Rogue Agent

By Les Mason

Rogue Agent, the second thriller in the Leon trilogy, continues the extraordinary adventures of a Mid-East CIA specialist one year after his exploits in Empty Quarter.

Istanbul and the South Aegean provide an exotic backdrop for a heart-thumping thriller that pits Jewish CIA intelligence officer, Leon Loeb, against his own agency.

Something has gone horribly awry and Loeb must not only keep himself alive, but also the delectable Frances, who holds the key to a series of hitherto unconnected political assassinations. Frances beguiles Loeb causing him to forget dispassion and first principles. Alone and on the lamb, the odds weigh heavily against them both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Les Mason
• Release date: Aug 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780994847218

Les Mason

Born in St. Helens UK, Mason moved to London as a child and now lives in Toronto Canada. A partnership in a film production company led to an interest in writing the thriller novel and a writing grant from the Toronto Arts Council. Mason also co-edited the Canadian Crime Writers’ Association newsletter, Fingerprints.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

PINK MIST GALLERY

The first print brought back an unsettling memory: his first woman.

Despite harsh midday light she looked clear-featured and radiant, belying the advancing years. Twenty years earlier Lisa Velásquez, Latin beauty queen, had garnered many titles, including Miss Chile and Miss Latin America, with a face that could stop pacemakers, and a body that could all but arrest the earth’s rotation. A mature, delectable woman who had clearly aged better than most, despite the prodigious head start nature had lavishly endowed. Lisa had done well in life and taken meticulous care.

All the foregoing, only to bring her to this captured moment—her final millisecond of life.

He sipped strong coffee and wished the black and white print rendered better detail. They always enlarged badly. Grain became boulders even on the finest grade paper from the modified 16mm Minox camera’s low resolution and tiny negative. He tilted the print and tried to define the expression in her indistinct eyes.

When she married Bonito Gomez she must have been... what? Twenty-five... twenty-six, thereabouts, he ruminated to himself. Gomez probably thought he’d died and gone to heaven. The brutal, semi-educated mestizos wasn’t in her class by any stretch, despite being well on his way up the power spiral, killing as he went. Just a thug—a common, avaricious bandito—with grand aspirations that somehow worked out.

Perhaps Lisa saw that in him; the political potential in his mongrel face—the instinctive way he selected and disposed of everyone that mattered. She could never have remained oblivious to Bonito’s cruel raison d’être.

By the time he’d become firmly entrenched as head of state security in the Pinilla regime she’d presented him with three sons and been witness to cartloads of his special handiwork.

Before her violent death, had Bonito taken a chance—confided his subversion—told her he’d been turned? Probably not. Greed did most of the work, taking him to the threshold. He teetered, almost there, but needed one last push to make him wholly ours. The decision came down. Lisa would be the final outrage.

The Turkish coffee tasted unusually bitter tonight. He diluted it with water from melted ice cubes, ignoring the lavish selection of alcohol, and closed the small refrigerator. A moment later he resumed his glossy memories that were strewn across the hotel bed.

She’d been an absolute beauty by any standard, even at the instant of death. Smiling as she exited the Plaza De-Angeles, surrounded by security and the inevitable retinue of admirers. He remembered the moment as she adjusted the white long-sleeved gloves and headed for the bulletproof limousine, swinging those magnificent hips that childbirth had failed to decimate. Her outfit, pure haute couture as always, included a wide-brimmed hat set at a rakish forward angle. Pieces of it would be found more than a hundred yards away on the steps of the main entrance and in the fountains that lined the courtyard.

She never opened the car door herself, which inevitably meant a pause. He knew he could take her down as she moved, but stationary, however brief, presented a more certain kill. It meant he could go for the preferred headshot with confidence.

