Yeah, taken care of good, Bolan thought. They'd sure been quick to spot the possibilities offered by a patient who had been trained to kill, but couldn't remember which side he was supposed to fight on! For some reason he recalled the shootout in the Maginot lobby and the dying watchman, Gerhard. As if you didn't know! the boy had cried bitterly when the Executioner had posed some question concerning the terrorist plot.
Well, he hadn't known, not consciously. But now he was damned well going to find out!
Noiselessly turning the handle, he eased himself into the study and closed the door behind him.
Friedekinde, seated at the desk writing, had his back to the door. "What is it, Mazarin?" he asked testily without raising his head. "Who rang the front doorbell? Did you knock something over? I thought I heard a noise."
Bolan made no reply. For ease of movement he was armed only with the Beretta in its shoulder rig — fully equipped with suppressor. He drew the autoloader from leather and held it loosely in his right hand.
"I asked you a question, man," the doctor said angrily. "I expect an answer when I…" The sentence died on his lips as he swiveled his chair to face the doorway.
"Mazarin is temporarily — shall we say — indisposed," Bolan said softly.
"Baraka!" Friedekinde exclaimed. "How did you…?"
"I rang the front doorbell. You heard me."
"But, my dear fellow, how good of you to come by. We're always happy to see an old patient." The clinic boss was effusive. "Although how you happened to… never mind. Now put that thing away and let me fix you a drink."
"What are you offering?" Bolan said. "Psilocybin? LSD? Soma? If it's telepathine, I prefer it on the rocks, with a twist of lemon."
Beneath the thatch of white hair, Friedekinde's florid face blanched. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
"The name…" the Executioner's voice was no more than a whisper "…is Bolan. You see, I know about Baraka and how you and your thugs treat him. What I don't know…" now the voice cracked out like a whip "…is what you are programming him to do. And you're going to tell me that right now. Or die."
The blood drained from Friedekinde's face. "I d-don't know the d-details," he stammered. "I swear it. It s-started as an… well, as an experiment. It was Schloesser and Hansen who… All I did was provide the laboratory space. It wasn't my idea, the imprinting. They swore it w-would be…"
"Okay, I'll accept that for now," Bolan said. "You may or may not be in on the details. But I want to know about the whole plot. The bombs, the killings, the hijacks — there has to be an overall reason."
"I know nothing, n-nothing at all," Friedekinde babbled. "I was asked to provide a certain service… a professional service… to allow members of my staff…"
"Nonsense," Bolan interrupted roughly. "You're in it up to your neck, even if you have nothing to do with the actual planning of the hits."
"I c-can't tell you."
"Okay, it's your life," Bolan growled, taking a threatening step forward.
"All right. What do you want to know?"
"I told you." Bolan stepped back, keeping the gun trained on the doctor's forehead. "The object of the terror campaign."
Friedekinde breathed heavily. Finally he spoke. "It's a c-consortium, a group of the world's most powerful men. They're connected with extreme right-wing or neofascist political groups or paramilitary organizations. They fund them secretly and support…"
"Their names?"
"It's more than my life's worth to tell you."
"You said it, not me." The gun barrel came up fractionally.
"Al-Jaafari," the Swiss said hastily. "Sayed Mahdi al-Jaafari, the playboy oil billionaire. Farid Gamal Mokhaddem. He's in oil, too, but he has an enormous religious following in the Arab world. There's an American senator…"
"Shell Pettifer. A big wheel, perhaps the biggest, in electronics. I just saw him leave. One of your board of directors — and you say you're just an innocent bystander? Don't make me laugh."
"There's a man called Nasruddin, who organizes…"
"I know about Nasruddin. What about the other directors? Caversham, the Brit? The French admiral? Giotto?"
"They don't take an active part. But they have… well, connections. They could swing a lot of support our… that is to say, their way, when it became necessary."
"Okay. So who calls the tune?"
Friedekinde stared at him pathetically. "I don't follow."
"The boss man. The brains behind the terror campaign. There has to be an overall planner, an organizer. Who is he?"
