by James Quinn
In his mind's eye, he could see the shapes of several figures running along the corridor of his hotel floor. They would remain covert for as long as possible and they would be armed. They could neither let him escape, or die. They wanted him to talk.
So it came as no surprise when the knock on the hotel room door came, less than five minutes later. He moved to a spot directly in front of the door, like an actor on a theatre stage, about to give a grand performance. His arms were outstretched at shoulder height to his sides; a Christ-like figure on the cross. He was ready and eager to leave this world. “The door's open,” he called. “Let yourself in.”
To hell with them all, he thought. The CIA, the KGB, and the politicians that run them. Hell, let them butcher one another. He hoped the Cold War would become a Hot War. Many times in the great game, the knight was sacrificed for a better tactical advantage, so why should this time be any different?
He waited for the pause, then slowly the handle turned and the door began to open on its arc, the barrel of an automatic pistol cautiously leading the way. He had enough time to see this before he pressed the button on the detonator and watched as the fizzle of the acid burned away and dropped the plunger into the plastic explosive.
The firestorm of light was almost biblical.
Chapter Nine
The Director of Central Intelligence was about to pack up his briefcase for the day and call for his driver to bring the car around when his personal line rang. It was his Deputy Director, Webster. “Mr. Director we've just had word from Mexico City. There's been an explosion. Eight confirmed dead, dozens more wounded.”
“Ferrera?”
“Yes sir, he set off a bomb he'd rigged inside his hotel room. Took out himself, our snatch team and several Mexican police officers,” said Webster.
The DCI swore under his breath. “Alright Roy, get up here, we need to manage this situation.”
It was a god-awful mess. The DCI was a father himself, knew how he would have felt, and he certainly would have handled Ferrera's grief much better than his predecessor, who had frankly made the situation worse with his acid tongue and incompetence. However, this didn't make his problem any less tangible. Ferrera was dead now – that at least was a blessing – and even if he had left any evidence behind the Agency would simply make it disappear, or simply deny everything anyway.
No, the real problem now was Higgins. What to do with him? He certainly couldn't be let off. His actions were treasonous, after all. He'd broken a bond of trust that could never be repaired and to give him his liberty was opening the Agency up to possible extortion. And that would not happen, not during his tenure. Higgins was too dangerous to be kept alive and free. What was needed, was a subtle removal to a thorny problem.
Ten minutes later, Roy Webster entered the DCI's office. Both men sat down and looked at each other. Finally, it was the DCI who spoke. “I think we need to make this mess go away, Roy. Go away and trim off any loose ends.”
“I take it you mean Higgins?”
The DCI nodded. “He's the one who holds the balance of power at the moment, the one who could destroy the Agency with a phone call.”
Webster nodded. “I think that's a wise decision, Mr. Director. There's someone we know of who could deal with this problem for us. Quietly, discreetly.”
The DCI was well aware of the gravity of issuing the order to kill an operative. It was both risky and morally askew. And while as a government employee, albeit a very powerful one, he could not sanction an assassination at a political level anymore thanks to the recent Executive Orders from the White House, there was a caveat that allowed him to interject at an operational level if necessary in extreme circumstances. Extreme circumstances like this. “Who, someone on staff?”
“No, it's… complicated. He's a freelancer, effectively. He's very good, exceptional in fact. His cryptonym is Caravaggio,” said Webster.
The DCI raised an eyebrow. “Caravaggio, like the artist? I've heard of this fellow, rumor only, of course.”
“Actually, he's informally known as the 'Master'. They say he's turned wet-work into an art form.”
“Do we have control of him? As an asset, I mean?” asked the DCI.
“No, sir, he's not an agent in the classic sense of the word. He works only for very high rewards and even then, only if the 'job' interests or challenges him. He's been involved in several high-level intelligence operations for a variety of Western agencies, all of them successful. I think it's fair to say he's something of a legend within the intelligence community.”
“Mmm,” the Director mused. He didn't like the thought of not having a source under his control, it was too vague and unwieldy, but he had to admit his options were limited. The Assistant Director of Plans had left him in a precarious situation, both professionally and politically. He had been brought in to take a firm hold of the CIA following the retirement of the previous Director, and he was damned if he was going to be kicked out because one of his senior men had decided to be a part of some stupid revenge crusade. He needed this whole mess to disappear.
He had made up his mind, distasteful as it was, but sometimes ruthless decisions needed to be taken by honorable men. “Can you get in touch with this Caravaggio?”
“I'll try, sir. We can only ask, however, as I say, he only works for the highest bidder and for unique operations.”
“There is no price ceiling on this one. How would it… happen?”
Webster shrugged. “Oh, these things always play out a certain way Mr. Director. We offer Higgins a choice; prosecution or early retirement. He'll fall into line and retire. We then cut him loose from the Agency and have him on a very long leash. In six months, or eight months, or even a year's time from now, just when everyone has forgotten about this affair, that's when our contractor makes his move.”