His mind advanced the scene that final millisecond. On this occasion it wasn’t perfectly clean; something he always found irritating. Not that he cared about the extra pain and suffering he might cause—only the perfectionist within him took offence. Two people directly behind her went down, randomly felled by fragments of the frangible round. The beautiful face disappeared in a glistening halo of pink mist, and Lisa Gomez’ life ended as swiftly as current in a broken electrical circuit.

After Bonito’s final push, others took care of the subtle details that would leave him certain this professional-grade atrocity had been the work of KGB enforcers. Strange how individuals like Bonito Gomez—individuals who dealt out horror and atrocity all their lives—became so indignant. So outraged when touched by the same terrible reality. But Bonito was predictable, and that made him easy.

The coffee tasted no better and was too tepid now; it was abandoned in disgust. He set aside the first print and concentrated on a second photograph from the disarray.

Another time, on the other side of the world, John Morehouse sought to finalize the Soviet deal, confident his elaborate KGB-financed security arrangements were infallible. A huge estate sprawled deep, almost a kilometer from a private road, ringed by mature elm and fir. Northern Finland was bitterly cold in March, and the memory of near frostbite on the exposed fingers of his right hand made him tingle. Logistically this had been an insufferable job that tried his patience to the limit, but a real challenge. The rules of this game were unspoken but nevertheless implicit: none of the Soviet security force could be so much as scratched, rendering any armed assault on the estate out of the question. Morehouse and his supporters were so cocksure nothing could get to him, it had to be done.

A small window of opportunity existed between the trees from a rocky, snow-covered hillside some two kilometers distant. Even working with a skilled spotter, no one had made a successful shot from this range before, but he knew the cold, dense air would be on his side.

Morehouse had gone native. Every morning he spent an hour in the wooden sauna, appended to the west wall of the main house and located strategically close to an icy pond. At 6:00 A.M. a telltale plume from the chimney would rise vertically through the trees, indicating the wood stove had been fired. At 7:00 a groundsman routinely set his dogs to heel and broke out the ice in the corner of the pond with a spade. About fifteen minutes later a vaporous, nude figure would jog through the snow, pause to fill his lungs, then completely submerge through the newly created fissure.

The Minox camera caught the moment perfectly through the powerful, custom-built telescopic sight; including thin crosshairs centered in the middle of the traitor’s steaming back. This time Morehouse went down and never came up. They found his body wedged under the ice many yards from the hole. It was a very satisfying conclusion to a tenuous project. One the opposition would ruminate over for a long time to come.

A small amount of bad coffee wasn’t doing the job of keeping him awake, and tonight it was imperative he stay clear-headed; at least until the expected phone call came through. He resisted the drowsiness and tried to concentrate on another print.

The third chosen image also launched a vivid memory. Whenever the media caught scent of his craftsmanship, they always reported the same way: "Felled by unidentified sniper fire."

He’d never envisioned himself as a sniper. It sounded cowardly, as if there were no more skills or planning involved than a crude mob hit. He considered himself a specialist—his gunsight perhaps the telling x-ray or his hand-made cartridge a scalpel. A surgeon who deftly excised the bad tissue so the remaining body of life could grow healthy and strong.

Chung San Li was just such malignant filth. When he died in Saigon, the White House press release reported Li’s assassination as the work of Vietcong insurgents whose sniper fire had ended the life of a true southern patriot, dedicated to the peace mission and destined to be a key figure in negotiations with the north.

To the contrary Li had been secretly working for the north for over a year. It was impossible to speculate how many American boys died as a result of the information he passed to the communists. The print showed him smiling infectiously as he shook hands with the secretary to the American ambassador, safely cloistered inside the embassy courtyard. It wasn’t such a clever job like Morehouse, and when Li’s grinning, toothy face atomized into that perfect pink halo, it hardly made up for all the innocent tissue he had infected and consumed. But few assignments gave this much satisfaction.

He looked at his watch. Gone 2:00 A.M. Turkish time.

