"Okay, General, you convinced me. I guess you made your point."
"I mean, sure, they could get their deuterium, their heavy hydrogen, their cadmium and their graphite moderators easy enough. They could even build themselves a reactor, provided of course that they..."
"Why uranium 235, though?" the Executioner cut in once more, in an attempt to stem the flood. "I thought plutonium was preferred these days on account of the yield from uranium being so much greater."
Hartley shrugged. "Why bother when you're stealing it anyway? Could be because security is even tougher on plutonium. Or maybe the guy masterminding the deal has a personal preference for the other isotope. Whoever it is, he has to be a big brain in nuclear physics. This is no high-school laboratory routine, whatever the scare stories in the media say."
"That does narrow the field some," Bolan admitted. "How many physicists are there in the world capable of directing such an operation? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?"
"You tell me," Hartley said. "My guess would be hundreds. Maximum. But it's only a guess."
He removed his spectacles, snapped them shut and stowed them in his breast pocket. "Whatever you turn up, keep in touch," he said. "Frankly, I can't say I approve of the way Brognola's handling this. Nothing personal, you understand. But any shift, any prospective shift, in the balance of nuclear power is vital information for our strategic planners. Remember that."
"I'm not likely to forget," Bolan said soberly.
"No. Well... " Hartley sighed. "I'd rather it was done through professionals answerable to the Administration, but I can see why Brognola decided against it. The other thing to remember is that the destination of the stolen isotope isn't the only problem. Apart from Harries, every single man responsible for the thefts is still working undercover, undetected, in the nuclear plants where they occurred. It's equally vital that they should be identified."
Bolan nodded. "I'll do what I can," he promised.
It was only then that he asked the hotel doorman to call him a cab.
Back in his hotel, therefore, he was faced with a problem more immediate than the relocation of the uranium trail.
Who could have been so familiar with his movements that they could have traced him from Marignane back to the hotel, where he changed into more conventional clothes, and then on to the Intercontinental?
And who would have had the means to call up a car, a crew and a ready-primed explosive device at such short notice? The men of the Marseilles underworld, certainly — especially bearing in mind the coded message from the private eye and his subsequent fate; or the cops, who knew he was at Marignane and could conceivably have bugged the motel room. And who could — as Brognola had hinted — have been in touch with the milieu and tipped them off.
But neither of them would have known that Bolan was anything more than a criminal being handed over to American justice. And even if for some reason the room had been bugged, would anyone have had time to analyze their conversation, draw the right conclusions and act on them?
On the face of it, the most likely character in the cast was the general himself. He had the knowledge and the opportunity. But did he have the motive?
Hartley had made it clear that he didn't approve the use of a free lance at the expense of the official intelligence services. But unless he was himself part of the conspiracy involved in the uranium thefts, which seemed kind of farfetched, would that disapproval have been strong enough to countenance the elimination of the lone wolf?
The Executioner thought not. He hoped not.
But he was left with the uneasy feeling that the mission entrusted to him by Brognola was much less undercover than he had thought.
Chapter Three
Mustapha Tufik's coffee shop wasn't listed in the telephone directory. It rated no mention in the city guide. Nobody in Bolan's hotel had ever heard of it.
He had assumed, somehow, after the buildup on the private eye's tape, that it might be something of a tourist attraction, the kind of place known to every hotel porter and cabdriver in town. But he scored zero all along the line.
Finally, standing beneath the sheer forty-foot stone wall of the fort that guarded the entrance to the old port, he got wise. If Tufik ran a coffee shop, he would have to get supplies someplace. The next step was to make the rounds of the coffee wholesalers.
Bolan found a pay phone and removed the entries he needed from the C section of the yellow pages directory. He looked around for another cab.
It wasn't so easy. It was raining again, a sullen, relentless downpour, slanting under pressure from a westerly wind that bounced ankle-high off the shining quays and cascaded from flapping awnings over the waterfront restaurants. Every taxi in town seemed to have been booked by office executives hightailing it for the railroad station or hurrying to bars to imbibe an extra predinner martini.
