“What’s their plan?” Jean-Paul said tightly. “Did he know? Did you get it out of him before he died?”
“Oh, sure.” Smiler’s mouth twitched in a grin that was pure evil. No prizes, Bolan thought, for guessing how he came by the name.
“Well?” The tanned face creased into an expression of impatience.
“They was in league with the Corsicans,” Smiler said. “This lot, I mean. Balestre’s boys were to be the backup detail — if the raid had worked out. They were waitin’ for a signal.”
“Where?”
“At sea. If they don’t get the go-ahead by midnight, they play Cinderella and try again another day.”
“You didn’t find out the signal?”
Smiler shook his head. “This punk wasn’t the boss. I don’t think he knew.”
“Does Ancarani know? About the whole deal, I mean.”
“Not on your life,” Smiler said. “Balestre and him, they weren’t exactly buddies!”
Interesting, just the same, Bolan reflected: Jean-Paul was already unsure of the Corsican capo. He could use that later.
“The guys at sea, where do they run to? Balestre’s hideout near Calvi?”
“I would think.”
“This mess must be cleaned up,” Jean-Paul said. “Fast. The Russian’s already sore about tonight. We were supposed to have sewn up any possible opposition before he showed. Now he’s staying for a couple of days instead of splitting tonight... and the slate has to be clean before he signs. So I guess it’s a surprise party at Calvi tomorrow night.”
He turned to Bolan. “You string along, Sondermann. We can use all the muscle we got. But first there’s a couple of solo deals I want to talk to you about. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He took Bolan’s arm and piloted him away from the cellar.
“You got the retainer okay?” Jean-Paul asked as they climbed to the garden floor.
“Sure,” Bolan lied. There had been very little money in the hit man’s pockets or baggage. He guessed that whatever had been advanced to Sondermann would remain forever unclaimed in some discreet account in Hamburg or Switzerland.
“The terms are still agreeable to you?”
Bolan nodded.
“Good. You’d better get back then. I’ll brief you tomorrow night. A car will call at your hotel. I’ll have one of the guards run you back to Cassis in the launch.”
“Forget it,” Bolan said. “My car’s just across the water. I’ll take the rubber dinghy.” He grinned. “I don’t think the owners are going to need it again tonight.”
* * *
Bolan left the dinghy at the foot of the bluff, dressed and drove back to the city. He found a pay phone on the old port, fed in coins, dialed eleven digits.
A girl’s voice answered at once. “Yes?”
Bolan quoted an identification number and a password. The girl gave him a Paris number to call.
He memorized the number, waited half a minute and dialed it. The number, which was changed twice every day, was answered on the eighth ring. Bolan identified himself again, quoted the code number of the person he wished to speak to, waited while he was further checked and then patched in to a scrambler line.
“The ball game has started,” he said when finally he was put through. “We have to meet and it’s a red. Tomorrow, Number One on the list. No, make it midday. I expect to be killing some Corsicans in the evening!”
7
Mack Bolan took the early railcar east from Marseilles to the small shipbuilding port of La Ciotat. A sultry humidity had hazed the air and turned the sea from Mediterranean blue to a dull pewter color that merged with the sky.
Still, the long curving strip of shore that lined the bay beyond the old town was crowded. Oiled vacationers lay packed like sardines on the blistering sand. The water was busy with swimmers, windsurfers and pleasure boats. It seemed a far cry from the murderous exchanges less than twelve hours ago at La Rocaille.
Bolan intended it to be. Of the handful of passengers who had left the diesel railcar at the station, none, as far as he could see, had followed him to the beach. And he was sure no one had followed him when he boarded a bus bound for Bandol, farther along the coast. But there were such things as walkie-talkies and phones. He had already been tailed from Lyons to the gas station ambush and noticed nothing. And he still didn’t know how many different teams might be gunning for him.
But today it was vital that none of the hoods, that nobody at all, knew of his rendezvous.
He left the bus at Bandol, dodged through a crowded fruit market and installed himself at a sidewalk cafe. There he ordered and paid for a drink, walked through to the men’s room and left by a back entrance without returning to his table. After that he threaded his way around two floors of a department store and jumped another bus as the doors were closing.
The bus took him back to Aubagne, on the outskirts of Marseilles. From here he took a cab to Aix-en-Provence.
Telder was waiting for him in the fossil room of the city’s natural-history museum. “Chamson’s too well-known in these parts,” the Swiss Interpol chief said. “We agreed that I should come alone.”
“Good,” Bolan said. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t tailed. But if I was, I think I lost him.”
He glanced around. Bolan and Telder were the only visitors professing interest in the glass display cases.
“I’ll give it to you straight,” Bolan murmured. “There’s a KGB plot to weld all the world’s Mafia families into one supersyndicate of international crime, armed, funded, supplied — and probably directed eventually — by Moscow.”
Telder pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “To what end?”
“To undermine the power of all the Western police forces, of shooting and bombing and looting every country into a state of total anarchy. With the resulting chaos and panic... well, they figure the whole system will collapse, making way for a Red takeover.”
“And the four murders we were investigating?”
