A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1)

by James Quinn

  “Stan knew the risks, Chuck,” sniveled the new Director of Central Intelligence at the 'welcome back to work' meeting he was required to attend six months ago. The new DCI had been brought in to shake up the Agency. Senior staff viewed him as an 'interferer' who knew little about intelligence operations. “We have to remain professional and not let our personal feelings – no matter how repugnant and distasteful we view the Russian Service's actions – cloud our judgement. Stan would have known that.”

  “It's Dan, Mr. Director.” It came out as a whisper, barely audible over the Director's pep talk.

  “We simply can't be seen to be using the Agency as a vehicle for personal vendetta's, and this talk of retribution, of us trying to close down possible Soviet networks that you seem to be encouraging. It's the stuff of fiction, not the responsible actions of one the best intelligence services in the world. Stan was one of our best young officers he would have gone far—”

  “It's Dan. Daniel,” Ferrera said in a flat statement, still with respect in his tone.

  But the Director was in full flow. “…and no amount of cloak and dagger games will bring him back, Chuck. We have an exciting new job for you, not operational, you understand, but still interesting enough to keep you active. Risk assessment for our overseas stations – a very valuable job, lots to do, lots to get involved with.”

  The Director had risen from his desk and outstretched his hand, indicating that the meeting was drawing to a close. “Get your life back, Chuck, throw yourself into your work. It's what Stan would have wanted.”

  It was then that Ferrera's anger had spilled over. “His fucking name was Daniel, you moron!”

  And that was that. He'd stormed from the Director's office, driven into Georgetown and hit the bars. Martinis and bar nuts filled the rest of his day.

  The following months had been a lesson in mediocrity, boredom, inaction, and loneliness. When he wasn't at work, he was getting drunk, and when he wasn't getting drunk, he would look in the mirror and see the face of an old, broken man staring back at him.

  His only respite, if it could be called pleasurable, was to stand and stare at the memorial wall in the main reception at Langley and occasionally he would move forward and trace his finger over the star on the plaque that represented his son. With no grave he could visit, that small gesture, if nothing else, gave him some comfort.

  * * *

  Thump, thump, thump!

  It was a beautiful spring day, that much he knew. He could just about see the sunlight shining in, through the cracks in both the curtains and his eyelids. He could see his alarm clock. 1.53 in the afternoon.

  Thump, thump, thump!

  He groaned. He'd missed work again.

  Thump, thump, thump!

  The banging on the front door had awoken him from his stupor. A commotion, tinged with the potential for violence. He staggered from the bed, took one last slug of 'Jack', and made his way down the stairs to fling the door open.

  “So, you haven't done it yet. That's good to know,” said a very annoyed Assistant Director of Plans.

  “Ugghh.” That was as much of a speech that Ferrera, in his hungover state, could manage.

  “Eloquently put, Chuck. Jeez, it stinks in here. How much sauce have you put away?” Higgins took in the room. The half-naked man in front of him, the empty bottles, the gun on the floor where it had dropped from its owner's grip during the night.

  “Done what?” said Ferrera. He was still working his way through the questions in his scrambled thought process.

  Higgins entered the room, closed the door and gently sat Ferrera back onto the nearest couch in the lounge. “Oh, I think you know what.”

  Ferrera slumped back onto the couch and groan softly.

  “Oh, don't worry, I won't report it. I wasn't sure if I'd find you wrapped round some hooker or if I'd find your brains splattered all over the walls by the time I got here,” snarled Higgins.

  “Huh… wrong on both counts, sir,” slurred Ferrera. He rolled his furry tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to work up a modicum of fluid.

  It was then that Higgins lost his temper. “Oh, cut the crap Chuck, and put some clothes on. You need to pull yourself together and quick. You're slowly drinking yourself to death, you look like shit and you're basically finished at the Agency. Not even I can stop that happening now.”

  Ferrera fixed the other man with a harsh, beady-eyed stare. “So why should I care, then, huh, huh! My boy's dead, family is finished, job's down the crapper. What's left!”

