The Redaction Chronicles Collection

Chapter 15

Ten hours later, two men stood in the cold, grey mortuary staring down at the recently deceased body of Max Dobos. One was a criminal investigation officer with the Austrian police; the other was a senior British diplomat from Her Majesty"s Embassy.

“Whoever did it to him knew exactly what they were doing,” said the Austrian police officer.

Cecil Rowlands nodded his aging, shaggy head in agreement. Even to someone as untutored in forensics as he was, he could see the range of defensive wounds on the forearms of the corpse. Not to mention the butchering of the poor wretched devil"s throat. Nasty.

Vienna was a village, a big village certainly, but a village nonetheless, and everybody knew someone who knew someone. As the SIS Head of Station in Vienna, it was good old Cecil"s business to know the people in the know. People like Inspector Krupp, who took a monthly stipend from him.

Rowlands had been on a long weekend break, his first in many months; Thursday through to Sunday. The call to his private line when it came on the Saturday evening had ripped him away from what he hoped was going to be a quiet weekend of fishing, drinks and one of Joyce"s pre-Christmas dinner parties. Joyce, his wife, did so love putting a party together. The evening phone call had put paid to that little luxury and he knew the moment he had heard Inspector Johan Krupp"s voice that his weekend was going to be ruined. Joyce would be furious with him for days over this.

He had arrived at the hospital and been whisked down to the mortuary by a police sergeant, only to find Johan Krupp, doyen of the Viennese police waiting for him. Krupp was tall and grey with a bad suit and a habit of flicking ash from his cigarillos onto the floor whenever he had things on his mind. A thing he did now, despite being in the confines of the mortuary.

“So Inspector, what made you think that this man is connected to us?” asked Rowlands.

Krupp stared down at the floor. Catching his meal ticket out was something that didn"t sit well with him. “I found one of your Embassy telephone numbers hidden in his sock. Didn"t know what it was at first, it was only when I ran it through the reverse telephone directory files that it was flagged as the British Embassy. I thought I"d better let you know before the security police got wind of it.”

Rowlands smiled. “It"s much appreciated Johan, and don"t worry, there"ll be something extra in the pot this month for you and your good lady. You did the right thing.”

“Thank you Herr Rowlands.”

Rowlands frowned. “In his sock, I wonder why he had it hidden there.”

“Well, there were signs that his body had been searched before the killer fled. Obviously he either didn"t think to search the feet, or else he was disturbed.”

The body of Maximilian Dobos lay n***d underneath a thin cotton shroud and over sheet that reached up to his tortured neck. Rowlands could see the beginnings of the "Y" shaped pathology scar that ran from his left ear, down the torso to the abdomen.

The body had been found by a cleaner on her way to work in one of the municipal buildings. The elderly woman had noticed a shoe lying along the path that led to the adjacent alley. A quick glance around and she discovered track marks in the muddy verge, where the victim had been dragged before being concealed under an old carpet. Thirty minutes later the police were on the scene in the form of Inspector Krupp and his team of detectives. It was now a murder scene and Krupp and his men had control from here on in.

The deceased had been taken in a sealed body bag to the Vienna General Hospital and the unknown man"s details had been recorded and then he had been placed in a locked fridge until the resident pathologist was ready to conduct his investigation. An hour later the post-mortem began with Krupp attending. It wasn"t the first that he had been forced to sit through, wouldn"t be his last either, but nevertheless it wasn"t an experience that he looked forward to at any time.

The corpse had been weighed, measured and photographed. Next came the washing process, before what Krupp called, the "butchery" started. He made himself scarce and decided to take a look at the man"s clothes and possessions. It was starkly uninteresting. Normal clothes, virtually empty wallet, identity card, cheap watch. The items of a single man and nothing more. A dead end. He started again, this time more thoroughly moving through each item of personal belongings until on his second pass which turned the gloves inside out and then the socks, he found something. There it was. It was nothing more than a small piece of paper with a series of smudged numbers written on it. Krupp stared down at it for what seemed an age. It could be everything or nothing, he decided. But there was something familiar about the number, something that connected with him.

He excused himself, said he would return, then made his way back to Police Headquarters to check something. Just a hunch, but hunches in his experience had a way of turning into definitive clues. A quick flick through several contact files and confidential reverse telephone directories confirmed his suspicion.

