by James Quinn
The man, Vogel, was staring at him hidden in the darkness, hatred in his eyes, glaring into the camouflage of the opposite woods.
If he takes another step forward I'm going to gun that fucker down, thought Grant, tears stinging his eyes, knowing that his woman was dead… murdered in cold blood. Only an imaginary barbed wire fence that was the no-man's-land separated Grant and Vogel from a shootout at close range. Vogel, as if reading Jack Grant's mind, held up the baby across his head and upper body; a human shield.
Faintly at first, and then growing louder, Jack Grant could hear in the distance the sounds of klaxons, shouting, men running, the clicks of automatic weapons being cocked, and could see the random strafing of flashlights as guards searched the gloom, drawing closer all the time.
Grant knew that his time was up and that if he did not move now, then he would be caught and executed along with his children. But how could he leave a baby, his son, behind? Yet the question was, how could he not if he wanted his daughter to survive? He would have to sacrifice Peter for Katy. It was an impossible choice that no parent should ever have to make.
He took one last look, tears in his eyes, and then he ran. He ran as hard as he could into the woods, his legs pounding, still cradling the baby, putting distance between him and the hunters behind him.
Peter, I'm so sorry, he thought. Peter, forgive me, I will find you.
And even as he reached the edge of the woods, he heard the voice of Ulrich Vogel, shrieking like a forest demon.
“You can never run from me, Jack Grant. I will find you! You can't hide forever!”
Book 4: Fire The Weapon
Chapter One
Linz, Austria – 1989
They had risen early, wanting to be away by mid-morning, and had spent the last hour loading up the kit and equipment into the Renault ready for their journey to Mostviertel, to Schloss Osterreich.
The previous night had exhausted both of them and at the end of their shared truths they had walked away, zombie-like, to their respective bedrooms, like punch-drunk boxers using the time between rounds to rest. But, despite their exhaustion, neither man had really slept, their minds going over everything that had been said, everything that had been discussed and everything that was to come during the next day.
Gorilla hoped that he had said enough. He had felt a change in the younger man over the course of the few hours that he had talked. Could it have been a ploy on Peter Vogel's part, a ruse to string along this old spy? Possibly, but Gorilla didn't think so. He looked into the younger man's eyes and he knew that he had reached him. It seemed that he knew his son, after all.
The morning brought a bright, clear day. They had risen early, breakfasted and then, once they had loaded up the Renault and sanitised the rented safe house, they hit the road, Peter driving and Gorilla sitting back resting in the passenger seat. The duo sat in silence, watching the dramatic countryside pass them by. Their journey was relatively short, only an hour's drive from Linz, but they both wanted to get to the location and set up a covert surveillance hide on the hills overlooking the castle. They would be spending the day watching the comings and goings of the castle's staff and the security teams visiting. Once darkness hit, only then would Gorilla move into position.
“I have some questions. Can I ask them?” asked Peter.
Gorilla opened a single eye, waking from a gentle slumber. “Of course you can, Peter. I would expect nothing less.”
“How did you escape?”
“The short answer is, barely. I ran like my life depended on it, which of course it did. Once I got to my little car, I drove like the devil. I knew I only had a short window before Vogel could organise a search team. Once I got near to Berlin, I put the baby, Katy, in the foot well of the passenger seat and covered her with a blanket. I just had to hope and pray that it was enough to get me through in case we were stopped.”
“And did you get stopped?”
Gorilla shook his head. “No, I was lucky, it was smooth sailing. Although I had a plan in my mind to ram my way through any vehicle checkpoints and go for broke. I'd shoot my way out if I had to. Thankfully, that never happened. My best guess is that Vogel was too busy trying to explain away what had happened at the farmhouse to his superiors than in trying to track a spy. They had only a brief description, didn't know what car I was driving or even which direction I was going in. They would have been looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Peter smiled. In his situation he'd have done the same; better to die trying than be taken by the enemy. Finally, he came to the one question that had been burning in his brain throughout the night.
“Why did you not try and find me?” he said.
Gorilla went quiet, a hiatus in the flow of the conversation, and decided to stare out at the pretty countryside while he decided how best to answer. Finally, he explained, “The first thing that happened after I got back was that I was arrested by the British. The MPs had me and Katy was placed with a family from the British Embassy for a week or so. Then Masterman came to see me in the military prison. It was just like old times. He wanted to know every little detail so I told him everything that had gone on. The affair, the children, Lisbeth's murder… everything. He listened to my story and then did what he always used to do.”
“What was that?” asked Peter.
Gorilla smiled, remembering his old friend and senior officer. “He did the decent thing. He protected us, spent the rest of his life keeping an eye out for both myself and Katy. He was a good man and I miss him. Then we started following up leads where we could – anything to find what had happened to you. I begged SIS to let me go back over to the East and track down any information, but they refused. I was sent back to the UK, with Katy, and I was under strict instructions not to come back to Berlin. It was just too dangerous for me. Rumour has it that Vogel had an SSD hit-squad out looking for me.”