  The slap, when it came, rocked Ferrera. It contained such contempt and together with the dismissive look on Higgins' face, Ferrera wasn't sure what had just happened. Then the tears came. He held his head in despair.

  Higgins crouched down so that they were at eye level. When he spoke, his voice was soft, gentle and reasonable. “Chuck, you're sitting here in your own piss, contemplating suicide. All those things you once hung onto are finished and the sooner that registers, the better. Your life will never be the same again. But if you want to stand any chance of getting payback for your boy, for Daniel, then you need to shape up quickly.”

  “You said yourself I'm finished at the Agency, the DCI himself has deep-sixed the plans I drew up to attack those Soviet networks.”

  A slow nod from Higgins. “All that's true. But I've been thinking. I don't think the opportunity for justice is with the CIA. It's far too narrowly focused for that. The Agency have become a bunch of ass-kissers in Washington, headed I might say, by our revered, at least in his own mind, new Director of Central Intelligence.”

  Ferrera shook his head. He still wasn't connecting the dots; maybe it was the booze gripping him.

  Higgins placed a gentle hand on his friend's head and caressed it. “Don't worry about it now. I'll explain in time. Even I'm not sure what I mean yet. The first thing we're going to do is get you well again, somewhere away from Washington. There are too many memories here, too many distractions and too much booze. Don't try and resist or I'll have the goons from the Office of Security drag you out of here.”

  Ferrera looked up and nodded his acquiescence. He'd cause no trouble. Higgins nodded, satisfied. “Then we're going to draft a letter, handing in your resignation on health grounds, which I'll take to the DCI personally; that way, you'll at least get a good resettlement package. Finally, I'm going to hide you somewhere remote, somewhere isolated, so we can dry you out and get your brain cells working again like they did in the old days.”

  “And then what?”

  “Why, that's the simple part. Then we start planning,” replied Higgins.

  And it was then, on that day when he'd reached rock bottom, that Charles Ferrera experienced a moment of clarity. Not an epiphany, nothing so biblical or as all-encompassing as that, but he came to realize in the nexus of that moment that he had wasted too much time in mourning his own son, his Daniel.

  He'd mourned, he'd cried, he'd indulged in self-pity and despair. He'd been a sham. What type of father simply sits back and lets a bigger aggressor snuff out the life of a child, without extracting some kind of retribution? His Italian ancestors would have demanded revenge so that honor could be restored. He lay back, relaxed and somewhere deep in his mind, he sought out a glimmer of hope.

  A month later, on the day he was due to retire from the CIA, have lunch with the Director and receive his Certificate of Merit for long and faithful service, Charles Ferrera didn't show up for work again. This time it had nothing to do with him being drunk; he was simply too disgusted with the establishment to which he had dedicated his working life.

  * * *

  The American Central Intelligence Agency, like any large government institution, is a bureaucracy and over recent years, there had been a growing culture of neat, tidy men with short haircuts and Brooks Brothers suits. They had a narrow focus and an even narrower mindset of the world. What had started out after the war as a sleek and lean organization, had grown and grown until it was like a
fat man spilling out of his suit, and like most over-large, obese and unaccountable secret societies, it could, if you had the right insider knowledge and technical know-how, be quite easily manipulated.

  This was Richard Higgins' beginnings of a plan.

  Following the aborted Polish operation, Higgins had been put in charge of investigating what had gone wrong in Warsaw Zoo and the murder of Daniel Ferrera. Put in charge of it, hell, he had requested it vehemently. He would track down those responsible for the death of his nephew, come hell or high water.

  Not that Higgins despised or hated his Agency, far from it. Oh sure, it was weak at times, ineffectual, overly-complex and always pandering to those jerk politicians. But despite all this, he loved the CIA, as a teenager who has loved his first girlfriend will later love and respect her as a wife. They had a history. Which in a sense made it all the harder for him to betray the trust he had afforded the CIA.