He sat back in his office chair, lit one of his cigarillos and made the phone call to the home address of the Right Honorable Cecil Rowlands of the British Embassy in Vienna, the British resident spy and Krupp"s confidant, friend, and paymaster.

“So, how long had he been dead before he was found?”

Inspector Krupp flicked through the pathology report that he had attached to his clipboard. “The pathologist suggests between six to twelve hours. So he died sometime around eleven o clock last night. It could be a few hours either way, but last night definitely.”

“And the weapon?”

“A very sharp straight edged knife. No sign of that, most probably dumped in the river. Whoever did it certainly wanted to finish him. The wounds on the arms were put there to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. It buys the killer time to escape. He obviously thinks that we"re all idiots on this force and will waste our time pulling in all the known robbers.”

“Is there any suggestion that this was a black market thing? Chaps falling out about sugar or tobacco or what have you?” asked Rowlands, determined to rule out as many possibilities as he could before his thoughts turned to espionage.

anyKrupp shook his head. “Max Dobos wasn"t known to us, but it"s certainly possible. Maybe he crossed someone he shouldn"t, but it must have been big for them to send this kind of message. Our underworld usually just resorts to beatings. Did you know him?”

The question caught old Rowlands off guard, but being a professional he did what he always did on such occasions; he dug deep into his trouser pocket, rummaged around, fished out an old handkerchief and began to clean his spectacles. Yes, for old, dependable Cecil Rowlands it was a tactic that had bought him time on many occasions.

He peered in close to examine the chasm that had once been the dead man"s throat; he squinted, and then stood back up to his full height. “No. I didn"t know him,” he murmured, and then quickly moved the analysis onwards. “So; we know the cuts to the arm were committed post-mortem. What"s the order of play regarding the rest of the wounds?”

Krupp shrugged and glanced at the report. “The first wound, we believe, was a stab to the throat, which caught him on the left side. That"s probably the one that would have killed him; it"s certainly the most lethal. Then multiple stab wounds to the kidneys and surrounding internal organs from the rear. The butchering of the throat, that was done as a supplementary strike, and in my professional opinion, was totally unnecessary. It was just the killer showing off.”

“And making sure the job was done in case he didn"t get a second chance,” said Rowlands.

Krupp nodded, silently admitting to himself that could have been the case.

“Anything at his home? The poor fellow must have had something to his name.”

“Nothing of any use to us, he seemed to live a frugal life. A shabby apartment, a cooker, a radio, a bed, a phone. No money, no frivolity it seems. We"ll keep digging, but…” Krupp"s words tapered off, and he shrugged his shoulders, resigned to the fact that this would probably be a dead-end case.

Rowlands was sure the Inspector would keep digging. He was a good man, a good detective, but sometimes, certain cases have a habit of coming up against a brick wall when leads fizzle out. That was something that the police and the spies had in common. “What will happen to him now Johan?”

Krupp winced, as if these matters were of no concern to him. “There will be a simple burial courtesy of the state probably by the end of the week. If anything else comes up, I"ll let you know.”

Rowlands thanked him and made his way out of the mortuary. From behind him, he heard the hushed tones of Inspector Krupp. “And you can, of course, rely on my discretion Herr Rowlands. We guardians of decency must stick together through thick and thin in these perilous times.”

Cecil Rowlands called home. He didn"t like to think of Joyce hanging around, waiting for him to turn up, especially after all the effort she had made with the dinner party he had to miss out on. “No darling, I"m still at the hospital and will probably have to go to the office from here. You go on to bed, get some rest and poor you, having to deal with the Radleys" and Herr Marks all on your own. You"re a trooper, I"ll make it up to you I promise,” he cooed down the phone.

With his domestic problem – if not totally resolved – at least contained, he made his way down to his car and drove the ten-minute journey at that time of night to the Embassy.

The British Embassy was an ornate fifty room villa located on Reisnerstrasse and had once been the summer residence of Prince Metternich. Rowlands waved his way past the guard on the gate, said hello to the night duty officer manning the front desk and climbed the stairs to his private sanctum at the rear of the building on the second floor. These offices were only accessible, via a multi-deadlocked steel door, to the officers of SIS.

