A low wall separated one side of the square from the portico. Slate roofs slanted up from the other three, but a dormer projected onto the landing space from the center one, and this had been modified so that the original window was replaced by double doors of armored glass.
No stairway, no stepladder was visible; clearly the glass doors were the only way of getting into the castle — the only way that was legitimate. An alternative would be to scale one of the roofs, lower away on the far side of the ridgepole and hope to find an upper-story window that could be forced.
Bolan stared at the steeply sloping slates and shook his head.
No way.
He checked over his two guns, pulling back the nickel slide of the Desert Eagle to chamber one of the .44 Magnum rounds. He took one of the stun grenades from the neoprene pouch and clipped it to his belt. He removed a miniature penlight from the pouch. Then, warily, he approached the glass doors from one side.
When he was two yards away, he flicked on the light, angling the narrow beam toward the door frame. On the far side of the glass he saw a short passageway covered in dark blue wall-to-wall carpet, the outer door of a small elevator, the entrance to a stairway that circled the shaft. The doors themselves fitted snugly edge to edge, with no sign of a catch, handle or latch. No hinges were visible.
The Executioner frowned. Could they be remotely controlled from inside the building?
Uh-uh. Because there would have to be a bell, an intercom, a talk-through grille or a video scanner, and, after playing the flashlight beam all around the frame, there was none.
Sensors, alarms, magic-eye beams?
Zero.
Still frowning, he moved in until he was facing the doors... and froze, his right hand darting toward the holster on his hip.
The doors had opened, sliding soundlessly apart to vanish into slits cut in the dormer wall.
He saw it then, the small hooded projector hidden top center in the door frame itself. Cross the downward-angled ray and the circuit was broken: the doors were automatic, the kind used in any hotel, supermarket, apartment block or airport.
They also actuated a dim roof light that glowed above the elevator door.
Bolan glanced swiftly behind him. As far as he could see, the dormer would be invisible from any part of the grounds: the helipad would effectively block the view from that level. There was a possibility just the same that the opening doors would be signaled to security somewhere below. He stepped quickly inside, and the light was killed as the doors shut behind him. But now a red pilot light began to glow above an intercom at one side of the elevator.
The way Bolan read it, Maccione didn't need any sophisticated alarm system up there. There were no vent pipes, copings or ledges that could give access to the helipad. So there weren't going to be any chance callers there: the only way of making it was by chopper.
Passengers and crew, he supposed, announced themselves over the intercom once they were inside.
Since no chopper had arrived within the past few minutes, was there a chance that there was nobody listening at the other end of the intercom, that a pilot light there would have remained unnoticed?
In a Mob headquarters? The warrior wouldn't bet on it.
He'd better split before a voice behind that grille started to ask questions.
Unleathering the smaller, more maneuverable Beretta, Bolan passed the elevator and trod silently down the stairway that spiraled into the heart of the fortress.
15
Vito Maccione was thickset and muscular; he was shorter than Fraser Latta and much less suave. A scar from an old knife wound puckered the skin of his pockmarked face just below the left temple, and he wore his stiff gray hair in a modified crew cut.
The two men sat at the head of an ancient refectory table in the great hall of the schloss, a huge room whose ceiling yawned three stories above the floor, and which boasted a raftered roof and minstrels' gallery. Six other men lined the top end of the table and a pouting well-endowed blonde stood by a drinks cart in front of an enormous hooded stone fireplace. A burly guard was stationed in front of each of the hall's three entrance doors.
"Okay, so we fucked up all along the line," Maccione admitted hoarsely. "I don't want to hear any excuses."
"There are excuses, Vito," Latta soothed. "The reports tell..."
"Fuck the reports," Maccione snarled. "You know where you can stick them." He glared around the table, drumming thick fingers angrily on the polished oak. Precious stones glimmered from gold rings on four fingers on each hand, and he wore a diamond stickpin. "You, Giordano..." he stabbed a forefinger at the third man on his right "...you got an excuse for losing Bolan in Liège? With all the clout you got in that shitface town?"