The Director nodded, satisfied with the DDCI's hypothesis. “Tell him that, and I want it done quietly, an accident maybe.”
“Perhaps a heart attack, sir, middle aged men, stressful job – it's not uncommon,” suggested Webster.
The Director had no doubt that in a few months' time, following the enforced retirement of Richard Higgins, he would receive a report about the man's fate; drowning while swimming, a car accident, a fatal illness, a random shooting while out hunting. Really, the method was irrelevant, only the end result mattered.
Yes, it would be a report that he would read, digest and then burn in the fullness of time.
He could wait. He was a patient man.
Book Seven: Endgame
Chapter One
Rome, Italy – May 1965
Rome. The Eternal City. A place of culture, art, history and equally entwined in its lineage was a record of both murder and politics. It was a beautiful day, in fact the perfect day to carry out the final contract of the mission, thought Marquez.
He had been in Italy less than three days. He'd flown in to Rome's Fiumicino Airport using his final false passport in the name of Andre Delacroix, a Frenchman. In that time, he'd settled into a quiet hotel along the Tiber, purchased a small car and rented a garage, which he would use as a workshop to carry out the necessary planning.
His plan was to snatch her once she left her city apartment and he was certain from his systematic surveillance, that he had most of the details of her routine; out shopping during the day, stop for lunch with friends, meetings in the afternoons with what seemed to be senior officials from the various ministries of the Italian government, before returning to her apartment. In the evenings, she would normally be the dinner guest of wealthy Italian families who were keen to have her company, before returning home around midnight.
He knew she had been in Rome on vacation for the past week, he also knew he only had a window of another two days before she returned to New York and the United Nations. Therefore, he had to act tonight. It was simple really, probably the easiest of all the contracts he'd been asked to complete.
Pick her up after she left her apartment an
d was headed for her Alfa Romeo, get her in the car, take her somewhere remote, in this case the garage he'd rented on the outskirts of the city, drug her, tie her up in the passenger seat of her car and detonate it outside the Russian Embassy in Rome. He would finish this contract with a bang.
After the aborted shooting in Paris and the disappearance of Gioradze off the face of the earth, he had to assume the operation had been compromised in some way. Where the leak had come from, was anyone's guess. It could have been that one of his contacts had talked, possibly the German had felt slighted in Marseilles and had tipped off the Russians for some coin. He discounted the fact that Gioradze would have talked. The man was far too tough and the last person he would spill to would be the Russians. He hated them with a passion.
The Paris shooting had also injured him. The bullet from the short, blond-haired man had taken him in the left hand and while it had been painful, it had been bearable for a man of his constitution. Should he have continued with the contract? He'd given his word to the American certainly, and the CIA man himself had given him tacit approval to back out if he wished.
But Marquez was not a man who was easily dissuaded from risk, far from it. So the decision to carry on with the contract when all his professional nerves were signaling for him to cancel and abort came as no surprise. It was the challenge of the odds against him which kept him playing. Besides, Rome was his last job and after that, his false life would be dumped and he could return to his real identity.
All he had to do was kill one more target; a woman who wouldn't see him coming and who was, physically at least, no match for a determined abductor and killer.
* * *
Contessa Sophia Argento sat at her writing bureau and signed her name across a letter she had penned to her late husband's brother in Washington. It was a ritual she completed several times a year, to reassure her brother-in-law that she was in good health and doing well.
She looked in the mirror above her writing desk and took note of the face that stared back at her. She still had a delicate, elfin face, despite the odd line around the eyes, and thick, lustrous dark hair tumbled over her left shoulder showing only the odd fleck of grey. The elfin face had come from her mother, an English governess who worked for a rich family in Taranto, and the dark hair had been a gift from her father, an aristocratic Italian Count who had wooed the English governess over the course of a hot and passionate summer more than four decades before.
Her childhood had been one of happiness and love, and as her teenage years turned into adulthood, she had found a calling in helping her fellow Italians in their villages and communities. Her English mother's sense of fairness and her Italian father's drive had given Sophia a good grounding in connecting with people. She'd been a passionate representative of the people of Italy during the war, when she'd been an active member of one of the numerous Communist Party resistance groups, determined to remove the Nazi boot-heel from the face of Italy.
In 1946 she'd married Thomas Reynolds, whom she had first met when he'd been parachuted in as part of an SIS/OSS liaison team to help stir up resistance ahead of the impending invasion. Captain Tom Reynolds had been the archetypal all-American officer; strong, confident and handsome. The young Captain and his beautiful Italian resistant contact had inevitably grown close over the coming months, working together, moving from safe-house to safe-house, with Sophia acting as his interpreter and guide.
What had started as a bond forged by war, had grown into a full-on, passionate affair and with the war over, Sophia had thrown herself into rebuilding her country when she later stood as a Member of Parliament. Tom had also assisted, by using his contacts in the US government and they had both been part of a post-war project helping to invigorate Italy. They'd been happy years; helping the people, making a difference to Italy and finding their love for each other once again.
