by James Quinn
So he walked, determined to get home quickly and put as much space between himself and the Parliament Building rendezvous.
In truth, he was sick and tired of peddling intelligence to the great and good of Vienna's covert marketplace, sick of his menial job working at the university as a repairman, and tired of Vienna. What had once seemed like a vast stage for him to work on was now in his eyes, a crowded Babel that he had long since become weary of. He dreamed of an apartment in Paris, warm nights, a simple life with no looking over your shoulder or wondering where the next double cross was coming from. He had gone the length of the rope with this phase of his life and he knew that he needed to reinvent himself or risk becoming an outdated player. So Paris sounded just the right spot to while away his days.
The kernel of an idea for his retirement had come when he had been approached by the American, Mr. Knight. He knew the moment that the CIA man had offered him a well-funded stipend that whatever it was he was planning; it was going to be big. This was more than double his usual fee and experience told him that with a well-funded purse came an operation of great importance – and risk, of course, as risk was an elemental part of the trade.
Information is power, he knew, and the only questions to be asked were what the meeting was about and who was this intelligence useful to? But without solid evidence, the head spies would throw him out. A little fishing trip was needed, nothing too technical, simple electronics really, a little eavesdropping perhaps. After all, he had responsibility for the security at the meeting in Luxembourg, so it wouldn't be too difficult to rig up some self-made surveillance equipment. Not for Max Dobos, oh dear me no.
The device he had decided on was a Stuzzi Portable Reel to Reel Tape Recorder which was made in Vienna. It was commercially available, relatively cheap to buy, and being the size of a small toaster, fitted snugly in his overnight case. He had bought it directly from a contact who provided discreet surveillance equipment to private investigators. The Stuzzi also came with an adapted eight-foot-long string-like microphone wire, which Dobos hoped would be adequate to fit into the safe-house.
He had travelled to Luxembourg several days before to make all the arrangements, such as the approach to the Catalan killer, securing the 'safe-house' in Clervaux and to rig up his elementary recording device.
When the Catalan and the American had gone into their meeting, he had quickly rushed down to the basement, uncovered the recorder from behind the mattress and pressed the PLAY/RECORD button. The tape whirred slowly and Dobos listened intently through the headphones. What he heard only confirmed his suspicions about the American operation. This was no mere information gathering exercise. This was a list of agents being targeted for 'termination' and outside of the Catalan and his American case officer, only he knew about it. And that made it very valuable information, very valuable indeed to the right recipient.
With the American having flown out the next morning, Max Dobos made preparations to retrieve the tape from the hidden recorder. He was in no hurry; the house in Clervaux had its rent paid up until the end of the week and, sooner rather than later, he would have to remove all traces of the meeting which had taken place a few nights earlier. He spent the next day cleaning and removing any material that had been left. His final job was to uninstall the Stuzzi recorder and place it back in its little carry case.
Once back in his rented apartment, he had listened intently again to the recording. The quality of the tape was reasonable with the exception of one or two sentences being muffled due to the two men moving around the room and out of the microphone range.
What he heard was a gold mine of intelligence. Agents, operational planning and state sponsored executions. He knew that on the open market, this information would be highly valuable. But who to trade this information to, that was the crux of the matter. Reason would say that his first approach should be to the Russians. After all it was a Soviet network that was being targeted for termination. The KGB would welcome the intelligence with open arms.
But Dobos didn't think so. He knew the Russians to be poor payers, except for their star agents, and besides, Dobos hated the Russians for what they had done to his home country following the war and the Hungarian revolution in '56. No, he needed a different buyer.
He mused about it for the rest of the night, weighing up the pros and cons of each of the contacts that he had in the numerous secret services, before finally settling on the British service. He had done numerous jobs for the British spies over the years and they had always been fair and paid him well. He trusted them, as much as anyone could trust a spy, and he was sure that with the right approach, they would be able to accommodate him. After a number of tense telephone conversations with the local SIS station, he had been ordered, against his better judgement, to leave the only copy of the material at one of his old dead letter drops that SIS used to pass secret information and orders to their local informants.
He had visited the dead drop site in the Karmelitermarkt, the one his SIS contact had told him was codenamed ABEL. It had been a while since he had personally had to use it and he just hoped that it was still active. That very morning, he had lodged the small packet containing the tape recording between the brick wall and the base of the billboard. His next task, the one he was least looking forward to, was the brush past meeting with the Catalan killer from Luxembourg.
All of this he was reflecting on when he noticed the clack of footsteps somewhere in the distance behind him. Don't look around, was the age-old tenet of the counter-surveillance game. He was now passing the edge of the municipal buildings, which he knew would stretch out onto the side streets. The following footsteps kept a steady pace with his. He turned down a side walkway, with no one about. Keep moving, Max, he told himself. Had his plan been discovered? Had he been followed to the dead letter drop? And who was it – the Russians, the Americans – not the British, surely.
