Bolan smiled, lightly slapped the guy’s hand, and took the young lady out of there.
As soon as they’d stepped inside the warwagon, she sank to the floor with a happy sound and declared, “I never want to leave here again.”
He said, “Come forward,” and went up to fire the engine. The girl slid into the seat next to him, contrite but eyes glowing—and he quit that place, headed for the motel where he had parked Margaret.
“Okay,” Dianna said presently. “Start screaming at me.”
He shot her a stern glance then grinned solemnly as he replied, “Well, we live and learn, don’t we. If we live.”
“That’s all? You’re not going to slap me around or anything?”
“Do you deserve it?”
“Sure. I guess I cornered all the deserve in town, huh.”
“Maybe a pimple of it, here and there. I’m glad you’re alive, Dianna. Save the apologies for Margaret. You owe me nothing.”
“I owe her, though.”
“Yeah.”
“I owe you, too. Listen, what can I tell you? What do you need to know?”
He angled another glance her way and shrugged his shoulders. “What do you have?”
“I don’t know. Ask me something.”
“The blond guy. Was that Franciscus?”
“Yes. The rat. I thought for a little while that you two were very much alike. You’re not. Not at all. He almost killed my mother, didn’t he.”
Bolan nodded. “Trying for me.”
Her eyes hung as she reported, “Johnny was furious that they missed. But he didn’t bat an eye over the way they handled it—my mother, I mean.”
“These people don’t care who gets in the way, Dianna.”
“Yes, I—you told me that,” she pointed out, small voiced. “I had to see it for myself, I guess. I’m sorry, Mack. I am genuinely sorry. For what good that does.”
He dismissed it with a bat of the eyes. “Did you see the chubby comic on the stairway behind Franciscus?”
“A while ago?” She slowly shook her head. “It all happened so fast.”
“Guy about sixty. Five and a half feet or so high. Big belly, Hollywood glasses. Dressed for burial. Ring any bells?”
She said, “No. I don’t recognize that. Maybe it was the important person—yes, I guess it was. They went to the airport to meet someone from Rome.”
“Rome, eh?”
“Yes. Someone important. They were all atwitter. That’s why I was tied and gagged. They didn’t want me to—”
“That’s not the only reason,” he pointed out.
“I guess not. I tried to get out of there twice tonight, before they tied me up. I guess I was running around and yelling a lot. They were going to kill me, Mack. I know that. Eventually. They were.”
He said, “Probably. Homburg from Rome, eh?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. You keep saying ‘they.’ Is that a figure of speech, or …?”
“No, there’s a bunch. Johnny’s the boss. They all call him ‘Captain’ to his face and do everything but salute and kiss his shoes. It made me sick. But all those men at the penthouse are sort of like bosses. I mean—well, not David and the ones that just stand around feeling of their guns. But he has about ten other men that come there. Honestly, you know what came in my mind when I was watching them together up there tonight? Hitler and his gang, or something like that. They’re all maniacs. But Johnny is the boss maniac. D’you remember me asking you if the little iron cross made you a neo-Nazi? Boy! How close—but the wrong side.”
“That’s the way they struck you, huh?”
“Sure. Heil Johnny! They do everything but goose-step and wear comic uniforms.”
“What do you think they’re getting ready for?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. Except that they’re all high, very high.”
“Okay, let’s go back a bit. To Allan. You didn’t tell me the whole truth about that, did you?”
Very quietly she replied, “No. I was the first in the family to meet John Franciscus. I went to work for him. Next thing I knew, I was going to bed with him. He was …” The girl batted her eyes rapidly and took a deep breath. “I guess I thought he was sent from heaven, gift-wrapped and all. I’ve noticed that most people get that feeling about him—at first, anyway. He’s a rat, though.”
“Allan.”
“Huh? Oh. Well I was just an avenue to Allan. Not that he had to twist Allan’s arm any, but—well, I blame myself for Allan.”
“Don’t. They knew exactly what they were doing and so did Allan. They hit the guy in his weak spot.”
