by James Quinn
By the turn of midnight, the bottles were definitely half empty rather than half full, and many of the students had retired to bed, preparing themselves to be shipped off to wherever the powers-that-be were going to send them. An hour later, it was down to stragglers and only the old assassin and the young gunman sat across the table from each other, face to face; a single candle and a half empty bottle of whisky to keep them company.
“With due respect, Major… bugger off!” said Grant, smiling. The drunken conversation was about an operation during the war, being dropped into France and wiping out a unit of Luftwaffe aces!
A slug of whisky and Harvey leaned forward, one beady eye appraising Grant through a fog. “My dear boy, I was on my own, miles from anywhere, bloody great sub-machine gun strapped across my back, when I happened to take refuge in the barn of a very welcoming and attractive farmer's wife who was more than happy to keep me warm for the rest of the night, if you get my meaning.”
“And then what happened?” slurred Grant.
“Well, a gentleman never tells. However, she will always be in my thoughts. After that, I made my way to the café where these German pilots socialised and I gunned the whole bloody lot of them down!” said Harvey.
“Does it get any easier?” asked Grant, more curious than conflicted. “The killing, I mean?”
The Major took another slug of whisky. He smiled to himself as the nectar rolled down his throat and into his stomach. Then he turned and looked Grant squarely in the eyes. “People will ask you that all the time. Almost every one of my students wants to know what it's like to kill a man in cold blood… to be the assassin. I can only tell you this: I can remember the face, the look in the eyes of the first man that I killed, but not the second or the third. After that, it's only a sense of who they were… a building, a room, a scent, or a noise… that's all I remember of them.”
Jack Grant nodded, taking in the wisdom of this older, strange little man. Grant just hoped that when the time came, he would be as blasé about assassination as the Killer evidently was.
But Harvey the 'Killer' wasn't finished. He felt one of his finest students needed a crowning accolade. “There's nothing more I could possibly teach you, boy. You're a killer. You know how to do it and what's more, you seem comfortable with it. That's a rare and very valuable combination to the right people. So here's to you, bloody Gorilla Grant. May your scalps be many. Bottoms up, old boy!”
Chapter Eight
Hotel Dollabella, Via Petroselli, Rome – 1989
The hotel room was exactly how he had left it days before; even the maid hadn't moved anything.
He had left the villa quietly, leaving the bodies exactly where he had found them and wiping away fingerprints from areas that he was likely to have touched. When he was satisfied that he had left no trace, he had taken the VW van to get back into the city.
He had parked the van in a side street off the Via Del Quirinale, then took a taxi to drop him off a stone's throw from the Coliseum and from there, he walked the rest of the way back to his hotel. On the way into reception, he had been intercepted by the hotel manager who had wanted to know if everything was acceptable with his room. “Any problems? We are here to serve, Commendatore!”
Grant had nodded, reassured him that it was fine and that he had been merely spending a few nights staying with his daughter. The lie seemed to satisfy the manager and Jack Grant was free to make his way to his room. He stripped off his clothes, throwing his suit into the corner of the room and treating himself to a refreshing shower for the next twenty minutes. Once he had finished, he towelled himself off and lay on the bed, letting the cool air sweep over his body.
They had her! They had his girl! The pain in his chest was intense, but the pain and nightmares in his mind were even worse. If they harmed an inch of her…
What? What will you do? That isn't your life anymore.
I'll make it my fucking life. I'll bring every bloody one of them down!
Guns? Violence? You left that behind…
I'll bring it back! My skills are still there, they haven't gone anywhere!
Katy doesn't need bullets at the moment – she needs logical thought, she needs a smart brain, not emotion and violence.
He knew that was right. What's more, the kidnappers knew that, too and, for the moment, they had the advantage. He had been told to go back to London and wait, and he knew that now they would fuck with his mind for a while; playing the waiting game.
But when they did finally get in touch, he would have to be ready, both physically and emotionally. He suddenly realised he was starving. He ordered a bottle of red wine and a pasta dish, opened the doors to the terraced area of his room and looked out over the city. Rome of an evening, when it was illuminated, could be the most romantic and special city in the world. But not tonight. Tonight, he felt lonely and vulnerable and he hated the sight of the city that was sprawled before him.
The kidnappers! They were out there somewhere, waiting, plotting, planning and when the time came for them to get in touch he, too, would be ready for them.
Across the city in a lock-up garage, Katy Grant was chained, gagged and locked inside a strong room. So far, the only interaction with her kidnappers was when she was told to sit up so that they could remove the hood and gag to feed her rice and let her drink some water.
Since she had arrived, she had barely slept, the nightmare of the abduction still being fresh in her mind. It was all a confused blur and she was sure that some of the elements of what had happened would come back to her soon but, at the moment, it was… disjointed. She remembered saying goodbye to her father before he went off to his meeting. She remembered eating that evening and then saying goodnight to the priest and the bodyguards. After that, it got a little vague.
She remembered sleeping… then a noise… then a shard of light as her bedroom door was opened. Noises from outside, sounded like a struggle. Then it was hands grabbing her, holding her down, then a sharp scratch at her neck and then… darkness… sleep.
