Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  "Then you must have been followed at a distance," Brognola said.

  "You mean a bug they could home on? But we played that scene, Hal. We found the bug. And anyway I checked everything before I left the hotel — shoes, seams, belts, everything."

  "We'll run another check on you," the Fed decided.

  They took the elevator down to the specialists in the basement.

  There was a bug.

  It took time to locate it, but the experts finally hit pay dirt… in Bolan's silenced Beretta.

  One of the tiny screws securing the butt plates had been removed and shortened half a millimeter. Then it had been replaced with the transmitter, no bigger than the head of a match, between it and the end of the screw hole.

  "Very smart," Bolan said. "They used two bugs. One, in a fairly obvious place, that we were meant to find. And this one. They knew I'm never without this gun… and they relied on the fact that I'd have to unharness before a body search or an examination of my clothes. Once we'd found the first one, it was a fair guess that we wouldn't look any further."

  "Look, Striker," Brognola said when they were back in the interview room, "does it really matter? The fact that they know where you've been doesn't tell them you know about the presidential hit. That's the important secret we still hold. And in any case, if you're going to go through with it, you want them to find you, don't you?"

  "I'm going through with it all right," Bolan said. He walked to the window and looked out. The tow-haired punk was still there. So was the Peugeot. "There are a couple of other secrets they don't know that I know," he said. "I got a look at a new videotape before I was jumped last time. And I don't think the four guys who tailed me knew that I'd seen it."

  "What did you see?" Brognola asked.

  "A rehearsal. Baraka's next target is the French president. The hit can be made from an old bunker that's actually part of the Maginot fort. It looks over a valley, and there'll be a presidential motorcade crossing a bridge at the far end of the valley when he visits Alsace next month."

  Brognola whistled. "And secret number two?"

  "The camera operator was a little careless. The guys organizing the plot — Pettifer and the Arabs and the rest — were watching Baraka's programming. And for an instant they came into view. So now I know who Al is."

  "Who?" Brognola demanded.

  Bolan told him.

  The Fed dropped into a chair and mopped his brow. "My God," he said. "This is dynamite!"

  "For me," Bolan said, "it's this guy Baraka that's dynamite. A guy wearing my face and my body, and I don't know him from Adam. Until I can get inside his skin, this operation remains a gamble. And that scares me some."

  "Trust Beth and Toledo," Brognola said with a confidence he was far from feeling. "The dose you swallowed on your trial run was a pilot. They didn't know how or when it would be needed or used. The Man's timetable is fixed. They'll know exactly, to the minute, when the antidote drugs have to be at their strongest."

  "Yeah," Bolan said. "That's right."

  He didn't tell the Fed what scared him most. He remembered it very well. Sometime during his walk with Nasruddin and the Marksman, they had passed a store with a mirrored door. Bolan had glanced aside and seen his own reflection — a tall, husky man with rugged features, blue eyes, and the cold, blank stare of a killer.

  32

  From the air, the principality of Monaco looked as if a giant hand had snatched a part of Manhattan and scattered it along a three-mile strip of hillside plunging into the Mediterranean. It was divided into three neighborhoods, of which Monte Carlo was the best known and most important, since it included the luxury hotels, the affluent apartment blocks, the famous casino and the banks.

  Most of all the banks. For this nineteenth-century pleasure dome still hosted the world's highest concentration of oil sheikhs, billionaires, property developers and industrial tycoons.

  Foreigners living there paid no tax.

  "Maybe less money changes hands here than in Vegas," Hal Brognola said to Bolan, "but a lot more of it stays right here in town. You know why? Because it's safe. Because this is the most cop-riddled place on earth. They have three hundred guys in uniform, another coupla hundred in plainclothes, two hundred casino heavies and a palace guard of fifty — to look after a population of no more than twenty-seven thousand. There aren't many burglaries in Monaco."

  "How many of them are genuine Monegasques?" Bolan asked.

  "Fewer than six thousand. And you know something else? There are secret police, too, and they hold dossiers on every damned one of those twenty-thousand-plus foreigners. Every single telephone line in the principality is patched in to a listening post, which can be switched to record at the drop of a peaked cap. And they have more video cameras than you ever saw in your Maginot dump — one at each main intersection in town, twenty-six in all. And those babies can zoom in and read a newspaper headline from two hundred yards if the guys on the police monitors want to read the latest score in major league baseball or check out tomorrow's weather."

  "Okay," Bolan said. "So the place is secure. They have it all sewn up. The rich dames can wear the real jewels when they go to the casino. I get the picture."

  "Only the really loaded are welcome," Brognola told him. "A lot of folks try to get permission, but only about thirty a year are allowed to become what they call 'privileged residents' — best-selling authors, tennis stars, racing car drivers, wealthy actors. You know."

  "Sure. Why are you telling me…?"

  "One of the banks won't even let you open a charge account with less than a hundred grand. And you have to keep your balance above that. If you want to write a check for ten bucks, you have to have one hundred thousand and ten in the kitty. I'm telling you this," the Fed continued as he saw Bolan's expression, "because it may not be all that easy to get past all this security. Plus the President's own bodyguard."

