, it had happened that quickly.
The arm that guided her now belonged to a tall, red-haired woman in her thirties. The redhead steered her around and back to her sports car. “Just keep walking, sweeti
e,” she said. “You don't need to see any of that. Now, please let's me and you go for a little drive. And no trouble, please. I don't want to have to get rough unless it's absolutely necessary.”
Thallia had been in enough danger in her life not to argue with her new abductor, woman or no woman. She opened up the sports car and they both got in.
“Just drive, sweetie,” said the redhead. “I'll give you directions once we hit the road.”
They turned left and moved up the ramp towards the exit. A final look in the rear view mirror showed her the red-headed woman's accomplice, the man with the silenced gun, dragging the dead body of the kidnapper away.
The safe house was a rented apartment, discreet and off the beaten track on the edge of the city limits. Eunice took control and moved the other woman out of the car, in through the door and down into a seat in the main lounge.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” said Eunice, handing Thallia a glass of brandy. “Here, drink this. It might help calm your nerves.”
“I'm fine. I am not nervous,” said Thallia.
“Good for you, sweetie, good for you,” said Eunice.
They had sat in the apartment waiting for Gorilla to arrive, making small talk. Eunice thought that the Greek woman had an ethereal quality to her. She had that confidence that beautiful women the world over have; a combination of poise and serenity.
The door opened and Gorilla walked in. He nodded to both women, locked the door behind him and sat down across from them both. Thallia noticed a spot of blood on her shirt collar.