“I don’t torture people.”
“No, of course you don’t. You’re not the type. I could tell it the moment I saw you.”
“Then why? Why give up the plot?”
“I’m sick,” Levesque told him. “I learned of it just last week. You see before you a large man, yes? I was larger. When I began losing weight for no reason, I thought it was merely the demands of my work.”
“Murder for hire isn’t work,” Bolan said.
“But, damn you, you follow what I am saying to you,” Levesque spit, throwing the cigar down. “My lymph nodes are swollen. I feel pain in my back. I’m sick to my stomach all the time. I am dying, Agent Cooper. It is pancreatic cancer. There is no more certain death sentence. Adenocarcinoma, it is called. The pain will grow greater, and I will be dead.”
“How long do you have?”
“It will come soon. And frankly I have no desire to end my days as the tool of some ambitious fool. I have done nothing with my life. Nothing but pursue money with the only skills available to me, those being aptitudes for violence and for the organizations of those who specialize in it.
“Even now you look at me, and I can see in your eyes that you would kill me in a heartbeat if you thought the act justified. I have met your type before. You believe you live by a moral code. You believe that I am corrupt and you are incorruptible. Perhaps that is even true. But Deparmond looks at me the same way. He stares down at me like you or I would stare at a noxious insect, at the leavings of an animal.”
“So you want respect?” Bolan asked.
“Do not be a fool. I will not have respect. There is nothing I can do to achieve that. But I wish no longer to be a gear in the machine of Deparmond’s ambition. He will pay a price for his disrespect of me. I will soon be dead but so will be his political career.”
“And you think telling me this will put nails in Deparmond’s coffin?” Bolan asked. “You overestimate the power I have.”
Levesque almost glared at the soldier. “No,” he said. “I do not think I do. I think one such as you would put a bullet in Deparmond’s skull upon learning of this betrayal...if not for the fact that men like you do not run the world. You are closer to me than you are to Deparmond or Gaston.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Bolan said.
“And yet it is Deparmond or Gaston, and men like them, who rule,” Levesque replied, grinning. He bent, groaning and holding his back, and picked up his fallen cigar.
Bolan waited as the Frenchman lit the cigar again.
“I would like to see Deparmond pay for his crimes. As I most assuredly shall pay for mine. If you will entertain a simple request from a doomed man.”
“I’m listening.”
Levesque picked up the magazine for his Hi Power. With his thumb he began snapping rounds out of the magazine. The brass-cased rounds hit the floor and rolled. Levesque kept popping the cartridges free until there was just one round in the magazine.
“I am going to load this into my pistol. I would ask only that you give me the privacy to take my own life. And in return for this gift, the gift of a dignity I do not deserve, I will give you the name and address of a man who can authenticate the video evidence I have of Deparmond. I recorded our meetings with him, you see. The video is ironclad proof of his complicity in the terror attacks. I think you want this very much.”
“I do,” Bolan said.
“I thought as much. For a man like you must bend his knee to unworthy masters. Politicians. Bureaucrats. Men in power. A man like you, he will be on a leash, yes? And the video evidence would give you the proof you require to make your leash just a bit longer, to go after Deparmond in the name of justice.
“Making Deparmond’s crimes public will rob him of support. It will destroy the election. Bringing about the very result your government probably wishes, yes? The moderate, Gaston, in power? An administration in Paris that continues to heed your government’s wishes?”
“Who is it?” Bolan demanded. “This video expert.”
“His name is Tessier. Edouard Tessier.”
“How do you know this Tessier can validate the video?”
“He stores them for us,” Levesque said, “because he helped us record them. He can verify that they have not been tampered with, that the man appearing in them is Deparmond. Tessier is well-known in his industry, specialized though it is.”
“And why will he cooperate with me?”
“You called me a mercenary,” Levesque said. “A man who does things for money. Money is Tessier’s only god, too, but he is not like me. He is a harmless man. A civilian in every respect. He will do as you ask simply because he has no reason not to do it. Do we have a bargain?”
Bolan paused. “All right,” he said. “Give me the address.”
Very carefully Levesque reached into his pants pocket and produced a business card. He handed this to Bolan. “Goodbye, Agent Cooper.”
“Good riddance,” Bolan said.
“I am going to load my gun now. I will wait until you leave before I chamber the round.”
Bolan nodded. He backed out of the room nonetheless. When he was on the stairs, he heard Levesque rack the slide on his weapon.
