by James Quinn
Gorilla pulled up a chair and sat warming himself by the kitchen fire, occasionally glancing over as the little assassin slowly began to calm down and then eventually, quieten down. By the end of fifteen minutes, he'd slipped into a calm, semi-conscious drowse, his head lolling forward and occasionally snapping back up again as it regained control of itself. Gorilla thought the little man looked like a nodding dog, trying to stay awake after a busy day working out in the field.
Gorilla needed quick results from this interrogation. Time, as always on jobs like this, was of the essence. He started slowly, gently, keeping the questions simple at first and trying to create a rhythm so the prisoner would get into the habit of answering.
“Can you tell me your name?” It was said gently, like a parent talking to a drowsy child who was flitting in and out of sleep.
“Rrrr… Rogue.” The voice was toneless, tired, exhausted.
“What is Rogue?”
“Codename, used for long, long time…”
“Okay, Rogue. Can you tell me the name you were born with? Your real name?”
“David.”
“Okay David, good…”
“David Gioradze.”
To Gorilla, the surname sounded as if it had come out of the man's mouth as “Jeee-yurr-addghee,” probably a downside of the drugs. He looked like a dope fiend who'd succumbed to a huge hit of opium. “How did you get here, David? Car, boat, plane?”
“Boat from Barfleur. We moored off the coast, a small engine dingy to here… dumped on the beach… climbed the cliff track… hiked the last bit.”
“And the others, David? Who were they?”
“Hired muscle… from the Legion… useless fuckers got shot… mmm.”
“Who sent you here, David? Who's the paymaster? Where did the contract come from?” The man seemed not to notice the question; either that, or he chose not to commit to an answer. Gorilla pressed the remainder of the drug in the syringe into his bloodstream. He waited a few moments before Gioradze started speaking again.
“A man,” he mumbled, his head rolling from side to side.
“Which man? What did he look like?” asked Gorilla, his voice comforting, willing the answers to flow.
“Never met him! Only know his name… Knight, Maurice Knight. American…”
So it was an American contract, thought Gorilla. The CIA had gotten itself involved in something way outside of their normal remit. It was time to refocus the interrogation. “Is there a code David? Do you have a code to send, confirming the hit has been carried out?”
A slurred “Yethhh” and the nodding dog head again.
“What is it?”
“Phone from here to a number in a village… outside Paris…Auvers-sur -Oise… code is Ciseaux… then hang up… mmm,” he mumbled.
Ciseaux. Scissors, thought Gorilla. How very apt. A word code provided its own unique problems. He would have to listen carefully to this mercenary's accent to get it right. “What's the number? Can you remember it?”
Gioradze slurred out the number. Gorilla wrote it down, just to be certain. “Very good. Who is on the other end, David?”
Gioradze tried to lift his head up, but failed. “Partner… bad bastard… Marquez.”
“And is that where he, Marquez, is based at the moment, David?”
Gioradze gave a nodding of the head once more. “Mmmm… but then he's gone.”
“And does Marquez have a codename, David? A code name like yours?”
“Uh-huh… WIN.”
“Pardon ?”
“The Yankees gave him the codename Q… J… WIN. Long, long time ago… before all this happened.” He tried to wave a hand in a dismissive gesture, but because of his restraints, only succeeded in weakly waggling his fingers.
“Very good, David. Well done,” soothed Gorilla. The man was beginning to slip in and out of consciousness, probably the combination of blood loss and the drugs.
Gorilla thought he knew the answer to the next question, but he wanted it from the man's mouth. “Who is the next one on your list, David? Who is the next pay-day? Is it Paris?”
“Uh-huh… military man… we flipped a coin for it. Heads the military man… tails… the old man… I got tails!”
Gorilla thought he sounded disappointed. “How's he going to do it, David?”
Gioradze shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno, how… gun suppose, maybe… his choice… on the bridge though. Pont Nerfff… the military man goes there every Sunday, takes a stroll, meets people… your people… bloody KGB… bloody.”
