A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1) (40 page)

New York – April 1965

It was late at night when the telephone rang at the private residence. A flicking of the study room light, a tightening of the dressing gown belt, a rub of the eyes and the man picked up the handset. “Hello!”

“This is SENTINEL.”

The man paused to search his memory. A codename! Then he remembered. “Good to hear from you, it's been a while.”

“Did I disturb you? What with it being the middle of the night?”

“Not at all, SENTINEL, I had to get up anyway, the phone was ringing.” It was an old and terrible joke that had passed between them for years. “To what do I owe the pleasure at this godforsaken time?”

“I've a little present for you. Some information, unofficial at the moment, just between you and me, and I wondered if you could shed some light on it.”

The man rubbed the sleep from his eyes and tried to focus. “If I can, sure. Anything for an old friend, even an unofficial one.”

“It's about an operation your people are running in Europe.”

“Is this line secured, SENTINEL?” The man knew that his private phone line was 'cleaned' and monitored daily to ensure no third party was using electronic measures to 'bug' the line. But he couldn't be sure his caller's line had the same integrity.

“No, it's not been cleaned. That's why I'd like to meet face to face. I'm in New York.”

The man laughed. “And it couldn't have waited until morning? Jeez.”

“What can I say; I was eager to speak to you. Would tomorrow morning be convenient? Say about eleven.”

“Sure, just swing by the office.”

“Ah, would it be possible to have a chat somewhere more neutral? I was thinking of 350 Fifth Avenue, on the eighty-sixth floor. You know where I mean, don't you? I've never been before and would relish the opportunity.”

“How very theatrical, not like you.”

“Well, at least there'll be no one in a building overlooking us. Plus, it makes it easier to spot anyone taking an unhealthy interest in two old friends having a chat.”

“Yeah, plus we can always toss them over the side if we don't like the look of them!”

* * *

350 Fifth Avenue is better known by its more iconic title of the Empire State Building. The lower observation deck is situated on the eighty-sixth floor and it was here that Masterman stood at 10.55am.

His early arrival had nothing to do with the covert meeting and running a counter-surveillance assessment. Instead, he just wanted to spend some time enjoying the spectacular vista. It had been well worth both the cost in time and the extra expense as he took in the sprawling view of Manhattan.

“I'll say one thing for you Brits; you certainly do pick the most impressive meeting points.”

Masterman turned and looked at the man walking towards him. It had been, what? Four, five years since they'd last worked together in the bad old days of Berlin. CIA officer Troy Dempsey was of a similar hue to Masterman. Tall, powerful in the shoulders, he looked like an American Football linebacker. The well-cut suit seemed to be molded to his body, his physical strength and the lilting Texas drawl belying a sharp and ruthless mind.

“Troy, it's good to see you again. Come, let's have a stroll and enjoy the view,” said Masterman. They walked casually on; each man aware of the people around them and each checking for signs of people showing an interest.

“How's work these days? I hear your people closed down the old office,” said Masterman.

Dempsey frowned. It had been a torrid few years for him at the CIA. After being one of the prime architects of the Executive Action department, the unit responsible for covert action and assassination, he had watched in horror as the CIA top floor and congress had essentially stripped Executive Action down to a shadow of its former self. Operations which had been months in the planning had been dismantled overnight, Grade 1 agents had been dropped and left out in the cold, and loyal officers had been thrown to the political wolves.

Dempsey had been lucky. He was too much of a valued CIA man to be let loose into the commercial world. Instead, he'd been moved sideways and given a lesser post, running operations against Iron Curtain assets at the United Nations. He shrugged as if it was just one of those things. “You know the brass; they always know best. Makes you wonder what we'd all do without them. So what's this all about, Stephen? Not that I'm not glad to see you again, you understand. It's just that coming all this way to see me, well, it's mighty intriguing.”

Masterman smiled. “I hope that alone tells you how important my people consider this information. I mean, flying first class to New York, have you seen the price of airline tickets these days? It appears, and I admit it is a little unusual, but not without precedent, that we are on opposing sides on this occasion.”