The French terrorist was under any number of death sentences, not the least of which was Mack Bolan’s. Allowing the man to take his own life rather than face Bolan’s guns or the lethal cancer from which Levesque suffered was certainly a mercy. The Executioner was a merciful man, as much now as when he had earned the nickname, Sergeant Mercy.
Levesque had not been. Levesque would not have offered mercy to any of his victims. But a single bullet through his brain would remove him from the equation, would stop him from ever again harming another human being. He would die at his own hand; there would be no political blowback to American interests. And letting the French terror leader commit suicide meant he would cease to exist in mere moments.
All in all, Bolan thought, that was a worthy trade for whatever dignity the terror leader thought he was buying.
A single gunshot rang out.
Levesque said he would shoot himself. Bolan wouldn’t leave until he saw the man’s bloody corpse.
CHAPTER NINE
Somewhere in Paris
The sound of the gunshot was so loud that Anton Lemaire ripped the headphones from his ears.
“Merde!” he shouted.
He had done it. The crazy bastard had done it. Levesque, that coward, had shot himself and ended his pathetic life.
Lemaire sat back in his chair. As if without conscious thought, his hand found the switch for the radio microphone receiver and switched off the unit. The sound feed from the bugging device—hidden in Levesque’s writing desk—was cut off in a burst of static. There was no one to hear it and nothing to be heard now.
While Lemaire felt vindicated for having planted the bug in the first place, there was still the bitter sting of proof in Lemaire’s mouth. He hated the certainty that Levesque was broken, a turncoat. But the knowledge did clear the way for Lemaire to take his rightful position within ES.
The urban safehouse around him was abuzz with activity. Operatives of the ES in camouflage uniform were stripping, cleaning and loading weapons, as well as preparing explosive satchels for more raids in the city. Now more than ever it would be important to pour on the pressure.
This Cooper, the American CIA agent, would be quick to report to his masters that the head of ES had taken his life. Lemaire would not allow the ES to be dismissed as irrelevant. It was time for a show of force, and, more important, it was time to transmit a message that would make all of Paris take note of their resolve.
As for what Levesque had said in his dying confession...this was information that had not been shared with Lemaire, even given his position within the group. Levesque had been a man of man
y secrets. He had never revealed from where exactly his finances came, nor had he let on to his troops that he was motivated by anything but belief in their cause, belief that France should be purged of foreign influence.
Clearly these were lies. Levesque was a traitor to the cause. But the revelations changed nothing. The sooner Lemaire’s troops forgot their former leader, the better.
As the second-in-command of ES, Lemaire had taken it on himself to call to arms those men among the organization who counted him as their leader. Over the years, Levesque’s considerable influence had waned with a portion of the men. That group was large enough that the ranks of those recruited by, trained by and therefore loyal primarily to Lemaire were a considerable force.
There were others of the ES loyal to Levesque, particularly those recruited and trained by Levesque. Lemaire, in calling ES to arms at this, one of its last remaining safe havens in Paris, had offered these Levesque loyalists a place at the table. They had refused, and as far as Lemaire was concerned, the organization was well rid of them.
Weakness bred weakness. Lemaire had harbored doubts about Levesque for some time. Suicide simply confirmed every suspicion in the second-in-command’s mind. Only a weak man did his enemies’ work for them. Only a weak man betrayed his comrades before taking a bullet and avoiding the consequences of his betrayal. The ES was stronger without such a man at its head.
News of Levesque’s death would have to be carefully managed. Only Lemaire knew of it; only Lemaire had been present, a disembodied listener for this final, unworthy act. He would have to capitalize on that if he could. Perhaps he could pass among his men the idea that Levesque had been assassinated by the CIA.
The American government wanted weaklings to run France, after all. It made a certain sense. The American CIA was forever meddling in things that it had no business with. Only Lemaire need ever know the truth of Levesque’s ignominious end. Lemaire could build up Levesque’s memory, make him a martyr, and thus use him to motivate his loyal ES troops.
The size of the network that was ES was more vast than most suspected. The public knew only that the danger was real. Law enforcement probably had its own theories, and in truth Lemaire had no idea what the American CIA or INTERPOL or other governmental agencies thought about the ES. He was not connected to international politics. He understood the realities of the streets of France. He had been born and bred to them.
Anton la Bête, they called him. Anton the Brute. Anton the Beast. Anton the Animal.
It was a street name. