A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1)

by James Quinn

  In one swift movement Marquez had grabbed Lumumba's head and was forcing it down to the floor with one hand while with the other he pulled out the Colt.45, pressing it to the man's temple. “Down, down…down on the floor! Try to fight and I will shoot! Get DOWN! Quiet!”

  Lumumba was no fool and knew better than to argue with an armed man. He slumped into a sullen silence.

  “Keep driving for another half a mile, you'll come to a fork in the road. That's the rendezvous; the collection party will be waiting for us,” Marquez ordered Samuel. The driver, to his credit, kept calm and guided the car along the dirt track for another few minutes. Then slowly from out of the darkness the silhouette of several military jeeps and wagons began to appear. They flashed their lights in recognition and the driver of the limousine beeped his horn to complete the code.

  The limousine slowly pulled to a halt, the driver aware of the soldiers with their fingers on the triggers of their weapons. A man stepped forward, large, in command, his outline cast against the glare of the truck's headlights.

  “I am Major Pierre Koroma.” His voice was a deep basso and rumbled. He stood composed and confident; one hand wavering near the pistol he wore on his hip. He was military, through and through.

  The door of the limousine opened and Marquez dragged out the terrified Lumumba, the gun still pressed against his temple, and forced him onto his knees between the two groups.

  “Hello, Patrice,” said the man and then waved a hand for unseen shadows to take the deposed Prime Minister away. Marquez stepped back as the guards grabbed the fallen man. He didn't even look at the doomed prisoner. For Marquez, the target was now a thing of the past, a burden he had put aside.

  “I have been asked to pass on our thanks on behalf of General Mobutu,” said Koroma.

  “Thank you.”

  “The General says that he is in your debt for this service. He says if there is anything he can do for you in the future, he will consider it an honor to help.”

  The noise of a scuffle broke out from the rear of the trucks. Marquez assumed that the ANC soldiers were having fun with the deposed politician, fun involving punches, kicks and rifle butts no doubt. Marquez turned back to Koroma. “I will remember the General's kind words. It is always useful to have a patron as wise and powerful as the General. I thank him.”

  Koroma nodded. It was good that this foreign spy should show proper respect to the General. “That is good. I also have the other piece of information that you wanted, about the kidnapping of your 'friend'. ”

  “Yes?”

  “He is being held in a warehouse out near Panza. It is a private place which belongs to the security police. He has been there for days. If you go there now, they will be told you are expected so that you can collect him.” Koroma handed Marquez a slip of paper with the address.

  “Thank you, Major.”

  “Our friends in the Security Police will also be expecting the agreed sum for the release of your friend.”

  “That is understood Major. I have the funds, five thousand dollars.”

  “Excellent,” said Koroma happily. “Then our business is complete.”

  The man stalked back to his jeep, issuing orders as he went. The engines of the convoy rumbled into life and within seconds the trucks and jeeps were a distant light down the dirt road.

  Marquez stood for a moment, breathed, and took in the coolness and tranquility of the night. The first job of the night complete, he thought, now for the rest of his chores. He walked around to the driver's window and motioned for him to open the window. “Samuel, are you alright?”

  The driver nodded, but Marquez could see his hands were shaking. He gripped the steering wheel fiercely, trying to halt the tremors. Marquez opened the door and eased him out, leaning the traumatized man against the side of the vehicle. “Relax, it is over now. You have earned your money. You would be better if you forgot everything that you saw here tonight. Come, let me give you a cigarette. Let me get my pack from the back seat.”

  The shot, when it came, shattered the night air; the sounds of the wilderness taking flight and the echoing report of the.45 caliber bullet. The sound of the body hitting the dirt at full force was negligible. Marquez stood and looked down at the body for a moment. The bullet had exploded right in the driver's eye, taking away a section of his head. Marquez moved quickly, grabbing the dead man's heels, dragging him out into the scrubland and concealing the body behind a small clump of bushes. It might take weeks before the corpse was discovered and once the wildlife and desert dogs had their fill of the flesh, identification might take even longer.

  * * *

  David Gioradze, the spy who had been operating under the pseudonym of the Austrian Franz Donner, had been sitting handcuffed to the uneven iron chair for the past five hours.

  The rusty metal of the handcuffs had worn away the skin around his wrists and the thick black hood that covered his entire head was saturated with sweat. The sweat wasn't from the temperature, but from the sheer physical effort of keeping his body under control.

  He was naked, freezing cold and bruised along the full length of his torso. He prayed they would kill him soon. His only escape from the torture, discomfort, and pain was the refuge of his own mind.

  Hide David, his mama would have said. Hide and you'll be fine. He had learned that trick well as a child when his father would come home after a meeting with the émigré group he was a part of in Paris. His father, a man with a short fuse of a temper, had taken badly to being an exile in a country which he despised. The émigrés would meet once a week in a small bar in Montmartre and the talk and the wine would flow, so that by the end of their 'political meeting' they would be fired up with patriotism, revenge, hare-brained schemes, and cheap vodka.

  By the time his father had made it home, his temper had been at boiling point and the likely target for his temper and frustration was his wife. “Hide David, papa will be home soon,” was the usual routine, and always followed by the reminder to, “Whatever you do stay in your room, don't look and cover your ears. Papa is tired, that's all it is, emotional and tired.”

  The family had 'escaped' from the ravages of the Georgian/Armenian war in 1918, when David had been no more than a year old. With distant relatives in France, Paris seemed the logical place for the family of Pytor Gioradze to seek sanctuary. The intention had been to return to Tbilisi at the end of hostilities, but no sooner had one skirmish finished than three years later the Red Army had stormed its way into Georgia. Pyotr Gioradze, a committed anti-communist, saw the writing on the wall and decided that to return to his homeland would mean repression or even death for him and his family.

  They had lived an uneventful life as exiles. His father drank himself to death and his mother lived a humble life in a two-bedroomed apartment until she finally succumbed to cancer. For David, he simply became self-sufficient and made his own way in the world working as a laborer, or in a host of other manual jobs. He didn't worry too much – he was young and without any commitments. He could do as he pleased.

  During the Second World War, he'd seen Paris being stormed by the fearful Wehrmacht, and like many young men of his time he had decided that the best way to free his adopted country was to aid the Maquis resistance fighters any way that he could. Gioradze had only been allowed on the fringes of the French resistance; running messages, moving sabotage material, surveillance of German officers, but it had given him a taste for adventure. Compared to some, he'd had a good war until 1944 when he had been captured at a Maquis safe-house during a Gestapo raid.

  He had been operating as a courier for a local sabotage network, unfortunately by1944 the Germans were taking no prisoners, the tide of the war was going against them and mass executions were the norm. He had been held in the local secret police cells, awaiting execution and it was only when Paris fell that he was finally released by the Americans.

  After the war, he'd run with a gang of organized criminals; safe blowing and bank robberies mostly. The
last job he'd been on had ended up with him being caught and doing five years in La Santé prison.

  After five years of hard stir, he'd been released and came right back out to work with his old gang. Then a fight outside a bar one night had turned sour and Gioradze had ended up killing a member of a rival gang who was trying to muscle into their patch. A knife was pulled; Gioradze was slashed across the face. In return, Gioradze simply pulled out his .38 and shot the man dead in the street. His fellow gang members got him out of Paris that very night. He headed south, determined not to go back to prison again under any circumstances. He made his way down to Sidi-bel-abbes in Algeria and signed up for the French Foreign Legion for five years.

  He made it to Corporal and had fought his way across Asia and North Africa; jungles, swamps and deserts were his battlegrounds. He liked the action, adventure and the spirit of the men he worked with. He had faced death, looked it in the eye and had retaliated at times with almost reckless abandon. At the end of his five year 'stint' Gioradze returned to Europe, looking to start a life away from the Legion and to make some serious money. He bumped into an old Legion friend in Belgium and heard that the Americans were hiring mercenaries for an operation in South-East Asia.

  Rather naively, he approached the US Embassy in Belgium in the hope of gaining a meeting with the local Military Attaché. The man on the desk simply nodded, asked him a series of questions, took his contact details, and politely told him that he would pass the information on to the relevant department. David Gioradze returned to the apartment that he was renting and went about his business. He heard no more from the Embassy. He was not unduly worried about money, he still had his savings from his time in the Legion, and if he did run short of cash, well, there was always a bank or jewelers that he could turn his attention to. He was happy to while away the days in Belgium drinking and whoring, at least for a while.

  A month later he received a letter inviting him to attend an employment interview in Germany. The letter suggested some possible work that suited his experience and skills. The name on the letterhead said 'Farthing & Co – Munich' and enclosed was a time and date and a request to 'keep all travel receipts for reimbursement purposes'.

  A week later he arrived in Munich for his job interview. He sat in a sparsely furnished office while a patrician-like German interviewed him for over an hour. “We understand that you're good with languages – French, German… Russian,” the man had said. “And that you're experienced in military matters.”

  “Is this about the job in Asia?” asked Gioradze.

  “No, we know nothing about that. We have something more important to concern ourselves with. You're the kind of man we're looking for. How do you find the idea of working in Europe? It would mean a quick stopover in another country first, just to check you out and give you a bit of training. Nothing too intense and certainly nothing you haven't done before I would imagine. We work in the acquisition of information.”

  And that had been it, the start of his career as a contract agent for the CIA. His initial mission had been as one of two agents who were to 'trail their coats' in Berlin in the hope that the KGB would pick them up, offer them some money in exchange for a trade in information. Except of course that the information, codes, actually, would be fake, but would give the Americans a chance to peek inside the Russian's code-breaking capabilities.

  The weeks' worth of training at a CIA safe-house in Maryland included the use of tradecraft, cover and secret writing. It was intense, but not difficult. The mission was a 'go'. He would be in West Berlin within twenty-four hours, he was ready and primed.

  Then the bombshell landed. The job was cancelled with just twelve hours to spare. He never knew why or what had gone wrong, only that the project had been 'dismantled' and that he was now spiked. His handler came to visit him. “We're thinking of resettling you; give you some money so that you can start again. The Europe operation's a busted flush; how do you fancy Mexico? Maybe we can use you again in the future for something. Think about it.”

