The two men were longtime friends. They remained in contact after Bolan made the decision to quit that particular hot seat and strike out on his own. When the big guy needed intel on the underworld, Brognola supplied it from the worldwide Stony Man computer complex. But at a point when America really needed him, the Executioner came in from the cold to establish an arm's length relationship with the government. Bolan vowed never to be at the mercy of the Administration and refused to work within the confines of the system. He'd help Brognola with situations that were too hot for the intelligence agencies to handle, but he'd always be his own man — free to refuse certain missions, and free to pursue those of his own choosing.
"Hal, don't you think this strong-arm cop routine is something of an overkill? Why the vice squad?"
Brognola shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I knew you'd chased Carvalho this far. The vice squad boys know the back street runs better than anyone. Plus the fact that half the other services here are in cahoots with the Mob, and security was important."
"Okay," Bolan said. "But they could have passed on the message, given me your location."
"Uh-uh. Nobody can know we're working together, that's vital. The local cops were asked, as a favor, to locate you and hand you over into my care. Those guys' orders were to bring you in. No questions. End of story."
Bolan nodded. "Got it. So could we dispense with the window-dressing now?" He held up his wrists, which the French police had handcuffed before they left.
"My pleasure." Brognola produced a key. "Take a seat, Striker, and please hear me out. This is dangerous stuff."
"One more question," Bolan said, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. "Why here? An airport motel is secure?"
"It has to be. Question of time. I'm really supposed to be in Istanbul on a drug-busting conference along with police chiefs from Damascus, Vientiane, Ispahan... and Marseilles. It's important that the local guy doesn't know I've been here. Right now..." Brognola glanced at his watch "...it's 3:45. The next session of the conference is scheduled for 11:00 a.m., in seven hours. If I'm going to make the plane that'll get me back there in time, I can't risk getting too far away from the airport."
The Executioner nodded again, dropping into a deep-seat easy chair. The room was comfortable enough: burnt-orange draperies and bedspread, tobacco-colored wall-to-wall carpet and a chromed floor lamp that stood beside a long desk.
The Fed was unpacking a home movie projector from a fiber suitcase. "Just how close are you to getting Carvalho?"
"The case is closed," Bolan said gruffly.
"And the dealer?"
"No longer with us."
"Terminated with prejudice?"
"Extreme prejudice."
Relief flooded across Brognola's worry-lined face. "That's just fine," he said. "You'll have time on your hands. So relax and pay attention. I have news for you."
Bolan sighed. "Pour it on."
"I'll drop you in the deep end," Brognola said. "There's a nuclear angle, and it could be serious. We discovered a gradual series of thefts of uranium 235."
"Gradual?"
"Over the past three years. We hadn't paid all that much attention until the Stony Man computers came up with a rundown. We'd run a random trace, and it showed tiny, but consistent, losses of the fissile isotope. Each one with an identical MO."
"I'd have thought even one theft of uranium 235 was worth one hell of a lot of attention," Bolan remarked dryly.
"Oh, sure. Every one was a big deal on its own. On file, top priority, dead secret — with all hell breaking loose to try to identify the thieves and recover the stuff."
"But?"
"Until we ran that trace, the thefts hadn't been regarded as part of a single operation. We hadn't paid all that much attention until we realized the pattern was international."
"International?"
"Yeah. They lifted the stuff from all over — from Hanford and Clinton, Calder Hal! in England and Dounreay in Scotland, from Chatilion, near Paris, and Pierrelatte here in the Rhone valley. Even from Magnitogorsk in the Soviet Union."
"I guess that last one should tell you something about who didn't steal the stuff. You say 'we,' Hal, and 'they,' but you don't give the cast list. Who?"
"Like I say, it started at Stony Man. Then the NSC got interested. After that it was the Company, and... well, finally, it came back to me. As far as 'they' are concerned, up to this point we drew a blank. One thing is certain, though. Whoever staged the thefts staged them for one purpose and one purpose only — to use in the manufacture of thermonuclear warheads."
"What kind of amounts are involved?" Bolan asked.