He liked the exotic flavor of the Middle East: the constant intake of strange smells, strange sounds, strange tastes across his palette. Even the humid climate had a certain inescapable allure. And here, amidst these exotic assaults to his senses, for the first time in his life he’d allowed something to happen which he thought would always be impossible.

How could this be; this pure, undiluted affection for another human being?

Wasn’t he whispering death—life-taker par excellence?

After reshuffling the prints into their former neat pile, he secured them away from prying eyes and went to the window. The luxury hotel’s southeast exposure overlooked the moonlit Golden Horn, and to his left the yawning mouth of the Bosporus disgorged south into the Sea of Marmara and ultimately the Dardanelles.

His new target would be out there somewhere in that chaotic jumble of narrow streets, and it wasn’t hard to speculate on identity—a phone call would only serve as confirmation. His master merely had to point a finger and he’d become a virtual machine, efficiently doing the master’s bidding without feeling or recourse to emotion.

But instead of concentrating on the complicated logistics—the essentials of security, timing, distance, light angles and trajectory, all his preoccupation centered on Frances. No more could he get her from his mind. He not only wanted her sexually like other women who had crossed his path; he wanted her totally—to ultimately share it all—even if it meant confiding the unconfideable.

The phone rang ending the muse.

ONE

TAXI SERVICE

Incerlik US Airforce Base, Southern Turkey

Loeb stood alone with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, leaning into the wind. Not a big man in contrast to others, his less than average stature seemed all the more diminutive when dwarfed by the colossal transport aircraft he’d been sent to meet.

Despite wearing sunglasses he squinted as dust and engine exhaust swirled off the runway into his face. Eventually the flapping of his clothes subsided allowing him to open his shaded eyes fully.

The Lockheed C130 trundled to a stop and immediately became engulfed by a maelstrom of service vehicles and military personnel. The crew and a small complement of passengers deplaned through a door near the front of the aircraft while the massive cargo doors began disgorging the load. Loeb lifted his dark glasses. A Ford station wagon, its paintwork matching the aircraft’s olive drab, had drawn up near the base of the mobile steps. It seemed buglike in relation to the scale of the hulking transport plane. At two hundred yards he had difficulty making out faces on the silhouetted figures descending the stairs, but knew one of them had to be BOXCAR, Langley’s current cryptonym for the Director of Middle East Operations.

Loeb chewed on the inside of his mouth. So what brings a seventh-floor director here on today of all days, with Washington in uproar over yesterday’s shooting in California? He shrugged to himself at the unanswered question. Maybe Bowman knew? His Chief of Station, Charles Bowman, remained tight-lipped when it came to visitations from top management—tight lipped and tight-sphinctered—as if each authoritarian intrusion into his domain represented an imminent rectal exam.

Screw Bowman’s insecurity! This anniversary day, June 5th 1968, held its own phantoms for Loeb.

Exactly one year ago a conflict, now known as The Six-Day War, blossomed forth in all its lightning fury. His working relationship with Bowman had slowly soured and decayed in the months that followed the Israeli victory—the treacherous Vercandi affair outcome had seen to that. He knew he couldn’t go on this way indefinitely. A Control Officer’s affinity with his Station Chief must be based on respect. In Loeb’s eyes Bowman had been compromised, and no working relationship could thrive in an aura of mistrust.

One answer would be a transfer to a new station, but he realized the aura would follow him now. Could he ever trust a Station Chief as completely as he had trusted Bowman? In a shadowy corner of his mind lurked the true rationalization: Loeb distrusted the agency, not the man; Bowman represented a symptom of a much larger ailment.

The CIA had trained him to be this convoluted creature, not devoid of empathy perhaps, yet likewise not slavish to fixed ideas of personal loyalty. They wanted a thinking slave, capable of appreciating the big picture. Someone skilled at manipulating others, yet at the same time acknowledging the necessity of ones self being manipulated for the common good. Voluntary slaves no less. The oxymoron fit CIA to a T.

