Operation DOUBLEPAYBACK

by Jack Freeman

  As the bad news from Cuba was sinking in, a message came through from the Trujillo plotters. They were ready and determined to go ahead. Max consulted Kingman and the word came down to hold off. Nobody in the Company or higher wanted another potential disaster overlapping with the current one.

  On May 30 however, the anti-Trujillo plotters went ahead anyway. As the 69 year old Trujillo started on his way to visit his 20 year old mistress, Mona Sanchez, the lead assassin, General Diaz, was notified by his brother that El Jefe was on the move. Trujillo was ambushed at about 10.30 that night and died from 27 gunshot wounds. Immediately after the assassination the conspirators went to the house of General Roman whose task was to round up Trujillo’s family and close supporters for immediate execution. However, Roman was not at home having been detained by Trujillo the day before. Panicking, the conspirators fled, but nearly all were captured, tortured and executed by the Dominican Republic Secret Service under the personal and thorough supervision of security chief, Johnny Garcia. Trujillo’s son, Ramfis, hastily came back from Paris and took over where his father had left off.

  Max only heard of the assassination when it was over and the conspirators were on the run. Pausing only to curse the plotters for going ahead when they had been advised strongly not to, he quickly arranged for Company agents in Trujillo City to be exfiltrated. The Ambassador also left hastily before US involvement could be established.

  “Well, shit,” said Phil Agee as he began to clear his desk and to get ready to leave for Quito, “That’s two disasters in a row. Castro’s stronger than ever and definitely in the Soviet camp now and the Dominican Republic has a new Trujillo, who will likely be just a bad if not worse than the old one.”

  “Yeah, we can’t put a good face on this. Plenty heads are going to roll, for sure. The whole Bay of Pigs shit comes down to the top brass. We did our best, given the orders, and what we had to work with. But changing the plans all the time was never going to work. Everything we did was to gain deniability at the cost of having the right results...but even that didn’t work. The whole world knows we were in it up to our necks. Between you and me, I think I’ve had it now with the Company. I have got a notion to go for the Peace Corp.”

  “Well, that’ll be a big change. Fight the battle of ideas without bombs and bullets, ehhh? Well good luck with that. I’m back to keeping an eye on Castro’s chums south of the border down Ecuador way. I’ve got to put in a few years yet before I can think of stepping down with a half decent pension. I joined in ’57, some years after you, Max. Another thing is, I may be getting a divorce and that’ll cost me plenty. My wife can’t take the Company life and is giving me hell about it, but I am not ready to quit. I am sure I will get a chance soon to do some big stuff, and succeed.”

  “Sorry to hear about the divorce business. And you a good catholic boy, too. I never got married. I guess the Company did get in the way. Maybe I will later, who knows. As I told you, I joined in the early days, ’51 and they’ve kept me so busy, there has been no time for wedding bells. I started with involvement in the Rollback programme. Good idea, get the Soviet occupied countries of Europe to rise up. But it got nowhere, apart from a lot of good guys wasted. Then went to the Middle East, next stop, ‘Nam, that’s shaping up to be a big one, believe me. Now, I’m in the Western Hemisphere team. I tried helping Batista hang on, but no luck there. I have a horrible feeling that we foot soldiers will get the flak for the Bay of Pigs and the Trujillo business, even although all the blunders have been at the higher levels. Hey, that’s disloyal talk. Forget I said that, but you can see why I might have had enough.”

  “Ha, ha, sure thing buddy. If you stick it out, maybe we will see you down Central America way, some day. Good luck and so long,” said Agee as he left the hut.

  Next day, Max was summoned to Kingman’s office.

  “What is all this about you quitting the Company? And spreading morale sapping doubts about the wisdom of superior officers?”

  “Jesus, that little rat Agee! I shouldn’t have confided in him. Yeah, I’m thinking seriously about leaving. I’ve been in the Company a long time now and recent events haven’t been exactly glorious. Forgive my loose talk. It was all in house and confidential, supposedly. The thing is, well, I was pretty stressed out. We had such high hopes for Cuba. I really thought it might be an op that would be up there with Iran, ’53, but wasn’t to be.”

