Rogue Wolves

by James Quinn

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Mediterranean - two months later

  You would have spotted them at some point if you had been a member of what the glossy magazines and gossip columnists of the social elite referred to as the 'Jet-Set'.

  Regardless of their apparent wealth and ability to pop up in all the en vogue locations of the rich, they did rather stand out, for several reasons. Most notably, they were discreet, which wasn't a phrase used often about the rich. Second, they had a quiet containment about them. Even the most nonchalant concierge couldn't fail to notice that they always had a quiet, concentrated look about them, almost as if they were constantly on the lookout for danger. And who knew? Perhaps they were. They wouldn't be the first, or last, wealthy couple who were concerned about being separated from their money, jewellery, or even liberty, at the hands of the criminal class.

  But the thing that attracted the eye to them most was their physicality, their appearance. They kept themselves to themselves, certainly. They were always polite and tipped well. He was the well-dressed Englishman, obviously a self-made millionaire. He was short and trim, but with the close-cropped hair of the professional bank robber.

  His lady, by comparison, was tall and elegant, her shock of red hair styled in the latest fashion to enhance her designer wardrobe. American, but still terribly nice despite her nationality. Not loud, like some of Americans, but more refined than most of her compatriots. However, despite their radically different appearance, they complemented each other perfectly. They felt easy with each other's company and skin. And, of course, they were obviously very much in love. That was self-evident, even a blind man could see that.

  Occasionally, the man could be seen seated on his hotel balcony; white briefs, sunglasses on, letting the warm sun soak into his taut body and staring out at the sea in deep concentration, smoking a Cohiba cigar. He would usually be joined by his lady in a silk sarong. They would sit together, talk, laugh, drink and then disappear inside to their suite for the afternoon. Well, the rich had the time for afternoon lovemaking, didn't they?

  Of an evening, when they dined in the best restaurants of their current favoured location, they would walk into the old town, hand in hand, lost in each other's words and senses. They glided through their adventures together, a universe of two stars.

  And then, after they had exhausted themselves in their vacation destination, they would be gone, with no notice. They would disappear and fly out to the next exotic location… and the next… and the next.

  Well, of course, the rich could afford to do that, couldn't they?

  Following the hit on Caravaggio's island, Gorilla Grant and Eunice Brown had had enough.

  They were both seasoned enough operators to recognise that they were burned out after their recent operations together, and both agreed that contracts, the spooks and the whole bloody lot of them could get lost for a month or two. They had decided to travel and get away from the stench of their working lives and enjoy each other, as new lovers do.

  And they were lovers, lovers of a romantic grandeur and on an epic scale. Sardinia, Milan, Athens… they travelled far and wide, staying in the best hotels and making love all day in the best suites. They were insatiable.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said, holding him as they lay entwined in another faceless hotel on a hot sunny day in Palma, Spain. They had been in bed all afternoon and probably wouldn't move until evening.

  “Of course,” he said, cupping one of her perfect breasts in his hand and playing softly with it.

  “On the island. Caravaggio. How did you beat him? What happened in the jungle?”

  He sighed, reached over and kissed her nipple and then thought back to that night of terror in the jungle. After a long while, he finally spoke.

  “I knew that I wasn't able to beat him head-on. Remember, I had been tortured, half starved and disorientated. I was in no shape to take on a man with the skills of Caravaggio. I was almost out of bullets… and then I remembered something that the South African had said in Tenerife.”

  “What was that?”

  “Remember, he said that if you wanted to beat The Master, then you would have to play to his ego. That it would be his downfall. So I was exhausted, low on ammo, in unfamiliar terrain… I was almost done. So then I reasoned, why not let him think he has won? Give him what he craves. After all, my mission was meant to be a redaction, not a fair fight duel. So I let him think that he had killed me.

  “I draped the dead body of a jaguar that I had killed over my shoulders, so that I was carrying it on my back. I had already dressed it in my shirt and jacket. I held it in such a way that, at that distance, the head of jaguar would look like my head. Christ, that big cat weighed a ton! But it was enough of a similarity in the darkness to make Caravaggio take the inevitable headshot, obviously thinking it was mine.

  “I was lucky. He could have missed and hit me for real. I dropped both myself and the big cat and then kicked it down into the crocodile pit while I hid on a ledge out of sight. The most dangerous thing was hoping that Caravaggio wouldn't miss when he took a shot at me. Every assassin wants that fatal headshot. It played up to his sense of invincibility and false superiority. It caused him to relax and lower his guard. Once that was done, he was mine for the taking.”

  She lay silent against his chest for a long time, running over his words in her head. Finally, she said, “We are connected, Jack. You know that, don't you?”

  “Connected how? Apart from the obvious,” he said, staring down at their naked bodies, legs wrapped around each other, inside the bed.

  She smiled that sad smile of hers and Grant thought she looked even more beautiful. “We can think like each other, we know when something is wrong with the other… we are compatible. We would make a hell of a team. I've never had that connection before with anyone,” she said.

