by James Quinn
He was a double for the British, passing all kinds of doctored material to his KGB contacts in the hope that they believed him. At any moment in those first few months, he'd expected to be exposed. He'd worried over what the retribution from the Russians would be; a shot to the back of the neck, or poison in his drink? The thought made him shudder and Willem had to admit to himself, there were more than a few nights when he'd barely slept. Such is the stress of the spy.
But the bullet and the cyanide never came. In fact, it was quite the reverse. The spy work had started to take on a life of its own, quite distinct from his normal life. He separated them quite comfortably into various boxes; Box One was home and family and work, Box Two was the British, and Box Three was the KGB facade.
Willem glanced at his watch as he hurried down the street. 7.45 am. Dammit, I'm going to be late, he thought, picking up his pace. He'd missed the last tram and decided to try to find a taxi along his usual route, but with nothing on the street he decided to continue on foot. He didn't notice the large delivery wagon ambling distantly in the background, slowly crawling along. Nor did he notice the tall figure who was less than ten yards behind him. Why should he? The plans he had for the day were repeating in his mind as he approached the curb to cross the road.
Willem felt a push, although in those last few seconds if he'd had time to correct himself, he would have considered it more of a blast – a force impacting between his shoulder blades and throwing him forward onto the road. His briefcase skittered across the cobblestones and he landed on his knees. One trouser leg was torn and his spectacles had gotten dislodged and balanced precariously on the end of his nose.
He was about to turn and give whoever had jostled him a piece of his mind, when he heard the roar, the gunning of a motor and the squeal of the tires as an engine reached its peak.
Willem had just enough time to move his eyes to the left, before the impact of the truck's bumper smashed directly into the side of his skull. He experienced a dull pain before his body was dragged under the vehicle's heavy wheels. In a haze of semi-consciousness, it felt as if Willem was being thrown around inside a huge washing machine, his body bouncing off the cobblestones and being ripped, then crushed by the heavy rubber tires and undercarriage of the truck.
On the far side of the street, the only witness to the accident was the octogenarian Alberto Fricke, the tobacconist, who was completing his morning routine of stocking shelves and straightening packets. He was up on his rickety stepladder when he heard the roar of a heavy engine and the squeal of tires.
He wasn't meant to be working that morning, it was supposed to be his rest day, but his angry wife had informed him she was visiting friends and as for his lazy great lump of a son… so it was work for Herr Fricke instead of what he should have been doing; enjoying the newspapers over a cafe crème in his favorite chair.
It was the dull thud which made him look. He twisted his head around in time to see the man being dragged under the delivery truck like a rag-doll. Later, Fricke would swear that he'd heard the man's bones, crunching and grinding beneath the wheels of the vehicle.
Herr Fricke flung himself down from his step ladder, no easy feat at his age, and hurried to the shop window to get a better look. He peered through the roller blind which would remain closed until opening time. The truck had stopped twenty feet further on, and the man, the poor wretched man lying on the street was spread-eagled, his limbs placed at unnatural angles.
Oh my God, an accident, a terrible accident, thought Fricke.
Then something strange happened. Actually, two strange things happened as he would later tell the police. The truck crunched its gears into reverse and accelerated back at high speed, once more trampling over the body. This time there was no crunching of bones, merely a squelching and popping noise as the man's head and internal organs collapsed, and then just as quickly, the truck moved off again, driving over the body for a third time before racing off down the street. The body looked like a scarecrow which had its stuffing removed, then been coated in red paint.
With a hand clutched to his mouth in horror, Fricke noticed the second strange event. A man was standing watching the events. A single man – why hadn't he noticed this man before? He was tall, dark of complexion, and with a trilby hat pulled down to cover his face. Was that a hint of grey streaks at his temples, creating two little horns above his ears?
The man had watched the whole thing, hadn't moved in fact, from the one spot. He'd remained standing on the pavement, exactly where the dead man had fallen onto the road… Herr Fricke's eyes widened in horror. Had this man… had he pushed the poor man into the truck's path! No, no surely not! This was Zurich after all, not some crime-ridden backstreet in Berlin or Paris.
The man in the trilby hat appeared to examine the corpse from a distance, before he casually turned and walked away, never once looking back.
Unknown to Herr Fricke, the first legitimate agent of the Constellation network, ORION, had been officially terminated.
Chapter Seven
The meeting between the operational team that made up MACE and the controller of the Constellation network took place in 'The Eyrie'. It was a small, two-roomed office, positioned at the top of one of the many obscure buildings behind Whitehall, which the Secret Intelligence Service maintained for discreet meetings between its officers.
A visit to Headquarters at Broadway would have been unthinkable. Redaction Unit members were always briefed and debriefed at an off-site secure location, and because of the nature of their work they seemed to have acquired a reputation for 'worrying' the regular officers.
So, Operation MACE; a mace like a weapon, hard and blunt and heavy. A weight to crush an enemy! It was what the Redaction Unit did best.
