by James Quinn
Sassi met with his agent later that day at a café on the fashionable Rue du Château d'Eau. Gorilla was already waiting, had been for the past thirty minutes before Sassi arrived. Both men looked like successful businessmen enjoying an afternoon café noir to discuss a potential business deal. It was relaxed but professional, ties loosened but jackets still on and unbuttoned.
“Here, I have a gift for you. Something to complement your new left-handed gun skills,” said Sassi, pushing over a small black attaché case across the table. “Have a brief look now. You can have a more detailed look when you get back to your apartment.”
Grant took the attaché case, popped the locks and opened it just enough so that he could make out its contents. He raised an approving eyebrow, nodded, and then resealed the case. He would inspect it in detail when he was back in his apartment.
“I think this piece of 'equipment' will be perfect for you. I ordered three, all configured for left-handed shooters. You have this one here. The others are secured in safety deposit boxes, one in Hong Kong and the other in New York, for when you find yourself in those parts of the world. For now, think of this one as your 'European' gun,” said Sassi.
“Thank you,” said Gorilla.
“For our best men, we always offer the best resources. That's how much we value you, Jack. Looking after you following that hit in Nice, the hospital, rehabilitation, the whole care package, getting you back into the field. We recognise your worth,” replied Sassi, patting the other man gently on the arm.
Gorilla cocked a quizzical eye at the Frenchman and smiled. “Are you flattering me, Paul? Because normally, when a Frenchman starts down that path of flattery someone usually ends up getting fucked. And to be honest, you're just not my type!”
Sassi laughed despite himself. He had always liked this quiet, tough little Englishman. He was a good covert operator but, more than that, he was a man to be respected.
“I have a job for you, something that I think you would enjoy. We want you to track a man, find him, hunt him down. He's dangerous, the best in the business. But we think you'll be able to succeed where others might fail. We think you have an edge, a better motivation than some of our other agents.”
“I think, old son, you'd better explain,” said Gorilla cautiously. He sipped at his coffee, his eyes scanning around to make sure that they weren't being watched. Talking details out in public always made Gorilla wary.
“We think we've identified the assassin on your last job in Nice, the man who shot up your hand. We want him found and we think you're the man to do it.”
“I'm in, tell me everything,” said Gorilla without hesitation. His brow was already starting to furrow; he could feel the anger rising in himself.
“You may not feel that way when you find out who it is.”
“I don't care who it –”
“It's Caravaggio.”
“Fuck!” said Gorilla Grant. Talk about spoiling his good mood.
The man codenamed Caravaggio, and unofficially known among the intelligence networks as The Master, was a crème de la crème intelligence agent and assassin who had been involved in the covert operation business since before the war; a gentleman spy, a ruthless killer, a Cold War ghost. In the small milieu of the intelligence networks, he was the stuff of legends. It was said that he could get to even the most secure and hidden targets anywhere in the world – and he never failed to fulfil a contract.
And, like most legends, the stories of his exploits seemed to reach fantastical levels with every decade. Frequently, he was said to be operating in different parts of the world at the same time, usually against several opposing factions of the same conflict.
He had the ear of the Chairman of the KGB, he had assassinated several high ranking Nazis with his bare hands, and had kidnapped politicians and held them for ransom almost throughout every decade. There was also a rumour that he had been a double and triple agent so many times throughout the Cold War, that not even the intelligence agencies were sure who he was actually working for. He was successful enough to pick his own contracts and name his own price, which was always high. He was a most dangerous man.
And, despite all of these interconnecting strands, he was still now, some forty years later, unidentified. Nobody knew his real name and the people that had once seen his face had long since died – many in violent circumstances. His personal security was impeccable and his cut-out list was extensive. Unless you knew the right people and their people and their people, there was no way that you would even be considered for an audience with The Master.
CIA, KGB, SDECE, the Italians, Chinese… Caravaggio had contacts in almost every intelligence network. He had worked on every continent, had been at the top of his game… and then he had disappeared.
Grant thought back to the shootout on the beach all those months ago. What was it the assassin had said – “I understand that you are the new me”?
He decided to press the thought further with Sassi. “Why would he know about me? I assumed he had retired years ago, or was dead. I've never even operated against him, as far as I know!”
“Well, whatever the reason, he's evidently heard of you. It seems that you've been making a splash on the international circuit and among the intelligence networks and that you've caught his eye,” said Sassi.
Grant nodded. It was certainly possible and, without blowing his own trumpet, he had acquired a reputation as an effective operator over the past few years. Probably, and to his own knowledge, there were only a handful of agents on the planet that could match Gorilla and his skills. It was a small pond that he operated in. He had been involved in everything from taking down agents and covert courier work, to good, old-fashioned 'redactions'.
“So why do they want him? Why now?” he asked.
Sassi shrugged, seemingly unconcerned about the reason, just how it was going to be completed. “He has acted against French targets, against the France national interest. The Elysée Palace has had enough. The most recent threat is that we have intelligence to believe that this man is plotting to assassinate the President.”
“Of France?” laughed Grant.
“Of course!”