  “In our line of work, it can be dangerous. Slows you down, weakens you, makes you vulnerable,” he replied gruffly.

  She shrugged. “Maybe. But not in our case. I don't think we would put ourselves in a position like that. I'd rather shoot myself in the head than take you down, Jack.”

  Grant had stared at her for a moment, etching her face on his memory, then he had kissed her and they had made slow love for the rest of the afternoon. When they had finished, Eunice always rose from the bed and brought him a drink. He liked that. No woman he had ever been with had ever done that after sex.

  Over the coming weeks, Grant kept on returning to that conversation on a regular basis, running it around in his head… trying to decipher what she was telling him. That was Eunice's way. Every story had to have a hidden message and, dimwit that he was, sometimes he had to play catch-up to try to figure it all out. He got it, most of the time.

  When they weren't being lovers or seeing the sights, they were eating and drinking at the best bars and restaurants in their current exotic location. They seemed determined to make a hole in the cash fund that they had recently inherited, which, even after their recent acquisitions, was still quite substantial, and enjoy themselves in the process. It was rare that they went off and did their own things separately, even for just a few hours.

  But it did happen… occasionally.

  On a whistle-stop tour to Lisbon, Eunice said that she would like to take a stroll down to the market at the far end of town. Grant had risen from his slumber and offered to come with her, but she had gently pushed him back down to sleep with a kiss.

  “I'll just stretch my legs, I won't be long. Get some rest for… later. For when I get back,” she said, in that suggestive drawl that drove him wild.

  So Grant had slept and Eunice had gone off for an hour. There was nothing to it… and he had pushed it from his mind. She had returned looking distant and a little pensive, but only for a few moments and then her normal laid-back southern self had returned.

  Several days later, just as they were getting ready to leave Lisbon, Grant did his usual routine of calling in to Sassi
. It was standard procedure for a contract agent, at least every few weeks. He found a street telephone kiosk, made sure he wasn't being watched and then pumped in the necessary coins. He dialled the phone number and heard the clicks as the tracing tool was initiated somewhere in the bowels of the French Intelligence service, ready to record the conversation.

  Then the voice that he knew came on the line. Sassi.

  “Allo?”

  “It's Gorilla.”

  “Ah… enjoying your vacation still, I see. Lisbon. Beautiful. I have not been there for many years.”

  “Actually, we are getting ready to leave and head over on the ferry to Tangier.”

  “Even better! Thank you for the recent parcel. Our superiors are very happy with the information that you recovered.”

  Gorilla nodded. As soon as they had made it back to the Mexican mainland following the hit on the island, Gorilla and Eunice had passed the American and French 'Caravaggio files' to their respective parent services, namely the CIA and SDECE Head of Stations in Mexico City.

  “You are very welcome. I am glad to have been of help. Do you have something for me, Paul?”

  “We do. A little job, just a little tidying up of loose ends.”

  “Okay, I'm listening. When?”

  “Soon as you can… although I don't think you are going to like it.”

  “Why not?”

  Then the French intelligence officer told him and Gorilla thought that his world had suddenly come crashing down around him in flames.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Casa Rouge Hotel, Tangier, North Africa

  The suite was exquisite. It had a panoramic view of the city, en suite and silk sheets on the bed. Every amenity, even champagne on tap, could be arranged for an exorbitant fee. It was the finest that money could buy in North Africa. The Casa Rouge was the best hotel in the city.

  It was also a hell of a place for a hit.

  This was the final leg of their vacation. They both knew it, both felt it and thoughts of what was to come were hurting them both inside. The bell boy had carried their cases up the grand staircase from the main reception to their honeymoon suite on the top floor. It seemed that the Casa Rouge didn't do elevators. It was old school.

  Gorilla had tipped the bellboy well and ushered him through the door, while Eunice had breezed around the rooms, inspecting and admiring their new home for the next day or so.

  When she heard the hotel door close, she had stepped forward into her lover's arms and kissed him tenderly. They placed their cases down on opposite sides of the bed. There was a gentle click as each of them opened their respective suitcases.

  There before each of them, nestled among the clothes, lay the weapons that had been provided for them for their respective contracts. They were both semi-automatics. Eunice's was a 9mm Walther, Gorilla's was his ASP. Getting the guns past the security checks on the ferry terminal had been laughably easy for both of them. They hadn't even had to bribe anyone. The wealthy-looking couple had been waved though without a second glance.

  They both looked up from their cases and smiled. Sadness for both of them, longing tinged with regret. Even at this late stage of the game, both of them hoped that their love for each other would override what was expected of them, what they were being paid to do.

  They both knew what was coming. After all, they were connected… they could, at times, think as one.

  Gorilla thought she looked beautiful in the slim, above-the-knee cocktail dress, her red hair tied back in a simple pony-tail. For her part, Eunice took him in… shorter than her, slim, cropped white-blond hair, his new sunglasses and the suit and tie that she had picked out for him the previous day at a designer boutique. They looked like a couple who had 'made it' in life; wealthy, confident, respectable.