It was decided that the teams would be split into two. First, there was the 'Fire-Team', with Jack Grant as the Field Controller on the ground who, through experience and seniority, would have overall command. He would answer directly to Masterman at Redaction in Pimlico. Nicole Quayle would be the spotter used to ID the enemy targets, as well as providing surveillance and logistics support to Grant.
The second team would be the 'Trackers', who would be led by a young officer who'd only been introduced to them that very morning, although within the corridors of the Service he had an outstanding reputation, one that belied his youthful looks.
Toby Burrows resembled an undergraduate at one of the better universities. Tall, thin, impossibly young, tousled hair, bespectacled, and with a sense of dress that indicated he regarded his wardrobe requirements as something of a chore, rather than a necessity.
He was pleasant but aloof to his colleagues and regarded the vital meetings senior officers craved on a daily basis to be a distraction from the real work which was the lifeblood to him; that of catching spies.
His private life was a mystery to the others in the Service, and yet if they had scratched the surface they would have discovered he had a pretty wife, two adorable children and lived a contented life in Islington. His reputation had been earned in the Service's new counter-intelligence section, where he had a knack for tracking down enemy agents and playing them back against the enemy.
His nickname, the 'Burrower', fit him well. While other spies and agents favored the silenced pistol, high-tech surveillance equipment and all manner of bizarre gadgets, the 'Burrower's' Cold War weapons were his desk-bound secure telephone lines, access to the SIS Registry files and a wide range of contacts in friendly intelligence and police forces across the globe. His tenacity, a nose for a lead, and the ability to pull together any number of fragmented pieces of intelligence into one tangible picture, made him a much sought after counter-intelligence officer within SIS. While Grant and Nicole would be the physical part of Operation MACE, Toby and his team of assistants would undoubtedly be the brains.
They settled themselves into 'The Eyrie'. The room was laid out like a classroom, with Masterman and Porter sharing the main desk at the head of the room and Grant, N
icole and Burrows each at an individual desk. While Masterman was the team's direct controller, it was Porter who took the center stage chair and ran the briefing. Masterman leaned back in his own chair and gazed out at the rain covering all of Whitehall. “Are we all up to date on the background to the case?” asked Porter, opening the proceedings.
They were. They had had the files in the morning and had spent the past few hours reading and re-reading the background. A day with the files would have been better, but they were limited on time, so a morning would have to do.
“Well, I think we should start with Nicole's account of the two suspected CIA men. How did you come to I.D. our two lovelies… where was it again… the Caribbean? Why don't you talk us through it in detail, Nicole, tell us exactly how it happened,”said Porter.
* * *
It is Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic. It is night, it is hot and there is an air of unreality about the proceedings. By the end of the day the news that President Trujillo has been assassinated on a quiet country road will reach the rest of the world. El Benefactor has ridden the tiger and now the tiger has chosen to eat him whole it seems.
Nicole is having a drink at the Hotel Rafael, the local watering hole where all the Europeans hang out. Her host is Clive, the Deputy Head of Station. Clive is thin and tired and forty. Recently divorced, he has done his best to flirt, but as most Englishmen of a certain breed tend to, he is making a hash of being both seductive and romantic and is instead coming over as a lecher.
She had been invited for “drinks so that we can relax and perhaps have an informal chat about station business,” which Nicole deciphers as being code for Clive wanting to seduce her. She fears Clive will be disappointed and knowing Clive's reputation, she will be in his bad books for the rest of her tour.
The Rafael's bar is pleasantly full with a mixture of journalists, local business impresarios loyal to the Trujillo government, and a hotchpotch of Latin American elite. Europeans are in the minority here. Everyone is trying their best to be relaxed and cultured, but the signs of tension around their eyes says otherwise. News is coming in regarding gunfire in various parts of the city. Clive's attempts at illuminating conversation are starting to run out of steam, and Nicole is doing her best to appear interested and courteous. She toys with her rum and in another fifteen minutes she will feign a migraine and ask if Clive can arrange for a car to take her back to her apartment.
Five minutes in, several sips of rum and a couple of Clive's clichés later, the moment happens, a man enters the bar. Whoever he is, he walks with a smooth, gliding motion and the confidence of an executive car salesman. He is tall and broad, his suit jacket draped lazily over one arm, and he reminds Nicole of a Roman General officiating at his own Triumph. His gaze wanders over the patrons of the bar as he strides toward a table in the corner. His eyes lock temporarily on to Clive's and the two conduct a covert nod of recognition before the Roman General turns his back on them and nurses his scotch.
“A friend of yours Clive?” asks Nicole.
For once Clive is reticent to part with information, and instead his response is clipped and scarce on detail. “Let's just say professional acquaintance, rather than a friend. He's the Cousin's man over here, sort of my opposite number. I see him at the monthly liaison meetings. He's in charge of the Americans ops in the region,” replied Clive, trying not very successfully to hide his pang of jealousy at Nicole's interest in the other spy.
“Well, he seems very sure of himself,” observed Nicole.
“Aren't all Americans like that? Name of Tanner. Excuse me for a moment; I'd better just chew the fat.” And so Clive disentangles himself from his chair and heads over to the American.