"I never heard his name," the Swiss cried abjectly. "He has nothing to do with the foundation. He's only been here once or twice. He's American. The others call him Al."
"That's a great lead," Bolan said. "If you're telling the truth…"
"I swear it," Friedekinde said.
"What's the aim of the operation? These scum are paying Nasruddin and his hit men to eliminate prominent figures and stir up a climate of terror. Why?"
"They're hoping, planning to create a situation where the Communists — local parties, not the Soviets — will attempt to move in. There'll be opposition — people will think it's a Moscow takeover. Things will get even worse, almost up to the civil war level. And at that point, there'll be such an outcry, such a demand for a peaceful, lawful existence, that our right-wingers can move."
"You're deliberately provoking a total breakdown of law and order with the hope that the Communists will move, right? And at that point your neofascists will take over — by popular demand — and claim after all the heads have fallen that they're in power legally. Is that it?"
"Yes."
Bolan remained silent. He didn't like it at all. It was exactly the way Hitler had put it. And once in control, with oil and electronics in their power and a terrorized work force to kick around, there was nothing they couldn't achieve.
He looked at the Swiss again. "There's one more thing you're going to tell me. It seems that Baraka, my other self, is being prepared to make a hit that will be the high point of the campaign against law and order. What is it? And when?"
There was a look of resignation in Friedekinde's eyes. Bolan thought he saw something there. Regret, perhaps? He couldn't be sure. In any case, it appeared as if the man had consigned his fate to the Universe. And Bolan had a pretty good idea what that fate would be when the others came to collect.
Friedekinde broke. "Very well," he croaked. "It won't do you any good and it will kill me, but it's the Nimitz… at Monte Carlo."
"The Nimitz? The U.S. Sixth Fleet flag carrier?"
Friedekinde barely stopped himself from nodding. "A g-g-goodwill visit," he choked. "There's a reception at the Sporting Club… heads of state, movie stars, the world's richest people. It's… a big event. There may be informal talks on America's… on help to deal with the law-and-order threat. Secret agreements perhaps."
"And I'm scheduled… you mean Baraka is scheduled to make his first hit there? Is that what you're telling me? What's on the shopping list? A bomb aboard the Nimitz? A U.S. Marines liberty party machine-gunned? An elder statesman eliminated?"
"I warned you, it won't do you any good," Friedekinde whimpered. "Even when you know, you won't be able to do anything about it. You're already programmed. All the details. Once they catch you again — and they will — all they have to do is pump the right dose into you, point you in the right direction and you'll carry out the program as efficiently and mechanically as a clockwork toy."
"The program being…?"
Something that was almost a hysterical laugh escaped the Swiss's foam-flecked lips. "You're going to assassinate the President of the United States," he said.
29
For the second time on this mission, Mack Bolan was numb with shock.
The monstrousness of the plan astonished him. The fact that he had been scheduled to engineer the biggest atrocity of all horrified him. And still more disturbing was the idea that he had already been programmed to do this.
Inside his head, utterly concealed from his conscious recollection, a group of cells among the billions in his brain held the secret blueprint of the evil operation. Like a cancer festering unseen in an otherwise healthy body, he carried within him the seed of an evil flower that, when it bloomed, would shake the world.
Worst of all, the knowledge he tried desperately to hide from himself, was the conviction that, given the right backup and briefing, he had the skill and the power to get away with it.
It was this that really scared him.
But before he could free his mind to examine the implications — and estimate his chances of foiling the plot — other problems, more urgent, more immediate, claimed his attention.
He heard the crunch of tires on gravel followed by the slamming of a car door. Then there were footsteps rising to the porch, a key grating in a lock, and finally confused shouting, presumably when Mazarin was discovered.
Bolan dropped the lamp and leaped back behind the door. He was ready with the silenced Beretta when it burst open, but Klaus, the chauffeur, was standing outside the window with a submachine gun, and behind him, half obscured by a stone urn filled with geraniums, stood the Marksman with his twin-barreled rifle.
