by James Quinn
“Fine. How is everything here?” said Grant.
The Harlequin nodded. “Perfect. It is all set up. I can brief you when we get to our operations base.”
Grant sat back in the seat watching the scenery change on their journey. An hour later, they had arrived at their Forward Operations Base; a small bungalow that had been rented in Spallerhof, a small suburb just outside Linz. The FOB was of sufficient distance away from the target location in Mostviertel that they could operate freely and unhindered.
It was as cosy as a rental property could hope to be and in many ways was a facsimile of the apartment in Paris. Grant noted that the living area had been set up with military precision: a desk complete with the information relating to the operation; weapons and surveillance gear laid out on the floor neatly; radio communications and, in the corner, a hastily tailored burn box, consisting of a metal rubbish bin and lighter fluid, in case they were interrupted and they had to destroy any evidence.
“Do you want to start now or freshen up first?” asked the Harlequin, closing the door behind him and checking for any unwanted attention on the street.
Grant shook his head. “Let me take a quick shower and we'll go over everything. Do we have any food?”
“Yes. I can make you something to eat.”
“Good. I brought some good quality bourbon,” said Grant, checking out his room.
The Harlequin frowned. “I never drink on operations.”
Gorilla shrugged. “You might not, sunshine, but I'm retired and possibly going on a suicide mission, so I think three fingers of good quality hooch is not too much to ask.”
The Harlequin smiled and nodded. “Take your shower. I'll have everything ready when you come out.”
Grant spent the next fifteen minutes washing away the grime of travel and, more importantly, preparing his mind for what he was about to do. When he emerged washed, clean and refreshed, he made his way into living room to find the Harlequin sitting at the table, ready and waiting. A plate of sandwiches was set before him.
“Okay, let's go over everything one last time,” said Grant, standing over him, his hands behind his back.
They talked of the timeframe, the surveillance hide that the Harlequin would set up over the target location, the route that Gorilla would use to enter the grounds and the access point he would utilise into the property.
“We can expect a decent level of cloud cover tomorrow night,” said the Harlequin.
“Excellent!”
“Once you are inside, it's up to you how you play it. You have the covert option and the disguise option.”
Grant thought about it. “I'll use an element of both. The nearer I get to Sobolev's suite…”
“Suite 152.”
“… yes, 152, then I'll probably use the disguise option,” suggested Grant.
“Once in the room, you know the drill. We want it as bloody as possible, shots to the head only. Those are the orders.”
Grant nodded, tracing the route in his mind. “Understood. And my route out?”
“Out of the room, take a left along the hallway to a service staircase and down. After that, you move quickly across the golf course and I will be waiting for you at the edge of the woods. From there, we move to the car and away,” said the Harlequin.
Gorilla moved his eyes over the blueprints before finally stopping on something. “That service elevator… can you talk me through where that comes out?”
The Harlequin looked down and traced the corridor with his finger. “It seems to come out…”
It was at that precise moment that Gorilla Grant brought the heavy, beaver-tailed leather SAP down hard on the back of the Harlequin's neck. The younger man grunted once, and then rolled forward, upending the table as his weight crashed into it. Grant raised the impact weapon again in case a second strike was needed, but it wasn't; the Harlequin was out cold. Gorilla reasoned that the Harlequin was young, strong, tough and fit, so he wouldn't be out for long. He would have to move fast.
The Harlequin awoke to a throbbing head and the feel of cold ice on the back of his neck. He was on the floor in the lounge, his legs splayed out before him, and his hands were both handcuffed to the radiator. Seated before him on the leather sofa was Gorilla Grant, holding the Sig Sauer with the suppressor attached, and while the weapon wasn't directly pointed in his direction, the Harlequin was under no illusions that the old assassin would use it if he had to. There was a glass of bourbon on the table next to him; it had the look of being half empty rather than half full.
“You were only out for about ten minutes,” said Grant. “I hit you harder than I meant to, I'm sorry, but the ice pack should help in a little while.”
