A Game For Assassins

Chapter Two

Chapter TwoWas he able to handle the murder of seven people, seven people who made up a Russian intelligence network?

Oh, he was more than capable. In his time he had caused – either directly or indirectly – the deaths of more than a dozen people, for just as some people are born to be academics, surgeons or musicians of the highest order, so the Catalan was a natural in the art of murder. He had, after all, spent half his life engaged in the dangerous world of espionage, criminality and professional terrorism.

Juan Raul Marquez –aka the Catalan; the man from Luxembourg; the Killer – had been born forty-five years earlier in the Catalonian region of Northern Spain. His affluent family background had been a melting pot of Catalan extremism, and while the political firebrand of his youth had long since left him, what had remained was the wisdom and experience of the born survivor. The life blood of intrigue coursed through his veins, and like all natural survivors who have walked through the constantly shifting sands of the secret world, he played the game superbly.

As a young man he had travelled extensively around Europe, affiliating himself with all manner of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary groups. He was like many of his generation, outwardly wealthy, cultured but still struggling with his fortunate place in the world. He had so much, while many had so little.

So he raged; raged against the elitist European royalty, the corrupt governments, the puppet politicians, the lies of communism, and it was this anger and this searching that led him into contact with his first underground political cell.

In truth, it had been his infatuation – perhaps even love – for the cell's leader, a charismatic and handsome Swiss doctor named Michel who was eager to stem the rise of communism, which had led him to being one of the bomb throwers in an attempted assassination of a visiting communist party leader to Geneva. Unfortunately for the fledgling terrorists, both bombs had failed to ignite and Marquez and his cohort were quickly arrested by the authorities.

Prison, even a Swiss one, had brutalized him. The beatings, the r***s, the hard labor were bad enough; but six months into a ten year sentence he had learned through the underground network the harsh reality of the secret world. His beloved Michel had been an Agent Provocateur for the Swiss authorities. It had been a trap designed to roll up a cell which had been getting too well known.

People take to prison in many ways, some acquiesce, some blend in, and some fight back. For Marquez, it was the latter. Following months of a***e and the final cut of betrayal, he'd proven to be a difficult prisoner for the guards to handle. The beatings increased and solitary confinement seemed to be his way of life. Fortunately, for both himself and the guards, he was handed an early release from prison, thanks to the intervention of influential, and very rich, friends from his social circle who were able to hand a hefty bribe to the Swiss authorities. That, and the promise that he would never return to Geneva again, seemed to be a fair deal.

The experience had left him with a clear understanding of several things. Namely, that he would no longer be fooled into believing the lie of political ideology. They were fools the lot of them, ready to commit to a baseless system and yet so easily brought down by human fallibility. How weak.

He decided that in the future, he would be responsible for his own planning. He spent most of his twenties hiring himself out as a smuggler and thief and eventually moved to Paris.

He moved in wealthy circles, had tempestuous affairs with several men, and cultivated friendships with those in power. He was fast becoming a power player.

With the outbreak of war, Marquez fell firmly on the side of the Petain government and had many patrons inside the Vichy regime. He soon came to the attention of the Abwher, German military intelligence, and earned his credentials in the early part of the war by spying on his French hosts. He was caught in flagrante by the French authorities, spying on a munitions factory, and given a prison sentence for his trouble.

Fortune was once more on his side however, and he was released by the intervention of his friends in the Vichy regime, not least being Pierre Laval, the new head of government. Once he had regained his liberty, he went straight back to the spying game, this time in Bordeaux working as an intelligence agent for the Sicherheitendienst, also known as the SD – the Nazi intelligence organization. Capture, murder and t*****e were his stock in trade and he used them to excess.

By 1943, and sensing that victory was turning in the Allies' direction, Marquez offered his services as a double agent to a British intelligence network operating in Paris. He also had a lucrative sideline, smuggling expensive works of art and diamonds stolen from wealthy Jewish families to Lisbon. He used this 'route' to pass sensitive information he had gleaned from his inside position in the Nazi intelligence service in France, to the British SIS and American OSS stations in neutral Portugal.

In the intelligence war, however, there are no old and bold spies and it was only a matter of time before a rare mistake was made by Marquez. He lasted a year before he came under suspicion by the Gestapo; he was hauled into the interrogation center at the Avenue Foch and questioned for days. Through good luck and a cast-iron cover story, he was able to soothe the German's concerns, at least initially. He was released and placed under surveillance by the Gestapo, who waited to see if he would make contact with anyone from the Allied spy networks.

Marquez, with his trademark cunning, knew when he had been compromised and did nothing except sit in his Paris apartment drinking expensive wine and entertaining several young men. After a month's worth of surveillance, the Germans, being no fools, decided that he was too much of a risk and chose to exile him from France. The knock on the door one December morning by two heavily armed Gestapo agents who were under orders to 'escort' him to southern Luxembourg confirmed that his espionage career was over. Marquez, if asked, would simply state that it was part of the great game; the risk, the thrill, and the elegant blood rush of danger that made him become embroiled in such intrigues. He traded the lives of men and women as a stockbroker might play the market, with ruthlessness and cold calculation. He never looked back, only forward.

By 1945, the Germans were on the run and the Americans were rounding up all manner of former German agents, spies and operatives. Marquez was hauled out of Luxembourg and placed before a British Colonel with responsibilities for intelligence work. The stern Colonel assured Marquez that his valuable work as a double agent would certainly go in his favor, if he could “just give us a few more details about his former compatriots.”

Marquez spent the remainder of the year giving as much evidence as he could about German and Vichy intelligence operations to investigators and prosecutors at the Nuremburg trials. With the war over and his freedom assured, he moved back to a civilian life in Luxembourg. He opened a small art dealership and antiques business, and to the casual observer, lived a quiet and unremarkable life. It provided him with excellent cover for his much more lucrative secret life consisting of international smuggling operations, both in precious minerals and narcotics, as well as working as a freelance agent for the French, Belgian and West German Intelligence Services.

And so a decade after the end of the war, Juan Raul Marquez had once again returned to his chosen trade of smuggling, espionage and murder. It was a trade in which he excelled, and a trade which sooner rather than later would bring him to the almost omnipotent attention of the CIA.