Giordano was thin, bespectacled, with dark hair slicked over a narrow skull. Like the other five subordinates, he was dressed in a sober business suit, a telling contrast to the tan vicuna sported by Latta, and Maccione's ivory-colored shantung. Pursing his lawyer lips, he replied, "Excuses, no. Explanation, yes. This guy is one super-professional. We had him sewn up, just the same... until he took that dive into the Meuse. Nobody could have foreseen that. We had a boat out in less than five minutes too, but he'd already let go of the barge that was towing him."
"All you're saying is that you lost the bastard."
"He wouldn't have been there to lose..." the spectacles flashed at Latta "...if he hadn't been picked up on a phony snatch. And then, if that wasn't enough, he was allowed to escape!"
"Now just a minute..." Latta began.
"Or, after we had relocated by him," Giordano pursued hotly, "if he hadn't been given a free pass by that third-rate team supplied by our dear friend from Cologne." He shot an angry glance at an overweight mobster sitting beside him.
"Shit, we had no time to organize anything better," the fat man shouted. "After Bolan left the optical place and the Ardennes detail screwed up, we had to act fast or see..."
A tall bald man rose to his feet to interrupt, and then suddenly everyone was talking at once.
"Shut up!" Maccione roared. "Pack it in, all of you."
He was on his feet, pounding the table with one fist. "Get this straight. There have been fuck-ups all around. Number one, the security detail fucked up allowing this Zulowski to make it to the safe and lift the goddamn report while I was away. Number two, the worst of all, Gallo's Luxembourg unit failed to catch him in time to stop the papers' being copied — and after that they allowed him to mail his damn holograms to the U. S." Maccione paused, his face flushed. He was breathing heavily.
"Just to keep the job nice and tidy," he grated, "Gallo then orders a sharpshooter to snuff the guy before they find out what he used to make this hologram, and where it is."
"Yeah," someone said. "Where is Gallo, for God's sake?"
"You won't be seeing him any more," Maccione replied grimly. "Guys who work for me don't make that kind of mistake twice."
He sat down and continued in a quieter tone. "Fuck-up number three, we snatch Bolan because we think he's in on the act and can give us information. Only he isn't and he can't. So what do we do?" The European capo leaned back in his chair. "We set the bastard free with a tip-off, like practically an invitation..." he shot a venomous glance at Latta "...to contact his bosses, find out what it's all about and start acting like a detective all over bloody Europe. That's what we do."
"You thought it was such a good idea, Vito, to create a special intelligence unit, feeding info to all the families over here," Latta said levelly. "Well, it was Schleyer's computerized intelligence that came up with the idea that it would be smart to kidnap Bolan and pump him on their communications setup. Okay, I coopted Rosi's boys in Washington to organize the abduction, but it was only because of Schleyer's intel."
Schleyer was another beefy man with cold, calculating eyes set unexpectedly in a prizefighter's face. "It seemed a fair deduction, given the trace on the guy that we had," he said sullenly.
"Deductions, ideas, tr
aces!" Maccione yelled. "What I want is facts. I got two. This son of a bitch Bolan is still on the loose, and still searching, for starters. Second fact. The Washington snatch was the only operation that worked, the one piece of efficient action we've had since this whole goddamn thing started — and it had nothing to do with us. Every single thing we did blew up in our faces."
"Yeah, Vito, but look, man, the difficulties we had to..."
"You're bosses because you're supposed to organize..."
"If the fuckin' report hadn't been lifted in the first place..."
"What do you do if you get fed wrong intel?"
Mack Bolan smiled grimly. When the dogs began to fight among themselves, the prey sometimes was forgotten.
He was lying flat on his face, squinting between the wooden bars of the railing that surrounded the minstrels' gallery. The sound of raised voices had led him through the warren of passageways honeycombing the castle. Just before he eased open the upper-floor door to the gallery, he'd heard the elevator whine upward from some lower level. The opening of the helipad entrance had been signaled, he guessed, and someone had been sent up to check why no more visitors had arrived... and maybe why no second chopper was occupying the pad.