The American by contrast, is less than pleased to be approached in a bar by a British intelligence officer, no matter how casual or innocent it might seem, but to his credit he display's none of this irritation overtly. Instead, he offers a glad hand to Clive and a friendly slap on the back before the two men incline heads towards one another and conduct a whispered conversation. The quiet dialogue continues for several minutes more, in fact long enough for Nicole to finish her drink and ready her purse to leave Clive and his American friend to it, when two obvious Europeans enter and head directly towards where the American is standing. One is tall and spare and distinguished the other squat like a bullet with a scar on his cheek.
Tanner turns to his guests, and addresses them directly. Then, Nicole notes, he turns to Clive and says something directly to him. Nicole imagines that it is the equivalent of a short, sharp directive to go forth and multiply. Whatever was said, Clive returns to his table red-faced at the American's comment.
“What was all that about?” asks Nicole.
“Tanner is a bloody arse, that's what. Meeting with a couple of his privateers,” replies Clive, the florid color slowly disappearing from his cheeks.
“Privateers? Do you mean pirates, Clive?”
“Don't be so silly. Covert ops people, mercenaries, cutthroats probably. You know how the Americans are fond of using all kinds of scum like that.”
“I didn't to be honest. What are they doing here?”
Clive laughs at her naivety. “Oh the Yanks are up to all kinds of mischief in the Caribbean. Stay around here long enough and you'll soon find that out. Wouldn't surprise me if they have a big op going on as we speak; and when you start to involve outside killers, well that usually means that it's regime change time. Still, none of our business is it, another drink?”
* * *
“And then what did the CIA man do?” asked Porter.
Nicole stared at him for a moment before she responded. She took a second to recall that she was no longer in the heat of the Caribbean, but instead returned to the drizzle of her present daily life. “They huddled in the corner for about twenty minutes talking, the American patted the taller man on the shoulder several times as if he was congratulating him, and then both parties went their separate ways.”
“So why couldn't this Deputy Head of Station ID them? Why only you?” Burrows questioned, holding a pencil at the ready to scribble down any intelligence.
“He did, we both did. To be honest, at the time we didn't think much about it. We assumed they were CIA agents, which it seems they were, and wrote it up in the Operations Diary when we returned to base.”
“You had no camera with you?” asked Grant, flicking through his file.
Nicole shook her head. “No, we were out having a drink, letting off some steam. It was only later when we found out that these two fitted the description of CIA contract agents on several possible murders.”
“So how come Clive isn't sitting here and you are?” Porter asked.
Nicole paused, looked out of the window and took a deep breath. “Clive shot himself six weeks later. It seems his divorce had hit him harder than he liked to admit. He wasn't a bad man, just lonely.”
Porter nodded, accepting the reality. “So you're the only living witness from our side that we know of. And now, after all this time you're sure you could recognize them?”
She nodded. “Believe me. They do tend to stick in the mind. When I see them, I'll know them.”
“What happened after that? Any further sightings?” Burrows queried, writing furiously.
“Of the two mercenaries or whatever they are, no. The rest as they say is history. The killing of Trujillo took the whole of the country into hell. Mass arrests by the Cascos Blancos, the secret police, of anyone even suspected of involvement in the assassination. Widespread torture at La Cuarenta prison, death squads, and massacres, you name it. It's all in the station's files.”
“And you. What happened to you?” Grant questioned.
Nicole shrugged. “All non-essential personnel were told to leave. I was out of the country by the end of the week and on a flight back to London. I was reassigned the very next day.”
There was a pause in the flow of the conversation as the MACE team digested Nicole's story. The only sound was
the patter of rain on the window and the imperceptible scribbling of pens on paper as notes were made.
It was Jack Grant who broke the silence. “I do have one question. These other agents – Soviet admittedly – what do we do about them?”
Porter grimaced. “We do nothing. It's just tough luck, Jack, they're on their own. Our priority is Constellation and its agents. If we're lucky, this CIA-backed action team will bugger up somewhere along the line, whether it's our agents or, if there is such a thing, innocent Soviet spies! If it slows them down so much the better, that way you'll be there to mop them up while they're looking the other way.”
“And we definitely can't move our people, or throw a protective cordon around them? Or at the very least, alert them?” pushed Grant.
Porter sank into a Buddha-like pose. When his head rose, his face was grave. “No, no movement, no security, nothing out of the ordinary. Understood?”
“Sorry, Jack, you're it, I'm afraid. Keep it low key, and if at all possible, keep contact with the Constellation agents to a minimum,” said Masterman.
“There's no chance of having a quiet word in the Americans' ears? 'Hey lads you're buggering about with our agents and would you please mind backing off'?” Grant pressed.
Porter shook his head. “The word from the top is that the Chief wants this situation to go away. He wants the Americans to be none the wiser about who these agents are actually working for, he wants this assassination operation dismantled by putting a fucking bullet in their heads, and finally, he wants the status quo to remain in place regarding the relationship with the American Service.”