"If you don't want us to come in shooting," Max Nasruddin's voice drawled from outside the door, "throw your gun on the floor where we can see it."
Bolan's lightning glance took in the whole scene. There was no other exit from the study. Behind him, a hatchway that probably connected with a butler's pantry had slid open. On the far side a man held something with a long barrel that glinted in the light from the study window.
Covered from the front and rear, Bolan had no choice. "Say nothing about Baraka and save your own skin," he whispered to Friedekinde. "Keep quiet and I won't let on that I know." He threw the Beretta onto the carpeted floor in front of the open door and raised his hands to shoulder height.
Nasruddin strutted into the room. He was unarmed, but the tow-haired youth behind him with flinty eyes beneath a jutting forehead was carrying a Detonics Combat Master. He looked eager to use the .45 automatic whose stopping power was as lethal as Bolan's own AutoMag.
Looking at the pathetic figure of Friedekinde, still slumped abjectly in his swivel chair, Nasruddin said with scarcely disguised contempt, "All right. So Mister Big here put the bite on you. What did you spill?"
"I couldn't help it. I… he was threatening to shoot me!" The voice, quavering at first, rose to a defiant yelp.
"What did you tell him?"
"About… the plan. Just the general layout. He wanted to know what the hits… what he called the t-terrorist acts… were in aid of," Friedekinde said wretchedly.
"And you told him?"
"There was nothing else I could do, Max."
"All right, that's enough. He didn't ask you anything else?"
"He was g-going to, but then you arrived."
"I wanted to know when and where the next hits were planned," Bolan said with a meaningful glance at Friedekinde.
"You do know. It's all in your mind!" Nasruddin said. He laughed. "You're familiar with the whole damn thing — only you can't remember any of it."
Okay, they did know he knew he was Baraka. In the meantime, it looked as if they must also be wise to Julie's betrayal.
"Yeah, your little friend was also a little indiscreet," Nasruddin said as though reading Bolan's thoughts. "You were getting too close for comfort, too often. So we ran a check. The Belgian hit was organized specifically to bring you back within range. You fell for it all right. But just to make sure our suspicions were correct, we fed the Marco girl a different story from everyone else when we set it up. The real target was always the Kennedy tower block — but she was told, when she activated the dossier, that it was the Culture Center. And that's where you went when you hit town, the Culture Center. Who needs more proof than that?"
Well, as far as Julie was concerned, time was running out, Bolan thought. And right now there was nothing he could do about it. He posed his own second question.
"Tell me one thing," he said. "You're safe enough, after all, if I'm not going to remember a thing about it. What is this big hit I'm supposed to be training for? What's the target? Where?"
Nasruddin turned to pin him with a level stare that was equal parts dislike and suspicion. "You'll know soon enough," he said gruffly.
Strikeout.
Klaus and the Marksman had come into the room. The chauffeur still held his SMG at the ready. They were followed by Mazarin, clasping both hands to his gut and glaring at the Executioner. The tow-haired youth's Combat Master was pointed at Bolan's abdomen, and he supposed the fifth member of the assault squad remained on the far side of the hatchway at his back.
"The timing's a mess," Nasruddin said, plucking his lower lip with a forefinger and thumb. "And it means the original schedule is shot to hell. Plus we'll have to keep him sedated damn near a week. But since the bastard's here… well, it'll save us the trouble of bringing him in the normal way. And I don't like to let him loose after his talk with Uncle Wilhelm here." He glared at Friedekinde. "Klaus, what time do you have to pick up Schloesser and Hansen again?"
"They're waiting in Berne with Senator Pettifer until his plane takes off," the bullet-headed hardman said. "I'll be leaving again in half an hour."
"Great. They can decide the appropriate medication when they arrive. Meanwhile, I figure our friend Baraka has earned a rest."
He turned to Mazarin. "Perhaps I could persuade you to help Mr. Bolan sleep until the medics show?"