“What?”
“His habit. A very expensive one.”
“Yes, I—I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way. But that doesn’t let me off. I—Mack, I knew what was happening, all along. I mean, generally, though—never any of the particulars. Still don’t. But, well, last night, now—when you came storming into that warehouse—well, I simply seized the moment. We thought it was the police. There was no gun at my head.”
Bolan solemnly nodded his head at that revelation.
“But I really did pass out. I didn’t have to fake that.”
“What else did you have to fake?”
“Nothing. I—I wasn’t putting you on, Mack. Thor.”
He said, “Okay. Things fit better now, anyway. Level with your mother, too, Dianna.”
She sighed. “I will.”
“Learn from her. She’s got it together pretty well.”
“Yes, I guess so. I’ll try.”
He was wheeling into the Holiday parking lot.
“She’s in one-oh-four. Her name is Hammond. So is yours, until everything settles around here. Watch yourself, Dy. Take care of it.”
“You’re not coming in?”
He shook his head. “Things to do. Stay down, this time.”
“Will I—will you be coming back?”
“No. This is goodbye. We’ve seen a lot together. Right? Remember it.”
“Oh I will! Kiss me goodbye?”
Their lips met tenderly, briefly.
She said, “You’re really something else,” and bolted out of there.
He watched her out of sight, then cruised on through and back onto the road, reverse course.
Yes, she was very young. But searching, and growing. That was more than could be said for some.
Bolan heaved a sigh of genuine regret—regret for a lot of things, a lot of people—then he wiped it all clean and cast his mind forward into the night.
There were things to do, yeah. Lots of things.
First, a “collection” pass of 40 Washington Towers. It would be interesting to hear the initial reaction to the strike on the penthouse.
Then that meeting with a real solid guy, Leo Turrin. It wasn’t all pain ahead.
16: CORPUS DELICTI
Old Hardguts was standing a few feet back off the curb, a solitary figure with coat collar turned up against the mists, snapbrim hat pulled low, unlit cigar clamped between the teeth—breathing through his mouth.
Bolan could have pulled him out of any crowd, at any time. Some undercover guy.
He frowned darkly, recalling that he’d come close to killing the guy once. Not once but several times. That had been before, of course. Before Bolan knew who and what Leo Turrin really was. No man in Bolan’s memory had earned the respect that this one had. There were few compensations to the life Bolan had chosen; Turrin was one of them.
He pulled to the curb and hit the door control. The center door slid back, and Turrin stepped inside.
“Sarge?”
“Welcome aboard, Leo. Come on up.”
“Go around to the other side first. Hal’s on the corner next to the building.”
Sure, and there was another one. Hal Brognola, super bureaucrat—a man within a man—a public servant who really cared. And, who did not think like a machine, all input/output—he was a cop with soul.
Turrin was marveling
at tie rig. “You son of a gun! This’s some damn rolling palace you’ve got here!”
Bolan chuckled and replied, “She’s got claws, too.”
He halted at the opposite corner, door open. Turrin had to call to the guy before he broke cover and hastened aboard.
“What the hell is this?” Brognola growled.
“Isn’t it something?” Turrin said gloatingly, as though it were his own.
“Yeah, it’s real peanut butter and bananas,” the federal man said sourly. “Stands out like a bawdy house madam in Sunday school. What d’you do with a thing like this?”
“Ask the man who owns one,” Turrin replied, wounded.
The two made their way forward and dropped onto the padded side-facing bench opposite the command chair. Bolan grinned and shook steely hands as he eased on past the civic center.
Brognola said, “You’re looking well. Better than you have a right to.”
“It’s the climate,” Bolan replied. “Very strong atmosphere out here.”
Turrin sniffed and commented, “Say that again. I got about forty pounds of it wedged into my sinuses.”
Bolan shot a weighted glance at the man who was perhaps the second or third ranking law enforcement official of the nation. “How’re things in paradise, Hal?”
Brognola grinned sourly. “How do you spell that?”
“Try S-H-I-T,” said Turrin.