  As the meeting progressed, Kingman agreed that in view of his past long and capable service, the Company would let him go as soon as possible with no hard feelings and provide a modest pension to help out. What’s more the Company would assist him in being taken on by the Peace Corps that was now definitely going to come into being. The catch was that after leaving Max would still be an unofficial asset and should be ready to pass intel back to the Company as need be. Being in the Peace Corps could lead to juicy tit-bits of information coming his way. His residual role would be completely deniable and off the book, but if he got into trouble they would try to help, although nothing could be promised. If he didn’t co-operate the pension might have to be adjusted.

  Jack agreed with Kingman that Max could still be useful to the Company even when he was no longer an officer and that he, Jack, would liaise with Max in the future, when his services as a freelance might be needed.

  In mid 1961, President Kennedy set up the Peace Corps and by August of the same year, Max was a pioneering member of the Corps, en route to Iran to manage a hostel for younger volunteer education workers in Tehran.

  A year later he had left the Peace Corps and was based in London, running a bookshop with his Iranian wife. However, unresolved business from his old friends and enemies kept returning and eventually led to being chained up and drugged in a Mayfair coal cellar.

  Chapter 17 Operation Max

  Azar tried to run after the departing black vans and before they were out of sight she mentally noted the number of the rear van, HH-RV 1848. Sweating, out of breath and frightened, she went into a telephone box to try to reach Jack who was still at the CIA’s London Station in the Embassy. Digging out four pennies from her floral handbag, she began dialling the thoroughly memorised number, MAYfair 1376. As the operator at the Embassy answered, Azar pushed in the four pennies and cursed loudly as the final coin stuck on the way through, which aborted the call.

  Azar pushed the “Operator” button. After a delay full of buzzers and squeaking sounds a cockney voice offered to help.

  “I need to make a reverse charge call to MAYfair 1376. It’s urgent. Tell them Raven is calling for Moose.”

  “Is this some kind of joke, caller?”

  “No, it’s very serious. Try it, please,” shouted Azar, beginning to panic.

  “All right caller. Keep your hair on.”

  The Embassy operator came on again and said, “Please repeat your details, caller.”

  “My call sign is “Raven”. Put me through to “Moose”.”

  Now she was put through to Jack right away.

  “Jack, thank God I got you. Max has been snatched right off the street, on Bayswater Road, just a few minutes ago. I got one of the van’s numbers, German plate, HH-RV 1848. We had been tricked into going over that way to meet a book distributor who turned out to be non-existent, a phoney.”

  “Jesus H Christ,” replied Jack, “We can check out that number in minutes. Meet me in the Grosvenor Square Gardens at 12.15.”

  “Ok. See you soon and for God’s sake, have a plan.”

  Azar got a taxi over to Grosvenor Square and met Jack at a bench in the sun near the spot from which Max had raked the Embassy with machine gun fire just a few months previously. Jack had a brown bag with doughnuts and two take-way coffees from a stall in the Embassy.

  “Jack, what’s going on here?”

  “Have a coffee and help yourself to doughnuts while I fill you in. We’re on the case. We can’t afford to have Max possibly squeezed of critical info. I know he’ll resist, but we don’t want to take chances with
our sources and assets. Recently Max has had most to do with ops against the RPI, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Going further back there’s always the Sovs, plus the Chinese, assorted Middle East interests and the North Vietnamese. It could be a co-incidence but a couple of weeks ago Ali was somehow let out of one of our holding centers. A Company officer called Agee is under secret investigation as a possible double who might have organised that. The whole thing was to be kept under wraps, so I am sorry I did not pass this on sooner.”

  “Shit! Well, it would have made us more careful if we had known Ali was on the loose again. Anyway, we have to deal with the current problem and not hash over who should have done what. Can we narrow the possible perps down at all?”