Loeb shook his head to clear the thoughts and tried to concentrate. In a few moments he would meet a man who held sway over every facet of his currently dismal life. The Company represented all Loeb had in the world. He’d be dysfunctional everywhere else, not unlike an institutionalized convict serving out the latter part of a life sentence. He also knew he’d shimmied as far up the CIA ladder as he would get—the never to be glimpsed reasons for this buried somewhere inside his detailed C3 file.

Two of the deplaning passengers availed themselves of the idling station wagon while the remainder boarded a small bus. The Ford drove straight towards him, only altering course the last moment.

Loeb didn’t flinch. His shade covered eyes bored through the windshield at the parade-uniformed driver. The square-jawed NCO casually motioned with two fingers of a white-gloved hand. Loeb opened the front passenger door and got in beside the immaculate corporal, who pulled away with a tire chirp before he’d barely closed it.

As usual Loeb did not look in any way impressive. His cheap, lightweight linen suit might well have been slept in for a month. Even right after a shave he maintained that dark, stubbly look, and this day was much removed from his last encounter with Wilkinson Sword. A holster containing his Browning Hi-power automatic pistol currently resided in the trunk of a rental car in the main visitor parking lot. No civilian set a toe onto this base carrying a weapon, least of all a member of the Ankara consulate looking for all the world like a Turkish toilet attendant.

He twisted in the seat and glanced over his shoulder. The two rear passengers sat stone-faced, in silence. The one directly behind Loeb had the intensity of a State Department Secret Service Agent—a look even cloistered children could spot without difficulty. The fellow to his left would be BOXCAR.

Loeb summed up the exec with one glance: late fifties, pepper and salt, completely untanned round face with heavy bags under eyes that were half closed. Not a stout man, but not slim either; magically well groomed as only executives can be after a long flight. He balanced a briefcase flat on his knees and clutched it by the base, as though the car might be infested with thieves intent on stealing it at any moment. By their expressions, the visitors regarded Loeb on par with the proverbial turd in a swimming pool.

Loeb thought about a banal opening remark, but shrugged to himself and turned away leaving it all unsaid. Had sociability been a prerequisite, Bowman would have sent one of the diplomatic assistants who seemed to festoon every corner of the Ankara embassy. Besides, the shitstorm that raged back in the U.S. following Bobby Kennedy’s shooting would put a damper on any DC liaison.

Two minutes later they arrived parallel to the large flat sheds that formed the security buildings and reception center. After drawing up under the huge American and Turkish flags, the trio of passengers alit and the car sped away in the direction of the barracks. An MP snapped to attention and held open a glass-paneled door with the flat of his hand.

Once inside the excessively air-conditioned building Loeb shivered again. The newcomers looked relieved. Before moving along the corridor to the security desk, BOXCAR nodded to his bodyguard who in turn gestured at Loeb with an outstretched hand. Loeb thought about shaking it, but relented and produced his special identification. Normally he’d never carry anything except a false passport and gun permit—certainly nothing that attached him to the embassy or the agency. This unusual situation necessitated careful anonymity be set aside. Loeb handed the tall security agent a small plastic wallet containing a card that came under close scrutiny before being handed to BOXCAR.

BOXCAR grunted and flipped it closed. Leon Loeb is it?

Loeb pulled at his cold nose and nodded.

BOXCAR glanced at his chaperon then back to Loeb. I was beginning to wonder if your COS had sent a goddamn Turk to sort this out. I must say your outfit is novel for an intelligence officer.

The security agent to BOXCAR’s left grinned smugly, revealing small, baby-like teeth set in wide gums.

I only dress like this when I’m working undercover or on liaison, Loeb quipped, alternating his eyeline between the two of them. The rest of the time I go casual.