His first port of call was the file registry room. He worked quickly and expertly, removing several buff folders before taking them to his office. He sat at his desk, placed the folders and files in front of him and opened up the confidential agents list for the Vienna station. He flicked through a few pages until he came to the "D"s".

His finger moved down the page until he came to the entry for "Dobos, Maximillian" and read through the brief biographical details of the agent and his contact tradecraft.

Name: Dobos, Maximillian

Name: Dobos, MaximillianAgent: CH41/V

Agent: CH41/VDetails: Born 1914. Hungarian, confidence trickster and low-level source. Used mainly in Soviet deception operations and for routine surveillance/security operations with Vienna Station. Outsourced to other friendly intelligence agencies when required.

Details: Born 1914. Hungarian, confidence trickster and low-level source. Used mainly in Soviet deception operations and for routine surveillance/security operations with Vienna Station. Outsourced to other friendly intelligence agencies when required.What followed was the man"s last known address and what method was used for him to communicate directly with the station. Then Rowlands noticed a small tick in the "communiqué" chart. It was dated the previous day. So Dobos had in some way attempted to communicate with the station over the past day or so. Rowlands closed the ledger and made his way to the station"s communications section in the next room. He unlocked the secure door with his personal key, went straight to the main desk and looked through the pending file of communiqués.

It took him five minutes to find what he was looking for. Three separate transcripts. All phone calls to the station on the direct agent phone number were automatically recorded and then transcribed. It seemed that agent CH41/V had called the direct agent line three times in a twenty-four-hour period. Interesting, thought Rowlands. The man obviously had something important to offer, judging by the frequency of the communications.

Interesting,He pulled the three separate transcripts out of the ledger and worked his way through them methodically. Each began with the usual administrative jargon – agent identity code, officer identity code, time and date – which was all part of the minutiae of running an overseas SIS station. Rowlands ignored them; he knew them by heart anyway. It was the text that he craved in the hope that it would yield a clue to the man"s intentions and perhaps reveal why he had been murdered so violently.

The first communication had been received less than 48 hours ago and to Rowlands" experienced eye Dobos had been bullish and overconfident in his first contact. It was as if he had a good hand in poker and couldn"t wait to tell the rest of the table about it, thought Rowlands.

It was as if he had a good hand in poker and couldn"t wait to tell the rest of the table about it,AGENT: This is [deleted]. I have valuable information, valuable material which may interest your service. I would prefer to speak to Colonel Ellerington. Only Ellerington will I deal with.

This is [deleted]. I have valuable information, valuable material which may interest your service. I would prefer to speak to Colonel Ellerington. Only Ellerington will I deal with.STATION: No names, please on an open line.

No names, please on an open line.AGENT: I understand, but this information is relevant and timely. It will have great benefit for the British.

I understand, but this information is relevant and timely. It will have great benefit for the British.STATION: That may be the case, but if what you say is true, we would need to assess it to verify its worth and authenticity. We would suggest that you leave it at one of our collection points as usual.

That may be the case, but if what you say is true, we would need to assess it to verify its worth and authenticity. We would suggest that you leave it at one of our collection points as usual.AGENT: No, you do not understand. This information is very sensitive. I would be foolish to let it out of my control. I demand a face to face meeting.

No, you do not understand. This information is very sensitive. I would be foolish to let it out of my control. I demand a face to face meeting.STATION: I"m sorry, but as I"m sure you know that is not how this works. Leave the information with us so that we can look it over. If it is useful we can negotiate a price.

I"m sorry, but as I"m sure you know that is not how this works. Leave the information with us so that we can look it over. If it is useful we can negotiate a price.AGENT: I have a specific price for the material. It is non-negotiable and I will only deal with Colonel—

I have a specific price for the material. It is non-negotiable and I will only deal with Colonel—STATION: I said no names. You know the protocol. No names. No face to face meeting unless the material is useful to us and to do that you have to pass it to us first. Also, WE set the price.

I said no names. You know the protocol. No names. No face to face meeting unless the material is useful to us and to do that you have to pass it to us first. Also, WE set the price.AGENT: Damn you! I will offer this to the French or Germans if I have …

Damn you! I will offer this to the French or Germans if I have …STATION: That is your choice. Those are our terms. This call is terminated.