“Piss off! Why would he do that?”
Sassi shrugged in the way that bored Frenchmen do. “Who knows? Perhaps he's crazy, but I doubt it. Chances are he's working for a big payday to bring him out of retirement. Either way, it's irrelevant. It's a mission. It's your mission if you want it.”
“Just me? A plot against the President of France and you're sending one solo British gunman after him? Really?”
“Don't be ridiculous, Jack. Of course we aren't. We have every resource in the French Secret Services looking at this, not to mention the anti-terror police, the military, all of them. But this is an agency-wide covert operation. Clandestine all the way. The operation is being run directly from the President's office. But you are my man, a contract agent for the Action Service, and I want you to start the hunt to track him down and terminate the threat independently of the police, military or the rest of the SDECE.”
Grant nodded, but he didn't believe him. But that was okay. In Grant's opinion, there wasn't an intelligence officer alive who didn't lie to his agents at some point. It was expected, it was normal. But Sassi was usually a straight shooter as far as he knew, so whatever he had been told, he seemed to believe.
Besides, reasoned Gorilla, if he wanted honesty and fair treatment, he should have got a job in a convent. All Gorilla Grant wanted was to do what he did best and be operational again, and if that meant going up against one of the greatest assassins of the age, then that's exactly what he would do.
Chapter Five
When he had first decided to settle down in Paris, Grant had leased a three bedroom apartment in a quiet side street that was two blocks' walk from the Seine. He had spent money on it and had bought only the best to fit it out; décor, furniture, the latest TV and stereo entertainment systems. It was a subtle and tasteful bachelor pad that
, as much as anywhere, he was happy to relax in and call home.
He let himself in, scanned the room, threw the keys into the little ashtray that he kept on a ledge by the door and sat down on the couch, placing the attaché case on the coffee table in front of him. He flicked open the locks and studied the equipment inside.
There was the pistol itself, which had a threaded barrel to take a silencer. The accessories consisted of a silencer, leather inside-the-waistband holster designed for covert carry, a shoulder holster, a spare magazine pouch, two magazines, a cleaning kit and two boxes of ammunition. There was also a complementary double-edged boot knife in case the operative wanted to go all old school and bloody.
Grant took out the pistol first and examined it.
The ASP 9 was a single stack, double action 9mm semi-automatic pistol. It had started life as a variant Smith & Wesson 39, Gorilla's old gun when he had been employed by the British in the 1960s, and had been the brainchild of a shadowy gunsmith from New York known within the intelligence milieu as 'Mr Theodore'.
Some said Mr Theodore had worked for the CIA before going freelance and producing high-end weaponry for professional and discerning clients. Mr Theodore had taken a number of S&W 39s and made up to two hundred modifications to them. He had narrowed it down and shortened the original frame, then he had removed the sights and re-fitted it with his own unique version, the Guttersnipe sight, which were specially designed for close quarter instinctive shooting.
The Guttersnipe sight consisted of a groove-like channel that ran along the top of the pistol and narrowed towards the muzzle. Inside the grooves on the three sides were triangular shapes that were designed to focus the eye to the channel's natural target. The principle was simply that the sight's 'choke point' would allow the shooter to direct his aim instinctively, without consciously looking at them.
Grant wasn't too sure about all that. He was very much an instinctive gunman of the old school, so to him, there was nothing new in the sighting principle. Besides, most of his targets were at bad breath distance, anyway and nine times out of ten they never even saw him coming.
Mr Theodore had also instigated a clear magazine and grip so that the gunman could see how many rounds were left. All in all, it was a unique weapon designed with covert carry and shooting in mind. Grant chamber-checked the ASP to make sure that it was safe and then spent ten minutes manipulating the actions on the pistol to get a feel for it, noting how the safety and magazine release were geared for the left-handed gunman.
Very nice, he thought. Whoever Mr Theodore was, in Grant's opinion the man certainly knew how to make a covert quality firearm. It was like his old 39 but more discreet and niche.
The final item inside the case was a brown manila folder that would contain an intelligence briefing pack, plus passports, IDs and cash and credit cards made out to a fictitious name. He pulled out the intelligence briefing pack and studied the papers inside.
Everyone in the trade knew the name of Caravaggio; he was the epitome of the fictional super-spy – part Sidney Reilly, part James Bond and part Scarlet Pimpernel. He had been a 'name' since before the war, and yet there was still very little actually known about him; at least as far as the French intelligence service was concerned.
He was reputed to be a freelance intelligence operative with no localised affiliations, responsible for numerous assassinations both sides of the Iron Curtain, one hundred percent ruthless and never known to have failed at a mission. One source described him as a 'playboy assassin'.
There was a list of the known operations that he was rumoured to have taken part in, some for wartime German intelligence and a couple of vague and blurry photographs that could have been Mickey Rooney or Babe Ruth, or anyone for that matter. He flipped a page and ran down a list of possible contacts, most of whom were dead.
The most interesting notation was from an unnamed source, which, in Grant's experience, usually meant that it had come from signals surveillance. There had been a partial transcript of a conversation between two men; one from a number registered in the Mediterranean and one in the United States, more specifically the state of Louisiana.