“Gang bosses who didn’t want to play ball. They were killed in a hurry to stop them from forming some kind of rival, non-KGB coalition.”
Telder’s eyes widened, but he remained silent. He was pretending to take notes from a caption inside one of the showcases. “What are the mafiosi supposed to get out of the partnership?” he finally asked.
“Money,” Bolan said. “More than they ever dreamed of, even in their slime-bucket business. And I think they’re dumb enough to believe they’ll be allowed to exist, even to warrant special treatment, after the takeover!”
“Stupid asses,” Telder said. “They’d get special treatment, all right. A private room in the Lubyanka. Can you imagine the comrades setting up a directorate for social-realist crime? Hell, they don’t even admit they have any crime!”
“They’ve got crime,” Bolan said soberly. “For export only. It’s labeled KGB.”
The Swiss smiled faintly. “Very well. What do we do about it?” he asked.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Bolan said. “You and Chamson, that is. No public crime’s officially been committed... yet. There’s only one line to take, and I’m the fall guy in the hot seat. It has to be done from the inside. And right now that’s where I’m at.”
“Done how?” Telder queried. “Killing all the family chiefs who are in on the deal? Even unofficially, I can’t give a go-ahead on that.”
Bolan shook his head. “They would be replaced, anyway. Same goes for the Russian masterminding the scheme. No, the only way is for the Mob as a whole to be unwilling to go through with it. That would choke off the KGB, make them see it’s a no-go situation.”
“But you said the Mafia already had agreed?..”
“Sure, for the moment. But to make it work, they have to be solid for this one-Mob, one-leader routine. Like the Nazis under Hitler. Without that, the KGB won’t play. So the way I figure it, the Mob must be disunited.”
“But how?” Telder asked again.
“
Play one family against another. Arrange it so they’re gunning for each other rather than the law. There were enough dissenters left to raid La Rocaille, even without leaders. It shouldn’t be too difficult to play on existing rivalries and find a few more. It’s been done before, back home. Working from the inside, I think I can do it here.”
“But it’s got to be quick. The whole deal has to fall apart while Antonin’s still down here.”
“You’ll need help, then,” Telder said. “What can we do?”
“There is something,” Bolan said. “I have to keep my nose clean with my new boss. I already know of several contracts that Sondermann’s been hired for. But I don’t want to take out innocent guys just to keep my cover secure.”
The Swiss was still looking at him expectantly.
“They’ll have to disappear all the same,” Bolan said. “It has to look as if I really did zap them. But I can’t fake gunning them down, maybe in front of witnesses. If I handed them over to your people, could you keep them under wraps, totally out of circulation, until the ball game’s over?”
“It’s strictly illegal, but... yes. We could even arrange news items reporting that the bodies had been found floating in the river, out at sea, whatever.”
“Great. That should keep my hardman image intact. And if the victims don’t like being held incommunicado, you can tell them they’re damned lucky not to be incommunicado forever.”
“I think you can leave the details to us,” Telder said.
Bolan said, “As for the rest... well, I’ve made enemies already inside the organization. I can make more. Then it’s just a question of pitting one group against the other.”
“We are aware of the risks you run,” Telder said. “We are most... appreciative.” His voice sank to a more conspiratorial note. “When you want us, you know the number to call.” He nodded briefly, turned and walked out of the room.
Ten minutes later Bolan emerged from the museum and made his way toward the railroad station.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the big man himself! And what are you doing in a dusty old museum in Aix?” a voice exclaimed just behind him.
Bolan swung around... and found himself face-to-face with Coralie Sanguinetti.
8
Bolan sat with the girl at a cafe table drinking pastis. Bright shafts of sunlight speared the shade beneath the broad leaves of the plane trees.
“I could ask you the same question,” he said.
Bolan wondered if she had been ordered to shadow him.
“I’m studying philosophy,” Coralie said. “Here at the university in Aix.” She was friendly again now. Bolan didn’t have the time to figure out why. “I’m not just a poor little rich girl, you know. I shall have to earn my own living sometime.”
“Not taking over Daddy’s business?”
“Do I look like that kind of person?”
“Frankly,” Bolan said, “I’m not exactly sure what business your father is in. We’re kind of sheltered up in northern Germany.”
She flashed him a suspicious look. “He has the biggest machine-tool factory in Italy,” she said. “He has controlling interest in a company that manufactures digital watches and calculators in Alsace. He imports computer hardware from Japan, and he’s on the board of two major oil companies.”
“But why would a guy that successful have friends like... like the people I work for?” Bolan queried.
“Let me ask you a question,” Coralie said. “Why are you badmouthing people like Jean-Paul — a man with your reputation? I’ve heard about you, Herr Sondermann: you’re what they call a hit man; you kill people — for money. They tell me you murdered nine already.”
“Only folks I didn’t like,” Bolan said gravely. He would dearly have liked to set the girl straight, but the words he wanted to say would come uneasily from the mouth of a Teutonic killer... and if he allowed himself to show her what he really felt about the mafiosi, his cover would be blown for good. He tried to change the subject.
“Do you know Jean-Paul well?” he asked.
“Since I was in diapers.”
“I work for him, but I don’t really know him yet. What is he like?”