He started to move faster. If he could make it past the open ground, he would be back onto the main streets and from there it was only a matter of a few minutes until he could reach the safety of his own address. He moved faster; strong leg, weak leg, strong leg, weak leg, the same as he had learned in the camps to keep away from the beatings of the guards and…
Something occurred to him. He could no longer hear footsteps behind him. His pace slowed and after a few more tentative steps he risked turning around. He expected to see men in trench coats, ready to pounce on him, but instead he was treated to the cold darkness of the pathway he had just walked. His breathing had grown shallow; he calmed himself before moving on. He only needed to reach the end of the walkway past the wall, and he would be back onto a well-lit main road with good lighting, people and cars.
Nearly there, he thought. Don't lose your head now.
He calmed himself again. It was just his imagination, the deal with the British and his aborted meeting with the killer Marquez had spooked him, that was all. Strong leg, weak leg, strong leg, weak leg… just keep thinking of retirement in Paris or London or Madrid…
As he passed the end of the wall, he saw a flash of silver, felt a dull thump to the underside of his chin and then a searing pain, pain he had never felt before – ever – and never would again. His hands reached, instinctively upwards and he staggered forward, feeling the warm flow of arterial blood coursing between his fingers…
Dobos managed to twist his body around. Had he run into a fence, a spike, what? Instead, he saw a small, angry man in dark clothes, his hat discarded and flung on the floor, obviously dislodged during the initial strike. The man was approaching him fast. The man lashed out with his foot, Dobos felt his knees buckle and he fell forward onto all fours. With his hands now supporting him the blood from his throat gushed freely out onto the cobbles.
I'm dying, he thought, his mind in turmoil. This is how it ends, on a dark backstreet on a freezing cold night, with no one to care or to miss me or to bury me.
Then he felt his body being wrenched up violently to a kne
eling position. Putting his arms up to protect himself, he was aware of the man with the blade slashing at him, trying to cut through the barrier of his forearms. The searing pain shot up through him and then he was spun around and felt the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP and the searing pain once more as the blade was pumped forcefully into his kidneys. He knew then –had seen enough of death and violence in the camps – to know that his end was imminent.
Finally, his head was wrenched backwards, exposing his throat to the stars in the manner of a sacrifice, and then for the final time and from the corner of his eye, he saw the dull red colored glint of the steel blade as it made its way towards his throat.
He was just another casualty of the intelligence war.
* * *
Gioradze had been in place for a good twenty minutes before the limper had arrived, had seen the man arrive, wait, study his watch, and as the time drew nearer to the brush past meeting that he was supposed to be having with Marquez, seen the man's evident impatience as he was stood up.
The Georgian was at an adjacent angle to the front of the Parliament Building, across the road and concealed behind the trees that lined the boulevard. He was perfectly hidden in the night and despite the chill, was comfortable. There had only been one or two people passing by, several cars, but nothing out of the ordinary. No hostile surveillance of the proposed meeting of any counterintelligence officials or security police ready to spring a trap. Whenever a pedestrian came too near his hiding spot, he simply melted back into the shadows.
He glanced over at the limper. That was how he thought of his target. The limper. He observed as the man glanced at his watch more frequently before deciding to cut his losses and abort the meeting. Gioradze gave it sixty seconds before moving out of his position and onto the darkened streets.
He knew the ambush site that he wanted. He had earmarked it earlier; it was underneath a bridge that ran across a small stretch of open ground, further up the main road. As far as killing grounds go, it was perfect. Quiet, isolated, and with few lights, so that dealing with the body of the dead man would be that much easier, allowing him to manipulate and make any last minute corrections to the corpse. He just hoped the limper went the expected way. If not, he would have to improvise. Either way, the man wouldn't make it back to his apartment tonight.
He saw the limper cross over the main road further up and knew that he was taking the expected route. Now Gioradze's priority was to get ahead of him and hide at the ambush site. He estimated he had a little less than two minutes to sprint, to reach the ambush point before the limper arrived there. For a man of Gioradze's stamina and energy it was no problem.
He ran quickly, sticking to the grassy verge lest his shoes make a noise in the still of night and alert the limper. The grass expanded out to make a small hill, rising up at a gradient, and from his elevated position Gioradze was in the perfect position to look down at his target scampering along below him. Within seconds the hill began to decline and Gioradze could see the wall that was to be his hiding place. He squared his back against it, took a deep breath and unbuttoned his heavy jacket to give his arms more freedom of movement for when the attack began. No one ever expects an attack from the front, he thought. The limper would be so busy worrying if someone was still behind him that he wouldn't even consider someone is in front of him.
His weapon of choice, in fact the minimal amount of protection he carried when he was not on a job, was always a knife. On this occasion it was his favorite German Paratrooper gravity knife which he had won in a poker game on a drunken night during his time in the Legion.
He had felt the weight of the weapon in his hand; it felt good, solid, and dependable. He gave a brief peek around the corner to confirm his target was near. He was no more than twenty feet away, shuffling along, dragging his lame leg. The Georgian sharply flicked the handle of the knife downwards and heard a satisfying 'click' as the inertia of the blade sprang forward, his thumb moved the lock into place and at last the full ten inches of knife was steady, resting in his hand. He cocked his body, his knife arm primed, ready to swing. He could hear the shambling movements of the man, edging closer and closer until… He could not have timed it better. He swung his arm around 180 degrees, saw the silver trail as it gleamed in the streetlight's glare, sensed rather than felt the knife's impact so sharp was the blade, and watched as the man went down in a gurgling agony. Then he pounced on his victim.