The voice of the male from the Mediterranean had been run through the voice analysis systems of whatever intelligence unit had captured it out of the ether. A hit had come back and correlated from a similar one that had been captured from a soviet telephone call in which the name 'Caravaggio' had been identified. The date of the call from the Mediterranean to the USA was listed as three months earlier.
Grant frowned. Voice analysis was something way outside of his knowledge, and he suspected that even now in the 1970s, it still wasn't one hundred percent accurate, no matter what the experts had said. But what seemed clear was that they had voice-analysed and confirmed that the male was Caravaggio and that he had some connection to an individual in Louisiana.
One of the intelligence monkeys at La Piscine had run a search on the USA number and had narrowed it down to a club in New Orleans called The Pink Lady. The club was owned by a man named Armand Guillame, a retired arms dealer with connections to several intelligence networks. It wasn't much to go on, but it was the only lead that he had at the moment and really the coincidence was just too much. There had to be a connection. Maybe this slim lead would be the first step in tracing Caravaggio.
Grant put in a call to SDECE operations and told them what he wanted. Once it had been confirmed, he put the phone down and decided to shower. Twenty minutes later, he was out and checking his watch. 5.30 p.m. He picked up the phone again and dialled the international number of the all-girls boarding school in Sussex, England, heard it ring and waited.
He got through to the school receptionist first and asked for his daughter by name. It was a spur-of-the-moment call, a family emergency. Could he speak to her for a few moments?
He was told to hold the line and then, five minutes later, he heard, “Hello… Daddy? Is everything okay?”
“Hi, love,” he said. “Everything is fine. I knew they wouldn't let me talk to you if I just said I wanted a quick chat. You know I'm only supposed to call on the weekend or in an emergency, so…”
“Oh, Daad… They'll go mad here if they find out!”
“I know, I know, I'm terrible. But it will be me going to hell, not you, so don't worry,” he laughed. “How's everything there?”
“Oh, fine. Latin is soooo boring, but I've decided to try out for choir practice so that's cheered me up this week.”
“All the girls okay?” he asked. 'The girls' were Katy's little group of friends. They had a Hannah, a Neve, an Ella, a Phoebe and some other names that he couldn't remember off the top of his head.
“They're fine. Two of them had a row the other day and I had to sort it out,” she said. That was Katy, thought Grant, always wanting to solve problems.
“Okay. Good. You need anything?”
She said that she didn't. “When can I come and visit again? I love France.”
“Well… look, that's why I'm calling. The office wants me to go away on a work project for a few weeks, maybe as long as six weeks. I'll call in when I can but it might be a bit sporadic. But once that's done, maybe we can go on a little vacation, maybe Spain for a week in between terms?”
“Sure, okay… Spain sounds cool!” she said, giggling with excitement. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Oh, somewhere boring and hot with terrible food,” he said jokingly. “Remember that time when –” He heard a voice in the background; it was undoubtedly one of the Year Heads at the school trying to hurry Katy along.
“Oh Dad, I have to go. It's Miss Davies. She's a horror monster!”
“Oh. Okay, love. I'll talk to you soon. I miss you. I love you,” he said, hating the fact that the call to his little girl was so brief.
“I love you too, Daddy. Oh and Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Don't forget to get me a present! Preferably two! 'Bye, love you!”
End of call. Kids! Typical!
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br /> Chapter Six
Hotel Alba, Via del Corso, Rome
The hooker rolled the black silk stocking carefully up her long, slim, tanned legs and attached it to the garter belt that would hold it in place. For the past thirty minutes, she had been naked as she cavorted around the luxury hotel suite with her 'client' for that night.
'Cavorted' was probably the wrong word; he had tried his best to grab and grope her. She, on the other hand, had tried her best to remain flirty whilst still keeping him at bay… at least until the sedative that she had slipped into his drink had taken effect.
She had hoped that a combination of the nakedness of her slim body, the freedom of being out from under the watchful eyes of his 'minders' and the potency of the champagne would distract him until the drug kicked in, which mercifully it had a few minutes before.
The client was, in fact, a Major in Iraqi intelligence whom she had seduced in the hotel bar. She had caught his eye, flirted, been invited for a drink and then dinner. The hotel room was a natural consequence of the chain of events.
The Iraqi had dismissed his two-man security detail for the evening, so that he could have this dalliance with this beautiful Italian woman. It had been easy to seduce him and slip the sedative into his drink – embarrassingly easy, in fact. She just wished all of her jobs were this easy.
In truth, she wasn't a hooker. She wasn't even Italian. Her cryptonym was 'Nikita' and she was one of the best bounty hunters and freelance intelligence agents in the business.
She continued dressing, slipped on a midnight blue cocktail dress and stepped into her high heels. She smoothed out the creases in the dress and admired herself in the mirror. What she saw was a medium-height woman, slim and athletic of build, and with the pale complexion of the redhead. Her red hair made the green eyes in the pale face stand out and many a man had fallen for those emerald eyes in her thirty-five years.