That is your choice. Those are our terms. This call is terminated.ENDEX.

Rowlands smiled at the conversation. Colonel Ellerington was his working name, the name he used when contacting local agents for off the cuff meetings. The station officer, actually his deputy John Green, had done a good job of unsettling Max Dobos and keeping him dangling. They all came in cocksure of themselves, ready to believe that they have the latest top secret, no, above top-secret, information ready to trade. He"d seen it a million times before and in most cases, it was worthless scraps that the informants had gleaned from drunken conversations in a bar somewhere.

aboveRowlands preached to his officers that the role of the professional intelligence officer was to downplay what the agent thought was priceless information, not only to bring the price down, after all no one wants to pay top prices no matter how good the intelligence is, but also to give the officer time to accurately assess and analyze the material. Is it real or is it a fake? There you bugger, that will take the sting out of your tale, thought Rowlands.

There you bugger, that will take the sting out of your tale,He flicked through to the following communication transcript. It was the same day, but two hours later. Dobos was going for his second bite of the cherry. Either the Germans or the French had told him that they weren"t interested or he was determined to get a deal exclusively from SIS. Either way, he had put himself at a serious negotiating disadvantage which Rowlands knew his deputy would have taken ruthless advantage of.

STATION: Yes. Number please.

Yes. Number please.AGENT: CH41. I would like to talk to someone else.

CH41. I would like to talk to someone else.STATION: You can talk to me. What do you want CH41?

You can talk to me. What do you want CH41?AGENT: I… I called earlier. We spoke. I understand the need for protocol. Of course I do. But you must look at it from my position. I have something of great value. I would be foolish to just hand it over.

I… I called earlier. We spoke. I understand the need for protocol. Of course I do. But you must look at it from my position. I have something of great value. I would be foolish to just hand it over.STATION: How were the French and the Germans? Did they welcome you with open arms?

How were the French and the Germans? Did they welcome you with open arms?AGENT: I… I… I have not yet approached them. I have worked well with the British before and wanted to offer you the chance first. If you hadn"t been so obtuse then…

I… I… I have not yet approached them. I have worked well with the British before and wanted to offer you the chance first. If you hadn"t been so obtuse then…STATION: Goodbye CH41, I"m terminating the—

Goodbye CH41, I"m terminating the—AGENT: No, no, please wait. Can we not reach an understanding?

No, no, please wait. Can we not reach an understanding?STATION: CH41, a face to face meeting is impossible. We are all very busy. Imagine if we had to have a meeting every time someone had some chicken feed to sell.

CH41, a face to face meeting is impossible. We are all very busy. Imagine if we had to have a meeting every time someone had some chicken feed to sell.AGENT: It is NOT chicken feed. You will see this when you examine it!

It is NOT chicken feed. You will see this when you examine it!STATION: As I was saying…we would never get any work done. The deal is this. Leave the material at my Cousin ABEL"s house. You remember ABEL?

As I was saying…we would never get any work done. The deal is this. Leave the material at my Cousin ABEL"s house. You remember ABEL?AGENT: Of course…

Of course…STATION: Good. We will collect it, look it over and see what we think of it. If it"s good, or as good as you say it is, we can negotiate a price. If it"s not for us, then we hand it back to you.

Good. We will collect it, look it over and see what we think of it. If it"s good, or as good as you say it is, we can negotiate a price. If it"s not for us, then we hand it back to you.AGENT: But it will be too late, then you will have already seen it.

But it will be too late, then you will have already seen it.STATION: You know the way the game works CH41. That"s the risk you take. Besides, we have worked with you in the past. Have we ever let you down? You simply have to trust us.

You know the way the game works CH41. That"s the risk you take. Besides, we have worked with you in the past. Have we ever let you down? You simply have to trust us.AGENT: (pause) I will think it over.

(pause) I will think it over.STATION: Good idea CH41. Good day to you, sir.

Good idea CH41. Good day to you, sir.ENDEX

Green had handled it well, thought Rowlands. He had given the agent a tentative option whilst also being fair and professional. Anything less and it turns into the tail wagging the dog with the agents trying to run rings around their case officers.