When she woke, she felt like she had the worst hangover ever; confused, dehydrated, scared, shaking. She honestly had no idea how long she had been here; she thought perhaps two hours at most, but really it was all guesswork.
She heard the bolt on the door slide open, metal on metal, and became aware of a presence in the room with her. Katy didn't think it was 'feeding time' so soon; that had only been recently.
“I'm going to stand you up. Do you understand?”
The voice was strong, not cruel or cold. 'Businesslike' was how she would have described it. And the accent; English was spoken, but there was a faint accent underneath that the man was trying to disguise. German?
Strong hands lifted her up to a standing position and then she heard a scrape of a chair across the floor. The hands gently pushed her shoulders so that she could sit down. God, it felt good to get off the floor; her body was aching from being stuck in the one position. Almost at once, Katy felt another sharp scratch, this time on her forearm. She knew what was coming next… sleep would come soon. She had figured out that they would be moving her and they wanted her quiet.
She tried to protest, to scream through the gag, but the sedative was just too strong, too fast-acting. She felt a metallic taste in her mouth and then, once again, darkness.
The Harlequin stood over the girl, watching as she slumped gently into the chair. He checked her pulse, she was fine. She would sleep for the next five hours; more than enough time to get her onto a plane and out of Italy covertly.
The Harlequin was muscular and powerful; he looked like a weightlifter or wrestler. His handsome face, bespectacled and topped by a mop of blonde hair, was chiselled and focused. He called over his shoulder for his team to come and ready her for the transport. Three men came in and carefully carried the girl out to the waiting vehicle.
Finding and tracking the girl had been pathetically easy. Their mission had been to track her in Rome, isolate her, abduct her and then spi
rit her away to be used as leverage against the assassin, Gorilla Grant.
The team had worked well, even slipping a small tracker into her shoulder bag so that they could find her in case of a 'loss'. Then she had unexpectedly met her father, something that the Harlequin and the team weren't prepared for, and the plan was thrown into disarray. The old man still had skills and the mission had gone wrong. It had taken the Harlequin and his team another few days to locate the tracker on the outskirts of the city. After that, it was a case of digging in on surveillance, waiting for an opportunity and then taking out the bodyguards. The Harlequin had stood in the darkness of the street, his gaze fixed upon the villa with the fortified door. A fortified door was not a problem for a man of his skills. It could be breached easily. Grant and the girl had tried to lie low, not realising that the technology of the tracker was working against them.
The Harlequin had looked different. He had changed his appearance following the first attempted abduction. The blond hair was gone, replaced with dyed jet back hair, thick, black-framed glasses and a dark business suit. He remembered the explosion as it had rocked the door-frame and then it came blasting inwards in a plume of smoke and dust, closely followed by the black-clad figures of the covert assault team. The final assault on the villa had taken a little under five minutes, and in ten minutes they had the girl and were driving away from the area.
The Harlequin knew the life of Gorilla Grant intimately; knew what the man had done, who he was now, and what he was capable of. Hatred of Jack Grant burned deep in the heart of the Harlequin. It had fired the Harlequin's lust for revenge for most of his adult life.
He had been trained by the best military and espionage minds in the East – SSD, KGB, DGI – and over the past few years he had gained an international reputation not only as an excellent covert operator, but also as someone capable of ruthlessly eliminating enemies of the state. His reputation was now on an equal par with that of his sworn enemy, Gorilla Grant. The Staatssicherheitsdienst, the SSD – or, as it was known, the Stasi – had been his home since his teenage years, when he had been recruited to it by the man he respected more than any other; der Oberst, the Colonel – his father.
When the Colonel had given him the mission personally, the mission to kidnap the assassin's daughter, the Harlequin had been overjoyed. His father had plotted for years to bring the assassin Grant down and the girl was the key to that downfall. How, the Harlequin did not know yet, but he was sure he would be told when the time was right.
And while the mission had been diverted by the early introduction of Gorilla Grant, the Harlequin prided himself on being able to adapt to any environment and turn the situation to his own advantage. Now, they had the girl abducted and her father weakened and confused; dancing like a puppet on a string.
Improvisation was one of the key skills of any intelligence operative; even more so when you were one of the best assassins of the modern age.
Chapter Nine
Chelsea, London – 1989
He had turned the dining table into an operational planning desk. It was littered with notebooks, old photographs, pens, pencils, a telephone and bits of paper with hastily scribbled messages on them. It looked like chaos, but to Jack Grant it was organised chaos.
He had been back in London, at his Chelsea apartment, for just over three days and had used his time well, hitting the ground running; gathering what little intelligence that he could, organising resources and making discreet contact with several of his old sources. But from the kidnappers, so far, there was nothing.
His first task was to build on the intelligence that he had learned about the terrorist/assassin – the Harlequin. But, aside from what he had already learned in Rome, there was precious little information or even evidence that the blond Harlequin even existed outside the files of the intelligence services. So Grant stuck with what he did know. The Harlequin was young, fit, capable and ruthless. He was not to be underestimated.