“You ever read that book by Orwell?” Brognola said tiredly. “Well. I can report that Big Brother is alive and well and running paradise.”
“It’s that bad?” Bolan inquired, eyes glinting.
“It is.”
“Leo was telling me a while back that you’re getting kicked upstairs. I guess it hasn’t happened yet, eh?”
“Told them I’d resign first,” the JD man replied. “But let’s talk about this Washington. What the hell is happening, Striker?”
Bolan smiled to himself. The guy couldn’t bring himself to address Bolan by name—probably wouldn’t even admit the name to himself, anymore. Sure, it was a tough world, this one. He told the worried friend, “I was hoping you could tell me. The roots are in your Washington. This is just the flowering bush, out here. It’s some sort of an international deal, Hal. It couldn’t work without cooperation from paradise.”
“What’s involved? Maybe I can add a piece or two if I know the name of the game.”
Bolan quickly brought them up to date on the specifics, omitting the Langley Island angle. Then he added, “So this guy Franciscus seems to be the local power center, operating under some franchise from the east.”
“We can tell you plenty about that guy,” Turrin said. “But it’ll keep. Go on, this is getting fascinating.”
“Well—the guy is not a made man, I know that. But he’s been bringing made VIPs out here for the past three or four months, wining and dining them, taking them on guided tours of some special facility here. And it’s not the Expo.”
“Fair isn’t even open yet, is it?” Turrin wondered aloud.
“Soon,” Brognola said. “Couldn’t there be a connection there?”
“It’s possible,” Bolan allowed. “It’s been a nice cover so far, for contraband. Could be just as nice a cover for people. But I’ve found no evidence of direct involvement with the legitimate Expo people.”
“Ants at the goddam picnic—to borrow your phrase,” Turrin commented. “So where is the picnic? What’s big enough in this place to warrant all the panic?”
“Cosa di tutti Cosi,” Bolan said quietly.
“Sure,” Brognola agreed. “That’s been a possibility for a long time. But where’s the corpus delicti?”
“All around you,” Bolan muttered. “I’m going to play you a tape that I collected not half an hour ago.”
He punched a button on the front panel and swung out a miniature console.
“Hell, would you look at that!” Turrin enthused.
Bolan explained, “I gathered this poop from the Franciscus penthouse. Covers the period from the moment of strike to about forty minutes thereafter. The primary voices you’ll hear will be Franciscus and a guy called Helmann. I get this Helmann as a poor man’s version of Ari Onassis—considering that anything below that is poor by comparison—a Rebozo, maybe or an Abplanalp. He came here directly from Rome—just arrived tonight—though you’ll get the idea from the tape that he’s actually based in Zurich.”
“I have the picture,” Brognola said.
“Run it,” said Turrin. “I’m dying from curiosity.”
Bolan operated a small electronic keyboard on the console and turned grim concentration to the task of driving the vehicle.
An overhead speaker came alive with the confused sounds of thudding feet, cursing men, doors or something slamming shut.
A loud voice yelled, “That was Bolan, dammit! The son of a bitch, look what he left here for God’s sake!”
A fainter voice yelled, “He took the chick, Captain!”
“Forget it, forget it! They’re not going far! Hey, you people! Help Mr. Helmann there. God I’m sorry about this, Max. What a hell of a way to start! How’s that shoulder? Hey! You people round up a heat lamp and get that muscle-mover in here! Mr. Helmann has a very badly bruised shoulder here. God I’m sorry about that, Max. The rotten son of a bitch kicked me right back into you.”
“It’s all right, Captain,” a thickly accented voice assured. “I have survived worse. I shall survive this.”
More slamming, shuffling, excited voices overcoming all else. Then a tense announcement, strained, embarrassed: “We lost ’im, Captain.”
“You what?”
“He had a helicopter on the roof. Got away clean.”
A long period of silence preceded the next words, heavily accented speech: “This was one man? He does all this? He kicks Max Helmann downstairs? He shoots up your place and kidnaps a young lady? He drops in by helicopter and as quickly departs, leaving an army of men waving impotently at his departure? This is a safe place for my treasures, Captain?”
