It was a huge house, built on several different levels, combining gothic turrets with Oriental domes above a fantasy of Moorish arches and windows.
“Who owns it?” Bolan inquired.
“It was built by Deborah Delamour, the silent screen star of the twenties,” the cabbie said. “After her death, the property remained empty until the mid-sixties. It was bought recently and restored by an industrialist named Sanguinetti.”
“Are visitors allowed?” Bolan asked conversationally.
“Are you kidding?” the cab driver replied. “Sanguinetti’s got guard dogs, closed-circuit TV, electrified fences, you name it.” He gestured across the stretch of calm blue water. “In Delamour’s time, there used to be a suspension bridge, but that’s the only way you can get there now.”
He was indicating a small concrete jetty projecting from the base of the cliff on the landward side of the islet. Steps cut from the rock zigzagged to the top of the limestone face, and there was what looked like a cable car rail, with an open car, rising directly from the jetty.
A white power launch was tied next to the steps, with two burly men wearing blue sailors’ jerseys lounging nearby. Another guard stood by a tall wrought-iron gateway at the top of the stairway. “No beaches on the other side of the island?” Bolan asked.
The taxi driver shook his head. “Sheer cliffs all the way around,” he said.
Bolan glanced right and left. The heat had gone from the sun, but there were still vacationers bronzing themselves on the sandy strip below the road. Kids swam in the shallows, and there were half a dozen windsurfers offshore, waiting for a breeze.
Beyond a line of automobiles parked on a low bluff, he could see striped umbrellas and a beach restaurant at the inner end of a pleasure pier. A thicket of sailboat masts clustered around the wooden piles. “They use that pier?” Bolan asked.
“Uh-uh. They got a regular service of those floating bars...” he nodded toward the launch “...bringing them out, sometimes from the city, mostly from Cassis.”
Bolan nodded, as if dismissing the subject but the whole area intrigued him. Boatloads of people were ferried from Cassis to a heavily guarded property owned by an industrialist, and there was to be an important secret meeting... more than ever Bolan determined to smuggle himself onto that islet. “Okay, let’s go to Cassis now,” he told the driver.
The village was five miles away, around a bend in the cliffs, but to get there the road circled behind some wild rocky slopes. Sanguinetti sure had picked himself an isolated retreat, Bolan reflected.
Bolan paid the cabbie, rented a Volkswagen and drove down to the dockside. From a ship’s chandler store he rented scuba equipment, a waterproof neoprene satchel and a spear gun. Then he drove back toward Marseilles and down to the coastal road, which petered out a few hundred yards beyond the bluff where he had stopped the taxi.
At the end of the road, he concealed the VW behind an immense boulder and returned to the bluff on foot. He changed into the diving suit, strapped on the oxygen tank, drew on helmet and facemask and stowed the Beretta in the satchel. Picking up the flippers and his spear gun, he moved toward the water’s edge.
The night was very warm. The three-quarter moon was not due to silver the cloudless sky for another hour. The sea was calm. Bolan stepped into the flippers and waded in.
Several boats had already chugged out from Cassis to Sanguinetti’s jetty. He could see the riding lights bobbing at the base of the cliff. Voices and laughter drifted across the water, and there was a hint of music from the house above.
Bolan submerged and swam slowly and steadily toward the small island, using a luminous waterproof wrist compass to maintain direction. The sea became progressively colder as he approached the islet. There were deeps along this stretch of coast and the fissured limestone let in many small creeks, one of which he hoped to find on the seaward side of Sanguinetti’s fortress.
Fifteen minutes after he had entered the water, Bolan surfaced. He was west of the property, about thirty yards out from the cliff. There was a swell here that had not been evident from the shore; he could hear the suck of the waves as they lapped against the rocks.
He continued swimming. When the dark mass of the island was between him and the shore, he turned east and struck out on the surface for the limestone face.
He could see no sign of an opening in the sheer rock wall.