  They fumbled with the items in their suitcases in an act of casual theatre and then, as if sensing a hidden signal, they moved simultaneously, both reaching quickly for their respective weapons. All attempts at deception were now gone, their training taking over.

  A grasp and then the guns were up, Eunice's held in a two-handed grip and Gorilla using his single left hand, both steady and professional. Each weapon pointed at the other party. Their eyes locked. Sadness in hers, sorrow in his, tears in both.

  “Don't do this, Jack. It doesn't have to end like this. We can figure it out,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

  They both stood stock still like statues, fingers on triggers, ready, with only the width of the bed separating them. They didn't need the 'why' and the 'how' about who had given the go-ahead for the kill orders. They had both been in this business long enough to know that it didn't matter. Their respective employers, the CIA and the SDECE, had each decided to remove the other team's contract agents, no loose ends allowed, and what better way than to have them take each other out?

  But really, all that counted was the here and now and who would fire first.

  They saw each other well.

  “I know what they asked you to do to me,” she said. “Take out the opposition, the loose ends. I know because the CIA asked me to do the same to you. But that's not me, Jack, you know that. I'd rather take myself out than have you be forced to do it. Baby, listen to me. Us, you and me, together, I meant every word I said.”

  They smiled. There was nothing more to be said.

  Their fingers were poised on the triggers in that beautiful moment when they could either end it all completely, or risk it all and fight for each other against a combined enemy. In the end, it was Eunice who ended the stalemate; she was always the stronger of the two, the more confident. The look in her eyes said it all as she put her weapon away.

  Gorilla did the same.

  She looked at him with tears rolling down her cheeks and her voice was full of emotion when she said, “Baby, let's get out of here and not do this today. We are so much better than this.”

  “I love you, Eunice,” he said, holding out his arms to her. She stepped forward and they embraced.

  “I love you, Jack.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At first, there was nothing. No contact with their respective parent agencies. No sightings. No secure communication from either party. No confirmation that one contractor had taken out the other contractor. What's more, there were no dead bodies. The intelligence bureaucrats gave it a week, then maybe two more, just to be certain. But still nothing. No corpses meant no hit had taken place.

  Then slowly, there was a hint of a rumour here and there. A sighting by an agent in Cyprus of a honeymoon couple; him short and tough, her tall, slender and red-headed. A watch was put on as many known associates as possible. So evidently they were not dead, not redacted… both very much still alive. And together! The spies soon came to the very annoying realisation that their two contract agents had decided to ignore direct orders; they had gone rogue.

  The Kill order went out: ROGUE WOLF STATUS/REDACTION IMPLEMENTATION.

  Telex machines, phones, dead drops and agent-to-agent meetings were hurriedly put in place with as many known contractors, hitters, and mercenaries as could be found and trusted. A Belgian hit man from the Congo was alerted; a Japanese Yakuza who occasionally did the odd throat-slitting for the intelligence services; a Corsican gunman who was handy with the odd contract killing; a former OSS agent who was not averse to taking on a temporary kill contract; and a dozen more of similar ilk.

  All of them had their own skills and experience and, while even the agent runners recognised that none of them were in the league of Gorilla Grant and Nikita Brown, they felt sure that sooner or later, the errant pair would slip up and take a bullet in the back of the head.

  Wouldn't they? I mean, it was only a matter of time and opportunity? Wasn't it? Well, they damned well hoped so.

  So the spies set their tame killers loose and waited for the inevitable. They didn't have to wait long.

  A week later, the body of a sixty-year-old former OSS agent, and now retired 'businessman' who did the odd job
for the CIA, was found washed up on a beach on the Costa del Sol, Spain. The cause of death, two 9mm rounds to the chest and an execution round to the head. It was an inauspicious start to the CIA/SDECE Redaction operation.

  Over the following weeks, the Yakuza contract killer was found shot to death in his favourite Sushi Bar. After that, the word soon got out that the kill contract really just wasn't worth the time or effort. 'Too risky' was the general consensus by the freelance community.

  Exactly one week later, two letters were delivered to two intelligence officials on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The first was to Theodore Gibbs, Operations Director of a CIA front company named EXIS in Washington. The second was to Major Paul Sassi at the SDECE's Action Service station in Paris. They were in plain envelopes. The postmark indicated the origin as somewhere in Asia. A single typed sheet of paper was inside each.

  Gibbs had just sat down at his desk when his secretary came in with the morning mail. It was the usual sealed packets from Langley, internal memos and the odd communiqué.

  Several hours later, Major Paul Sassi would do the same thing.

  The letters read:

  We have destroyed the rest of the Caravaggio File. The risk to the networks is gone.

  For the record, we quit.

  We have decided that we are stronger together than we are apart.

  Send more people after us and we will send them back to you in body bags.

  It was the final warning from Eunice 'Nikita' Brown and Jack 'Gorilla' Grant.

  THE END

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