Dempsey's head snapped around, military style and he looked hard at Masterman, trying to read what the British intelligence officer was up to. “You're kidding?” he said.

They'd stopped and both men stared out across the Hudson River. The observation deck was growing busy with tourists and sightseers, so the two spies moved along several times until they found a spot where they wouldn't be disturbed. They spoke casually in a level tone; as old friends do when they're having a private conversation.

Masterman gave the CIA man the edited version of events; technical surveillance which had uncovered an American plot to kill British and European citizens, the assassins operating in Europe and even the possibility of attempting a hit on British soil. He gave just enough information to get Dempsey interested and laid out the evidence bit-by-bit to keep him hooked. He retained the active involvement of the British Redaction team, at least for the time being, for no intelligence officer likes to give away his ace too early. That would come soon enough, but at a tactical time of Masterman's choosing. Now it was time to twist the knife.

“So it seems that someone in the CIA has returned to their old ways and hired a bunch of killers to attack various targets across Europe. This team has had several scores – Hamburg, Zurich, Lichtenstein, if my reports are correct,” said Masterman.

Dempsey's face filled with contempt. He'd heard some crazy shit in his time at the Agency, but this was off the wall. “Ummm… obviously I can neither confirm nor deny anything, but it does all sound rather unlikely. Impossible, in fact! The Agency would never target British citizens without consent from your offices first; besides, what makes you think it's a CIA operation? It could be another service, or even a criminal organization, taking it upon itself to get involved. What's the intel and where did you come by it?”

“I'd rather not say at the moment, but needless to say, we have it on the very best authority that Americans are involved.”

“Bullshit! Besides, you know the agreement; no poaching on each other's turf!”

Masterman knew of the CIA/SIS agreement, certainly, but he also knew that it wouldn't count for much if some over-ambitious zealot wanted to change it on a whim. “Indeed. However, it appears that the message doesn't seem to have reached the ears of the contractors. If I were to say the codename QJ/WIN to you, would it mean anything?”

The question blindsided Dempsey, and for a fraction of a second, the shock of hearing the secret codename of a CIA contract agent had thrown him. Even in a secret organization like the CIA, people talk, and as Dempsey had been an active operations officer in the clandestine service, he more than anyone was aware of the 'legends' that certain contract agents had become, even if he didn't know their individual details.

Dempsey paused, his bright blue eyes taking in the Englishman's face, searching for any signs of deception. He knew he had to tread carefully. “Ummm, now you know I can't confirm nor deny anything. It sounds like bad fiction. That stuff just doesn't happen in the real world.”

“Well then, it appears that the Agency has a bit of a mystery on its hands; namely, that someone out there is recruiting hired killers, former CIA contract agents, to actively murder people in the name of the American government. It sounds like you either have a bit of a leaky ship, or a bit of a rogue elephant,” said Masterman.

Dempsey turned away for a moment, to collect his thoughts before looking back over his shoulder. “Then we've reached a bit of an impasse. Unless you can give me something more concrete, like evidence, I can't really approach anyone at the Agency about it. I'd get laughed out of Langley.”

“I understand, Troy,” said Masterman, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a sealed envelope. “That's as much as we can provide; it's not everything by any means, but it should get you started. A few names, dates, locations – you know the way these things work.”

“Well, let's hope it's enough to keep the Director of Plans convinced,” said Dempsey, still not certain that he was going to be able to sell this to his superiors.

“Ah, there we may have a problem. I'm sure the DP is a trustworthy chap, but the condition of this is that it goes directly to the top. The DCI only, I'm afraid,” said Masterman. “Those are the conditions from my Chief.”

Dempsey frowned. “The Director of Central Intelligence! Stephen, there is no way the DCI would see me, even if he did believe me. I'm an operations officer, in a relatively outlying intelligence post. The guy probably can't even remember me.”