Although the tide fall was minimal, a strong current ruled out any close approach to the cliff: if he swam in and tried to locate a foothold from which he could climb to the top, he risked injury on some underwater obstruction or being dashed against one of the jagged outcroppings. Treading water, he allowed the tide to carry him farther toward the east.
When he could see the mainland again, he turned once more and made for the cliffs.
There were two creeks in the eastern face.
From the shore, the farthest was little more than a gash in the limestone. Bolan dismissed it at once: the walls bordering the creek were almost as high as the cliff itself, and in some places they overhung the water.
The second was better. The strata dipped, plunged beneath the surface, leaving a narrow inlet, from whose inner end the rock rose steeply but was not sheer.
Bolan thought he could make the climb. The disadvantage was that he had almost completed a circuit of the island: the creek was shielded from the jetty by a single shoulder of limestone.
He had come too far to turn back. Besides, the shuttle service from Cassis seemed to have stopped. No more guests climbed the stairway or were whisked aloft by the cable car. Only the two burly guards from the launch remained talking there. Bolan would have to take a chance, scaling the slope with as little noise as possible. Fortunately, there was still music and occasional laughter drifting down.
Bolan floated, letting himself be washed into the creek by the waves. At the shallow end he rose cautiously, allowing the seawater to cascade from his wet suit as gently as he could.
Rock climbing in darkness is hazardous at the best of times, and tonight any trace of daylight lingering in the western sky was blocked by the mass of the island itself. He grasped a projection, a layer of harder rock that formed a thin shelf, and started to haul himself up the slope.
It took what seemed an eternity and innumerable teeth-gritting seconds of his determination to make the stealthy ascent. Once or twice small fragments of limestone broke off under the pressure of his fingers or toes and rattled to the water below. Once his foot slipped and he almost fell. But the small sounds of the sea appeared to have covered the noise, for there was no reaction from the far side of the rock shoulder; the voices from the jetty did not pause in their low-toned conversation.
Finally Bolan gained the flat ground at the top of the cliffs. The grotesque mass of the house lay directly ahead, on the far side of some tropical shrubbery. The music was louder now, and there was a dim luminescence reflected from some outside light around a corner of the building.
Waiting, he saw that there were indeed guards patrolling the grounds, but he neither saw nor heard any dogs. If there were sensors installed, the guards either knew to the inch the right path to take between the beams or they were equipped with desensitizer pads, for no alarm was sounded.
Finally, Bolan discarded the flippers that had been slung around his neck, picked up the spear gun and moved silently after one man, following exactly in his tracks.
He was almost at an ornamental terrace when another guy, a bruiser whose height dwarfed Bolan’s own six foot three, stepped out from behind a bank of oleanders and barred his way.
The confrontation, as sudden as it was unexpected, astonished both men equally. The guard, who was wearing a black turtleneck sweater over jeans, was holding a Heckler & Koch 9-6 automatic. Seeing the dark, helmeted figure of the Executioner, squarely in front of him, wet suit still gleaming in the reflected light, he brought up the gun instinctively.
There was no time for Bolan to unfasten the neoprene satchel and
whip out the Beretta. Hand-to-hand combat was unthinkable with the gorilla’s finger already curling around the trigger. Bolan was carrying the spear gun at port. He had no time to sight the weapon. At arm’s length he canted up the long, thin launch tube and fired.
A heartbeat before the gunman’s finger squeezed tight, the steel-barbed tip of the harpoon took him in the throat.
Arrowing in with terrible force, the razor-sharp head sliced through the jugular vein, flattened the ridges of the trachea and severed the carotid artery. The barb forced an exit to one side of the topmost cervical vertebra and left the shaft stuck in the gorilla’s savaged neck. He fell, clawing at his throat, and died.
Bolan dragged the body away to the cliff top and dropped it, together with the spear gun, into a crevice.