Mazarin flexed his fingers. The backs were covered in black hair. He licked his lips. "It'll be a pleasure," he said, looking at his right hand. Slowly he curled the fingers into a fist, then drew back his arm.
Bolan prepared himself for the blow. It didn't come. Instead the bald giant used Bolan's own technique: his knee jerked up with paralyzing force into the Executioner's crotch.
Bolan doubled up as agony flamed through his loins and belly. It was then that the huge left uppercut rocketed up with enough force to lift him off the floor.
Before he could fall, the tow-haired kid seized one of his arms and Klaus the other. They held him upright as his knees buckled and involuntarily jackknifed toward his brutalized groin, then Mazarin hit him with the second murderous blow.
And the third.
Pain seared through every nerve end in the Executioner's body as the merciless beating continued hammering at his defenseless torso. The room went dark and began to spin. Through a red mist of agony he heard Nasruddin's faraway voice ordering, "Don't hit him in the face. I don't want the features marked."
His lungs were on fire. He felt himself vomit uncontrollably. He was hallucinating: he imagined he heard women screaming; the sound of Mazarin's fists smacking into his flesh accelerated, grew faster and faster until they sounded like the rotors of a helicopter; a freezing wind roared through the archway and smashed into his chest.
Then consciousness dwindled to a single point of blazing red light…
30
The helicopter was a French army-type Lynx, and it was real.
Bolan saw wisps of cloud stream past the rain-spotted ports when he opened his eyes. He groaned and turned his head. Apart from his feet, it was the only part of his body that didn't throb and ache.
He was half sitting, half lying on one of the folded-back canvas seats in the belly of the chopper. The man in the seat beside him was tall and snub-nosed, with pale blue eyes and red hair. His left arm was in a sling, and blood had seeped through the bandages swathing his wrist.
"Aaron Davis!" Bolan exclaimed thickly, struggling to push himself upright. "What the hell are you doing here… wherever here is?"
He looked around the cabin. Behind him half a dozen tough-looking characters in camouflage fatigues sat cradling Uzi submachine guns. One had a blood-stained strip of cloth tied around his head. "Where am I?" Bolan demanded.
"There were some problems down at the clinic,
" the Mossad man explained. "We thought it better to lift you out."
"Thanks," the Executioner said. "But I don't understand. How do you know about the clinic? How did you know I was there today? What gave you the idea I was in trouble? What are you guys doing here anyway?" His head was beginning to ache now, too.
Davis grinned. "We know about the clinic because we followed you there from North Africa. We knew you were there today because we've been staking the place out ever since. We figured you were in trouble when we saw the posse forming up outside the window with guns. As to what we're doing here and why, I told you in Tel Aviv — a watching brief on these new-style terrorists. We have to satisfy ourselves first of all that their campaign isn't directed uniquely at Israel."
"It isn't," Bolan said. "I can tell you that. It's against Europe as a whole. What do you mean — you followed me from North Africa?"
"When they took you away from Boardman's place. You were brought to the clinic a couple of days before they dumped you in Paris, right? Well, we tagged along to see what the score was."
"I don't get it." Bolan was more mystified than ever.
"When I say 'we,' I mean our agent in Algiers — she followed you."
"She?" Bolan sat bolt upright — and winced. "You don't mean…? Your agent wasn't…?"
"Fawzi Harari." The Israeli nodded. "One of the best field operatives we had. She was a great loss."
"She was a great person," Bolan said. "Her killers have already been eliminated, but the account won't be closed until I've finished with Nasruddin." He sighed. "So that's why she handed me that phony story about the scooter, the overnight drive to Paris in an off-roader, and all that jazz?"
"Yeah. Actually, she tracked their plane in one of ours equipped with all the latest high-tech directional gear, radioed ahead for ground support and then reported back to us once the team had located where you were held. We sent her back to Paris when you were transferred there."
Bolan nodded. "So it was no accident she was ready and waiting to snatch me from the arms of the law. I can understand why she lied about the scooter, but what was all that nonsense about avenging her brother?"
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