The Executioner's Game

by Gary Hardwick

  The agency had no ties to any official governmental unit, so the president and Congress would always have plausible deniability of any actions taken. In short, E-1 did not exist.

  The department had been started almost by accident. During World War II, as Hitler’s threat swept the world, President Roosevelt became concerned about the dictator’s malevolent global influence. Roosevelt was worried that Hitler would succeed in his conquest of Europe and, along with the Russians, challenge U.S. authority after the war.

  So FDR called together the greatest minds from the scientific, military, and political communities and put them in a group he called Horizon. It was housed in the same building as the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS.

  Horizon’s job was to determine how big a threat Hitler was and what the United States should do about it. In the end the answer was simple: Hitler had to die. Roosevelt and later Truman would commission an elite team of assassins to do the job. They were pulled from the army’s, the navy’s, and the marines’ elite service units and trained in Canada for more than a year in intelligence gathering, covert operations, and methods of elimination. They were called the Elite Corps.

  The EC did not kill Hitler, but several of his generals and other key players in the Nazi Party were quietly dispatched during the war. Domestically the Elite Corps eliminated several double agents and averted a planned assassination of Harry Truman.

  The OSS was the precursor to the CIA, which was formally created in 1947 with the signing of the National Security Act by President Truman. “Give ’Em Hell Harry” wasn’t pleased with the idea that a foreign government would try to have him bumped off, so he took measures to make sure it would never happen again.

  The National Security Act charged the director of Central Intelligence with coordinating the nation’s spy activities and correlating, evaluating, and disseminating information that affected national security.

  The Elite Corps was eventually disbanded by Truman—or at least that was the official word. Unofficially the EC was kept funded to assist the nation in eliminating its enemies. During the Cold War, the EC team was called to action in the fight against the Red Menace. It was then that it was renamed E-1, had the fact of its existence erased from all official documents, and was given the power to kill anyone America considered a threat. There was some debate about the wisdom of this, but in the end communism was thought to pose a bigger danger than did a band of patriotic killers.

  E-1 was briefly suspended when Kennedy was assassinated. But the agency was eventually cleared of any involvement, and its work continued. E-1 has existed quietly since then through many presidential administrations, wars, and conflicts. There is a joke in government that the president knows he has killers at his disposal but doesn’t know who they are. If the government has secrets, then E-1 is the shadow of those secrets.

  E-1 was housed in a plain-looking building at 15 Standard Avenue, not too far from CIA headquarters in Langley. The windowless white structure looked more like a warehouse than an office building. E-1 shared space with the Veterans Administration, and several floors were given to the Social Security Administration. But E-1 had most of the building undercover as a special arm of the General Accounting Office. There were in fact people there who did accounting for the GAO, but E-1’s main activities had nothing to do with balance sheets. Everyone who worked in the building had a high security-clearance level, unusual for a nonpolicing authority, but no one in the VA or SSA asked any questions about it. In federal civil service, it didn’t pay to get too nosy.

  Luther entered the building and headed toward the back, where a wall hid a bank of elevators from the view of anyone in the main lobby. He walked up to the two big guards and flashed his ID. They ran a scanner over it and moved to let him onto the elevator. The car went down one floor to the first basement.

  Luther got out of the car and walked to the reception area. The room looked innocent enough, like any business lobby, but if there was a security “situation,” the room would lock the one door and the back entrance to the main facility, turning it into a little prison cell.

  In the middle of the small lobby, at a dark mahogany desk, sat a sour-faced woman in her fifties. She did not look up as Luther walked up to her.

  “Good morning, Adelaide,” said Luther. “Nice to see you again.”

  Adelaide raised her head, and Luther could see that she was hunched over a small computer. Her pale blue eyes appeared large behind her glasses. “Back already?” she asked. “I thought we were rid of you, Green.”

  “I’ve been gone for two years.” Luther smiled down at her.

  “Seems like yesterday to me. I guess I’m getting older. Time gets shorter, and then one day it stops, because you’re dead.”

  “Why are you stalling?” he asked Adelaide.

  “Smart boy,” she said. “We’re doing longer security checks. We had a little terrorist trouble in New York. Maybe you heard about it while you were over there in that country with the free dope and hookers.”

  “It’s not free. It’s just legal, and I wasn’t in that country,” said Luther.

  Adelaide Gibson had been one of their best field agents in the seventies. Back then she was a stunning beauty, a brunette with long legs and an infectious smile.

  Her story was legend in E-1. Adelaide had been on assignment in Africa when the warring nations were causing a potential imbalance in the Cold War. Both the communist powers and the United States were trying to sway African nations their way, or at best keep them fighting so that their influence was nugatory.

  Adelaide’s husband, Mark, was a regular CIA agent who’d been sent to Africa a year before on a special assignment. When Adelaide got there, she found he had been corrupted by a communist-backed regime. Mark asked her to join him in taking the money and looking the other way, and she agreed, just long enough to turn him in, along with the entire group.

  Adelaide’s husband was convicted of treason and several other crimes. Mark Gibson couldn’t live with the ruin of his life, so he committed suicide in prison. Adelaide had stood by him during his ordeal, but after he died, she quietly had a nervous breakdown and then retired from field duty. Now she sat at a desk, made a decent salary, and worked the controls of the second security station at E-1.

