Gary looked at Brent, “No guarantees, got it.”
“Alright, rule three. Sanford is a business, we make money, do something to make the company lose money or look bad, it’s bad, let’s just say don't do either of those two things.”
Gary nodded.
“Rule four. When we, and I mean internally speak of Sanford we know what we are talking about, when a senator from the intelligence committee talks about Sanford we are still talking about the same thing. Now when we are on an Army base, on a naval ship, in a restaurant, or on a Pan-Am flight; Sanford is a large international real-estate and land development company. You will have cover at all times, in training or during operation you will have a cover. You are either doing work pertaining to real-estate and land development, or you are not associated with Sanford. Most choose not to be associated.”
Again Gary nodded.
“That’s it, those are the four basic rules that you have to deal with right now, there will be more but they are specific to what you are doing and they will sort themselves out in time.”
“So now what?”
“Now you have some history to learn, Pablo is going to verse you in how Sanford came to be, and give you some of the basic outlines of how we operate. The who, the what, the where and the why of Sanford. After that you’ll have about four weeks to do some school work.”
Gary’s eyebrows crumpled, “Four weeks?”
“I discovered a long time ago training seems to go better in pairs and teams, in your case you are going to start out in a pair, but your other half isn’t quite ready, so for four weeks or so you are going to just be another high school kid studying in the early fall, you’ll just happen to be isolated in a bunker underground in Western Mexico.”
***
September 24, 1965
Neil sat in an aisle seat on a Pan Am from Los Angeles heading to Dallas. He had been called in, back to headquarters in north Dallas. Frank Vickery, Sanford International’s CEO had sent word to Low Blue a few hours before the baseline was done, Neil was to come back to Dallas. Vickery had taken over after Thompson had died in 1953. Kevin Thompson had taken over following the aneurysm that killed Paul Washington.
Paul Washington had filled James’s shoes as well as anyone could have. Washington had been the one to sniff out the coming work to be done in Berlin 1948 and had arranged for Sanford agents to be inside the city to disrupt Soviet operations as the air lifts took place. The success of this operation vaulted Sanford to the top of the list inside the US Government.
The men had been well known prior to that but they had been thought of as a second class service, a last resort. After their work during the blockade they were seen as an operational force to be reckoned with, and it was the true beginning of what would become a long standing relationship with the government of the United States. In fact, by 1950 if someone in government had a problem the phrase often heard was “Send it to Sanford.”
One day Washington had not showed up to work, he was a man who was loyal to his job as any man could be. When he failed to show up and had not sent any word people quickly became concerned. Ringing him at home had raised no response and Neil had gone to Washington’s House with Henry Huff and found Washington lying dead on his bedroom floor. The water in his shower was running and had long gone cold when they arrived.
It looked as though Washington had started the shower to warm it up and fell over dead as he had pulled a towel from the linen closet in the bedroom. An autopsy later proved that on February 15th 1951 a brain aneurysm had taken Sanford International’s second Chief Executive Officer.
Thompson had been killed during an operation funded by the CIA in Iran, they had been posing as Muslims working to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh’s government. To lose a third CEO so early in the company’s existence was almost devastating. It marked the last time a Sanford CEO would be involved in field operations. Vickery had stepped in and taken command, he had done well and thrived in the position.
Neil had been asked first after each vacancy, and each time he had turned them down. He had been asked when James left, James himself sat and talked to Neil about it, almost begged him to take the reins. Neil was not that guy, he had no interest in being the figurehead. He could be an advisor, he had done that and was comfortable doing it but he was no good as a number one.
There had always been seven on the board, as the top spot had opened and someone from the board filled it, they had brought other employees in to keep the board seat whole. The board had a screening process and it required a unanimous vote for a CEO to be placed. They had started out with James at the top, Neil, Thompson, Washington, Vickery, Huff, and Arvanites.
Sanford International was not a large company, when Neil thought of large companies he thought of the room with the giant computer in Dallas, IBM emblazoned on its front, he thought of General Motors and he thought of the plane he was setting on. He wondered, how many employees could a company like IBM or General Motors have? Had to be 150,000 or better, they were huge, IBM was making the computers for NASA, hell GM was giving NASA’s rocket jockeys Corvettes. No, Sanford International was no giant, but unlike the giant industrial machines Sanford was doing something different, “We fill a niche market.” Neil smiled and let a laugh out. A man in a grey suit in the seat next to him gave him a confused and suspicious look. Neil looked over, “I heard a good one at the bar. Have you heard the one about LBJ and the three nuns?”
The man looked back at him with an uninterested nod and roll of the eyes. What a smug bastard Neil thought, I’ll bet that guy would shit his pants if he knew.
Neil sat back in the seat, and thought of the people he worked with, they were good souls most of them, only around 25,000 strong. The majority of that number were ex-military, good people, ones with a belief in what they were accomplishing.