  He did, and decided that Mexico would do just fine. Maybe he could get a job working armed security for some of the big Fincas owned by the growing drug gangs. It was something to think on, certainly.

  A week later as he was packing, two smart-suited Agency officers paid him a visit. They were from the CIA's Africa Division and they had yet another job offer for him. “David we have something else for you, something has come up in Africa. It's a little operation that we're keen to get involved in. It would be dangerous, I won't lie to you, but it's more your kind of thing,” suggested the senior of the two.

  He had snapped at the offer, anything was better than sitting around the CIA safe-house in Maryland staring at the ceiling, and Mexico, well, Mexico would always be there at some point in the future.

  This time he had been flown by USAF cargo plane to an ancient fort in Malta, where the Agency kept a discreet paramilitary training base for its covert operators. Two weeks' worth of demolitions, small arms and surveillance training made him feel alive and he relished the thought of becoming an 'action agent'.

  Halfway through the training his case officer came to him for a final preparation. “You'll need some cosmetic work, toupee, new identification, and a new cover. You've operated in Africa with the Legion, we don't want you running into old contacts and being caught out. Don't worry about that we'll take care of it.”

  He had flown to West Berlin and from there direct to Leopoldville. His mission was to prepare a plausible cover for himself – someone mentioned a small retail business – organize a base of operations and begin to recruit suitable personnel for a covert intelligence network and a covert action team. Armed with a bit of money, some basic information and a lot of guts, he had thrown himself into his new role of a covert operator.

  But now as he sat among the feces, blood and vomit that had spewed from his body, and with all things being equal, he wished that he had never opened that letter in Belgium and had told the CIA officers to go and royally fuck themselves.

  * * *

  It was the soft scuffing of feet on the concrete floor outside his cell that awoke him from his dream.

  He twisted his head around inside the hood, craning his neck, trying to gauge whether it was food time or beating time. Maybe it was a trick, another mock execution, or maybe this time it was going to be the real thing.

  The clank of the bolt on his cell door being retracted made him involuntarily tense his muscles, bracing himself for whatever degradation they had in mind for him this time, except that this time there was no violence, no shouting, no cold water, no rubber hoses, only silence and the occasional whisper and slow careful movements of persons'unknown. He felt the handcuffs being unlocked before he was unceremoniously lifted to his feet and told to stand. They dressed him quickly and with no grace; pants up, shirt unbuttoned, no shoes, because his shoes had been stolen over a week ago. He was clothed, but barely.

  Strong hands grabbed him from either side, fingers digging into his biceps and then he was propelled forward moving left, left, left, up some steps, right, and all the while his bare feet bearing the brunt of the stone floor. It was the air that hit him first; coolness after the stifling confines of the cell. It's an execution, he thought; firing squad in the courtyard. Best to take it outside; don't want to foul the cell with more blood and brains.

  A creak of un-oiled metal came from what he later learned was a car door being opened and he was pushed into a seat. The heat returned again. His heart was pounding now, his breath coming in rasps. Through the hood he was unsure, but he thought he could hear a muffled conversation taking place outside the car. It went on for several minutes; perhaps French, perhaps English. Again he was unsure. He heard another door open, felt the weight of another body entering the vehicle on the driver's side. An engine was gunned and the vehicle fled at speed.

  The drive went on for, he guessed, the next ten minutes or so. Say nothing, just wait until an opportunity presents itself. And the
n what? he reasoned. I'm beat up, exhausted, can barely walk! What good could I do?

  He felt the speed of the vehicle drop until it casually slowed to a halt. The sound of tires crunching on the rubble road told him they were out in the countryside. He felt the hood being removed slowly from his head and experienced that wonderful moment of pleasure when cool, fresh air enveloped his bruised and cut face. Slowly he opened his eyes, partially at first, aware that any bright light would hurt the one good eye which wasn't completely shut from the beatings.

  He opened it to its full aperture and saw darkness. He was in the front seat of a car, what make he didn't know, and next to him in the driver's seat was the dark shadow of a man. They were definitely out in the countryside – that much he could see; no buildings, darkness, isolation. “I'm going to turn on the courtesy light. You might want to shield your eyes for the moment,” said the dark shadow man.

  The voice was speaking in English, but was also strangely familiar. The light clicked and bathed the interior of the car in a yellow tinge. Almost immediately, insects began trying in vain to penetrate the windows.

  “How are you, my friend?”

  David Gioradze turned his head towards the man, squinting his one good eye against the light, but at the same time eager to see the face of his savior. The man was dressed impeccably, as usual, in a summer suit and silk tie, and even in this extreme heat he looked relaxed and in control. The only addendum to his normal attire was a Colt .45 tucked at an angle into his waistband. “Luc… Luc, is that you? How…”

  “Relax you're safe now, those animals have done their worst to you. They can do no more.”

  His mind whirled with surprise, confusion, mistrust and panic. Was his cover still intact? Had he told them anything of importance? He didn't think so. Those animals had been more interested in information about local forces, rather than freebooting foreigners interfering in Congolese politics. He was quite happy to give up the local agents he had managed to recruit, anything or anyone as long as he wasn't 'blown'.