The sarcasm set the tone for BOXCAR. He studied Loeb before speaking again. This scruffy insolent renegade had scant use for real authority. He tried to recall Loeb’s profile. There were several agent handlers working out of Ankara Station, but something in the back of his mind insisted this little Jew was a specialty item to the Mid East theatre. Mossad connections were part of it; terrorist groups; Arab KGB agents; these were all integral to Loeb’s area of expertise. But there had to be something more. He couldn’t remember for the moment, but a secure line to Langley would quickly sort it all out. No doubt Charles Bowman harbored reasons for assigning this creature to him. Expediency dictated positive action and a high order of commitment. Appearances aside, soon it would be apparent if this Leon Loeb had the right stuff.

Before we move on I want to make introductions and a few pertinent points on procedure, BOXCAR said in a low voice. I’m Alex Seabrooke, I believe you know my title. This is agent Coe. He’s with State.

The security man nodded at Loeb.

Alex Seabrooke, Loeb mused. Sure, the name sounded right. He’d been appointed Mid East Director about six months prior, and had already been tagged with a brusque reputation that permeated the community faster than effluent through a filter bed. His boss would be Angleton the mole hunter, and anyone reporting directly to James Jesus must prepare themselves for paranoia on a grandiose scale.

Normally I’d interface with your superior before moving ahead, BOXCAR continued, but because this matter is so urgent I’ve decided to go directly to Istanbul. I need immediate close support with the local authorities and I want this matter resolved fast.

Loeb blinked, open-mouthed. There’d been no briefing of any kind from Bowman, and now Loeb suspected Bowman knew as much detail about this royal visit as he did. The sudden news that they were not heading directly to Ankara left Loeb at a loss for words. Bowman seemed adamant BOXCAR would make Ankara his first stop, and as a result had been twitching all morning at the prospect. It stunk. Trundling two assholes around Istanbul while waiting for each molecule of information like glucose dripping through an IV did not work at any level. Intelligent background shaped everything Loeb did.

He looked down at his feet and reflected: Bowman must really hate me to daub me with this shit. Well it’s not the first time, is it Leon?

***

The flight from Adana field, northwest to Istanbul took about an hour.

When Loeb suggested the Istanbul Regency as suitable accommodations, Alex Seabrooke turned it down flat. BOXCAR wanted something in the same neighborhood that wasn’t a fleabag—decent, but definitely not the Regency. Of course reasons weren’t forthcoming, so Loeb just kept quiet and drove the pool car, feeling two pairs of eyes burning into the back of his skull.

They checked in at the swanky Continental and took a three-room suite, paid for on a Diner’s Club card presented by Seabrooke. They carried no luggage to speak of, prompting a long, hard stare from the Turkish concierge as the strange trio boarded the elevator for the ride to the top floor. Loeb noted that Seabrooke seldom loosened his grip on the briefcase for even a second. Only after they were safely behind closed doors, and Coe had completed a thorough sweep of the chintzy rooms, did Seabrooke place the case on a writing desk and appear to relax. Coe immediately began fiddling with the telephone, unscrewing the ends of the handset and removing the speaker and diaphragm.

Looking for bugs? Loeb needled with a smile while peeling off his rumpled jacket.

Coe glanced up for a second, but didn’t pause the activity. We have a new capability thanks to one of our suppliers.

He nodded to Seabrooke who unlocked the briefcase and set aside a wad of paperwork that lay on top of an electrical device. It looked like an elaborate modem cradle for a computer, only it had its own weird-shaped handset hooked to the side. Seabrooke passed Coe the device along with two small parts that Coe fitted into the hotel handset. With everything screwed back together, Coe inserted the handset into the rubber cradle and flicked a switch. A small bulb glowed on the top panel.

It’s self contained—takes its power from the phone line, Coe volunteered as Loeb rubbed his bemused, stubbly chin and scratched the front of the sweaty T-shirt. We call it our Linesweeper.

A portable voice encoder?

That’s right, Seabrooke confirmed. Completely reliable on any line. All you need is one of these at each end of the connection and you have total security. Only last year these things were as big as a desk.

Suppose you want to order room service?