  That summer, Higgins was the lion that didn't roar. He sat and waited, watching and brooding. He oversaw the Agency's operations as usual, but because of his seniority at the CIA, he was also able to observe and manipulate. He followed leads and noted sources and assets which could be beneficial.

  “I've got the authority to investigate the Polish operation,” he told Ferrera. “I'll follow the seam and see where it leads. See if I can find out who was behind it, who was the team leader, who was the gunman, but more importantly why Daniel was shot. You keep your head down and get yourself strong again.”

  For months, there had been nothing. Only what they knew from official sources. There had been a shooting of a Western spy as part of a Russian/Polish counter-intelligence operation. One confirmed kill, with the body being disposed of in a Warsaw funeral directors. The spy was there on the 'black', without diplomatic cover and was therefore deniable by the US, hence the CIA's distancing itself from the whole sorry mess.

  For Higgins, the leads led nowhere, and he knew he was hitting a wall. Nothing was coming out of Soviet Operations; nothing from the CIA station in Warsaw and the death of a junior officer in the Directorate of Plans was fast losing momentum and fading fast. There was a war on and in war, there are always casualties. The young CIA man would receive a star on the CIA's memorial wall and the family would receive the sympathy of a grateful US government and nation. Besides, said the naysayers, Poland was a Cold War backwater. Now Vietnam, that was where the real cut and thrust of intelligence work was going to be over the next few years. Real fighting, a real war!

  And then, just as both Higgins and Ferrera feared the trail had gone cold forever, they experienced a piece of luck that changed everything. It came in the shape of a disaffected Russian intelligence officer, who had made an offer to the CIA station in Helsinki.

  Chapter Four

  The report into the offer of intelligence by the KGB officer, Anatoli Galerkin, landed on the desk of the Director of Plans in early August of 1963. It was read, digested and the appropriate recommendations were made.

  One of those on the distribution list was the DP's assistant, Richard Higgins. There was a cover note attached to the file that said 'MACAW – Thought this may interest you.' MACAW was the codename for his ongoing, but so far sparse, investigation into the Warsaw Zoo shooting. The note was signed by the Deputy Division Chief of Soviet Ops, an old friend of Higgins' who he'd brought up through the ranks.

  He had sat in his office, sipped at his morning coffee and skimmed through the papers. It was when he reached the fifth page that he stopped and asked his secretary to cancel his appointments for the next hour. He settled himself back at his desk and began to read through the report again in more detail. Maybe, just maybe, he had something here.

  The CIA case officer responsible for the initial meeting with the possible future agent Galerkin, noted in his report;'Galerkin has a high pitched nasal whine that is not attractive to the ear, but fits his physical appearance. He is thin, pasty, shrew-like. He is a squealer and likes to make himself appear more important than he really is'.

  Higgins had immediately cabled the Helsinki Station, pulled rank and booked onto the next flight out. On the plane, Higgins had read over the handwritten case notes he'd taken from the official files. Comrade Galerkin was proving to be an interesting customer.

  The first agent meeting had taken place in a quiet back-street hotel in Helsinki, several weeks earlier. Security was tight around the defector and his family, just in case the Russians discovered his subterfuge. It was unlikely, but always a possibility. It had been at the end of the second meeting, when the CIA case officer had started to question him about Western penetration operations by the KGB. They had him running down his list of departments, Soviet policy and Russian intelligence effectiveness, before they started on the meat and potatoes of names and dates. What he'd told them showed that Galerkin had excellent access to good intelligence product.

  But Galerkin, being no fool, wanted assurances that he and his family would be protected when the time came for him to 'come over'. He was holding back his treasure chest of A1 intelligence, until he was convinced of the American's intentions. In order to give up this intelligence, Galerkin had asked, no demanded, that he meet with senior officers from Langley.

  Higgins saw an opportunity and it spurred him into action. A car from the Embassy was waiting for him when he landed. Fuck hotels and sleep, he thought. He told the driver, “Take me straight to see the Chief of Station.”

  It took three days of wrangling, calling in favors and not a little bullying of his junior officers, before Higgins was given permission to go and meet and assess the KGB man on the ground, face-to-face.

