A Game for Assassins (The Redaction Chronicles Book 1) Read Free Page A

into its component parts – suppressor, magazine, and slide. Picking up the spent casings from the shots he'd fired, he placed them all into his inside jacket pockets before leaving the office. His presence raised not even a glance as he exited the office and made his way onto Hamra Street, heading back to the Squire's taxi. Moments later, Gorilla opened the rear passenger door and dropped down into the seat.
    “Okay. Off we go. But take it easy, no gunning the engine or high speed,” he said to the driver.
    The Squire nodded and began to move the car out into the busy traffic. “Was everything okay my friend? Any problems?”
    Gorilla placed the pieces of the Beretta into the satchel before tucking it back under the Squire's seat. “Everything was fine. The less you know about it the better.”
    “I understand. You will tell your organization that I performed well. That I was of use?”
    Gorilla nodded. This Squire had performed exactly as he'd requested. Good driver, adequate weapon choice, no flapping. “Of course. My people will no doubt reward you well. You were very good.”
    “Inshallah. Thank you, and where to now, my friend?”
    “The airport. I have a flight to catch.”
    By the time the body of the target had been discovered, Gorilla would be winging his way to Paris before travelling home to London. A circuitous route for sure, but it would at least keep the trail he left down to a minimum.
    He settled back and watched the sun cast the Corniche and the mountains in the distance in a yellow haze. Glancing down, he noticed a single speck of blood on the lapel of his jacket. It was a testament, and in fact the only proof, of his first Redaction.
    * * *
    Warsaw, Poland – October 1962
     
    The long watch of Tomasz Bajek began on a bright Saturday afternoon and had started some three hours earlier when he had taken over the surveillance shift.
    The operation, bizarrely enough, was in Warsaw Zoo, which to Bajek seemed a strange place for a group of fully grown men to be trying to blend in unnoticed on a warm weekend. But he supposed that foreign agents did not have the luxury of working only on weekdays.
    The zoo had been rebuilt in 1949 following the bombings of the Second World War, and was now one of the main attractions of the new Poland. He had already completed three rounds of his sector of the zoo and was now sitting down, rocking the pram that he'd been pushing for the past few hours. To the casual observer, he no doubt looked like a devoted new father who had been ushered out of the house by his frantic wife on the weekend, to spend some time with his progeny. The zoo was a relatively inexpensive day out.
    However, all was not as it seemed. Bajek was not a new father, and the pram held nothing more than a toy doll, wrapped up in multiple layers of blankets and bonnets on the off-chance that an overzealous member of the public should desire to see the baby. All that was visible were two bright blue eyes peeking out. He could think of nothing worse than wandering around a zoo for hours on end. He had never visited the zoo before, he hated bloody zoos, and after this job was finished he would never want to visit it again.
    In reality, Tomasz Bajek was a young, junior officer in Poland's internal security service. He had been working in the counterespionage department for the past four years, helping to catch spies and traitors.
    Normally he was tied to a desk, but today, due to a shortage of staff, he had been seconded to one of the roving surveillance teams. A break from the drab head office was always a pleasure.
    He was the sixth operative in an eight-man team, which ranked him somewhere above a headquarters cleaner, but below the filing clerks. Each of the team had their own designated areas inside the zoo's grounds. Two surveillance vehicles were also part of the operation - one was disguised as a refuse collection truck, circling the perimeter, whilst the other was that workhorse of security