In that case, the glider would be found, they would know there were strangers in town and all hell would probably break loose.
That was a risk the Executioner had been prepared to take. He knew he'd most likely have to fight his way out of Maccione's headquarters. He knew, once he heard that elevator, that it was only a question of time before a guard alerted the Mafia boss. But he hoped — now that luck and good judgment had made him a party to a conference of the Mob's European chiefs — that he might get a lead in the few minutes that remained.
He'd learned so far that his own deductions about the kidnap operation that brought him unknowingly to Europe had been correct; he knew now that his other guesses concerning the hunt after him were on target, and it was interesting and useful to know there was a specialized intel unit at work, even if so far it hadn't scored too well. There had to be a first time for everything, and it was as well to be prepared.
The Mob had no idea what Zulowski had used to create his hologram, and they had no more idea than Bolan did as to what they were looking for.
During the next few minutes, Bolan sifted three more salient facts out of the arguments raging below. Zulowski had been chased into Luxembourg by a team under the orders of the tall, bald guy who was capo of the Brussels area, and the agent, at the time, was driving a Peugeot convertible rented in the Belgian capital, which hadn't been located anywhere near the agent's body.
The bald man, whose name was Campos, had discovered through contacts in the Luxembourg police that although Zulowski was on his way into the post office when he was shot, no letter, no package, no items of any kind that could have been destined for mailing, had been found on or near the body.
It wasn't much, but it was a beginning. And it was all the warrior was going to get, for the noise beneath the gallery had suddenly abated. One of the behemoths standing guard at the doors had softfooted to the head of the table and was whispering something into Maccione's ear.
"What!" the mobster roared. "Here in the castle? Jesus, what do I pay you assholes for? How can anyone possibly..." He broke off into silence as the man spoke again. Bolan couldn't hear the words, but he could see the darkening scowl on Maccione's face. "On the roof? Okay, send him in."
As the guard hurried to the door, Maccione stood. "We've got an intruder in the castle."
The hall echoed with cries of outrage and disbelief. "There can't be," Schleyer protested loudly. "We've got the best security money can buy, installed by the best technicians. Nobody could get past all the checks I devised!"
"Bolan could," Latta said. "He got out of my place, so he could have gotten into this one."
"Your systems weren't planned by my unit. If they had been..."
"Enough!" Maccione snapped, turning toward the door. An aging ex-pug, incongruously dressed as a houseman with a white jacket and gloves, shuffled across the floor. The man was shaking with fear. Bolan could only catch an occasional phrase of his stumbling, low-voiced explanation.
"... not my fault, boss... I saw the light, says to myself maybe more folks from the chopper — or, no, maybe another chopper. All at once I realize nobody came down, so I take the elevator... all in darkness, and then, right at the edge of the pad, I find..."
"You doddering old fool!" Maccione yelled. "Even someone as deaf as you would hear a helicopter putting down. And nobody's going to wait two hours before he decides to quit the first one! You should have sounded the goddamn alarm the minute you saw that warning light, the hell with waiting to see if the elevator came down." He shook his head. "Get out of my sight. I'll talk to you later."
As the trembling old man made his way to the door, Maccione took command. "You guys..." he pointed to the hardguys guarding the doors "...alert the whole team. Call up the outside men to surround the house, close. Assemble the soldiers on standby here. Move!"
He swung around to face the men at the table. "Giordano, Campos, Schleyer — take the second, third and fourth. I'll cover this one and the basement. Wallmann..." he pointed to the fat capo from Cologne "...you take a detail and flush out all the closets, service rooms, kitchens, passageways. We'll keep in radio contact. You know the drill. Latta can man the control room and liaise."
Shoes scraped against the wooden floor as the mobsters exited via the three doors. Maccione alone remained with the blonde and the two guards. One was a thin, wiry redhead with a foxy face, the other a blank-eyed professional killer with a lock of dark lank hair falling forward over his brow.
