A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1)

by James Quinn

  “What happened to the husband?” asked Gorilla.

  “As far as I remember, he was found murdered a few weeks later, with a bullet to the back of the head, execution style.”

  Both Nicole and Gorilla dropped their gaze to their feet. The old man's implication was obvious. Had Marquez argued with, or simply grown tired of his lover after all?

  Then, as an afterthought Helf said, “Are you really going to use him operationally?”

  Gorilla looked at Nicole and then back to the old man. He shook his head. “No.”

  Helf thought about this and nodded. “Good. I hope you find him, for whatever it is that's going to happen to him. He's a psychopath. I think you people should remember that if it wasn't for willing agents like Marquez and others, we would never have been able to do the things we ended up doing.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Nicole and Gorilla were back in their Paris apartment, exhausted after a fortnight of travelling. That night, they sat in the lounge, each nursing a glass of wine as they went over everything they'd learned about the man they were hunting.

  “Do we chance a visit to Luxembourg?” asked Nicole. “It could be that he's returning between the contracts.”

  Gorilla considered this. It would be tempting to get close to where this man lived, but operationally, they would be better staying in Paris, ready to jump when the false passports were finally flagged as being used in a different country. “No, it's better if we stay here. We'll get the Luxembourg Station to run a trace.”

  So they put in a request, via London, for SIS Luxembourg to run a search for the man. The answer came back within a day. Gorilla made his regular visit to one of his tame telephone boxes and called direct to Consterdine in the Paris Station.

  “By all accounts, he's a respectable businessman, at least in Luxembourg he is,” said Consterdine. “SIS Luxembourg's contact with the local police said that as far as he was concerned, the man was not known to them.”

  “What about his home address?” asked Gorilla, scribbling notes on his pocket pad with a worn-down pencil.

  “Actually, it's both his home and business address: a shop at the front and an apartment at the back. Marquez runs a fine art and antique business, does quite well by all accounts. Keeps himself to himself and is there most days.”

  “Most days?”

  “The neighbors say that he occasionally goes away on business, for anything up to a week at a time, like now. The shop's been closed for the past month or so, which they admit is a tad unusual.”

  Gorilla wrote down the address in Luxembourg, thanked Consterdine and hung up. He stared at the notes. The man was definitely 'active' and was loose somewhere in Europe, either laying low or getting ready to go after the next target. Time was a factor. Unless they got a lead on their whereabouts soon – say in the next few days – the MACE fire-team would have to uproot and go and sit on the shoulder of the next possible target on the hit list. Keeping at a distance and staying well back, hoping they'd picked the right agent to protect, and remaining in the shadows waiting for the assassins to make a move. It would be an unenviable task, too much to go wrong and too risky for both the protectors and the protected.

  So it would be here in Paris, head to Italy, or back to England. It was a gamble and in truth, it would very much be guesswork as to which one to pick. Gorilla needed a lucky break and he reasoned that the only way to trace the hit-team was to catch them during what the spy-catchers called 'transitions'. Moving from one place to another, it meant catching them when they were most at risk and most vulnerable as they left one country and entered another. This option involved travel, and travel meant that you had to have passports, flight tickets, train tickets, car hire vouchers, and all the things that left a trail, no matter how well you tried to hide or disguise them.

  Now that London had the names on the false travel documents, it was only a matter of time before they turned up somewhere. The question was though; would his fire-team be able to move quickly enough to intercept them? He hoped so, because at the moment the sand in the hourglass was quickly draining away.

  * * *

  In the end it was the Burrowers who got a 'hit' on the flagged passports.

  The 'flagging' of the airport watch lists was a slow, grinding process and the French authorities had missed the 'Joosen' passport by several days. The call had gone out from SIS to friendly intelligence and police agencies, that the British were looking for a couple of suspected 'couriers' working for the Bulgarians. At least, that was the story fed to the liaison offices across Europe.

  Toby and his Burrowers insisted on an 'Observe and Report Order', which was jargon for 'watch them and let us know where they go'. They had sat around the office and sweated over the past week, waiting, praying and hoping that they hadn't been too late and missed the quarry.

  The breakthrough came in early March, when a tired and overworked intelligence officer of the French Security Service, the DST, was backtracking through the airport watch-lists. Late at night and armed with only a ruler and a pencil, his job was to match the passenger lists from every airline which came in or out of France to the ever growing 'watch-list' of suspected terrorists, spies and international organized crime figures.

  He moved the ruler carefully down the printout list, lest he should miss his place, and then would tick off the name if it wasn't flagged. He was well into his second hour, with still another thirty minutes before his next break, when he noted the name of a passenger who had travelled from Orly to Marseilles a week earlier, a Dutch citizen by the name of Vincent Joosen.

  His eye flicked over the watch list. He looked away and then looked back. A rub of his eyes to make sure that he had a match. Vincent Joosen. The same!

  The intelligence officer flicked through the operations order file to see what his response should be. He ran his finger down to the 'J's' and noted the Observe and Report Order, confirming he should immediately contact an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service by the name of Tobias Burrows at Century House, London.