Rowlands rubbed his eyes, God, he was tired. Only one more to go he thought as he flicked through to the final transcript. The final message was short, terse, as if Dobos was at the end of his tether. The message read:

STATION: Hello. Number please.

Hello. Number please.AGENT: CH41. Today the postman delivered to ABEL. Repeat ABEL. I will await confirmation of value and payment. I am placing my trust in your service"s good character. I hope the agreed terms and conditions are met. Goodbye.

Today the postman delivered to ABEL. Repeat ABEL. I will await confirmation of value and payment. I am placing my trust in your service"s good character. I hope the agreed terms and conditions are met. Goodbye.STATION: Thank you CH41 we will be in touch.

Thank you CH41 we will be in touch.ENDEX.

He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and ruminated about the previous few days" events. Dobos had approached the Vienna station with possible high end intelligence. He had agreed to terms and conditions for a trade of the material and had lodged it in the dead letter box codenamed ABEL.

Rowlands checked the duty reports for the station operations over the past week. He found the correct file entitled "Agent Management" and flipped through the section dealing with deliveries to and from the three main dead letter box sites for low level informants like the CH4"s which were KANE, ABEL and ENOCH.

According to the file the only one to have been serviced by the station officers over the last few days had been ENOCH, which meant that the team hadn"t gotten around to emptying ABEL. I"ll have their balls for that, he thought. He scribbled his initials next to the ABEL heading, meaning that he would take sole responsibility for collecting whatever Dobos had left for the SIS station there. But not tonight, he thought. I need to get home and get some b****y sleep. He checked his watch. It was 2.30am. Just in time to make his way home, trying not to disturb Joyce, grab a few hours of shut eye before he had to go and empty an agents" dead letter box on what was effectively enemy territory.

I"ll have their balls for that,But not tonight,I need to get home and get some b****y sleep.He sighed and rose from his chair, felt the muscles in his aching back click, picked up his set of keys to lock the station office and headed for his car. His weekend break was ruined, and in those tired few minutes in the middle of the night he was sick to the back teeth, in fact had had a bellyful, of Vienna, being a spy and getting himself involved in murder mysteries where the victim had had his throat ripped out like a stag that had been gralloched.

The very next morning, looking refreshed and wearing his best suit and overcoat, Her Majesty"s diplomatic servant the Right Honorable Cecil Rowlands strolled casually along Krummbaumgasse, his destination was the old Karmelitermarkt.

He did his best to fight his way through the busy Christmastime shoppers and keep the rain from his spectacles, which was not an easy task for someone of Rowlands" size and grace. He was more your strongman than your athlete, his wife would say.

If anyone had taken the time to ask this distinguished member of the diplomatic community where he was off to on that fine morning, he would simply have said that he was on a small errand of a personal nature before he began his day"s toils in the British Embassy. If pressed further, he would have confided to his acquaintance that he was on a mission to get back in his wife"s good books. A small, but modestly expensive pre-Christmas gift, to apologize for ruining their weekend together when he had been called back to the "office" to deal with a temporary problem. Some truffles from the specialist truffle seller in the market, he would say. Joyce did so love to cook and it was a rare treat that he was able to afford luxury items.

Of course it was a good story – not true – but a good tale nonetheless.

“Cover, ladies and gentlemen, is important,” he would drum into his field agents. “Always have a good reason for doing anything nefarious. You want to meet an agent at the opera; then I recommend that you at least know your Wagner"s from your Verdi"s, because you can bet your yearly wage that you"ll bump into someone who will chatter about it for days and be a fully accredited aficionado. I"m not saying you have to be an expert, but you at least need to be able to hold a conversation without making anyone suspicious… at least until you get the opportunity to bugger off double quick!”

Why the Karmelitermarkt? Well the most obvious reason was that there was an excellent truffle stall on the far side of the market. The ruse also gave him the opportunity to visit the ABEL dead letter box which was located nearby on the fringes of the market. Its exact location was behind a billboard at ground level. He just hoped that Max Dobos had secured it properly behind the loose wooden panel that held the timber frame together.

He strolled casually, moving through the throng, nodding to his fellow shoppers in greeting or in thanks. He perused the various meat, cheese and coffee stalls. There was nothing hurried about his manner and aside from his duties at the Embassy he looked like a man content to while away the rest of the day exploring the commerce of Vienna.