“Don't concern yourself too much. My Chief will be getting in touch with your DCI sometime over the next day or so. We'd like you to read and digest the information first. Who knows, it might be a lot of nonsense, it might even be explainable, or it might just be another scandal lurking around the corner for the CIA. At least this way, your people can chop the head off any rogue agents before they start a great big bloody war,” said Masterman, gripping his friend's arm in what he hoped was a congenial manner.

Dempsey ruminated. He couldn't imagine the Agency killing its own agents. Pay them off or imprison them, yes. But killing a contractor would send shockwaves through the intelligence network. Word would soon get around that the Agency was free and easy about 'eliminating' its own contractors at the drop of a hat. They would never get anyone to work for them again! He turned to Masterman and spoke, not unkindly. “I don't know whether to thank you or punch you, Stephen.”

Masterman laughed. “A little of both, I would imagine. But I hope that you'll see this as an opportunity to halt something very dangerous and to investigate to see if you have a rogue element working inside your organization.”

The two men walked towards the elevator; the rain had started to come in, and their brief meeting was at an end. The tourists were remaining behind and a tour guide had started shouting out his pitch. Masterman pulled on his gloves and Dempsey stuffed the envelope inside his coat. As they made it into the elevator, Dempsey remembered something from their Berlin days.

“How's the little guy from Berlin? What was his name… ape… chimp… something like that? Protégé of yours wasn't he?”

“Gorilla.”

Dempsey nodded. “Ah, Gorilla, the British Tom Horn. How is he these days?”

“You sound almost jealous. He's fine.”

“I tell you, Stephen, I never saw anyone shoot like him. Maybe we should hire him to solve our rogue agent problem,” said Dempsey in a startling moment of perception which sent shivers down Masterman's spine.

“Grant is fine. He's fast gaining a reputation as one of our best field agents. I'll give him your best, Troy.”

* * *

Troy Dempsey hit the streets and walked away, heading back to his office in the Rockefeller Center. He was tempted to break out into a run, a run that would take him all the way back to Washington in a hunt for a possible infiltrator and a traitor.

He of course did not run. He was a seasoned officer and knew better than to show his hand to a 'Brit', even if they were old friends.

So he sauntered along the street, taking his time and acting like he didn't have a care in the world. But he had to admit that what he had now, in this moment, was a new sense of purpose and determination which he hadn't experienced for many a good year.

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia – April 1965

The return to Langley and the subsequent visit to the offices of the Director of Central Intelligence had been brief to say the least,
thought Dempsey. An Agency car had collected him from the airport and driven him straight through to CIA headquarters. He was whisked upstairs, through the security gates and past the minimal amount of people necessary. The DCI, obviously a savvy operator, wanted to keep as many people out of the loop as possible.

He entered the inner sanctum and was greeted by an air of tension. A brief handshake and the DCI laid out the problem. “SIS have found something Troy, something that their Chief considers serious enough to pass on to us. They have asked for you personally; I understand that you worked with one of their senior men in the past. He has suggested you as the initial point of contact.”

Dempsey gave the DCI a brief outline of his dealings with Masterman. “We devilled together in the bad old days,” he said, as way of an explanation of why Masterman seemed to have chosen a washed up CIA officer.

“I understand that you have some investigation experience?” asked the DCI.

Dempsey nodded. “Yes, Mr. Director, I served with the Counter Intelligence Corps at the end of the war. Mainly rounding up Nazis and catching a few spies.”

The DCI leaned back in his chair, secure in the knowledge that he had the right man for the job. “Excellent, well, I must say this dossier makes disturbing reading. If it's true, then we do have a problem, a rogue elephant problem.”

Dempsey looked concerned and in truth, was unsure how best to approach his next statement. “So I take it that this operation we've stumbled upon is in no way a legitimate CIA operation. Can I just confirm that?”

The DCI had started drumming his fountain pen on the cover of the file, tapping out a tune Dempsey couldn't quite work out. “I can categorically state that this is not one of our operations. Furthermore, I will not be raked over the coals like my predecessor, in front of all kinds of god-awful committees and hearings because we're being blamed for some kind of false flag operation. If there is a problem, I want it stamped out or contained.”