Hunched against the deluge, Bolan tramped past the forest of masts and rigging, and started his odyssey on foot.
Three out of the first four wholesalers were closed already. At the fifth he struck pay dirt. Tufik had been a customer there since the mid-fifties.
By the time he had located a cab, and the driver had found his way to the ancient Arab quarter above the docks, it was after dark.
"I can take you no farther, monsieur," the driver said, looking at the Executioner curiously. "The road becomes too narrow. You will find the establishment, I think, up there on the left in a small courtyard. It is not my business to ask, but..." He paused.
"Yes?"
The driver shrugged. "Nothing. It is of no importance." He slammed the big Citroen into reverse and began backing up toward an intersection. "Just keep your hand on your billfold, that's all!" he yelled as the cab drew slowly away.
Bolan grinned. A word to the wise. He thrust a hand between the lapels of his sodden raincoat, checking the Beretta in its shoulder rig.
Rain was still pelting down, streaming over the surface of the lane, which twisted uphill between tall, blank facades. The gutters, choked every few yards with garbage, formed a series of dams that had spread out and flooded the cobbles, and Bolan's footsteps as he splashed up toward a dim streetlight were almost drowned in the gurgle of running water.
Directly beneath the streetlight, an archway led to a paved courtyard with half a dozen run-down houses on each side. Faintly above the drumming of the rain, hard rock warred with Moorish music.
The coffee shop was at the far end of the cul-de-sac. Bolan walked under a second arch piercing the crumbling wall, traversed an evil-smelling passageway and pushed in through the door.
Heat, light and noise engulfed him.
He saw a low-ceilinged, smoke-filled room jam-packed with men of a dozen different nationalities. Arabs, Hispanics, Africans and Northerners crouched over low tables around the walls, crowded a bar and stood in gesticulating groups. A rock number blared from a gaudy juke in one corner, barely audible over the babel of voices.
The noise level dropped abruptly as Bolan came in, but it had resumed its former pitch by the time he made it to the bar. From behind the handles of an Italian espresso machine, a hard-faced individual with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up above tattooed forearms looked at him inquiringly. Judging from the condition of a party of French sailors shouting by the juke, the place served stronger drinks than coffee for the non-Muslims.
"Espresso,'* Bolan said brusquely, mopping his drenched hair with a handkerchief and shaking the drops from his raincoat.
"Bien, m'sieu."
"The boss here this evening?" Bolan asked a few minutes later. There appeared to be no waiters. Customers wanting refills separated themselves from the brawling crowd and shouted their orders across the bar. And certainly there was nobody who looked as though he might be the owner.
"M'sieu?"
"Mustapha Tufik," Bolan returned. "Is he here tonight?"
The hard-faced barman stared at him. "But of course. He is always here."
"I'd appreciate a few minutes of c
onversation with him."
"That is not possible."
"I have come a long way to see him. With a message from a mutual friend."
"No."
A tall man with a broken nose, who had come into the den a few minutes earlier, lurched up to the bar and elbowed the Executioner aside. "Here, Jean-Marc," he growled. "Attend to your business. There's thirsty men waiting. Three marcs and a large glass of red, and make it quick."
"Would you mind letting the man decide for himself?" Bolan asked when the barkeep had filled the order.
The man scowled. "I told you, no. Nobody sees the boss without an appointment." He moved back to the espresso machine and began to prepare coffee for three Arab laborers.
"There would be a certain amount of money involved — for all concerned," Bolan called, mastering his irritation.
"Keep your money. Tourists are not welcome here, especially American tourists."
"I am not a tourist, and I am no American," Bolan lied. "What I have to say may be of particular interest to..."
The barman leaned his hands on the counter and thrust his face toward the Executioner. "How many times do I have to tell you," he shouted, "that the answer is no, no and again no. Now drink your coffee and belt up, or else get out of..."