  Chapter Two

  Marseilles – March 1965

  The German was perched on the end of the bed; his fingers interlocked with barely contained fury and frustration as he stared at his two 'senior employers'. He was large, well-built, greying at the temples and sweating, due to a combination of the Mediterranean temperature and the woolen suit he wore. Suppressed fury riddled his face; the glower seemingly a permanent feature.

  Their base was a series of connected rooms on the top floor of the Hotel Azure, overlooking the old port of Marseilles. The rooms were serviceable, at best. In fact, they were disgusting and no doubt more suited for clients who wanted to bang the putain's these Corsican pimps peddled.

  The only thing in its favor, was that as well as access to the main part of the hotel, they also had a separate entrance via an external staircase to the rear, meaning they could come and go without interfering with the 'business' at the front of house.

  The hotel was part illegal gambling den and part brothel, used exclusively by the Capo's soldiers. It was considered a safe-house, as it was under the protection of the Guerini Clan, which ran the prostitution, vice, protection rackets, and drug trade for Southern France. The hotel offered discretion, anonymity and security, so that the team could discuss their next target.

  The German pondered – as a man with much regret and wasted time in his life is often known to do – about how he came to be reduced to working for these two cutthroats. They had no honor, no sense of duty, and he trusted them about as far as he could throw them.

  After all, it was not so very long ago when one of these men would undoubtedly have been one of his informants, and as for the other, the German and his team would have been hunting him down, interrogating him before dragging him out into the forests and emptying a magazine into him. Assuming he had survived the interrogation methods the German was infamous for… and not many did.

  The German's name was Alfred Nade
l. It was not the name on his current travelling papers, but it was the one he'd been born with and the one he held dear. He had, over recent years, been a Muller, a Bonson and a Mobert, and even if he had to swap and change identities in order to keep his liberty and survive in this hostile, post-war world that he despised, it was a small price he was happy to pay.

  He had started his career working for one of the top men in the Sicherheitendienst, rising quickly and he'd been one of the prime architects in the plot to kidnap two British Intelligence men on the Czech border. Several weeks later, war had been declared and once again his career in the intelligence world had flourished.

  He had run a small team of hunters, whose specialty had been the tracking and elimination of the various 'terrorist' and underground groups. He'd wanted to take his team to the ultimate hunting ground – Paris. He had been given Holland instead. He fumed, pushed his team harder and it had worked, earning him the reputation as one of the most feared SS officers in the Low Countries.

  The extermination of Partisans on the Russian Front had been his finest hour, hunting down the Russians like rats. It had been good while it lasted, but by 1945, and with the tide of the war turning, it hadn't been long until the roles had been reversed and he became the hunted.

  He had finally been captured not long after the fall of Berlin by the Americans and was set to be tried at Nuremburg, until one night he'd seized the opportunity to escape. He had strangled his guard with his bare hands and fled into the night. For the following decade, he'd remained on the run, living in the shadows, being hidden and aided by his former colleagues of the SS in their underground organizations: a bit of money here, false papers there and for a while, never sleeping in the same location for more than a few nights at a time.

  He had travelled and hidden in South America, Spain, and Africa, and he found all of them to be shitholes. Instead, he yearned to return to his homeland. He had earned a living as everything from mercenary to a barman, from a garbage collector to a paid killer. All the while dodging the police forces holding warrants for his arrest, as well as an endless stream of Mossad agents determined to liquidate him and his former comrades.

  He had met the Georgian through a mutual arms dealer contact years ago, when he had been hired as part of a team tasked to remove the arms dealer's 'rival' in Antwerp. The job had gone well and they had, sporadically, kept in touch. Of late though, the work began to dry up. His age was going against him, he knew, plus there were just too many operators for too few contracts. His last job had been working as an enforcer for a smuggling gang based out of the Spanish Costas. It was demeaning, and if he was honest with himself, he could probably have made more working as a waiter.

  So when the Georgian had sought him out for a long-term contract, he'd snapped the little man's hand off. But the fact that he was a sub-contractor and not a main player in the job still ate away at him. He unclasped his fingers and turned his attention back to the Catalan and the Georgian. The subject at hand was who was to be the primary agent on the next hit.

  “Can I just interject?” said Nadel. They both turned to look at him, one with amusement and one with indignation.

  “Of course, Alfred,” said Marquez.

  “As I see it,” said the German, “so far I've taken all the risk and done the main bulk of the work.”

  There, it was out there and to his mind, it needed to be said. The last hit on the most recent Soviet agent on the team's list had been handled by Nadel. It had been a relatively simple task really, driving, nothing more. The only difference was that it was at high speed directly at the victim, but still, it was just driving and was not his usual method of dispatching a 'mark'.

  “That's not strictly true, is it? We were both involved in the operation in Zurich, and I personally took on the job in Hamburg,” said Marquez.

  Nadel snorted with derision. Of course the Catalan had taken sole responsibility for the hit on the Diplomat, he'd been a queer and knowing of Marquez's tastes, it had no doubt been part business and part pleasure for him.

  “Did I say something wrong?” asked Marquez. He was starting to get annoyed with this German's infernal mood swings.