Coe smiled and gave Loeb his answer. Pull the phone from the cradle and use it normally. You only get encoding when you go through the box.

Loeb flopped into a chair. Jesus! The times I could have used one of those gadgets.

All the stations will be getting them soon, Seabrooke said by way of consolation. We’re still testing at Langley and this is only a prototype. They must be useless to the other side, and that’s what’s holding up production. If the KGB got their hands on this unit it would cost us a fortune in redesign. By the way, don’t get too comfortable; I’m about to make a need-to-know call, so get lost for about twenty minutes.

Coe reinforced the order with a motion of his head towards the door.

Grabbing his jacket that he’d been obliged to wear because of the Browning automatic, Loeb pulled himself up. When you’re finished checking on me with Langley, give Bowman a call. He’s been crapping himself all day thinking you were on an inspection tour.

The remark did not go down well.

Is that any way to refer to your superior, Loeb? Seabrooke snapped. And for God’s sake tidy yourself up, man. This operation involves educated people, not local roughnecks.

Loeb, determined to get in the last word, said, Careful, Alex. You might let me in on something pertinent to this shindig, then we’d really be fucked! He slammed the door hard on his way out.

***

He knew he shouldn’t have spoken to a director in that tone, but the insolence fitted Loeb’s mood. While they played with their cute toys he sweated out one nerve-wracking covert action after another. They never saw the people ripped open by a soft-nosed round; bleeding to death in a safe house or back alley. People who trusted Loeb to keep them secure while they took outrageous risks in a hostile environment. Oh sure, the directors knew all about the dirty end, but they didn’t inhaled its aroma or listened to its screams.

He went to the overpriced boutique on the mezzanine floor and selected a white polo shirt and a pair of gray-green slacks, complimented by one of those conspicuously monogrammed Sea Island boating jackets. The pregnant little Turkish sales girl almost broke water when she caught sight of the Browning. He showed her his permit along with the room key and tried to head off any police awkwardness by assuring her he was, in fact, a special policeman himself. His Turkish dialect and inflection sounded so native perfect, most took him for a local without a second thought.

The adjacent leather shop provided new brown loafers, and the whole kit and caboodle got charged to the room. Loeb scrawled a signature on the chit and didn’t even bother looking at the total. Swinging the package, he ambled into the pompously overdone American Bar and ordered a scotch on ice under a huge crystal chandelier. The barman hesitated, eyeing Loeb with all the respect due an Armenian refugee, then noticed the room key and smiled.

A television set began to rerun the chilling footage of the Kennedy shooting for the umpteenth time as a nice looking prostitute with long black hair down to the hem of her mini-skirt tried to pick him up. She moved in with unobtrusive skill but made herself scarce when he allowed her a discreet glimpse of the holster. In a few minutes word would be all over the lobby that an undercover cop had dropped in for a drink. He grinned and shoveled some macadamia nuts into his mouth. Maybe he should have taken her back to the suite unannounced, so he could watch Pinky and Perky shitting themselves trying to hide the phone.

The TV flickered. They were showing the intense seconds of panic following the gunshots almost frame by frame as the newscaster bubbled on about near anarchy at the California Democratic Convention Center. TV was new to Istanbul and still a novelty, so even the most high-toned establishments made a point of placing a set on prominent display. Loeb stuck his nose in the glass and let an ice cube rub against his upper lip, noting how the reflection of the screen distorted as the ice moved. They were on to local events now, and suddenly the screen filled with new images.

He sat up straight, setting the empty glass on the bar. The barman closed like a piranha with a blood scent, but Loeb waved him off while staring mesmerized at the screen.

Medics were trundling a litter through a lobby and into an ambulance surrounded by onlookers while lights flashed and reflected in the glass and chrome. The caption in the corner of the screen indicated the filmed report had been taken a little after 4:00 A.M. at the Regency Hotel, only two blocks away. An American photojournalist, identified as Paul Yelland,