  “Well, the Sovs could do it, but usually we and they don’t act against each others guys on their own ground as it were. There’s a bit of a code between us. But you never know. Anyway, I wouldn’t put them top of the list. For similar reasons, I don’t think the official agencies of China, North Vietnam and Middle East countries would do something like this. That leaves the RPI…who definitely have a revenge motive and the Cubans, who are not too house trained as you might say, and probably know Max was in on the counter-revolution plan and the Bay of Pigs business among other things. The Trujillo crowd have a beef with Max too over Trujillo senior’s demise. We have had rumours that these three are cooperating in an anti-imperialist anti-US front and maybe they’ve got together on this. We’ll get feedback from moles in the Cuban and Dominican Republic Embassies soon. Also we have some contacts in the RPI and they are being sounded out.”

  “How long’s all that going to take? And what about the van with the West German plate?”

  “Hope to have some whispers back in a couple of hours. The van plate number and general description is with Scotland Yard and it’s been forwarded to beat and traffic officers as of interest in a possible kidnap case. The Yard liaises well with us and give us a pretty free hand as long as UK citizens aren’t involved…which probably is the case here. The van with the plate you spotted was reported stolen in Hamburg two weeks ago. UK Customs people have a note of it entering Britain through Hull last week but they didn’t know it was stolen at that time. European forces don’t communicate about such minor matters as a routine. The people in the van were recorded as Herren Jorge Schmidt and Winand Muller. Probably fake passports and we can’t find any previously known suspects or perpetrators in the Interpol records of these names, with the right ages, builds, distinguishing features and so on. They were noted as 28 and 32 years old respectively and said they were coming over as tourists to camp. They even had tents and camping equipment. This way they could easily have unrecorded overnight stays camping rough. There is no record of them staying in any London hotels in the last 2 weeks or at the moment, and you can’t pitch a tent anywhere near Central London…so either they have someone putting them up centrally, which is most likely, or they’re staying way out on the edge of town at a camping area such as Epping Forest.

  Anyway, these characters are probably not official operatives and we’re guessing they are connected with some of the new, red, urban guerrilla groups emerging in West Germany. Basically, these people are amateurs just now but will probably learn fast. They’ve been making a nuisance of themselves with home made bombs at banks, department stores, embassies and botched assassination attempts on top politicians, business men and so forth. They’ve been angling for international connections with existing stronger groups. After all, they are for international, world revolution, so that makes sense. So, maybe the group Schmidt and Muller are with has made contact with the RPI and have been brought in to help out the current action and establish themselves on the world scene. There’s no special reason why West German Red groups should go after Max on their own accounts. He’s had nothing to do with these new kids playing at revolutionaries. So we are thinking its something to do with the RPI maybe together with Cuban and/or Dominican Republic agents with a bit of help from a new Euro revolutionary group.”

  “Still, doesn’t narrow it down a lot. If only I had grabbed a cab and said “Follow that van!””

  “There’s never a cab when you want one, is there? Come on with me. We’ll go into the Embassy and check out the state of play.”

  Jack escorted Azar through the layers of security leading into the London CIA station’s main situation room deep under ground level. Some 10 desks with phones were staffed by agents speaking softly into their phones and making notes. A controller at a large desk beside a tele-printer was looking through printouts. Above the tele-printer a large scale map of Central London on the wall showed sightings of black vans meeting Azar’s descriptions that had been reported by police beat officers, as well as Azar’s last sighting. A few buildings were flagged up. These, Jack explained, were buildings associated with Cuban, Dominican Republic and RPI interests.

  They went across the room and began speaking to the controller.

  “Jim, meet Azar, Max’s wife,” said Jack.