The Harlequin said nothing, simply glared at his enemy. There was no point in shouting or screaming for help; they were both on a deniable operation, after all. No, if Gorilla Grant had wanted him dead, he would already be that way. This was something else… something he wasn't sure about yet.
“What is it?” said Grant, not even moving his head from his forward view. “You obviously have something you want to say.”
The Harlequin stayed silent for a few more minutes, so Grant decided to fill the gap. Fuck it, he thought. If his plan was to come to fruition, he had to get this young man on his side in some way. Besides, what did he have to lose? So he opened up the conversation, if not as allies, at least as one professional killer to another. On that at least, they had common ground.
“I never wanted to do the job I used to do, you know?” said Grant. “Sometimes, so I've discovered, you just allow yourself to be put in a pigeon hole. And once you're in, it's bloody hard to get out, especially if, like you and me, you're good at what you do. I certainly didn't want my daughter being dragged into this life. For men like you and me, yes, it's a part of the life we lead, but family… innocents… that is a violation. It goes against the rules of our trade.”
The Harlequin's fists were clenched, his knuckles white. Finally he spoke. “Is that what you tell yourself? That you are above the rest of us, that you have never killed innocents?”
There was bitterness there. Good, thought Grant, I've touched a nerve and this boy wants to get something off his chest. Gorilla Grant smiled sadly. “Oh, I've done bad things to bad people, and it looks like I'll be doing it again over the next few days. But innocents… no, not my style.”
The Harlequin sneered. “I've waited my whole life for this moment, to finally have the chance to kill you! My father's enemy, the murderer of my mother. Do you know what you took away from us?” he yelled, the cords on his neck standing out. “What you took away from me?” He swallowed hard, then continued in a hard, icy tone, “I'm not going to beg. If you're going to execute me, you're going to do it no matter what, so fuck you, Gorilla Grant.”
Gorilla looked closer into the furious face of the Harlequin. “I understand, but I think you should know something before you do. I think I should tell you something first.”
The eyes of the Harlequin were ablaze with hatred and barely controlled violence.
“I knew who you were the first moment I saw you in Rome on that street, and by the time I looked into your face as we were trying to escape, it only confirmed it. You could really only be one person, isn't that right… Peter?” said Grant.
There was silence, as if the Harlequin was trying to decipher if this was a ruse that was being played before Gorilla used violence and killed him anyway.
“Fuck you. No one knows my name. My identity is secret. How…?”
“Your name is Peter. Your birthday is the 12th of May 1961,” said Grant, smiling. How long had he wanted to say those words out loud for someone, anyone, to hear?
“How do you…”
“So listen to me, Peter. I don't want to have to hit you again with the SAP and I definitely don't want to have to use the gun but, just for the record, I will do both if I have to. So please behave. I want a few uninterrupted hours of your time and I really want you to listen to me. Do you understand?”
There was a stubborn silence from the Harlequin that lasted a few moments and then he nodded in acceptance.
“Thank you,” said Grant. “When I've finished, you can ask me anything or you can choose to ignore everything that I've said. That is up to you. If after that you don't believe me… well, then I'll put a fucking bullet in my own head and save you the bother, because it's all an old man has left to give you. But I'd like you to indulge me for what might be the last time in my life. This is my last will and testament. Tomorrow, I will complete the deal that we have and carry out the contract on Sobolev. If I'm still alive after that, and you still feel the need, then I will let you try to do whatever you think you have to. Do you understand?”
Another nod from the Harlequin; he would have his revenge against the murderer of his mother one way or the other. He had no doubts that this old assassin would fight and fight back hard; in a sense, that made it all the sweeter.
Jack Grant took a final sip of his bourbon to steady his nerves and then looked down at the younger man. “Peter, I'm going to tell you a story, a story that I haven't shared with anyone for a long, long time. You may think you know the whole story of your life already, from old files, Ulrich Vogel, half-remembered memories, but I'm here to tell you that you don't. You have no clue about what really happened in Berlin. It's a story about spies and it happened nearly thirty years ago.”