He turned the corner of the house, the Beretta now in his right hand. He was facing a sunken rock garden. Behind it, light escaped from windows under an arched colonnade. Through the windows he could see women in evening gowns walking back and forth. Apart from a white-coated waiter with a tray of drinks, no men were visible.
Hugging the shadows, Bolan crossed the garden, skirted a wing of the building and found himself on an open balustraded terrace that overlooked an Olympic-size pool. He was halfway across the terrace, threading his way between glass topped tables and lounging chairs, when he heard footsteps crunch on gravel.
He looked swiftly around. No place to hide here. He vaulted the balustrade, crossed a strip of flagstones and lowered himself silently into the shallow end of the pool.
He kept his head just above the surface and now he heard footsteps approaching, halt too near the corner of the pool where he was half submerged.
“Frank?” the guard called in a low voice. “You there?”
There was no reply.
The man shouted again, louder this time.
Bolan’s thoughts were racing. This guard must have a rendezvous... with the gorilla he had harpooned.
Bolan no longer had any compunction. This was no honest millionaire’s summer party. The first guard’s readiness to kill proved that. Bolan rose and reached for the guard’s ankle.
Hearing the swirl of water, the guy swung around. Before his eyes could register in the dark, Bolan’s steely fingers closed around flesh and bone. He heaved. Caught off balance, the guard staggered, almost fell.
Bolan jerked again, harder. The man flew over his head and belly flopped into the pool.
Bolan was on him before he had time to turn onto his back or surface. The guard struggled desperately.
The pool became a maelstrom of foam and thrashing limbs. Bolan had the advantage of surprise and superior strength. The guard was holding a gun, but right now his overriding desire was for self-preservation... his need for air, to feed his bursting lungs.
Bolan found his wrist, applied a nerve grip, forcing him to drop the weapon. Remorselessly he forged through the water, shoving the drowning guard toward the deep end.
Finally Bolan maneuvered the hardman to the side, where a ladder led back up to the flagstone patio. He hooked his arms over the top of the ladder while he thrust down with his feet to keep his victim submerged until at last the frantic struggles weakened and then ceased.
Bolan left the body floating facedown in the pool, recovered the Beretta from where he had dropped it on the terrace, and hurried back to the house. He turned another corner and looked across sloping lawns to a hedge over which the distant lights of the city made a faint glow in the sky.
The ground rose here, leaving a railed area circling the building. Bolan looked down through the top half of tall windows to a large paneled room in the center of which eleven men sat around a boardroom table. He caught his breath. So, this must be the “important” meeting.
Crouching, he saw that the room was surrounded by a gallery. A short flight of steps led to a door that was clearly an entrance to this gallery.
At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was not locked. A fraction of an inch at a time, he eased open the door, waited, pushed lightly. The door swung silently inward and he slipped through.
Carved wooden balusters railed in the gallery, which was in deep shadow. The room below was lit by three green-shaded lamps that hung, poolroom style, over the vast table. Bolan lowered himself to the floor and peered down between two balusters.
A big ornate chair at the head of the table was empty. Sanguinetti, the owner of the property — Bolan recognized him from newspaper photos — was installed at the foot. The other ten men were ranged five on either side.
They were talking among themselves. Bolan could make out no individual words, could hear no names. But he did not have to. He realized he was looking at ten of the most powerful men in the world.
And the most evil.
Facing him beneath the low-hanging poolroom lamps, Bolan saw the rock-hard features of Vincente Borrone, whose family controlled docks and transport Stateside; Luigi Abba, the undisputed boss of Vegas and the West Coast; the Unione Corse capo, Renato Ancarani; Arturo Zefarelli from Sicily; and Pasquale Lombardo, who ran the Mob in Toulon.
For a while Bolan was unable to pinpoint the crime emperors with their backs to him, but the conversation around the table was animated, and eventually each had turned toward a neighbor sufficiently for the Executioner to pedigree the other five.