Rowlands did two rotations of the ABEL site, passing by it to confirm that there was no overt surveillance, then around the block and back for one more pass. A third pass would have been suspicious, shopkeepers and market traders do have a tendency to remember a face that they have seen before. The third and final time would be the emptying of ABEL.

Was the vegetable seller looking at him a bit too closely? That road sweeper – he"d been there an awfully long time, since his second pass in fact? Or what about that couple at the cafe who were drinking their coffee, had they been observing him all along as he passed by the ABEL drop? Were they Russian informants or were they KGB agents running a hostile surveillance operation on a suspected SIS drop site?

In truth, there was no way of knowing and Rowlands knew that when it came down to the wire all the field agent on the ground could do was pray, hope for the best, and take a massive leap of faith that he wasn"t about to be caught or compromised.

The dead drop was within a few feet. He did an awkward duck-shuffle and looked down in mock annoyance at his shoes. He had purposefully loosened his shoe laces this morning when he had set off knowing that they would work themselves free in time. A few more steps and he was finally at the billboard. Not stopping he began to bend in one fluid motion and then the seasoned intelligence officer reached down casually to tie his lace, and when he was sure that there were no observers his fingers explored around the gap between the brick wall and the billboard. It was only a space of roughly four inches, but it was big enough to conceal a decent-sized package.

Nothing! Damn!

He pressed his fingers in further, groping into the crevasse, a bit more, and then… there it was. Roughly the size of a pack of playing cards wrapped in sturdy brown paper and sealed with heavy duty tape and glue. A quick glance around the street revealed no one, and then the package was swiftly placed in his inside coat pocket. A quick tying of the laces and he was up, off and on his way. He spent the next thirty minutes running counter-surveillance maneuvers, just to be sure. Rowlands was an old pro who had done his fair share of shaking off a tail in his long and murky past.

An hour later Rowlands arrived back at the SIS station. He threw his overcoat into his office and gave strict instructions to his secretary, a Welsh harridan by the name of Eleanor, that he wasn"t to be disturbed for the rest of the day.

He sat in the security room and unpacked the package from the dead drop. “Now then Herr Dobos, let"s see what all this fuss is about.” Rowlands carefully opened the package, removing the tape with small neat cuts with his penknife. Inside was a single sheet of paper, handwritten in English, and a small pool of audio tape.

The note read:

“Recording taken November 1964. Luxembourg. Freelance job. Can give more details once you have listened to the tape. Tape assures my bona fides.”

Recording taken November 1964. Luxembourg. Freelance job. Can give more details once you have listened to the tape. Tape assures my bona fides.He placed it to one side and went to fetch the audio tape player, a big brute of a machine that came complete with headset, from the station equipment cupboard. He locked his office door and set about rigging up the tape in the machine. When it was all connected and tested he took a single piece of paper and a pencil, pressed the PLAY button, closed his eyes and began to listen. His pencil would make a short scribble every now and then, picking out a word or a phrase that interested him.

Thirty minutes later the tape had finished. Rowlands removed the headphones and stared down at the notes on the paper. Dobos had either edited the tape not to include too much detail, perhaps hedging his bets for a better deal later, or the people speaking on the tape were security conscious, thus suggesting that they were indeed professionals. He scribbled out things that he judged unimportant, donned the headset once again and listened to it for a second time.

“b****y hell,” he said to himself when he"d finished. If the information was accurate and judging by Dobos previous work for them it always had been, then he had inadvertently stepped into the fringes of an American-backed operation. Not just any old operation either, from the sounds of it –a b****y assassination plot.

He now doubted that the Max Dobos murder had been a robbery gone wrong or a gangland affair, as there was just too much coincidence in the timing. Day One: Dobos offers information relating to a series of contract killings. Day Two: Dobos is murdered, violently, and his body searched. There was more to this than he"d expected, and false modesty aside, it was becoming unwieldy and needed to be looked at by people higher up the chain of command.

So, with the winter sun glaring through his office window, he pulled out the station codebook and started very carefully to compose what was to be in the fullness of time, an explosive communiqué to Broadway.