Peter nodded. It sounded like the type of thing Vogel would do.
Gorilla continued. “In August, the East Germans built the wall, effectively closing off the East and any hope of finding you became slimmer and slimmer. But I never stopped. I always tracked down every little lead that I could in the hope that we could find you again.”
Peter moved the car onto the main route running through to Amstetten Bahnhoff. He was taking his time because of the traffic, but also because it gave him time to ask more questions. “What happened to you and Katherine, my sister, after that?”
Gorilla liked the way he referred to Katy as his sister and smiled. “We went back to London. I became a single dad, tried to start again. It was hard, very hard, probably the hardest job I've ever had. But we managed. We had a bit of money that SIS had thrown my way – hush money more than anything else. Life went on a pace, Katy got bigger and then one day we got a knock on the door and it was Stephen Masterman. He had been rotated out of Berlin. He'd done his stint there and had been given a promotion as head of his own unit based out of SIS London.”
“The Redaction Unit?” asked Peter. SIS's Redaction operatives were the stuff of legend during the Cold War and the SSD had a healthy respect for them. Redaction consisted of hard-hitting, covert teams that weren't afraid to get their hands dirty or to spill blood if needed.
“Exactly. He was re-organising it. It was basically a more robust version of the Gutterfighters in Berlin. Except this time, we had carte blanche to operate all over the world, taking down extremists, enemy agents and threats to the defence of the realm. He wanted my skills and he knew that I could deliver, so I said yes. So Katy went to live with my sister and her husband in Scotland and me… well, I went back to work.”
Peter stared off into the distance for a while. There was family that he had never known, would not get to know now and he felt a pang of jealousy and sadness. “Why did my mother do it? Why did she stay so long under my fath… under Ulrich Vogel's control?” he asked.
Gorilla thought about it, choosing not to answer until he had carefully thought through his re
sponse. “Can we stop in a few minutes? Might be better to talk this through when we aren't driving,” he said.
They pulled the Renault over into a picnic area that they had found and stopped for a while to eat a light lunch of cheese, bread, good smoked German sausage and strong black coffee. Once they had finished, Gorilla turned his attention back to Peter's question.
“Lisbeth in many ways was just as arrogant and narcissistic as Vogel. She became driven, even addicted, to the intelligence war, and when she couldn't see out of that toxic fog anymore it eventually led to her downfall. She stayed put, undercover and in danger, even though she was now a mother and she had an escape option! Who does that unnecessarily? But that was just who she was, who she had become. Because I loved her, it clouded my judgement, too. I should have made her leave, pushed her harder to quit spying. But I didn't and I have to live with that. I often thought that if the roles had been reversed and she had been the case officer and I was her spy, she would have been one tough operator who would have pushed and pushed,” he said.
Peter looked down at his hands, an inner conflict happening within him. Gorilla saw it and tried to salve it.
“Don't think too harshly about her,” he said. “The time that she had with you, with you both, was the happiest I've ever seen her. We can all take comfort in that.”
Peter looked out at the road and nodded. “There's a storm coming. Let's go, I want us to be in place before the afternoon,” he said.
They came by private planes into Vienna International but all at staggered times. From there, they were collected by their respective security teams that had been in the country for the past several days, conducting their security advance planning protocols.
As was expected from people operating in the secret world, their protection teams were small, covert and effective. One Personal Protection Officer for each delegate, complete with one driver and vehicle and rounded up with one follow-on car that held the Personal Escort Team.
The CIA team arrived first and were quickly whisked away. Then a small British SIS delegation; a rather shabby older gentleman in an old raincoat and his Personal Protection Officer, and this was followed by the French DGSE team. Finally, it was completed by the Russian contingent that had brought them all together in the hope that they could at last unify and provide hope for a new working agreement, once the old world order was obsolete.
And at the head of them all was the Chairman of the meeting, the shining star of the new Perestroika and Glasnost and architect of intelligence liaison – Dimitri Sobolev.
Each of the countries had their own private wing in Schloss Osterreich, manned around the clock by their respective bodyguards. It was only the final wing that housed the conference suite that remained unoccupied until the day of the conference.
But regardless of whom they were, only one, Dimitri Sobolev, was willing to put his life on the line and place himself at risk. The rest… well, they were merely there to provide theatre and to give the meeting plausibility – even if they didn't know it.
The surveillance hide smelt of earth and pine needles.
They had been in place for several hours, watching the comings and the goings from the covert observation hide that Peter had dug into the side of the hill. It was first-rate; they could see but they couldn't be seen. They were concealed behind a bush that had been strategically pruned to allow their high magnification binoculars and spotting scopes easy access. Gorilla had the binoculars and Peter had the high-powered spotting scope.
They had a 180 degrees viewpoint of Schloss Osterreich and the surrounding area. To their left was a river, then the private road that led to the castle and in the distance was the smooth fairway of the private golf course. Over to the right was the castle itself and, framing it in various shades of green, was the forest at its edges and the hills and mountains behind it.