"Individually, pretty small. But if you add them up it begins to look alarming."
"You're certain Ivan's innocent?"
"Certain. Why would the Russians bother? They refine more uranium and plutonium than we do. Some CIA genius suggested that it might be the Chinese, or even the Soviets raiding their own places as a blind."
"There'd be no logic in that," the Executioner agreed. "None of the stuff has been recovered?"
"Not an ounce. They were precision operations, all right. Every one was an inside job, and no one connected with the thefts was identified."
"So what do you have in mind for me?" Bolan asked.
"Relax, Striker. You'll see." Brognola had set up the projector at one end of the desk. Now he unrolled a screen and pinned it to the far wall. "We have reason to believe there's a North African connection. And after the raid on Tripoli, Lebanon and Irangate, the Administration is too scared to openly take a hand in any intrigues centered on that theater. Too many people are eager to accuse us of being fascist imperialist warmongers. Plus the fact that even the small countries are kind of touchy on matters that relate to their own defense."
"So the regular agencies are definitely out. What's the job?"
"Find out who's behind the thefts, check out their plan... and squash it."
"Tell me what you've got."
"We did have one break," the Fed admitted. "A week ago, MI-5 in Britain reported a recent theft of 235 — from Aldermaston this time. But for once they did have a line on the guilty man. You remember Harries?"
"The physicist who went over to the Communists when he was on vacation in Hungary last month."
"Yeah. It seems he lost his nerve after he'd taken the stuff, and he tried to pull the political asylum gag in Budapest. But the comrades didn't want to deal with the situation, so they handed him back — which seems to confirm they had nothing to do with the theft."
"Meanwhile..."
"He comes up for trial in a couple weeks. But while he was away his wife turned up something and contacted Scotland Yard's special branch. So when Harries was handed over they were wise to the theft and knew what questions to ask. He could only finger one contact of course, a cutout. But it was a start. They didn't recover the isotope, but they were able to trace it — right here to Marseilles."
"And the cutout?" Bolan asked.
"He woke up with a hole in his head two days later."
"So the trail goes cold here in Marseilles?"
"Not entirely. I hired a private investigator to dig up what he could find before you hit town. I received his first report just before I left for Istanbul." Brognola slotted a spool of 8 mm film into the projector. "I guess they were too close behind him for the guy to risk filing in the clear, so this intel is in a kind of visual code. He was posing as a newsman after colorful feature material for a syndicate. This one small can of color stock and an audio cassette accompanying it were supposed to be samples of what he could offer."
Brognola switched on the projector, and it whirred to life. Letters and figures swirled across the small screen, then it suddenly erupted into a blaze of light and color. A line of camels stood silhouetted against a raspberry-tinted sky in a landscape of date palms and ridged dunes. The camera pulled back to show that the viewer was looking at a poster advertising package tours in North Africa, then cut to a lo
cale-establishing shot of Marseilles — the hilltop church of Notre Dame de la Garde, with its huge gold Virgin topping the bell tower — and then switched to a close-up of dockside cranes loading a freighter. This was followed by a landscape sequence, with the camera — obviously mounted on a truck — panning rapidly across fields of vines to zoom in on a road sign at an intersection. The lettering on the fingerpost read Cannes 235 km.
Next came a street scene, the conventional casbah shot, although the church in the distance showed that it was still in Marseilles. The camera, hand held, threaded its way along a crowded alleyway, with veiled women and gesticulating men in robes thronging two rows of brightly colored stalls.
Cut to a close-up of a revolving postcard stand outside a tourist souvenir shop. The gaudy photos spun slowly to a halt, and the camera zoomed in to pick up a card showing a panoramic harbor scene against an improbable blue sky.
Cut back to the alley, the camera panning along one side, stopping at a booth displaying Arab hardware — row upon row of copper pans, pots and other containers. More camels: a medium-long shot of bedouin loading bales of merchandise onto three dromedaries, a distant view of a whole caravan heading into the sunset. Finally the face of a black African, which was cross-faded with a fierce Arab visage. After that, the screen went blank.