  "Hal," Bolan said gently, "it's already decided, the plan's already made. I don't know what it is, but my Baraka self does. He doped it all out on that visit with Nasruddin and the Marksman." He shook his head. "It's a hell of a thing, knowing you worked out a complicated plan of attack — maybe a brilliant one, complete with fail-safe options — yet having no memory of it at all."

  "Are there no clues you can give me? None at all?" Brognola demanded. "Nothing on the site, the range, the location you chose for the hit? Nothing on how you aim to break through security?"

  Again Bolan shook his head. "I remember a stairway, sun on my face, a view of the harbor. I remember a party of nuns among tropical trees. I remember thinking that from there the casino looked like a wedding cake with two peppermills on top."

  "From where?" Brognola shot at him.

  "From the roof — looking over the trees sheltering the nuns." Bolan's jaw dropped. "You surprised that out of me. I didn't know I knew it," he said blankly.

  "Try again. Anything at all," the Fed persisted. But the compartment of the Executioner's mind that had surrendered one secret had closed again; he couldn't dredge up any more flash memories of his stay in Monte Carlo or the plan he had made there.

  Brognola sighed. "Okay," he said at last. "We'll cover the waterfront. It seems a likely enough place, where the shore party delivers him to the motorcade. The rooftops, too. We'll check which buildings overlook the casino across a belt of tropical trees. Not more than a hundred, I guess."

  "That may not be the place chosen for the hit," Bolan pointed out.

  "I know, Striker. But we have to cover every angle, don't we? In case Toledo is talking through his ass and the stuff they're gonna feed you is bad medicine."

  "With what I can tell them about the trial run, they should be able to modify the formula so that it works."

  "I sure hope so. Because from here on down it seems this is strictly a play-it-by-ear situation — for both of us."

  "That's right, Hal."

  "Well, I hope they're playing our tune, that's all. I hope you can somehow use the situ
ation to flush these bastards into the open and wrap it all up."

  "That's what I hope," Bolan said. "But you'd better keep your fingers crossed."

  The man from Washington put an arm around the warrior's shoulders. For a split second again, Bolan saw Nasruddin next to him on the roof, but the image faded. "Listen, guy," he said. "You know my first responsibility, my first loyalty is to The Man, don't you? His safety comes before anything else…"

  "That's understood, Hal."

  "So I have to tell you that from now on the danger sits squarely on your shoulders. Because presidential security will have to be alerted to the possibility of a hit. The local law, too. The whole shooting match, no pun intended, will be on the lookout — and if there's any doubt, they'll shoot to kill."

  Brognola fished a cigar from the pocket of his rumpled suit and stuck it between his lips. He made no attempt to light it. "I hope you understand the implications," he said awkwardly, "if Toledo's antidotes don't allow you to overcome the effects of the drugs and your Baraka self looks likely to succeed."

  Brognola paused as the soldier turned to look him in the eyes. The man from Justice wished with all his heart that he didn't have to utter the next words.

  Bolan's diamond-hard gaze never faltered as he looked at his best friend.

  Very softly Brognola said, "We'll have to kill you."

  * * *

  Once more the sun was warm on Mack Bolan's face. He sat nursing a beer at a sidewalk cafe on Paris's Champs-Elysees.

  It was crazy, he thought.

  He had been programmed to kill the most important public figure on earth as part of an evil campaign to stimulate a left-wing uprising that would be crushed by the extreme right. Although he knew about the conspiracy, he was continuing to allow himself to be used, in the hope that his antidrug treatment would permit his conscious self to block the plans made by his secret self.

  But he wouldn't know what those plans were, whether he could block them and eliminate the ringleaders of the conspiracy, until and unless the antidotes worked well enough to unite the disparate halves of his mind.

  Or until they didn't — in which case, as Max Nasruddin had said, he would "read about it in the papers."

  If they allowed papers in the cell for condemned inmates.

  There was a copy of an English language newspaper on the table beside Bolan's beer, folded back to an inside page. Right now he could read about the man whose life was supposed to be in his hands.

  The Nimitz was due to anchor off Monaco, along with a cruiser and a squadron of antimissile frigates, that evening. The next day, chase planes from the great carrier would give aerobatic displays above the principality, and there would be a presidential reception on board to which the Monegasque royal family, local dignitaries and various European heads of state were invited.

  It was on the day after that that the festivity was scheduled.

  Apart from the goodwill character of the visit, the paper said, it was thought that unofficial — but highly important — talks would be held between the U.S. President and European leaders on the subject of a firmer stand against Russian expansionism, the terrorist menace and the dictatorship of the oil producers. It was for this reason, the article stated, that the presidential advisers included the secretary of state, three Pentagon generals, two of them "hawks" and one a "dove," and Dr. Alwen Proctor, State's roving troubleshooter, who was also a notorious hawk in addition to heading the government's think tank on longterm strategic planning.

  And among all these headliners, Bolan knew, Hal Brognola would be flitting from group to security group, from contacts in the CIA to NSA aides to incognito members of the FBI to Monte Carlo antiterrorist chiefs, doing his best to figure out a contingency plan for a potential assassin to be wasted in certain circumstances — when he knew no better than Bolan himself from which direction the attack might come!