  “So there’s been whispering about you,” she said. “I hope it’s good.”

  “Me, too,” said Luther.

  “Outer doors secure. Inner online,” said Adelaide. “Three seconds.”

  The doors at the rear of the lobby opened. Luther said goodbye to Adelaide and walked through.

  Inside Security Station Two, Luther was faced with a large metal detector and guards dressed in the classic bland dark suits. Luther stood behind a glass wall made of thick, attack-proof glass and waited.

  He said hello to everyone, and he could see that Adelaide was right. They’d all obviously been talking about him. They had that look in their eyes that something was being hidden.

  Luther took out his sidearm, the Walther P99, and placed it in the gun chute. All E-1 agents chose their own sidearms. He liked the P99 because of its lightweight polymer frame and the recoil compensator that steadied it when he fired. It was much like an agent, an efficient killer.

  Luther stood in front of a small scanner and placed his hand on it. The machine scanned his hand-and fingerprints.

  “Come on in, Agent Green,” said one of the guards. “Welcome back, sir.”

  The security door opened, and Luther went inside. He retrieved his P99 and then moved down the hallway to a bank of elevators. He got on one of them and pressed the button for level six. The elevator went down. In any other agency, the boss would reside on the top floor, not the lowest one. Luther often wondered what it meant that the agency liked to house itself underground. He knew that this structure had a reinforced skeleton that acted as a second roof. If the building toppled, you could survive for weeks under the wreckage.

  Luther got off on level six, which they cal
led “Deep Six,” and headed for the director’s office. He passed through double glass doors into E-1’s operations room. It was a busy bullpen, with state-of-the-art informational equipment.

  The twenty or so workers here all kept track of the fifty-three E-1 agents all around the globe. Luther scanned the big world map on the far wall and saw the glittery gold buttons that represented the agents. A button locked in to his exact position in Virginia. That was him, he thought, reduced to a little golden speck.

  Luther was greeted by Thomas, a thin man of about thirty. He was Kilmer Gray’s personal assistant, and if you left it to him, he would tell you that he was running the shop.

  “Luther, you’re right on time,” said Thomas happily. “Director Gray is just finishing up.”

  “Good. Thank you, Thomas,” said Luther.

  Luther tried not to frown. He didn’t make small talk with Thomas. Luther didn’t like to hear him go on and on about his closeness to his powerful boss, so he just smiled and sat down. Thomas was a pain, although he was known to be quite proficient in several areas of training.

  Thomas looked at him a little too long, and Luther felt that sense again that he’d been discussed before his arrival. Thomas smiled, trying to cover his obvious expression, and then walked away to his station.

  Luther sat in the plush leather chair against the wall and waited. He didn’t have to wait long. Director Gray’s office door opened, and just then on the map, two agents’ gold specks sprouted red lines that stopped in Jerusalem.

  Kilmer Gray ambled out of his office. He was a smallish man who tended to stoop at the shoulders. He had a tangle of salt-and-pepper hair and sharp dark eyes under lids that always seemed half closed.

  Kilmer surveyed the situation room, and to Luther he looked like a hawk surveying his domain. His face was stony and expressionless, the face of a man who never wanted you to know what he was thinking. He turned slightly, making sure the agents had been relocated on the map. Then his eyes came to rest on Luther.

  Kilmer’s expression didn’t change. He walked over to Luther, extending his hand. “Luther. Good to see you.”

  “You, too, sir,” said Luther.

  Luther stood, and the two men shook hands. Kilmer’s was cool, and this had always bothered Luther for some reason. His grip was firm, but it was an icy thing, and Luther was always a little happier when Kilmer released him. The men walked into Kilmer’s office.

  Director Gray’s office was an expansive place filled with ornate furniture made of rich wood. The walls were covered with paintings done by the director himself. Lighthouses and dark cottages were his favorite subjects. Luther had forgotten that Kilmer was so talented. You might have thought you were in a professor’s study until you saw that on the wall behind his long desk was a smaller version of the map in the situation room.

  Kilmer Gray had been in government service all his adult life. He was drafted out of West Point and shocked his family by joining the Green Berets. He served with distinction in Vietnam, accumulating quite a kill record. Kilmer left the service and joined the FBI briefly but soon reenlisted in the army and advanced to the rank of general.

  He proved to be a ruthless adversary, and his intellect helped the country win many a day overseas. When a suicide bomber killed a batch of marines, it was Kilmer who planned the counterresponse that brought about the deaths of fifty suspected enemies over the next two years. The operation was methodical, flawless, and untraceable. It wasn’t long before the bureaucrats came calling, and Kilmer was sent into the CIA. He served in various capacities, including as Director of Intelligence. When he was asked to become the head of E-1, he accepted the assignment without hesitation.

  Kilmer had never married, and although he’d kept company with many women over the years, he led a solitary life. The job was his woman, people said behind his back, and it was true. Kilmer Gray was married to E-1, and it was for better or worse and until death.