As for the message that he had found at the scene of the murders following Katy's kidnapping? He had a vague idea of how kidnap negotiations worked; a target was taken, then silence by the kidnappers before both parties came together to negotiate a ransom. Most kidnappings lasted weeks, maybe even months!
But Grant was sure that this was no ordinary kidnapping. This wasn't about money. This team were Stasi-backed in some way; it was personal, revenge, so whatever they wanted, they wanted from him personally. To sit around and do nothing was not his way, was not an option for him, and if he was going to be 'operational' again, he would need assistance from some of his old contacts.
He put in a call to an old acquaintance, Jules Dumont, in Belgium. He had first met Dumont over twenty years ago while on an operation for SIS. Over the years, they had built up a friendship and while it was several years since they had last conducted business together, Grant knew that he could be relied upon to deliver. Dumont had been the best forger in Europe at one point, and even now, though retired, he still had access to materials that people paid well for.
“You are back in business, Gorilla? Your old way of life is beckoning you? You want passports, IDs, you leave it to me! What do you need, my friend?” asked Dumont, as he sipped on his habitual afternoon cocktail in his private residence.
“Passports, Jules. I need several for different countries; German, Swiss, Canadian, maybe even American.”
“No, no, no – no American, they are too hard to come by. You would ruin the market for me! But the others, yes – no problem,” cooed Dumont.
“Okay. That's fine, but it's not just for me. Do you have a pen and paper, so I can tell you the specifics?” said Grant, reeling off a list of details.
His next call was to his former assistant and one time apprentice – Jojo Mckay. He called the last number that he had for McKay and was in luck! He was in London for the next few days. They met at a pub on Northumberland Street, a stone's throw from Trafalgar Square. Whiskies were ordered and then ignored; in this game, cover was everything.
“What so you need, Jack?” asked McKay, his wiry figure comfortable in the three-piece business suit. Since 'Gorilla' had retired and they had gone their separate ways. McKay had gone into running a private mercenary business, with the odd bit of contract killing on the side.
“Ghost guns, untraceable and with ammo. I need three lots of handguns, shotguns and sub-machine guns,” said Grant, rolling the whisky around in the glass while at the same time doing a visual sweep of the customers at the nearby tables. The last thing he wanted was for Special Branch or MI5 to come crashing into his private operation.
“No problem, that's dead easy,” said McKay, laughing, his Liverpudlian accent shining through.
“If only it was that easy, Jojo. I know you can get the 'tools' but it's where I want them that will be the real headache; covert caches in separate countries. I want options. Let me explain,” said Jack Grant. He proceeded to tell the mercenary what he had in mind.
By the end of the day, Grant felt he had clawed back a bit more control over the situation. He had money, that wasn't a problem, but now he also had access to escape papers and, if necessary, weapons. He returned to his apartment and waited. His days had become a routine of eat, sleep, research and waiting, his hand never far from the telephone in case the kidnappers had managed to track down his unlisted number.
As for his old service, SIS? Well, he assumed that Jason Greensides in Rome had alerted London and informed them that Gorilla Grant was back, at least temporarily, on a piece of private business. Dealing with SIS was a double-edged sword. He didn't want to tell them everything about what was happening, just the bare minimum, because interference from the spooks could put Katy in even more danger. After all, there was a level of complicity from Jack Grant towards the kidnappers and whoever was behind them and until he had more information about what was going on, he was happy to keep it that way. On the other hand, SIS might be useful at some point in the near future if things got a little… messy. It was
always good to have a back-up plan.
It was on the fifth day that the padded envelope arrived in his letterbox.
He swept away the myriad of papers, photos and notes from the dining table and placed the unopened packet at its centre. He sat quietly and stared at it for several minutes. Finally, when he had considered all the possibilities of what secrets it held, he reached forward and carefully opened the envelope's seal. He slowed his breathing. Inside was a photograph of Katy, mouth taped over and tied to a chair. Grant knew that it was done for dramatic effect, staged, so as to raise the fear in the receiver of the image. He looked at it for a moment and then put it to one side.
Next, there was a first class return ticket to Tangier, Morocco. He looked at the date. It flew out in two days' time from Heathrow. He checked the details of the ticket and then, when satisfied, he placed that next to the photo of Katy on the table.
The third piece was a letter, printed, that gave him his instructions. It was all the usual tropes that you would expect in a kidnapping; don't alert the authorities, if you do she will be harmed… the usual. It gave the name of a hotel in Tangier – The Continental – and that a room had been reserved in his name. He was to be ready the following day, when a car would collect him and take him to meet the person who could assist him in being reunited with his daughter.
He put the letter with the rest of the information and worked it through in his mind. He had the feeling that travelling to Tangier was just a stopgap, not the final destination of whatever was going on. He would be under surveillance constantly, he guessed and taking a firearm with him would achieve very little at this stage, as he would no doubt be searched at various points before he even got to Katy. Was it a trap? Almost certainly, but he still had the gut feeling that this was a precursor to the final play.