And then Jack Grant fell back into the rabbit hole of his long forgotten past…
Book 3: Aim The Weapon
Chapter One
Berlin – February 1960
Jack Grant flew back to the island after two weeks' leave. That was how Berliners thought of themselves; living on an island. If you were from Frankfurt or Munich or Dresden, you were an outsider; only Berliners considered themselves islanders.
The two weeks' leave had dragged. In the first week, he had been given the duty of escorting Simon Brown's body back to the UK. He had stayed long enough to sign the paperwork and officially hand the body over to the family undertakers. He had ordered a wreath on behalf of the Gutterfighters in Berlin and the lads had promised to raise a glass to Simon on the day of his funeral.
Simon Brown's death at the hands of the, now free, KGB assassin had been a timely reminder to all of them that they were playing a rough and dangerous game in Berlin. It wasn't the kind of war that most of them had been used to, but it was still a war nonetheless and in this fight, the enemy weren't afraid to shed blood.
Jack Grant had attended the funeral in Norwich and was surprised to find that Brown had been married and had a small child. Because of his youthful looks, the rest of the team had always assumed that he was single and fresh out of university, when in fact he was a dedicated family man. Grant had stayed in the background during the funeral and had then slunk off unnoticed when it was over. His task completed and his respect paid to a fallen comrade, he was now free to do as he pleased for ten nights before he had to return to Berlin.
He could have travelled to see his sister and her husband in Scotland; would have been welcomed, had his old room back. But the thought of dodging the questions and trying to make small talk about issues that he knew nothing about, or cared about, didn't interest him. So he had stayed in London; wandering the streets, getting drunk and picking up any available women in the bars and pubs he regularly frequented. In truth, he hated it and couldn't wait to get back to Berlin.
Berlin had become his addiction; the city had a feel and danger all of its own. He missed the rain, the slick streets bouncing neon off the pavements, the fluctuation between the desperate people of the East and the less desperate people of the West. The place was raw and edgy and had a grim underworld feel to it that Grant could identify with. There was also the added excitement of the job that he was doing; a secret agent operating on the front-line of the Cold War. The combination of the intelligence work and the gritty streets of Berlin gave it all a sense of unreality, as if he was playing out a role in a movie.
He was surprised to see that it was Masterman who had come to pick him up from the airport. The colonel was in his Berlin street clothes, so Grant assumed that he had been out on operations before he came to Gatow to collect him off the RAF transport plane.
They drove through the darkness, allowing Grant to acclimatise to the environment again.
“Oh, the boys are busy… couple of surveillance jobs, bit of recon over the border, we even had a burglary job to steal some documentation stamps,” replied Masterman, when Grant asked what was happening in town.
“Well, I'm ready to get back to work, boss,” said Grant. He hated missing out on team jobs and the thought of the rest of the lads having 'interesting' operations rankled slightly.
Masterman nodded. “Yes, that's what I wanted to have a bit of a chat with you about. Now that Simon's gone, I need a chap I can trust, one that knows how to think on his feet when it comes to the intelligence side of things. Some of the boys are… well, let's just say better suited to just the purely physical side of things. But you, I think, have the potential to flit between the cerebral as well. Got a little job for you. Think of it as a nice way of easing you back into the swing of things after your R&R. Anyway, I want you in there, making the Gutterfighters' presence known.”
“Okay,” said Grant, sounding unconvinced. “What is it?”
“It's a bit of a babysitting job, bit of counter surveillance, and a bit of bodyguarding. Broadway is sending over a new SIS case officer from London. Apparently, they have a new possible source on the East German side of things, codename EMERALD. The chap from London needs a field security officer to watch his back during meetings and then, when he flies back to London, you will take on the role of linkman with the source – drop messages, brush pasts, agent debriefings, all the usual tricks of the trade, before writing it all up for SIS Berlin Station. You up for it?”