Bolan depressed an idler button to explain further. “From here on it jumps back and forth pretty quick, so keep ears alert. My mixer automatically edits time gaps and unintelligible impulses. Thirty recording minutes are compressed into less than ten. Get set, it’s heavy stuff.”
Leo Turrin actually lit his cigar.
Brognola clamped his jaw and leaned forward, tensely expectant.
Bolan released the idler and the sounds returned. He sent the warwagon on a slow cruise along the lakefront, his own shoulders tensed, eyes brooding as he listened for the second time to the clues for the conspiracy of the century.
Ten minutes later, Leo Turrin slumped into his seat with a grim smile. “Well well,” he commented drily. “So they’re bringing the bucks back home.”
Brognola clenched his hands together and growled, “As well as the francs, the marks, the lira, and the pounds. But why here? Why move Switzerland to Seattle?”
“Safer, maybe,” Bolan guessed. “It sounds like these guys are preparing for economic doomsday. Maybe they’re even manipulating one into existence. A worldwide depression is bound to benefit somebody, isn’t it? I’m not much on economics—but in my book, for every loss there’s somewhere a gain.”
Brognola was frowning, deep in thought. “Me either. Economics, I mean, I don’t get. I don’t believe the economists understand it, even. But I don’t see how the mere location of paper money could mean that much. Do you, Leo?”
“We have a saying in the mob,” Turrin replied soberly. “Don’t go for the pocket, go for the throat.”
“So?”
“They’re not talking about paper.”
“Langley Island!” Bolan said with a sigh, the light finally dawning.
“Huh?” from Turrin.
Sure. Langley Island. Vaults, not bunkers. Underground vaults in solid rock. Hard storage, sure. A military guard, with heavy firepower and Nazi-like discipline. Bombproof, fireproof, burglar proof. Like For
t Knox.
“Gold,” Turrin was saying. “Or silver, maybe. Why not both? I heard just the other day that an old silver quarter is actually worth about two bucks in today’s paper. They haven’t been minting pure silver for a long time.”
Bolan said, “How much of a share would it take, I wonder, to swing the whole world’s economy wherever you damn well wanted it?”
“That’s a thought,” Brognola grimly replied. “I would think, possibly, a very modest share. It works that way with some corporate stocks. You can control with ten to twenty percent.”
“What’s the latest estimate on worldwide mob worth?” Bolan asked.
“Outta sight!” Brognola replied with a flourish toward the ceiling.
Turrin punctuated that with a quiet, “You know it.”
“You guys want to take time for a little jaunt with me?” Bolan asked tautly.
“Where to?”
“Up near Everett, few miles up the coast. A warehouse whose time has come.”
“Let me get some marshals on the line,” Brognola urged.
“Not yet, Hal. You’d just get your tail kinked. They’re strictly legit, so far. I doubt that you could even get a warrant without a lot of hassle through Washington. And, unless I miss my guess, it would be blocked there. I need to expose it first. Then you can move in, and to hell with the warrants. Right?”
“I need to at least get them on standby.”
Bolan passed him the mobile phone, and explained, “Big metal warehouse on the Sound. Has PNA decals on it That’s on, uh, state route 525, south of Paine Air Force Base. You might have them assemble at the base.”
“That would work fine,” the official replied. “How do you use this thing?”
Bolan showed him how, then he showed the battle cruiser her heading and began making tracks northward.
It was time once again for her to earn her keep.
This time, with her claws.
17: TACTICS
Sure—corner the money market and rape the world. The guys had been looking for a handle for years, and maybe now they’d found it. The Thing of all the Things—the big hit—the clout to end all clouts—financial domination of the entire civilized world!
It could be done. Bolan knew it could. He didn’t know how, but he knew that it could. In this country alone it required an entire department of government just to keep the legitimate giants from taking over and gobbling all the little people, destroying competition, rigging markets, gouging the consumer for all he could stand.
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