Brognola switched off the projector. "How do you read that?" he asked.
"Three themes come through loud and clear. Transport, freight and Arabs. I think the signpost shot was a tip-off that the freight was your uranium 235. I wouldn't think the town it pointed at was relevant, but..."
"Unless it was a pun," Brognola cut in. "With the Arab hardware booth thrown in, in case we missed the point. You know Cannes... cans... equals canisters. Which is what radioactive isotopes have to be transported in."
"That could be. And camels equal North Africa. So we have that connection, plus canisters of uranium 235 in Marseilles, being transported by freighter to... where? The port on the postcard?"
"We identified it as Alexandria, Egypt."
"Okay, Alexandria. Then camels again, going west into the sunset, if that's significant. What do you think, Hal?"
Brognola shook his head. "You tell me. And I don't get the Arab face superimposed on the black one, either. Maybe the cassette will give us a clue." He took a small tape player from his suitcase and slipped in an unlabeled cassette.
"Most of this is cover stuff," he said, "but there's a message in there, as well." He thumbed a switch.
Bolan heard a man's voice, speaking in exaggerated travelogue style:
"As I stand here in the Arab quarter of France's second city, this historic cosmopolitan seaport where the Phoenicians traded six hundred years before the birth of Christ, it is difficult to resist a twinge of alarm at the evidence of our century's effect on those hundreds of years of tradition. The halcyon days when Marseilles was the gateway to the Orient are gone. Yet even in this nuclear age the Arab influence grows..."
Brognola had cut the sound. "That's an arranged cue," he said. "After the sentence containing the word 'halcyon,' it's a message for me." He rewound the tape a few revolutions and flipped the switch again.
"...to the Orient are gone. Yet even in this nuclear age the Arab influence grows stronger. Mustapha Tufik has run a coffee shop in the Algerian ghetto for more than thirty years. He, if anybody, has a finger on the pulse of North Africa and an ear for the Muslim heartbeat within the city. On the dark continent, he says, things are no longer as black as they were. There is nevertheless disquieting news from this Mediterranean imbroglio. The immigrant population has never..."
"That's all," Brognola said, switching the machine off. "The rest is all quasisociological guff for cover. The message ends with the word 'imbroglio.'"
"Okay," Bolan said. "So we have a ship ferrying the stolen 235 to Alexandria in some kind of canister, a strong scent of camels and now Mr. Mustapha Tufik and his coffee shop as a contact for disquieting news." He paused. "I notice you spoke of your private eye in the past tense. Is he off the case now?"
"Permanently. His body was found floating in the old port yesterday morning. He had been knifed. And robbed... or so the local gendarmes say."
The Executioner's eyebrows rose. "So somebody knows we're on the trail already?"
"Somebody knows somebody's on the trail already," the big Fed corrected. "That's another reason for using you as a bird dog. So far as this case is concerned, you'll be the X factor."
He unplugged the projector and began to pack it away. "There's a four-star general named Hartley staying a couple days at the Intercontinental. He's one of the Pentagon's nuclear experts. He can fill you in on the possibilities before you start digging for real."
Mack Bolan nodded. He rose to his feet and stretched. "Good to see you, Hal," he said. "Meanwhile, it must be nearing breakfast time. I think I'll go on into town and get a cup of coffee."
Chapter Two
The first attack on Bolan came within fifteen minutes of his meeting with General Hartley. He was in a cab, on his way back to the city center. Banks of high clouds scudded across a sunny sky, though the drying roadway was still greasy from the previous night's rain.
The cab was only a few blocks from the Canebiere when it was passed by a Volvo station wagon, its rear loading door propped open. Bolan paid no attention to the vehicle, though his subconscious registered the fact that two men in back of the driver were maneuvering some package near the door.
He barely noticed the Volvo slacken speed when it was fifty yards ahead, and then accelerate away. It was only when the heavy, square, black object fell to the road and came spinning toward the taxi that his battle-honed sense of survival took over and he exploded into action.