Some were technical and logistical people who had come over from the CIA or from the FBI. There were ones out of the CIA that had been around way back when Waite was involved, guys who originally stayed in the public sector when James and the guys went private.
Neil liked them, they had been in the mess, worked by the seat of their pants, invented this right along with him as they went. They had changed a lot of things since the days of Waite’s “selection” process. It was not just orphans or people with limited families anymore, they had to branch out.
Jim had realized pretty early on that they were limiting themselves. There was too much talent out there, and a family could keep a man balanced if he could keep his lives secret. They taught them how to live double lives, some of them did not have the need because their wives were working with them, but that was only 4 couples. There were four couples that Neil could think of, could be more. He knew it took a special person to do the work.
On the outside Sanford International Holdings looked to be a multinational company dealing in industrial real estate and property development. There were actual real estate transactions, and those transactions had allowed Sanford International to obtain some very premium operating bases, as well as some very nicely located private airports. A small arm of the company handled the real estate, and for as far as Neil knew the employees in that arm thought they were handling legitimate business.
In the beginning James had toyed with the idea of Sanford International publicly being what they were, assassins for hire. They had weighed the pros and cons of it even on that first night in Chelsea. What it came down to was two things, the appearance of legitimacy, and public image. The two as they turned out, were not far from each other but held different values.
The legitimacy allowed them to borrow money and secure the financing they needed to get off the ground. Some of Sanford’s first employees had been brokers building what would have been by itself a fairly successful international real estate business. Even so, property was often purchased at prices well above market value, either because of the operational value or because extra operating capital was needed to move forward. Repaying loans
had never been a problem as the demand for their true services exploded overnight.
There were two other branches under the real estate group, advertising and public relations. Those two branches were in turn, filled with a mixture of people in the know, and people out of the know. The people out of the know were just that, they handled the actual advertising for the real estate, promoting, selling, and closing. The in the know people on the advertising side spent time meeting with clients who were not calling about real estate, collecting contract offers and routing them back to the team that made evaluations. Which was in the beginning entirely the board of directors. The board was also the employees filling the contracts. Now there was an entire team of analysts who put the crunch on contracts, checked files for conflicts of interest and through back door contacts checked to make sure no toes were stepped on.
The PR teams were not much different, they set out roust new clientele from the bushes, that was on the public side. On the not so public side these were the advance teams, setting up surveillance and gathering information on the targets that had been approved. This was the peacetime operations set up, it was where things were tricky, keeping the left hand from knowing what the right hand was doing, even though the right hand always knew what the left was doing.
During the Korean War things had been much easier, groups were dispatched to the peninsula and contracts were handed out, in the simplest term they had worked on retainer, set up like time and materials contracts. The money that was made in those three years had put Sanford International in the black. Once the armistice was signed they ramped back up into the cover operations. In recent years as the U.S. involvement in this little country called Vietnam had increased, Sanford International offered similar terms and had been working on the ground there for the last four years.
Neil really preferred when they could work like that, open check book he liked to call it. From what he could see of the buildup in Southeast Asia, they were going to make a bundle, the January before he had started a two month rotation there. The United States had yet to figure out what they were up against. There was a steady influx of troops to the area but they have yet to have a major battle. A major battle was not what they needed, they need to meet the little bastards on their own terms. Neil had seen it before, they are small and we are big, but that makes us slow and lets them be fast.
The United States government was their best employer, but they did work for the Brits, the Canadians, Japanese, and occasionally the Mexicans. It all paid the bills, paid them well, and it helped move the western ideal forward. Best of all, they got to go after some really bad people and remove them from whatever life they were going to have.
Neil always suspected that in that mix, ultimately there were people who were not that bad, but for whatever reason someone had decided to pay a large amount of money for them to stop breathing. As an employee operating in the field he was not allowed the option to question if the person deserved to die or not, those decisions had been made by the board of directors. However, as a member of the board, he was often burdened with the task of asking why.
That was the dilemma the board had ran up against from the very beginning working for individuals and organizations got touchy, it happened though, after all they were a business. No matter how they had ever looked at it, if an operator was in a country, any country and they killed someone outside the theater of war and they were caught by the local authorities, they would be tried as murderers. Even times when they had performed government sanctioned assassinations within the United States border, everyone involved knew the consequences of getting caught.
Sure, there were people and favors, reduced sentences and mysterious jailbreaks, but they were committing criminal acts, and a few had paid the price for those acts.
***
Sanford’s Dallas offices were not opulent, they were plain and very discreetly marked. The taxi that dropped Neil off was already speeding away as he adjusted his tie and checked his watch on the sidewalk in front of the twelve story building. Neil would have rather taken some time to clean up and get a shave maybe a meal, but Vickery was expecting him this afternoon and he had no doubt already had an assistant check to make sure the Pan Am had been on time. So Neil walked into the building, and headed for the elevator. It was a quick ride to the top floor with the elevator stopping on four, and two people getting on, then stopping on eight and the two getting off. The doors opened on twelve Neil stepped out and was promptly greeted by Ray’s secretary, “Hello, Mr. Degrassi how was your flight.”