Dempsey knew the current DCI had been brought in to replace the mishandling of the Agency's affairs following the sacking of its previous incumbent. No one had liked the previous Director, who many at CIA considered way out of his depth both in terms of intelligence operations and as a leader of men.

“I want you to look under the blanket; find where this dossier from SIS leads us,” continued the DCI. “You work directly for me and answer only to me. I want answers, but I want it done with discretion.”

“What about the Office of Security, surely this is their department?” said Dempsey, who had no inclination to get embroiled in an internal turf war.

“At the moment, the OS is out of the loop. I want an initial investigation to see if this rumor has any credence. If not, then no one needs to be any the wiser. I'd like to keep the security people out of it as long as possible, at least until we have something more concrete,” said the DCI.

Dempsey considered this. At least with the DCI at his back, he would have full Agency authority. “I'll need to look through any number of files and interrogate any number of leads. What if I hit a wall?”

The DCI picked up a sealed envelope which had been lying on his desk. It was made from good quality paper with the CIA crest on the flap. He handed it to Dempsey. “That's your keys to the kingdom, at least as far as the CIA is concerned. You hit a wall, you show them that. Boiled down, it basically says that you speak for me. If you want something, you get it or the officer involved will report to me shortly before he begins a new posting somewhere extreme, such as Outer Mongolia.”

“I'll need help,” said Dempsey.

“You can have one officer. Someone you trust, and an office down the corridor. If anyone asks, you're working on a special project for the Director's office.”

The meeting ended as quickly as it had started. Another handshake and then the DCI was escorting him to the door of the office. Dempsey hadn't even had time to take in the view. As they reached the door, the DCI gave him one last parting shot. “Oh, and Troy, I have two simple rules; make it quick and don't fail!”

* * *

Dempsey decided to hit the ground running. He'd set up a temporary office in the east wing, somewhere quiet where he wouldn't be bothered. Then he made his way down to the Intelligence Division to see if he could find the man he was looking for.

Frank Wellings wasn't in his office, but he was down in the cafeteria enjoying a well-earned break and enjoying a cup of 'joe'.

“Holy shit! When did you get back in town? I thought you were hitting the bars down in Manhattan these days.”

Wellings was a rangy forty-year-old who had worked with the anti-Castro movement down in Florida, prior to the Bay of Pigs. Dempsey had seconded him to several Executive Action operations prior to the EA department being blown. These days, he was stuck assessing agent reports for the Northern Europe Section of the Intelligence Directorate. In his opinion, it sucked.

Dempsey knew him as a good man who knew how to keep a secret and was possessed with a good investigative mind. He deserved better than being stuck in a cubbyhole and moving paper around. He sat down at the table next to Wellings and sipped at his coffee. “Oh, I've been dragged back to run something. I've got something for you. You busy these days?”

“Oh yeah, sure, rushed off my feet. There are always paperclips that need putting away,” said Wellings, loosening his tie.

“I need you to do some snooping around for me. Quiet and discreet. Nothing official, at least not yet, not until we have something concrete.”

“And this comes from?”

For an answer Dempsey merely raised one finger and pointed it directly up into the sky. “God himself,” he said.

Wellings leaned back in his chair and whistled. The DCI himself. It must be explosive. He stared back hard at Dempsey and then a wide grin spread across his face. “When do we start?”

* * *

A day later and the combined forces of Troy Dempsey and Frank Wellings were in full swing. They had an office, phone lines, access to files and the keys to Heaven from the DCI.

“Okay, we start with what we know, which is not a lot. The principals, let's begin with them. We start with the agents and see if it leads us back to the major players in this little drama,” said Dempsey, grabbing an office notepad. He began to write:

The first point of call was to pull QJ/WIN's 201 file. A 201 file was a document held for every CIA agent or 'asset' which had been recruited by the Agency. Fundamentally, it gave a biography of the individual and how the case officer involved in the recruitment saw the running of the agent and how it should progress.