  “You’ll be happy to know that the Haklim agent you captured in Stockholm gave us vital information,” said Kilmer, sitting down and motioning Luther to do the same. “Mr. Hampton is quite efficient in using drugs to extract information.”

  “Yes, he is good,” said Luther, sitting.

  Luther didn’t ask what the information was, nor did he inquire about what had become of the third man. It was not his job to know such things. He’d completed his mission, and that was all he’d been paid to do. But he couldn’t help thinking that the Haklim agent had been drained of all useful information and then shipped off to the holding facility in the Philippines, where he would eventually be eliminated cleanly.

  “Alex Deavers is alive,” said Kilmer flatly.

  Luther was shocked. He straightened in his chair and did his best to play down his emotions. Kilmer was not one to mince words, and he relished getting to the point. If Luther knew Kilmer, the fact that Alex was alive was just the first part of the matter.

  Alex Deavers had brought Luther into E-1, had trained him and eventually become one of his best friends. When Alex was reported to be dead, Luther had taken the news hard. But that was the life, he’d told himself. He was prepared at any time for the death of any of the men and women he knew in the business. Still, he had never worried much about Alex. He was one of the agency’s best operatives and had cheated death many times. Apparently he’d done it at least once more.

  “Where is he?” asked Luther in a measured tone.

  “That’s part of why you’re here. I want you to go after the wolf. Will you?” “Wolf” was the agency term for a rogue agent.

  “Yes, sir,” said Luther. He did not hesitate. If Kilmer sensed any reluctance, he’d refuse to give him the assignment. Kilmer had obviously thought about the fact that Luther and Alex had a close relationship and the duality it created. Luther was emotionally invested, but he also knew the man well and would be good at anticipating Alex’s moves.

  Kilmer pushed a button on the lip of his desk, and a two-sided flat-panel monitor popped up. The monitor showed the mission file.

  “‘Alex Deavers, E-1 agent, was blown from the transport of the now-deceased secretary of commerce, Donald Howard, on February fifteenth,’” Kilmer began reading. The official story was that the secretary was killed by terrorist sympathizers and that everyone involved had died. “Deavers’s cover had been established six months before with the Secret Service. Another Secret Service agent named Gorman was unaccounted for that day,” Kilmer continued. “We had first believed that Gorman was dead. But we were mistaken. We then assumed that Gorman was paid to assassinate the secretary. Deavers beat us to that assumption and landed in Germany. He found Gorman in a private home, then tortured and killed him. We got a security photo of Deavers from a train station in Berlin.”

  “Did he get information from Gorman?” asked Luther.

  “Again, presumably,” said Kilmer.

  “So whatever Gorman knew, we’ll never know,” said Luther.

  “Yes. Deavers is now in possession of that information, too,” said Kilmer. Then his brow furrowed, just for a second but long enough for Luther to take notice. His eyes opened a little wider and then returned to their usual half-closed position. “From there he made it to London, where he contacted and killed MI6 agent Lisa Radcliff.”

  “Lisa,” said Luther under his breath.

  “Yes, I believe you knew her.”

  “Alex introduced us, many years ago when I was just starting.”

  “He contacted her, and then we assume he asked for her assistance. Presumably when it was refused, he resorted to his training.”

  Luther envisioned a battle between the two agents. Lisa and Deavers had been lovers at one point. No good agent would have been caught off guard, he thought. Lisa was a black belt in tae kwon do. He saw Alex disabling her formidable style and crushing her with his greater power.

  “He snapped her neck, in case you’re wondering,” said Kilmer. “And she put up a fight. His blood was found in her flat. Following thi
s little incident, British authorities came after him. Deavers easily eluded them. One man was killed and two others hospitalized. He killed an agent named Victor Jansen with a mini-stress charge that blew off the man’s foot. We believe that it was an item from Radcliff’s utility pack.”

  This was Kilmer’s clinical name for what E-1 agents called a “goodie box,” an arsenal of weaponry.

  “The other two men were beaten badly,” Kilmer continued. “We believed that Deavers bribed his way onto a freighter that went into Canada, or at least that was what we thought. When we caught up with the man on the ship, he turned out to be an illegal immigrant from Norway.”

  Kilmer turned off the display panel and then added, “I’m almost proud of him.”

  “So where do we think he might be?” asked Luther.

  “That’s where you begin,” said Kilmer. “We lost him. He left no ordinarily readable trail—nothing.”

  “And ‘nothing’ means an agent is on the case,” said Luther, remembering something that Alex had taught him. In the normal discharge of life, people leave evidence that they’ve been present in a place. There’s no reason for a normal person to cover his tracks or otherwise obfuscate the fact of his presence. But the only trail an agent leaves is no trail at all. When it’s examined closely by another agent, though, there’s always something there.

  “This mission is nonrecourse,” said Kilmer. His eyelids seemed to close all the way for a moment.

  “Why?” asked Luther. He had been thinking that Deavers was to be captured. But for a kill mission, he didn’t mind asking Kilmer this.

  The director was smart enough not to tell Luther it was a kill mission until he’d given him some information on what his old friend had done. Kilmer would not think of his question as weakness or hesitation. It was a request for more information.