The couple had lived a blessed life working in Rome, holidaying in America and visiting her late mother's relatives in London. They were the glamour couple of Italian politics during the 1950's. Travel, success and good looks had made them a part of the international 'jet-set'. Her husband's contacts had also given her some political clout. The Reynolds brothers were keen supporters of a young, up-and-coming Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. Several times on their visits to Washington they had a chance to meet with the charismatic and handsome politician. “He's the future of America Soph',” Tom had said. “That Kennedy guy sure knows how to get things done.”
Not that it had all been smooth sailing in the early years of her political career; the blustering fools of the collegial parliament had thought she'd been a Communist. She was not and never would be. It was just that the Italian Communist Party had held the best advantage of active measures and resistance against the Germans during the war, and it seemed like the best vehicle for motivating the peasants.
In time, her reputation for honesty and fairness grew among her colleagues and it became known that she was not open to corruption and bribes. She was wealthy enough in her own right, thanks to the inheritance left to her by her father. She owned land, farms, property and shares in various businesses and could not be persuaded to compromise herself for any expedient political opportunity that came along.
Sophia Argento transcended the traditional political classes of the right and the left and instead, was a calming influence within the bloody in-fighting of the Italian parliament. She later declared herself a moderate and joined the Christian Democrats, where it was rumored she had the ear of the soon-to-be Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
In 1959, Tom had been travelling back to their summer villa in Puglia when his car had been stopped one night by a cart upturned and its contents of straw strewn across the small back road. Tom had looked at his watch. 8.45. He was already late for their dinner party and Sophia would give him that fiery Italian look of hers that said 'Let me down at your peril!' To drive back down onto the main road would add another fifteen minutes to his journey. But if he could move the abandoned cart onto the side of the road… So he did what anyone would do. He stepped out of his car and into the warmth of a summer night to clear the debris. That was to be a fatal mistake. A figure in the darkness rose from behind a wall and opened up with a sub-machine gun. A short clatter of gunfire later, and Thomas Reynolds was thrown back onto the hood of his own vehicle.
His body was found later that night by a search party from the villa, who went looking for their errant host. On his chest was pinned a note, claiming that he had been assassinated by the local brigade of the Italian Communist Revolutionary Party. His crime, so the message said, was for his continuing support of the puppet regime in Rome.
She had grieved for over a year, had dressed in a traditional black mourning dress and shroud and had shut herself away, either in her villa in Puglia or on the occasional visits to Rome in her apartment. She did not socialize, shunned publicity from the press and to all intents and purposes, had become a recluse. Then, as season gave way to season, she'd grown stronger, less fragile and more determined not to be a victim.
Following Thomas' death, she'd reverted back to her maiden name of Argento, and as she hadn't been able to have children, she decided she would dedicate the rest of her working life to helping the poor and impoverished, not only in Italy, but across the globe.
Her reputation had quickly seen her head-hunted by the newly appointed U.N. Secretary-General, who had admired her work in the Italian government and wanted her knowledge and wisdom to assist him with running a 'new U.N. for a new generation'. A move to New York and a position of trust as an Executive Assistant to the Secretary-General had given her a new lease of life, in the years following Tom's death.
Of course, there was also her secret work which she had elected to become involved in, and it was during these years that she'd been approached by two ruthless spies: the mercurial Porter from the British Secret Service and the intense Krivitsky from the KGB. It was a high-wire act of nerve and danger, and just as she loved Po
rter for his mind, his passion for his cause and his unwavering battle against his enemy, she also loathed and detested Krivitsky for his narrow-mindedness, murderous intent and morally corrupt ideology.
She had been in New York at the U.N. for barely a month, when she'd been contacted by a short, chubby man with a mop of unruly hair, who claimed to be a representative of an organization called 'The Phoenix Society'.
“We aim to help the people who really need help in some of the poorest countries in the world,” the Englishman had said when he handed over a business card. “Perhaps I could buy you lunch, there's a very good place I know uptown.”
The place was the restaurant in the Hotel St. Moritz and once the plates and glasses had been cleared away, the meeting had taken a distinctly surreal twist. The man, Porter, had braced his fingers together and leaned forward, conspiracy gleaming in his eyes. He told her, calmly and in detail, her life up until that point in time. He told her he respected her socialist leanings, her love of peoples, not just Italian, but all those who were downtrodden and had no voice to speak up for them.
“What are you?” she had asked, not believing any of his make believe story so far.
He had looked at her, bewildered, as if it was a nonsensical question. “Why I'm a spy, my love, pure and simple.”
Her first reaction on hearing this had been to roar at him, make a show of him in front of the guests at the restaurant and then storm out. But the English man, no, the English spy, had soothed and calmed her. So she had put aside her temper and tapped into the cool logic that was her mother's discipline.