The cocktail was wearing down. Gorilla waited again and then gently, quietly, he carried on with his questions. “David? You were telling me about the military man on the bridge.”
“Uh-huh… Pont Nerfff.”
“The Pont Neuf. That's right, on a Sunday. Is it this Sunday?”
“Uh-uh… not tomorrow… next Sunday… April… on the bridge. Give me time to finish here… then we take out the next one.”
“How do you know he meets people there every Sunday?”
“The American… he told us… in the files he gave us.”
So they certainly had some good cast iron intelligence, Gorilla thought. “And is there a rendezvous where you and Marquez are meant to meet up? David, stay with me.”
Gioradze was slowly going under. It was going to be a race against the clock before he fell into a deep sleep. “No… call a bar in Florence. Leave my hotel number… Marquez finds me… finds me when his kill is done… more secure that way… mmmm.”
Gorilla decided to change his line of questioning. He could find out from Porter when Cirius, the military man, met with the KGB. What he needed to know now, was how the rest of the assassination program was going to go down. “So the old man, then the military man? Who's next David, who is the next one?”
Gioradze gave a weak smile, as if he had half remembered something from his past. “La plus e de grume.”
Gorilla frowned. “Okay, the 'big vegetable' – who is that David? Can you tell me?”
“The bitch, the one we call the bitch… the woman politico… good looking… but still a bitch.”
* * *
Gorilla picked up the remaining vial of drugs, filled the syringe and pumped the rest of it into the man's system. He knew what would happen and before too long, Gioradze slipped into a deep sleep. The problem now that he'd finished with squeezing the man for information, was what to do with him.
His orders were not to leave these killers alive if he found them. They had become too much of an embarrassment and a problem. He discounted simply shooting the man in the head. Gorilla, for all his Redactions, had never executed a man tied to a chair and he wasn't going to start now.
Bugger Constellation and its agents. Ideally, he would have liked another vial of drugs and let the man simply slip away from an overdose, but unfortunately, there was just enough to loosen the man's tongue and no more.
After much deliberation, he settled on what he considered the least distasteful way to go. He rummaged under the sink until he found what he was looking for. A medium-sized tin bucket. He placed it next to the chair so that it sat nestled underneath Gioradze's right arm. Then he took out his gleaming silver straight razor and flicked open the blade with his thumb.
Gorilla untied the rope holding the right arm in place and gently let it fall so that Gioradze's wrist was dangling directly over the tin bucket. Next, he placed the edge of the blade halfway along the man's right wrist, steadied his hand, and in one swift motion he dragged the blade sideways, opening up the vein. The cut was deep and true and at once, the blood began to seep from the man's wrist and down into the bucket.
Gorilla estimated it would take roughly five minutes before Gioradze would bleed out completely, maybe less if you counted in the amount of blood he'd already lost from the gunshot wounds. The blood flowed forth, spilling into both the bucket and dribbling onto the surrounding floor. In the dark of the room, it looked like a pool of shiny black oil.
Gorilla watched intently, he thought he owed the man that at least, and a few minutes later when the bucket was almost full, Gioradze slumped forward. He tensed momentarily and then the life left his body. Gorilla reached forward, closed the man's eyes and gently rested his head to one side. He opened the door and was met by the old man, sitting in the lounge. The old man's eyes were rheumy as if he'd been weeping.
“Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute,” said Gorilla. He almost made it outside – almost – before the feeling got the better of him and he threw up the limited contents of his stomach onto the stone doorstep of the kitchen entrance.
* * *
Once he'd recovered, Gorilla set to work. His first task was to make the call to the number in France. He picked up the phone receiver in the living room and stared at the piece of paper with the phone number written on it.