  “No, no, it's just… never mind. Forget it.” In truth, Nadel had been in a bad mood since they arrived here in Marseilles. He hated these stinking Corsicans with their pastis, bouillabaisse and arrogance. The majority of the milieu 'foot soldiers' were nothing more than glorified pimps, muscle in suits. Not even the whores who had been supplied to him by his hosts had improved his mood. “And why do we have to stay holed up in this filthy hotel? It stinks of sewage and as for these Corsicans…”

  Marquez frowned. He had negotiated the terms of their stay personally with one of the senior lieutenants of the Guerini Clan. For an exorbitant fee, they had been given access to a secure floor of the hotel, food and drink, and enjoyed the added advantage of the hotel being protected by a number of Guerini toughs from the milieu.

  The Georgian interjected. “You know why; we've been over all of this. We did three hits in northern Europe – the best place to hide out, re-group and plan is south. The Corsicans offered us safe haven so we can get the plumbing in place for the rest of the operation.”

  “We should have gone straight to the next target country, it would have been quicker,” blustered Nadel.

  Marquez, the leader, came over and stared down at him. When he spoke, his voice was calm and reasonable. “Yes, it would. Are you in a hurry, Alfred? You have somewhere else to be, perhaps? We take our time, we do it right, we go careful, yes. We let the dust settle. We are still within the timeframe of the contract we have been given.”

  Nadel waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Ahh… give me a gun, and I'll go to the next job and finish it myself… quickly! Why all this shitting about… we should be splitting up, hitting targets separately!”

  “No. We are more effective as a team. We split, too many things can go wrong,” said Gioradze.

  “You did the Hamburg hit on your own,” Nadel countered, talking directly to Marquez.

  Marquez shrugged. “That's because I was the best, and besides, I don't think that you would have liked that young man's sexual tastes. Or is that it? Did I 'queer your pitch', as the English say?”

  The innuendo was not wasted on Nadel, who reacted the way Marquez knew he would. “Fuck you, you—”

  “Hey, that's enough!” said Gioradze, standing, arms ready to launch at the German like an attack dog in case he made a play for his master, and his fingers edged nearer to the concealed weapon in the waistband of his suit trousers.

  “And fuck you, too,” ranted the German.

  But the steam had started to go out of Nadel's tirade; violence and aggression were not the best tactics to be used in a confined space such as this, especially with two experienced killers. “I'm going out… I need to walk.” He stood and moved his bulk quickly to the door.

  “Be back by four, we have much work to do,” ordered Marquez, before returning to the maps and intelligence papers he was working on.

  Nadel slammed the door on the way out, his point made. During the afternoons he had taken to walking along to the harbor and stopping at a small cafe to rest and take a drink, anything to escape the stifling confines of the hotel suite. Today he would need that fresh air more than ever.

  At the lobby, he nodded reluctantly to the two toughs who 'minded' the door and made his way out into the glare of the afternoon sun. He was rounding the corner heading down to the Old Port when he heard Gioradze's voice. “Alfred, wait, we need to talk…”

  * * *

  The afternoon sun bathed the Old Port of Marseilles, turning the walls of its buildings a dazzling white and giving the reflection of the water the look of black glass. The smell of seafood, garlic and aniseed wafted in and out of the doorways and windows of the bars and cafes, and on the water, the boats rocked gently to a rhythm of their own making. The seafront was an idyll of beautiful women, mysterious men and the promise of adv
enture.

  But that was only the veneer of the Mediterranean port. Beneath its surface Marseilles was 'run' by the organized crime gangs of the Corsican Mafia. The preeminent organized crime bosses in Marseilles were the Guerinis', and like their Sicilian cousins, they had graduated from a small island, in this case Corsica, to the mainland in 1912 and set about, through tough tactics and bloody vendettas, revolutionizing the criminal underworld in Marseilles.

  Aside from the usual illegal gambling, prostitution and protection rackets, the Guerini brothers had cornered the market in both heroin production and smuggling. As well as the obvious benefits of this affluent trade, the Corsicans also bought political power and influence which was so necessary in order to keep the supply chain of narcotics flowing across the Mediterranean and into Asia. Marseilles was their choke point and everything related to the Guerinis' criminal empire was run through that harbor port. They were masters of all they surveyed.

  The Georgian knew that Marquez had worked as a 'freelancer' for the Guerinis' on numerous occasions; usually on contracts that the Corsicans were unable to commit themselves or had trouble fulfilling. The Corsicans were fine pulling a trigger in a gangland feud on their own turf, but planning out an assassination in areas where they were not so well acquainted was definitely the preserve of an experienced assassin, an assassin like Juan Marquez.

  This relationship with the Corsicans had allowed the team a chance to set up base and think through their next move – for a price, of course, because the Corsicans were nothing if not ruthless businessmen, and the 'rent' for their stay in one of the Guerinis' safe-houses was, by most standards, astronomical.

  But as Marquez had told them, it was a worthwhile cost. “We run into any trouble, it's good to have the milieu on hand. They're tough boys and don't take too kindly to anyone pissing on their patch. Besides, the cost will be put in as expenses to the CIA, it won't affect our remittance at all.”