He broke off as a high-pitched buzz from below the bar cut through the hubbub. Reaching down, he unhooked a house phone and held it to his ear. "Yeah," he growled. "That's right... What...? Right away...? You're quite sure...? I don't know that you... Oh, what the hell. Just as you like."
The barkeep slammed the instrument back on its hook. "He'll see you," he said curtly, jerking his head toward a bead curtain behind the bar. "This way."
Bolan drained the rest of his cup and followed the man through the curtain and along a dark passageway. They skirted a patio bordered by a grimy glass canopy rattling under the assault of the rain, made it past another bead curtain and stopped in a softly lit waiting room. As they entered, a slim man in a suit rose quickly to his feet, one hand hovering near the unfastened top button of his jacket. Beneath the tarboosh he wore, his sallow face was watchful.
Bolan took in the scene at a glance. The contrast with the coffee shop was extreme. Subtly colored Persian rugs covered the mosaic floor, and the room was furnished with low divans in the Oriental style. There was only one other door: a sheet of beaten copper gleaming dully in a vaulted stone arch.
"For some reason he's agreed to see this tourist, Hassan," the surly barman said. "You take over from here, eh? I have customers waiting in the bar."
The slim man nodded, gesturing toward the copper door. As the barman turned and went back through the bead curtain, Hassan pressed a button concealed in the stonework and the door swung slowly open. Another corridor, stone-flagged and illuminated by wrought-iron lamps on brackets, stretched ahead.
"After you," Hassan said evenly. He kept some distance behind as they walked past a number of closed doors. Other than their footsteps on the stone floor, not a sound disturbed the silence. When they had passed five doorways, the slim man said softly, "The next one on the left. Knock four times."
Bolan rapped on the teak panels. There was a subdued buzz, a click and again the door swung open.
Mustapha Tufik was enormous, one of the biggest men Bolan had ever seen. He must have weighed well over 280 pounds, fat shoulders merging into a bulging neck, the great swell of his belly thrusting against a crumpled sharkskin suit. A few strands of reddish hair were combed across his freckled scalp, and a pair of unexpectedly humorous blue eyes twinkled among the rolls of pale flesh that formed his face.
He was sitting in an electrically operated wheelchair. Most surprising of all, he greeted Bolan in the broad accents of County Cork.
"Weil, now, me boy," he called cheerfully, "and what can I be doing for you? Come in, come in, and sit you down — if you can find a place, that is. For it's queer and cluttered it's getting to be in here at all!"
He waved a fat hand around the windowless room. It was a tough job finding a seat, for the entire area, about thirty feet square, was swamped by a great tide of paper. There were a few piles of reference books, matched by corresponding spaces in the bookshelves lining the walls, but most of the litter comprised an endless variety of newspapers, magazines and journals from all over the world. Overflowing onto chairs and couches, covering the floor in untidy heaps, these, Bolan saw, were spidered with scrawled annotations and underlinings in various colors.
Adrift on the flood were dozens of sheets of writing paper crisscrossed with scribbled notes, sheaves of clippings and long telex rolls bearing messages from APA, Reuter. Havas and Tass.
Steel filing cabinets in front of one wall flanked a modernistic console, which looked like the control panel of a recording studio. Oriental rugs hung below the lofty ceiling above the bookcases against two opposite walls. The fourth wall was pierced by an archway masked by the inevitable bead curtain.
The room was airless and hot. Bolan stripped off his soaking raincoat and draped it over the back of a chair that was piled high with old editions of the Herald Tribune. He moved aside copies of several different magazines and perched himself on the corner of an ottoman covered in purple silk.
"'Tis a foul night out there, they tell me," the fat man continued, "and you'll be after needing a spot of refreshment." He clapped his hands three times and then turned to the man in the tarboosh. "That's all right, Hassan, thank you," he said. "I'll let you know when this gentleman leaves us."