"You two stand guard in the central hallway," Maccione ordered. "Run, and I mean run, wherever the other guys call you. Bolan — if it is Bolan — will be alone. He flew in on one of those hang gliders and they don't carry passengers. So shoot fast when they corner him... and shoot first."
"You want this punk alive?" Foxy-face asked.
"Alive? Yeah. There are questions I want to ask. But cripple him good, okay?"
The men nodded and unleathered automatics from shoulder holsters — a Walther PPK for Foxy-face and a Smith & Wesson Model 59 autoloader for his companion. "We'll shoot real careful, Vito," the second man said, jerking his head to flip the lock of hair out of his eyes.
"Do that, Bruno. Lay off the balls, the kneecaps, the lungs. I don't want him screaming so loud he can't talk."
The gunners left the room. Maccione was alone with the blonde. "You better push that thing out of here, baby," he said, nodding at the cart, "and get lost awhile. I've got to check out the helipad."
"Vito," the girl whined, "do you have to get involved with this yourself? So you have a burglar. Can't the others handle it? You said we'd go into town tonight."
"This isn't any ordinary burglar. Stick around here and you're liable to get your butt shot off."
She pouted and wiggled her hips. "But Vito, I want to have some fun, see a show, go dance in a nightclub or something."
"I told you to beat it."
"But Vito, a gal has to..."
"Get the hell out of here," Maccione shouted, "before I get angry. You want some fun? I'll have you laid by every guy in the place, including the doorman, if you're not out of this room in three seconds!"
"My pleasure," the blonde spit venomously. "And don't think it wouldn't be, after what I'm used to!" Turning her back on the capo, she walked out and slammed the door.
Maccione cursed and began climbing the stairs that led to the gallery. Bolan slipped away.
He wasn't going to learn anything more: the problem now was to leave Schloss Königsberg alive, and that was something he'd have to play off the top of his head. He had no idea how many of the enemy would be searching the castle, floor by floor. The gunners patrolling the grounds were being drawn tight around the outside walls. Indoors, apart from Maccione, Latta and the old houseman, there were the six mafi
osi he'd seen around the table, the three guards who'd been manning the doors and an unspecified number of what the capo had called "soldiers on standby." Give it a margin of error: say around twenty.
He had seen the guns carried by Foxy-face and the cold-eyed killer; he was certain every one of the others would be as well armed. And they would be in constant touch, reporting back to Latta via the transceivers he'd seen clipped to the wall at regular intervals during his re-con between the stairs that wound around the elevator shaft and the gallery above the great hall.
Getting out wasn't going to be the easiest job he ever tackled.
The glider would be out for a start: once it had been located, it would have been destroyed or at least immobilized.
The chopper?
It would be one hell of a long shot, even if he could make it to the pad unseen. The bird was a model he was unfamiliar with, and by the time he'd worked out the controls he could be dead in the pilot's seat.
Find some way to make it outside and scale the cliff then? Maybe, but right now the important thing was to check the layout, and at the same time, remain totally invisible.
He raced down the long hall outside the gallery door, which led to an open space beneath a dome painted with rustic scenes. Here another gallery circled the entrance lobby, with twin staircases curving down to the main doors and the portico beyond. Off this rotunda, corridors and minor stairways radiated in all directions.
Bolan heard footsteps, voices calling, the sounds of stealthy movement all around him. Half a dozen gunners, blue-chinned men with tight-waisted suits and blank expressions, hurried across the hallway below. They would be the soldiers on standby, ready to muster in the conference room. Bolan made it halfway around the gallery and dodged into a short passage curving away to his left. He passed two doors on either side, then came to another stairway.
Up or down?
Boards creaked above. A voice, quite close said, "Campos, reporting from second. Nothing so far. Checking backstairs and closets now." A click indicated that the Brussels chief replaced the transceiver on its wall mounting. Bolan saw feet, then legs at the top of the stairs.
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