This could go either way. He weighed up the options and reasoned that Gioradze had probably told the truth under interrogation, and even if he hadn't, what choice did he have now? Don't phone in the code and the operation is finished. Do phone it in and the man on the other end smells a rat and it's the same result. Fuck it, let's just get on with it, he thought.
He dialed for the operator, heard the click as she came online and read out the international number. He waited, clutching the receiver fiercely, the earpiece emitting a series of clicks and tones. It seemed like minutes passed, but he knew in fact, it was probably only a few seconds.
“Your call is about to be connected, caller,” the operator announced. She sounded as if she was working from inside a metal chamber, her voice tinny and echoed.
“Oui,” said a male voice from the earpiece. It was strong, and authoritative.
Gorilla remembered Gioradze's accent and tried his best to imitate it. It had been gruff and guttural and he knew that it was best to keep it brief in case the accent slipped. “Ciseaux.”
There was a pause and then the voice said, “Merci” and hung up. The code was complete.
Gorilla gently placed the receiver back into the cradle. All he could do now was hope that the ruse had been successful. His next priority, he decided, was to conceal the bodies. There was one man outside in the grounds of the house, one in the cellar and Gioradze here in the kitchen. They had to be moved, and quickly, and then centralized in one location. The most obvious and unobtrusive place was the cellar.
Gorilla spent the next thirty minutes dragging and lifting the bodies and carefully laying them out on the cellar floor. He found an old tarpaulin and covered them. Finally, he made safe the Uzi's and then did a brief check around the outside of the property for any obvious damage that might be seen, once daylight came. When he'd finished, he made his way into the living room to talk to the old man who was wrapped in an old blanket and sat by the fire. He looked exhausted.
“What should I do now, Herr Gorilla?” said Scorpius, faintly.
Gorilla was busy packing away the Remington into its carry bag. “Nothing, just act like you normally would if tonight hadn't happened. Are you alright about the bodies in the cellar?”
Scorpius looked at the flames dancing in the hearth. “Herr Gorilla, I survived the horrors of Berlin after the fall of Hitler when the Soviet forces invaded. A few corpses of men sent to kill me… please, I will not even lose a wink of sleep.”
But Gorilla didn't believe him for a minute. Corpses don't sit well with anyone, not even corpses who had recently made an effort to end your life. Gorilla thought it was just the old man trying to hide his fear and decided not to press him about it any further. “Good. I will leave in a few moments and you will never see me again. I was never here; do you understand?”
The old man nodded.
“In a few days, you will receive a call from a firm of builders, who will give you a date for when they will be coming to fix the windows, doors and to remove some old pipe work from the cellar. You understand?”
Again a nod. “I understand – pipe work. What if someone from the village enquires about my broken windows and doors in the meantime?”
“They won't. But if they do, simply tell them it was storm damage from tonight's gales, hence the need for the builders. The builders when they finish will leave your house in perfect condition.”
Scorpius nodded. “And what will you do now, Herr Gorilla?”
“I have to finish cleaning up,” said Gorilla, jerking a thumb towards the sea outside the rain spattered window.
* * *
Aldert Verhoeven sat in the galley of The Thamilia nursing a cup of scalding hot coffee laced with a slug of brandy. He checked his watch: 2.30 am. They were late, damn them! Gioradze had assured him that the whole thing would take no more than an hour. That had been just under two hours ago.
He would give them another thirty minutes, then he would scuttle out of here. They'd been lucky so far, having attracted no notice from either the coastguard or any passing ships on shipping lanes, probably due to both the stormy conditions and the lateness of the hour. He'd been monitoring Channel 16 on the radio, to see if The Thamilia had attracted any attention from other crafts and been reported to the coastguard station at Pendennis Head, but again, there had been nothing. For now.