  In any case, Bolan thought, the attack on his own person would come soon. The reception was the day after tomorrow. To avoid alerting the terrorists, he had replaced the bug in his Beretta. The tow-headed kid was drinking coffee at a cafe on the far side of the street. The Peugeot was circling the block.

  Soon, Bolan thought again, they or their bosses would make their play.

  Bolan reached out a hand for his beer. The table tilted, and the glass grew immensely large and then dwindled to nothing. The tow-headed kid was running across the street, dodging the traffic. The Peugeot angled in to the curb, and the sidewalk swung slowly up to caress the side of Bolan's head. The last thing he heard was a voice saying, "I'm afraid our friend has been taken ill…"

  * * *

  "You remember who you are. Baraka. That's who you are," the man with the blue chin and wraparound shades insisted. "We have to take a trip because you have things to do, don't you, Baraka?"

  "The enemy," Mack Bolan said thickly. "Get rid of him."

  "That's right," the second doctor said. "If he is threatening you, you know what to do?" He removed his pince-nez and gazed enquiringly at the big American.

  "Kill," Bolan said.

  "And if he threatens the whole world?"

  "Kill, to keep it safe." And astonishingly he seemed to be both inside and outside of himself. He was floating alongside his body, seeing his own blank stare and hearing the voice issue from his expressionless face, saying, "Kill while there is still time."

  "Very good," the younger doctor said. "Excellent."

  The Bolan who was talking knew exactly what had to be done — he glanced with hatred at a life-size photo of the President of the United States — and remembered now in precise detail the plan he himself had worked out: the approach, the climb, the firing point. And the comforting presence of the gun they were kindly lending him.

  The Bolan standing outside recalled his last conversation with Beth McMann, the attractive Langley redhead, and the warning she had given him.

  "The dosage," she had said earnestly, "is calculated on the assumption that you regain consciousness, that you know who you are, even if it's for a short time only, when the effects of whatever knockout technique they use have worn off — but before they inject you with the psychotomimetics. We think there must be a period between the two comatose states — they'll need you conscious and organically normal to check out the cumulative initial effects of the drugs they use."

  "I don't remember waking up the other times," he had said.

  "You wouldn't because of the memory block they lay on you afterward. But that's when you have to swallow those first capsules. If you wait until after they treat you, you may already have taken off and be too… well, too stoned to remember."

  The capsules were lodged in special miniature clips behind the front teeth of his upper jaw. He worked two of the three loose with his tongue and swallowed them. The older doctor was swabbing the arm of his other self with alcohol-soaked cotton wool. The man with shades held a syringe.

  After that there was the dark man with the limp. But for a while back there things were confused. There was a journey by air. He remembered a lift-off — it must have been a chopper — and a view of the snowcapped tops of mountains. Then there was a blank, a lot of talk in a room with wide windows overlooking high-rise apartments, the blue sea below. Finally he was on his own, in control of his balance again, free to do what he wanted, what it was his duty to do, the way he had planned it.

  Wearing the white pith helmet, white belt and dark blue uniform of the palace guard, he walked briskly past the beach at the inner end of the harbor, around the corner where security police supervised the erection of barriers and a striped awning above the jetty where the presidential launch would land the official party later, and on up the slope that led to the Hotel de Paris and the casino.

  There was a leather-covered steel document case chained to his left wrist and a revolver in a white holster at his hip.

  The cop on traffic duty at the intersection didn't give the palace guard a second look as he hurried toward the banks. He raised a g
loved hand in a casual salute. Bolan returned it punctiliously, his face impassive.

  The streets were crowded. Stars and stripes alternating with the French and Monegasque flags hung from the buildings in the business quarter fronting the port. Smaller pennants mixed with colored lights had been strung between the palms outside the Cafe de Paris and among the trees in the gardens that stretched between the Avenue de la Costa and the casino.

  Traffic was crawling as motorists paused frequently to stare at the huge clifflike bulk of the Nimitz and its dressed escorts beyond the rocky headland on which the royal palace stood.

  Up beyond the casino, Bolan-Baraka walked into the main post office. Urgent business for the palace perhaps, a passerby might have thought, perhaps some official telegrams in the prince's name, or maybe even royalty needed to use stamps for their letters.

  The post office wasn't a separate building: it occupied part of the street level beneath a large business block. A long, wide marble hallway separated it from the entrance to the block. At one point, iron-railed stairs curled upward to office suites on the floors above; at another there was a bank of elevators. Between the two was a small door marked Private.

  Checking that the hallway was temporarily empty, the big man in the palace uniform opened the door and slipped through.

  He found himself in a corridor with offices on either side. He could hear a hum of voices and the clacking of typewriters. In one of the rooms some piece of electronic hardware was bleeping. He opened the door closing off the far end of the passage and passed through a sorting office with labeled wire trays racked along benches.

  Sacks of mail had been dumped ready for collection on the platform of a loading bay. Two yellow delivery trucks were backed up to the platform, but the long room was empty.

  Now, he knew, came the difficult part.

  It was believable that a royal guard might have legitimate business as far as the post office, maybe even inside the sorting center.