  “Sorry about the circumstances, Mrs Blue,” replied Jim, exhaling a cloud of Chesterfield smoke. He was a small, balding man with gold incisors and nicotine stained fingers. He continued by saying “ With help from the Met and MI5 we have already carried out discreet scrutiny of the RPI properties known to us and are starting to look at the Cuban and Dominican Republic properties. So far, we have drawn a blank. Our contacts, moles, if you will, say all is quiet on the RPI and Cuban fronts. The Dominican Republic Embassy had a visit recently from the former head of the late Trujillo’s secret police, Johnny Garcia. He is a dangerous guy all right. But he is recorded as leaving the United Kingdom last week. Still, he may have set something going. We do know he has vowed revenge on Trujillo’s behalf and was personally involved in torturing most of the assassins to death. So he has a motive for snatching Max whom I gather had some involvement in that business. Garcia is now freelance and we believe is acting as a sort of consultant in dirty war, repression, provocation and such like to a range of unsavoury regimes and groups. We hear that he’s working some for Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, which is almost funny, as old Trujillo hated the Haitians.”

  The tele-printer began to clatter and paper jerked out in irregular bursts of activity. Jim tore off the message and whistled.

  “Ok,” he said, “That van you saw, Mrs Blue, has been spotted, near here actually, in a mews off Duke Street, just near the Wigmore Street junction. A beat copper called it in and the Yard have passed it on to us. That’s interesting as it’s very near the Dominican Republic Embassy at 10 Duke Street. We’ll get our asset in there to nose around and tell us if there’ve been any unusual activities. Just take a seat and I’ll let you know if there are any developments.”

  “10 Duke Street. Well, fancy that. I just heard recently that the Duke Street coal cellars had been used by De Gaulle and the Free French crowd as an interrogation centre in World War 2 to check on French agents suspected of being too friendly, not with the Germans, but with the Brits,” said Jack.

  Azar and Jack took their seats. Azar was wracked with anxiety. If Garcia was involved, she thought, Max would be horribly tested and she imagined terrible things with pliers, thumbscrews, knives and electricity. She had heard a lot about Garcia from Max and all of it was bad. The business with the sharks was weird and very sick.

  “If only we had a plan, Jack, I’d feel a lot better.”

  “Yeah, well if he is being held at Duke Street, you can be sure we’ll have the layout of the place from MI5 and can work something out from that.”

  Jim came over and announced “Well, we’re making headway. Our source at the Duke Street property reports there was a kerfuffle there this morning and he heard people going down to the cellars. Also, he saw that a little used door leading to steps down there was left open as he passed by. The timing is about right to get from Bayswater Road to Duke Street.”

  “Right,” said Jack, “Sounds like Duke Street is our best bet. Now, for a plan. Can you get us
the layout of the Dominican Republic Embassy, Jim?”

  “Already done. My assistant is bringing it over now.”

  Examining the schematic layout, Jack pointed to the cellars. “These disused coal cellars are probably where Max I being held,” said Jack, “This means there is almost certainly a manhole cover on the street outside for a coal chute. If so, that’s our way in. We could go in tonight when the Embassy will be virtually empty apart from the odd night staffer who will probably be asleep. Doubt they get many midnight calls from the Foreign Secretary, or the Queen or whoever at that place.

  How about this? We open the coal chute, roll down sleeping gas grenades and then after a pause we go in the same way with gas masks and machine guns. We then open the front door to let two of us go in with a stretcher to get Max out, assuming he won’t be in a state to walk out. Hopefully, whoever is still awake inside will cooperate but if not we’ll have to kill’em.”

  “There could be a big diplomatic incident if it comes to that. But I would suppose all sides would want to keep this whole matter totally quiet and we’ll all just carry on as if it never happened,” said Jim.

  “Ok,” said Azar, “We’ll need a vehicle fitted out as an ambulance to take Max, and another one, a van marked as “Waterworks” or “Gas” ,say, to cover the manhole business. Now, let’s be absolutely clear, I am in on this. You know I can handle myself in a fight.”

  “No question about that,” said Jack, “That you are in the thick of it is just assumed. I will also be there and we can take two others from the CIA pool here. Our leanest and fittest, please, Jim.”

  “You’ve got them. We have two very suitable guys just did their marksmanship re-training and came out with full marks.”

  The team were assembled in a small room adjacent to the situation room and went over the Embassy layout and floor plans. The operation was rehearsed and checked out for snags by the whole group. All was fine, they decided, and 01.00 hours was set for the action to begin.