Hassan bowed and withdrew, closing the heavy door after him. A moment later, a veiled Arab girl of about thirteen pushed through the bead curtain. She was carrying a brass tray loaded with tiny cups and saucers, a copper pot full of fragrant coffee, a stone flask, glasses and a squat bottle half full of pale yellow liquor.
Tufik said something to her in Arabic as she cleared a space on the table and set down the tray. He slapped her familiarly on her silk-clad bottom as she giggled and ran off through the curtain.
"Delightful creature," he said reflectively, staring at the swaying strings of beads. "I keep half a dozen of them to look after me. When you're a big fella like me, there's nothing more relaxing than... Well, sure, I'm forgetting me manners! Turkish coffee now? With a drop of the rose water to settle the grounds? And you'll take a spot of the hard stuff? Izarra, it is, from the Basque country. I have the sweet tooth, as you see."
After pouring the drinks, he spun the wheelchair with dexterity and sped down an aisle left free between the masses of paper to hand Bolan a cup, saucer and eggshell-shaped glass held in a fine filigree cradle black with the patina of age.
"You have a most... unusual establishment here," Bolan observed, sipping the fiery, aromatic liquor.
"Sure, I guess I have and all. Though if it's the girls you mean, I have to tell you they're not..."
"I didn't only mean the girls. There's one hell of a contrast, you have to admit, between the, uh, coffee shop and this room, for example. Then there's the electrically controlled doors, the professional gunman outside, the fact that you knew I was here and invited me to step in just as your barman was about to throw me out."
"Ah, you have to keep a finger on the pulse, boy, in my business — and you have to take precautions, too. Besides, Jean-Marc didn't know who you were, Mr. Bolan. /do."
"And just what is your business?"
"Well, now, isn't that a question I should rightly be asking you? You're the one asked to see me. What is it you want?" The blue eyes were suddenly shrewd and calculating.
Bolan decided on the direct approach. "I was given to understand by a friend — a late friend — that you might be able to provide me with some information on a certain subject."
"What was the name of the friend?"
Bolan quoted the name of Brognola's private eye.
The fat man chuckled, the rolls of fat around his neck wobbling uncontrollably as he sucked coffee through pursed lips. "Sure, there's a splendid coincidence then," he said, putting down the c
up. "You've come to the right man, you see, for information is my business. I'm a merchant of information, to be sure. Wholesale or retail, in gross or by the item. You name it. If it's possible to get it, I'll get it. I play no favorites, I take no sides, I offer no loyalty, no allegiances. A man comes to me and pays for information, I give it to him, no questions asked. I don't care who he is. The customer is always right, and my customers come from all over — police, private detectives, lawyers, intelligence men, dubious characters from here to hell and gone. They all come to Mustapha Tufik."
"That's a fine old Irish name," the Executioner commented dryly.
"And it's my own, I'll have you know, sir. Me mother came from Ireland like they say in the song, God rest her poor soul. And indeed I was brought up in the old country. But me father was a Casablanca man, born and bred — though you'd not think it to look at me now, would ye?"
"No, I wouldn't," Bolan agreed. "But I understand you've been here a great number of years, just the same. In this Arab neighborhood, I mean."
"I have and all. The kind of setup I have here doesn't grow in a day. It's taken a long time to build up. You wouldn't believe how many hundred dollars a week it costs me in wire services and papers alone. And then, of course, there's the informers, the hotel porters, the airport folks, the travel agency men."
I "You must have great insight into what goes on in the world just by reading these." Bolan indicated the mass of periodicals around the room.
"Well, you know how it is. You never know when it'll come in useful, knowing who sleeps with whom, who was cleaned out at the tables, who's opened his mouth too wide and got fired. The gossip columns — when you add two and two together from different ends of the world — can tell a man a great deal. Then of course there's the diplomatic and political pieces. There's much to read between the lines there."
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