The first he recognized was Girolamo Scalese, king of the Camorra in Naples.
Next to him was the Baron Etang de Brialy, a small gray-haired Frenchman with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, who was the Mister Big behind all organized crime in Paris. Between this couple and Sanguinetti were two hoods whose names Bolan could not remember but who controlled, he knew, the Mafia in Chicago and Detroit. The quorum was completed by Jean-Paul.
It was the first time Bolan had seen the Marseilles gang leader in the flesh, and he looked at the man with interest.
J-P was impressive. He was a big guy, almost as tall as Bolan, and appeared to be in his early forties. He was trim, bronzed, the sharp planes of his face etched with laugh-lines, his head unexpectedly capped with thick white hair.
Bolan smiled wryly. If he had known his future “employer” would be at the meeting he probably could have entered the fortress openly and even been invited as a guest. As it was, he would have to get out fast before the absence of the two men he had killed was noticed. He couldn’t afford to have Sondermann associated with that.
But first, he wanted to find out the purpose of the meeting. Nothing was happening right now: the eleven men appeared to be waiting for something. Or someone.
A few minutes later, Bolan heard the clattering whine of an approaching jet helicopter. The noise increased and then it subsided as the chopper landed somewhere on the far side of the pool.
A whistle sounded. Almost immediately the aircraft took off again and flew out to sea.
As the rotor whine faded in the distance, conversation in the room below the gallery dwindled too. A door opened; a voice made an announcement.
A thickset man with a shaven skull marched into the room, nodded briefly and took the vacant chair at the head of the table.
Bolan choked back a gasp of astonishment.
The man was in military uniform; he wore the insignia of a Colonel in the Red Army.
His name, Bolan knew, was Dimitri Aleksandrevitch Antonin. And the last time they had met, Bolan had shot him in the shoulder and left him for dead. So, the liaison between the KGB and the Soviet military intelligence agency, the GRU, was still alive.
4
Bolan didn’t get it. On one of his daring one-man raids into Soviet Russia, Colonel Antonin had been in charge of the manhunt ordered at all costs to stop him from leaving the country with a defecting scientist.
At that time, Antonin had been assistant to Major General Greb Strakhov, the evil genius of the KGB responsible for the frame that had outlawed Bolan. He wondered now if Antonin had taken Strakhov’s place as head of the KGB’s “wet affairs” death squad. Or if he had returned to
his original post as KGB-GRU liaison under the department’s Third Chief Directorate.
Moscow was a hell of a long way from Southern France. And what was he doing here chairing a meeting of international racketeers?
Whatever it was, the Executioner knew, it would be something as corrupt as it was illegal.
He craned his neck trying to hear every word exchanged around the long table below. The conversation, which had been in French, had now lapsed into an English with more varieties of accent than Bolan had ever heard in one place.
“You know why I am here,” Antonin said curtly. “It is a matter for you to decide among yourselves — here, now, and I want a decision before I leave — whether you are prepared to accept my offer.”
Bolan’s eyes opened wide. He was eavesdropping on some evil scheme that the KGB was anxious to promote, that was clearly going to link crime with sedition.
“Very well, Colonel,” Jean-Paul was saying, “we are aware of the general strategy. Now let us hear the details.”
“They are not complicated,” Antonin replied. “You and the elements you represent are locked in permanent combat with the law, both nationally and internationally. Is it not so?”
He paused. “I am not,” he continued, “concerned here with questions of so-called morality, with the bourgeois-imperialist concepts of good and evil, right or wrong. In my country we subscribe to the doctrine that victory goes to the strongest, that might, as you Westerners have it, is right. I make, therefore, no value judgments in assessing your particular role in your society. I view it objectively.” Another, longer, pause. “And objectively speaking, you are weak.”
Several of the mafiosi shifted uneasily at Antonin’s words. Weak? That was the last term they would apply to themselves. They were the emperors of crime, and people lived or died according to their orders.
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