Of the violence, later he would admit, that he could remember very little of it. But then that was always the way for him. He was only aware of fast movement – kicks, grabs, stabbing and slashing the man – before sitting the man up, cutting out his throat and then pushing him away as the arterial spurt let loose.
With the limper gurgling out his last breath, Gioradze did a cursory search of the body, more out of habit than of expecting to find anything: some identity cards, some money, and a set of keys to the man's apartment, nothing of any use. He dragged the body off the main path a few feet away and folded it over until it was completely concealed. With any luck, it wouldn't be found until at least daylight the next day, by which time, of course, he expected to be out of Vienna and on his way home.
He checked his watch. 9.25pm. He had a little under two hours to report back to Marquez at his hotel. No problem. He would walk the rest of the way with a spring in his step, glad to be back working at the only job he had ever excelled at.
* * *
The next day, the early morning flight from Vienna's International Airport took off as usual. Among its many passengers was a tall, somber man of Mediterranean appearance and a smaller, bulkier man who huddled himself deeper into his hat and coat to keep the unappetizing cold at bay.
They were perhaps businessmen who had been visiting Vienna on a commercial trip and were now returning to their respective countries. They did not sit together; each had a separate seat at either end of the aircraft. They never made eye contact and they were never seen to speak. If any of the other passengers had been asked, they could honestly say that the two men seemed completely unaware of the other's existence.
The flight's destination was Brussels International Airport. Once the plane landed, both men would go their separate ways. One would travel back to his home in Luxembourg and the other would later take the connecting flight that would edge him nearer to his adopted home of the Iberian Peninsula.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, it would be another three hours before the butchered body of what was initially assumed to be a vagrant was found hidden in some bushes on the parkland.
Chapter Eight
Ten hours later, two men stood in the cold, grey mortuary staring down at the recently deceased body of Max Dobos. One was a criminal investigation officer with the Austrian police; the other was a senior British diplomat from Her Majesty's Embassy.
“Whoever did it to him knew exactly what they were doing,” said the Austrian police officer.
Cecil Rowlands nodded his aging, shaggy head in agreement. Even to someone as untutored in forensics as he was, he could see the range of defensive wounds on the forearms of the corpse. Not to mention the butchering of the poor wretched devil's throat. Nasty.
Vienna was a village, a big village certainly, but a village nonetheless, and everybody knew someone who knew someone. As the SIS Head of Station in Vienna, it was good old Cecil's business to know the people in the know. People like Inspector Krupp, who took a monthly stipend from him.
Rowlands had been on a long weekend break, his first in many months; Thursday through to Sunday. The call to his private line when it came on the Saturday evening had ripped him away from what he hoped was going to be a quiet weekend of fishing, drinks and one of Joyce's pre-Christmas dinner parties. Joyce, his wife, did so love putting a party together. The evening phone call had put paid to that little luxury and he knew the moment he had heard Inspector Johan Krupp's voice that his weekend was going to be ruined. Joyce would be furious with him for days over this.
He had arrived at t
he hospital and been whisked down to the mortuary by a police sergeant, only to find Johan Krupp, doyen of the Viennese police waiting for him. Krupp was tall and grey with a bad suit and a habit of flicking ash from his cigarillos onto the floor whenever he had things on his mind. A thing he did now, despite being in the confines of the mortuary.
“So Inspector, what made you think that this man is connected to us?” asked Rowlands.
Krupp stared down at the floor. Catching his meal ticket out was something that didn't sit well with him. “I found one of your Embassy telephone numbers hidden in his sock. Didn't know what it was at first, it was only when I ran it through the reverse telephone directory files that it was flagged as the British Embassy. I thought I'd better let you know before the security police got wind of it.”
Rowlands smiled. “It's much appreciated Johan, and don't worry, there'll be something extra in the pot this month for you and your good lady. You did the right thing.”
“Thank you Herr Rowlands.”
Rowlands frowned. “In his sock, I wonder why he had it hidden there.”
“Well, there were signs that his body had been searched before the killer fled. Obviously he either didn't think to search the feet, or else he was disturbed.”
The body of Maximilian Dobos lay naked underneath a thin cotton shroud and over sheet that reached up to his tortured neck. Rowlands could see the beginnings of the 'Y' shaped pathology scar that ran from his left ear, down the torso to the abdomen.
The body had been found by a cleaner on her way to work in one of the municipal buildings. The elderly woman had noticed a shoe lying along the path that led to the adjacent alley. A quick glance around and she discovered track marks in the muddy verge, where the victim had been dragged before being concealed under an old carpet. Thirty minutes later the police were on the scene in the form of Inspector Krupp and his team of detectives. It was now a murder scene and Krupp and his men had control from here on in.