“Hello Fran, my flight was smooth as glass.”
“Well, that is good. I don’t envy you boys flying all over the place. I like it just fine here in little ole Dallas.”
“I guess you’re right, sometimes it’s more trouble than its worth.”
“Mr. Vickery is expecting you. Would you like some coffee before I let him know you are here? “
“No coffee for me today Fran. Thank you, just let him know I’m here.”
She picked up the phone punched two buttons, waited, “Mr. Vickery, Mr. Degrassi just stepped in, shall I send him in?”
Fran looked up, “You can go in now.”
Neil nodded and opened the office door.
***
“Hello Neil, how was the flight?”
“Flight was good. I just don't like being in that can with all those people.”
“Wave of the future Neil, wave of the future.”
“Future hell. Doesn’t mean I have to like it Frank.”
Frank was a medium sized man, with a round head. His black hair was slicked tight against his head and not a single gray hair. Frank reached for a pipe and scraped the ash from it into the glass ashtray on his desk. Frank began to pack his pipe and looked at Neil, “How’s the boy?”
“You can’t believe how much he looks like James.” Neil shook his head raising his eyebrows. “He’s James in the flesh, the kid is sharp, he’s got that look, and you know the one. All that stuff happening behind those eyes.”
Frank took a pull from his pipe his lower lip pushed out, “I remember that look well. How did that guy ever sleep?”
“Who the hell knows? For all I know he didn’t sleep. If I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it happened.”
“Good point Neil, good point. What a guy he was. All of this from his lips.” Frank raised his hand to the ceiling as if he were at a revival. “The boy is really part of the reason I asked you to come back up here.”
“To be honest with you Frank, I didn't think it was so we could sit and have a smoke.”
“Well, it concerns me, I would like to hear it from you how the kid came to be sitting in El Comienzo.”
“I let him choose.”
“Let him choose what?”
“I let him choose between going to Vivian’s in Houston, and going through the screening for Sanford.”
“Holy shit. I thought maybe there was some other craziness that led to a sixteen year old being baselined. Why on earth did you think that giving him the choice was a good idea?”
“The kid just lost both his parents, one of whom was a man I considered a brother. He had nothing, no one, I gave him the chance at a little piece of his dad. Personally I thought he handled the whole thing pretty well.”
“Goddammit Neil. Did you even think about where this choice would lead him? You’re the boy’s guardian, is this something James had in mind, and did you guys set this up?”
“No, no. James had set up the Vivian connection. The other choice just sort of came to me, and yes, I do know where it leads.”
“And still you thought this was a good idea?”
“Was the choice that you made when you were just a few years older such a bad choice? Has it really turned out so terrible for you?” Neil gestured at the huge oak desk in front of Frank.
“Neil that was different. I was in the Aleutians, the Japs, there was Pearl Harbor, and you remember how it worked.”
“Yes, I do remember how it worked. I remember that one day a creepy little man with bad breath gave an orphan a chance to be part of something special. The difference then was I didn’t get paychecks with lots of zeros, and I didn't get to pick my work.”
“It’s still not the same Neil.”
“You’re fucking right it’s not. James Cannon looked out for me at every turn, and he was like my older brother. Later he thought enough of me to name me as the guardian of his only son. He wasn't some bureaucrat trying to fill a quota for his program he was my friend and I considered him family. That means I’m the closest thing this kid has to family right now, I just gave him what I thought would help him. Maybe I did it for me maybe this was my way to hang on to a little bit of the only family I really knew.”
“Okay, okay. Fine, I get what you are saying, but why, why now? Why not wait two or three years let him get a little older, so he’s had a bit of life before he makes that kind of commitment?”
“Call me curious, but I had a hunch. I was thinking, how old was James when Whaite got him? Twenty-seven, Twenty-eight?”
“Yea I don't know maybe that, what's your point?”
“My point is, what if Whaite had gotten him ten years earlier, what about twelve years?”
“Neil I was eighteen when I became Frank Vickery, I had the ten years earlier that you are talking about, where the hell are you going with all of this?”
Neil rubbed his forehead, now he did wish he had taken that coffee when he came in, “First, you’re no James Cannon remember that. Think about it this way, I was eighteen also when I met that disgusting little Whaite. I was only a few months out of running track and playing football, and even less time out of boot camp, a kid in the prime of my life. Still, James could run farther, faster and do more pushups than I could. All the while he was more focused, and had a plan, and three plans to back up that one and who know how many to back each of those up. He was a mental and physical specimen. Think about ten more years of polish on top of what he was.”
Killing Sanford (Gary Cannon Book 1) Page 12