“Do I have a choice?” replied Grant, checking the side mirror for signs of surveillance as they made their way towards the Gutterfighters' base.
Masterman swung the car round to the left. They would do another tour of the block, just to be on the safe side. “Not really. You start tomorrow. The London chap goes by the name of Grenham-Smythe. He's a little highly strung, bit of a playground bully – no wonder they keep him manacled to a desk back at Broadway.”
Now Grant definitely didn't like how this was playing out.
“But,” said Masterman, “he's nothing you can't handle if he gets too uppity. Besides, it will do you good, help broaden your scope in the intelligence game.”
Masterman looked over at Gorilla, who was slumped down in his seat, sulking. He smiled to himself and couldn't resist saying, “Just whatever you do, don't thump this one like you thumped all the other officers. I can't get you out of prison twice, Gorilla.”
For the Gutterfighters, they were very much left out in the cold about the importance of EMERALD; at least until the day the next day when Masterman called them all into the Ops room. The Gutterfighters sat watching him, waiting for their boss to speak, while to Masterman's left, standing in the shadows, was a tall, thin, stern-faced man in a tweed suit. Masterman introduced him as Grenham-Smythe.
“Our friends over at SIS Berlin want a bit of assistance in getting close to a source that they have an interest in. Mr Grenham-Smythe here will be our point of contact with SIS and will be handling the management of EMERALD personally. Now…”
“Yes, thank you, Masterman. I'll take it from here.” The voice was plummy and aloof. Rodney Grenham-Smythe was a fifty-something-year-old tin-pot dictator who had spent the war running some dodgy sources as part of SIME – Secret Intelligence Middle East – and would tell anyone who would listen about that fact. He stepped forward out of the shadows and took centre stage; a flick of his cuffs and a rising of the chin to look down at the street rats seated before him, gave the man a look of arrogance and disdain.
There was a shared annoyance among the Gutterfighters, too; nobody interrupted their boss
like that! But if the superior-sounding Grenham-Smythe noticed, he didn't let on. Officer class, the worse kind, thought Grant. Likes to give orders but spends most of his time behind a desk, running the world. Gorilla fucking hated him on sight.
“I have succeeded in establishing preliminary communication with what we hope will be a long-term source that has access to the highest offices of the East German security services. I will be in Berlin to handle the details of that relationship and to set up a feasible and long-lasting communication strategy,” said Grenham-Smythe, before pausing and waiting for a round of applause.
None came. Instead, it was Tiny, in his usual forthright manner, who spoke up and said, “So what do you need us for, then?”
“The Covert Operations Group will be put at my exclusive disposal while communication and formal relationships are established,” said Grenham-Smythe proudly.
There was mumbling and rolling of eyes among the Gutterfighters; they all had operations of their own to carry out and being farmed out en masse to one operation would put months of work either in jeopardy or on hold. Finally, it was Masterman who stepped forward, his considerable-sized frame towering over Grenham-Smythe.
“I'm sorry, Rodney, but that is not going to happen. That is not what was agreed with London or SIS Berlin,” said Masterman coolly.
“I have executive authority…”
“Not in this case, you don't. We are there to assist, act as a quick reaction force certainly, but I simply cannot suspend COG operations for the sake of one, as of yet unverified, possible agent.”
“This operation takes precedence over everything else!” snapped Grenham-Smythe.
Masterman smiled. “Rodney, dear chap, we are a long way from London, and can I suggest that it is better to have COG inside the tent pissing out, rather outside the tent pissing in?”
Grenham-Smythe's face was slowly turning red, but Masterman didn't give him time to explode in frustration. Instead, he offered him a salve. “So here's how we will handle it. I'll give you one of my best men for your operation on a full-time basis, with the option of bringing in the rest of the Gutterfighters as and when they are required. How does that sound?”