But now he was sure his luck was running out and he didn't wish to tempt fate any further. He who hides and runs away, gets to live another day, was his smuggler's motto and one that had stood him in good stead over the past twenty years in his smuggling career. He glanced again at his watch. 2.45 am. Fifteen more minutes and then he was gone, back to Barfleur. Fuck Gioradze, fuck those French thugs and fuck the…
It was distant, but unmistakable; the noise he'd been straining to hear for the past few hours, the putt, putt, putt of a small engined boat. Verhoeven was an experienced smuggler and knew that darkness was the covert operator's friend. So no lights, no signals, nothing.
He made his way to the stern and saw the inflatable craft approaching. Fifty feet… thirty feet… twenty. They had been lucky, no coastguard or police launches in the vicinity, allowing them to have free reign. The small rubber boat covered the last fifteen feet and then the engine was cut, the craft smoothly and silently left to glide towards the mother ship.
Verhoeven waved his hand to guide the ship towards him; in the other he held a rope to tether the two crafts together. Through the darkness of the night he saw a small silhouette of a figure stand up. Judging by the man's size, he guessed it must have been Gioradze. “It's about time! You're late. Where are the others?”
He was answered with the blast of a shotgun. In the vastness of the ocean, it would have caused no more than a pop sound and the brief flash from the muzzle radiated out no more than a few feet. The round took Verhoeven in the head, killing him instantly. His body sagged back onto the deck.
To all intents and purposes, and with the last of the mercenary team killed, the attempted hit against an old man living on the coast of Cornwall might never have happened. Certainly, there were no living witnesses to argue otherwise.
* * *
An hour later, after returning to shore and destroying the inflatable, Gorilla made his way back to the concealed Spitfire in the nearby copse, packed away the shotgun into the boot and drove the mile to the nearest public telephone box on the outskirts of the village.
He checked his watch. It was just past 3.45 in the morning. Good, a perfect time to wake Masterman up. It serves him right, he thought. Keep me up for days on end will you, Colonel? Well, two can play at that game.
He dialed the secure number which he knew would be transferred to Masterman's private line at his house in Chelsea. Hearing the ringing tone, then the pips, he pumped in as much spare change as he could to feed the device.
“Yes.” It was the familiar voice of Masterman. Rather annoyingly, he sounded wide awake, damn him, almost as if he'd been sitting waiting over the phone like a vulture ready to swoop on its prey.
“It's Gorilla.”
“Of course it is, who else would be pho
ning at this time of night? How's my car? No scratches? Better hadn't be or I'll kick your backside all the way back to where I found you!”
“No, no scratches, a bit muddy, nothing a good hosepipe couldn't sort out.”
“Well, make sure you clean it before you bring it back. How's our problem? Resolved, I hope,” said Masterman, his mind diverted from the car.
Gorilla started his situation report. “The targets are down, Scorpius is safe and his cover is still intact. Minimal damage to the property, but we'll need to send a cleanup team in quickly, to remove the bodies and fix up some damage before the locals get wind of it.”
“Fine, I'll sort that out today.”
“Good. There's also a boat moored off the coastline, about a mile out, which will need to be hauled away.”
“No problem. I'll have our tame coastguards confiscate it… and the captain?”
Gorilla glanced outside the phone box. It was silent and dark, the storm having long since subsided. “Unfortunately, he didn't make it. He decided to pay a visit to Davy Jones's locker.”
Masterman didn't exactly burst into tears at the news. “Anything else?”
“Yes. I managed to take the team leader alive as instructed. I gave him the drug cocktail and ran with it. As much as I didn't like using it, I have to admit it was very effective. To cut a long story short, the next target is in Paris.”
“So, Cirius, the soldier. How and when?” asked Masterman.
“Next Sunday. The man tonight was called David Gioradze, a mercenary who works with Marquez. It seems they were both contracted by an American called Mr. Maurice Knight. The plan was for Gioradze to send a simple code to their base just outside Paris. That would be the cue for Marquez to take out Cirius on the Pont Neuf, of all places. I've taken care of that, hopefully the false code worked.”
“Ha, they're ambitious chaps, I'll give them that. Good work, Jack.”