There was no time for speech. He leaned over the back of the driver's seat and grabbed the hand brake, heaving it upward.
There was a tortured screech of tires as the rear wheels suddenly locked, the cab slewing sideways across the slippery street. The startled driver overcorrected, and the cab — with Bolan still clutching the lever — turned completely around. Careering backward across a crosswalk, it slammed into a light standard and flipped onto its side.
The noise of the crash was drowned in the explosion, which blasted a ten-foot crater in the roadway. Miraculously, neither Bolan, the cabbie nor any of the people on the sidewalks was injured.
As the rubberneckers swarmed around the wrecked vehicle, the cabbie helped Bolan through the shattered rear window. "I don't know whether that was for you," he said shakily, "but if it's all the same to you, I'd rather you finished your journey by bus."
The Executioner thrust money into his hand. "Just be thankful it wasn't nuclear," he said.
Pushing his way through the excited crowd, he hurried away before the gendarmes arrived on the scene. The thick column of yellow smoke that rose above the rubble-strewn roadway was already at rooftop height. In the distance he could hear the warble of sirens.
The nuclear reference wasn't altogether a joke, he reflected as he ducked into a narrow alleyway. Not if General Hartley's intel was as disquieting as it seemed, let alone whatever the mysterious Mustapha Tufik could reveal.
The Pentagon man had reminded Bolan of a robin — a short, rotund figure with quick, darting movements and a characteristic pecking motion of the bald head to emphasize important points. He had seemed glad of the opportunity to display his knowledge.
"Stolen U-235?" he asked. "More than enough to make your critical mass? Let us consider how this material can be used."
"It won't be used to fuel the atomic pile at a nuclear power station, that's for sure," Bolan said grimly.
"Quite so, quite so." Hartley pushed shell-rim spectacles onto the pale slope of his forehead. "First of all, we can rule out your crude atom bomb right away. That's kid stuff now. Second of all, I think we can forget the cobalt bomb. Most everybody's too goddamned scared to touch it. That leaves us with the conventional thermonuclear fusion bomb. I guess you are familiar, sir, w
ith the principle of this device?"
"Familiar, but not intimate."
Hartley's question had been rhetorical. He ignored the reply and continued, "As you will be aware, there are three separate explosions involved — or more properly four, if you count the original detonator. The detonator sets off a charge of conventional explosive that hurls together two quantities of fissile material totaling more than that substance's critical mass. This initiates a chain reaction that produces a fission explosion. And it is only in the immense heat generated by this that the fusion process involving the bomb's main constituents can take place."
"You mean an H-bomb can only be triggered off by a small A-bomb explosion inside it?" Bolan asked.
Hartley coughed. "Well, yes — if you want to put it that way. But the significant thing," he continued, "is that the light elements required for the fusion reaction — that is, the main explosive substances in an H-bomb — can be acquired by any country, any organization, with reasonable resources. What stops every half-pint army and militia in the world going nuclear is the difficulty and expense of obtaining the fissile material necessary for the initial atom bomb blast."
"And that is uranium 235?"
"Or plutonium 239. Precisely."
"You're telling me that whoever has this stolen U-235 — providing they have reasonable resources — could be setting up a plant and manufacturing H-bombs in some secret place... say, somewhere in Africa?"
The bald head bobbed in affirmation. "Mind you, 'reasonable' resources can be astronomic by ordinary standards. But if they had the means, and a sufficiently isolated site, and the labor, and some way of getting equipment and material there — if they had all those things, then I guess it could be done. But those are big enough 'ifs' just the same, sir."
"They couldn't make it without the uranium 235?"
"Definitely not. Not unless the resources, the funds, were virtually unlimited, and they'd been working on it for years. To start with, you see, you'd have to amass your uranium ores. Then you must extract and refine pure uranium. Then the 235 isotope has to be separated from the natural element in a nuclear reactor, and the yield is minimal, only .7 of one percent. Add to this the cost of the raw materials, the cost of the plant, the time, the labor, the expense of the immensely thick shielding needed for..."
Anvil of Hell Page 2