The file on Marquez was extensive. Dempsey had put in a 'Priority File Request' to the CIA's Registry and thirty minutes later it was delivered by one of the clerks. He signed for it and then flicked through the agent's file, noting the man's last known address; Luxembourg.
Well, that fits with the intelligence from SIS,
thought Dempsey.
So far so good.

But it was the scale of operations that QJ/WIN had been involved in that amazed him. The agent had initially been part of the CIA's Soviet counter-espionage project, before being upgraded to work on several Executive Action assassination operations. There were no specific details in the files, but the names and locations stood out a mile; Lumumba/Congo, Trujillo/Dominican Republic, Castro/Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador.

There was a mention of several operations being conducted with a fellow agent; WI/ROGUE. A call to the Registry and another thirty-minute wait before the knock came at the door and that file too, was dropped on his desk. He signed for it and then tossed the WI/ROGUE file over to Wellings. “Here, get up to speed on this,” he said, before returning to the biography of Marquez.

The rest of the file contained numerous assessments by QJ/WIN's various case officers.

“
He is a man who can rationalize his actions and can ruthlessly execute his orders.
”

And so on and so forth. The agent was highly thought of. So, what went wrong?

The last page of the file revealed all. In late 1963 QJ/WIN was 'terminated' as an agent and the reason was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Since the start of the oversight committees following the Kennedy assassination, and Capital Hill's witch hunt within the American intelligence community – most notably the CIA – the Office of Covert Action had been depleted to almost an administrative section.

Under the leadership of its first Chief, it had a hand or organized roles in the covert world, mainly against high profile targets such as Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo. But once the senators and politicians had started delving deeper, it had been given a choice; toe the line and downsize, or we scatter the Agency to the winds. The new Director of Central Intelligence had capitulated and backed down.

A new Chief had been brought in to reorganize Covert Action; the old Chief moved sideways to a posting in Europe, and the responsibility for paramilitary action was being passed more and more to the mainstream Army and Navy, and less was being done by the civilian operators at the Agency. These days, the Office of Covert Action, or ORCA as it was known, was there only to assist with paperwork and pre-operational planning. ORCA had been neutered.

“So what do we have?” said Dempsey, once the files had been returned to the registry.

Wellings glanced up from his desk on the opposite side of the room and shrugged. “We have a couple of former contract agents who have been reactivated by someone claiming to be CIA. The reason seems to be to eliminate perceived KGB agents in Europe. Someone's definitely trying to screw up a network. The question is, why?”

“Usually it's money or revenge, that's if we take the professional reasons for this type of operation out of the equation. Seeing as this operation is well-funded, I guess we can rule out extortion and if we're to believe the DCI, then it only leaves us with one logical outcome – revenge.”

“Someone certainly knew where to look to find those guys.”

They both sat for a minute, digesting what they'd read. Then it hit Dempsey like a hammer. “Shit, that's it… get those files back up here. Call Registry and get them back now!”

The clerk from Registry came back, lugging both the files. He was barely through the door when Dempsey grabbed them from him. “Come on, come on,” he said, his voice quickening with the thrill of excitement. Could it be the break that could open it up? He flicked through to the last page of the file that bore the title 'ACCESS LIST', the document every officer had to sign whenever they wished to read through a file.

He ran his finger down the line until he came to the dates. The penultimate date was January 1964 and was signed by the Chief of Registry prior to stamping it 'Terminated Agent'. The only other one was in September of 1964, followed by a signature and title.

Dempsey turned and did the same with the WI/ROGUE file. Once again, there was the January 1964 date, the Chief of Registry and the 'Terminated Agent' stamp. The final one on the list was the same date as the other agent; September 1964 and the same signature and title.

“What is it?
Who
is it?” asked Wellings.

Dempsey turned and stared. “Oh shit… it's the Assistant Director of Plans. It's Richard Higgins!”