“He’s nice,” Coralie said defensively. Bolan remembered the way the gang leader had taken her arm the night before. “He’s got a better brain than most of the others. He’s generous. And he’s a caring man.”
“But he hires a guy like me to come down all the way from Hamburg. For what?”
“Oh,” she said with a pout, tossing back her hair. She drained her glass and set it carefully on the wrought-iron table. “When I first saw you in that gallery, before I knew who you were, I thought you might be... Oh, well. I guess one can misjudge people.”
Bolan suddenly realized the truth behind her mood swings. He was not a vain man, but he was objectively aware that he was attractive to many women. Coralie Sanguinetti was trying — and failing so far — to relate a natural liking for him to her own instinctive distrust of anyone in Sondermann’s line of business.
He felt sorry for the girl — sorrier still because she was also fighting another, harder, battle: loyalty to her father on one side, loathing for his associates on the other — but there was nothing he could do to help her. “Have another drink?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Thank you. I have a class at two o’clock.”
Bolan watched her get up from the table. Many other eyes followed her as she walked to her car parked by the curb. A white Porsche 928 — what else?
The Executioner frowned. He had a gut feeling that, given the right approach and the right conditions, he could make her into an ally. But right now he’d have to play it by ear. The one thing he knew was that any help she might offer in the future would not be to Kurt Sondermann...
For the moment, however, it was better that he reinforced that alter ego in her eyes. Back in character, he called out as she unlocked the door of the Porsche, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
Coralie looked across the terrace at him as she slid behind the wheel. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do?” she retorted.
9
The raid on the hideout used by gangsters from the Balestre mob was planned and carried out like a military operation, although there were no more than sixteen men involved. They were divided into two teams of three and a ten-man main force.
Jean-Paul had insisted that the attack be restricted to soldiers from his own Marseilles family. Ancarani, the Unione Corse boss from Ajaccio, had offered a large contingent from his own gang, but Jean-Paul had refused. Blood ties, cross-relationships and loyalties were so intermixed on the island, he pointed out, that the risk of a leak, warning Balestre’s people, would be high if Corsicans were included. Ancarani was angry, but he had to admit it was true.
Another reason — unstated, but one that Mack Bolan privately shared — was the fact that Jean-Paul was not one hundred percent certain of Ancarani’s reliability. Not because he was in sympathy with the Balestre mob, but because he seemed the least impressed of any of the capos by the idea of the KGB tie-up. And a refusal to go along with this had, after all, provoked the death of Balestre himself.
The assault was timed for midnight. Smiler and his two shadows had arrived at Bastia by air from Marseilles earlier in the evening. They were to make their way to the rendezvous in a rented car.
Jean-Paul, Bolan and a seven-foot ex-wrestler named Delacroix were making the trip by air, too... as jumpers, thanks to a bribed helicopter pilot who was supposed to be night-testing a new chopper slated for the Nice-Monaco shuttle. The others were coming by sea.
Corsica, lying eighty miles south of the Gulf of Genoa, is shaped like a fist, with the index finger pointing north at the mainland. The index, protected by five-hundred-foot cliffs, is the twenty-two-mile promontory of Cap Corse. Bastia is located at the base of that finger; Calvi — the nearest town to the Balestre hideout — is on the other side of the fist.
Between Calvi and the Cap stre
tches a treeless, uninhabited strip of granite known as the Desert of Agriates. It was here that the seaborne mafiosi were to land.
Inland from this bleak wilderness, Jean-Miguel Balestre had inherited several hundred acres of pasture that began on the far side of the Calvi-Bastia highway and rose toward the foothills of the mountains in the interior.
Bolan was told that the property was a sheep farm. Balestre had made his headquarters in a ranch-style frame house surrounded by dipping pens, a shearing barn and outbuildings. These were spacious enough to accommodate the few workers who tended the flock and the much larger number of villains who looked after his real business.
This had involved the smuggling of liquor, arms and stolen cigarette consignments from North Africa to France and Italy; the distribution of cocaine, heroin and hashish from the Middle East; and the supply to brothels in Ajaccio, Naples and Marseilles of young Arab girls bought in the slave markets of Somali and the Sudan.
Daringly, for there was an elite parachute regiment of the French Foreign Legion quartered in Calvi, the team had used desolate creeks on the deserted Agriates coast for the landing of this merchandise. Much of it was then forwarded to its ultimate destination by supposed tourists using commercial sea, land and air services, and in the false bottom of a high-speed diesel cruiser berthed at St. Florent, between the Agriates and Cap Corse.
For many months the operation had infuriated Ancarani and the other Unione Corse leaders based on Ajaccio, Bastia, Propriano and Bonifacio. If Balestre’s murder had not been contracted because of his opposition to the KGB-Mafia alliance, it was likely, the Executioner had learned, that he would have been liquidated, anyway, because of the inroads his operation was making on their own business.
Balestre’s team, working with him ever since he started on his own after the death of his father and a Camorra apprenticeship, were satisfied with the rackets they already controlled. And raking in more money would not compensate them for the loss of autonomy they would suffer as a small unit in a worldwide association.
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