They had watched the various delegates and their security teams arrive at staggered times, noting the weapons they carried, but, more importantly, how the security carried themselves. After all, not all bodyguards are created equal! They watched the movements of the staff, the drivers, and the bright spots of the security lights. Any piece of intelligence that they could gather, no matter how small, was saved and stored away in a memory bank.
Then, as darkness descended, Gorilla prepared his kit for the hit while Peter kept watch.
“What do you want me to do? Kill that bastard? Torture him?” whispered Peter.
The question had come out of the blue and caught Grant by surprise. He turned around in the hide and lay down next to the younger man. He shook his head. “No, no, no! That is never what I wanted for you and I don't want it now.”
“So what? What do you expect me to do?” asked Peter.
Grant answered without hesitation. “I want you to save your sister. I might not make it back from this thing, but you can. You both can make it out. This doesn't have to be your life. Get her away from Vogel, get her… get both of you to the West. Katy knows nothing of this life, it is not her place. She's an innocent. In the West, there is a man there who is expecting you. His name is Oxley, he can take care of everything. He will be waiting for you. I cut a deal with him. Will you do it? I know that you can, Peter, you have the skills, but I need to know if you will do it?”
Peter looked over at his father, the young man studying the old. “Let me do this,” he said. “You don't have to. I can be in and out. Let me kill the Russian!”
But Gorilla wasn't having any of that nonsense. He shook his head. “No, this is my contract. I agreed to it.”
“But it's a trap!”
“Of course it's a trap. Vogel sent me on a suicide mission, he doesn't expect me to survive the hit, and even if I did, I suspect that he had ordered you to quietly kill me somewhere before you escaped back to East Germany. Didn't he?”
Peter nodded. Of course he did. Ulrich Vogel always liked his loose ends tidied up. But that was the past. Now, Peter could no more kill Jack Grant than he could put a bullet in his own head.
“They are keeping her at a hunting lodge in Wandlitz. It's a huge white building off the Bussardweg, set back in its own grounds.”
Gorilla nodded. He knew what Wandlitz was. It was where the elite of the GDR lived and had luxury homes and it was of course the type of place that Ulrich Vogel would desire as he gained power in the Stasi.
“Then you go there and get her out of it. If I survive and can get to you both, I will. But remember, if I die, don't look back. Go forward, find Katy, and get out. I'm just so sorry that we didn't have more time together, Peter. Here, I have something for you.” Grant reached into his pocket and removed an old and battered black and white photograph. He didn't need to see it. He knew it intimately. He had stared at it, had cried over it over many decades. He knew every contour, fold and expression held in the secrets of the image. It showed a man in his late twenties, a backdrop of trees, a park. The babies cradled in his arms, wrapped in blankets. He handed it to Peter.
“That is the only photograph I have of us all together. You were only a few weeks old, Peter. I didn't kill your mother. I loved her, I tried to protect her, but in the end we were put into a dangerous situation. She was killed by the man who abused her for years, by the man you thought was your father. She was killed by his hand. I saw it all with my own eyes. Don't let him ruin your life like he ruined hers.”
It was Gorilla Grant's final recruitment pitch, and it was made even easier because it was the truth. Not just a little bit of the truth, or the half truths that he had told for operational reasons in the past. No, this was Jack Grant finally laying his demons to rest once and for all. And who better to tell it to than his own flesh and blood.
He laid an affectionate, protective hand on Peter's shoulder for one last time; then he zipped up his coveralls, hefted the small black backpack onto his shoulders and then he was gone into the darkness of the forest.
Peter watched him go; this man that he had known briefly, this stranger,
his father.
Chapter Two
Gorilla used the descent down the hillside to warm up his body and to make his limbs flexible, running at a slow pace, not hurried and well within his capability. After being confined to the surveillance hide for so many hours, it was a relief to get his body moving. The terrain was not harsh, just challenging in the fading of the day's light, so that by the time he had reached the edge of the forest, he was sufficiently limbered up and ready.
He completed a quick check of his detailed map by pen-light and found where the drainage tunnel, his access point, would be located. It was just along the river embankment to his left and minutes later, he was inspecting it.
The tunnel was big enough to take a fully grown man lying down, leaving a few feet above and to the sides for manoeuvring. He inserted himself into the drainage tunnel, head first and began to crawl slowly forward, the pen-light leading the way. He knew that the distance he had to cover equated to the length of two full-sized football pitches, so he focused his mind and ignored the smell, the darkness and what he was heading forward to try to do. His sole focus was to make this right; after all, his daughter's very life depended upon it, and if that meant crawling through hell, then he would do it without a second thought.
When he was halfway along the tunnel route, he heard the noise from a car's engine above him, then the crunch of tyres over gravel. The forecourt of the castle; he must be near. He moved on, still in his leopard crawl, arms and legs moving in unison. He was almost at the end of the route when he came face to face with a metal gate that covered the full circumference of the tunnel and acted like a sieve to let the water pass through and hold the detritus of leaves, dead rodents and waste back. It was exactly where the map said it would be. He knew now that he was close to the other opening that would gain him access to the castle's grounds.