  It had certainly ruffled a few feathers with the senior men at Soviet Ops; it was, after all, their territory and their agent, but Higgins had seniority over all of them and was a ruthless political fighter when he had to be.

  The next day, Higgins was to meet Galerkin. The venue was the same small hotel near the park. The arrangements had been made by the local CIA station.

  Same hotel, same room, same time – we keep the continuity, Higgins had told them. “But I want to meet with him alone. Just the two of us, with no outside interference. I'll know within one meeting if he has anything of use to say,” he insisted to the case officers at the Helsinki Station. If the CIA men had any concerns about this unorthodox practice, they chose to keep it to themselves.

  Higgins travelled alone and calmly made his way up to the room. Before giving a light tap at the door, Higgins pressed the record button on the body-worn tape recorder in his inside pocket. The door opened and the KGB man stood there.

  The CIA case officer's description of Galerkin had been exact. He was small, thin and weasel-like, and had an irritating manner that instantly made people wince. The two men shook hands and settled down. Galerkin began the meeting nervously, but when he realized he was conferring with a Senior Executive Officer from Langley, he became much more open and animated.

  Higgins began his pitch, seeking to find out just how much this man knew. “So, Anatoli. I'm here to assess whether it would be beneficial for us to work together. I hope so, as I understand that you have some information we're keen to look at. I wondered if you would be willing to meet with me over the next few days, while I'm in town?”

  Galerkin began to protest, but Higgins cut him off. “Don't worry, these meetings won't last very long, an hour or so, nothing that would alert your people or arouse suspicions. Where do your people think you are now?”

  Galerkin's fingers were scratching at his trouser legs, his nerves evident. “I have told them that I am attempting to recruit a clerk in the Finnish Ministry of the Interior. I do know of such a person, and we have met several times, but I have not recruited him as a spy,” he declared proudly.

  Higgins thought about it. Not a bad cover story actually, plausible certainly. “Anatoli, as I say, our time here is short and I'm hoping you can help me. This meeting is partly to establish your bona fides and partly to establish a level of trust betwe
en two professionals such as us.”

  Galerkin nodded and Higgins could see that he was winning him over. The Russian smiled. “Of course I am flattered that you came from Washington to see me. I hope that I can help. What is your question?”

  Higgins craned forward on the edge of the bed and interlocked his fingers together, resting his chin on them. “I would like to hear about the shooting of one of my men, in the Warsaw Zoo.”

  * * *

  Galerkin had started slowly and then as he found his own pace he began to speak with a flourish. “So you know about the spy with the codename Svarog? No? He is something of a legend inside KGB. His reputation is that of a man who is ruthless. Krivitsky is his real name, Vladimir Krivitsky, but Svarog fits him much better, it is the God of fire who rains down flame on its enemies.”

  Higgins nodded, eager for the KGB man to go on. He felt the tape turning in the body mike underneath his shirt, hoping Galerkin's words were coming through clear.

  Galerkin continued. “He had fought bravely in the Great Patriotic War, where he had eliminated many Nazi agents. He had also been one of the first officers recruited to Russian Intelligence and had the favors of the KGB Director himself. This, I think, made him almost invulnerable inside the political infighting at the KGB. I first met him when I was attached to the Department of Western Operations. It had been a promotion for excellent work. I was very proud.”

  “Anatoli could you tell me what you were expected to do in this new position?” asked Higgins, trying to stop the Russian from getting distracted.

  Galerkin nodded enthusiastically. “My new job was to create cover identities and to manage the production of intelligence from KGB agents working in Europe. It was a very interesting job, one that allowed me access to much classified material from the West. Within a matter of weeks, I was ordered to the office of a senior KGB case officer; Major Krivitsky. He had been recently seconded to Western Operations following an aborted operation in Poland that had resulted in the rolling up of a Western intelligence network. Apparently, someone had been killed as part of the operation… rumored to be a Western spy, but I did not know the details… I was still attached to a different department then.”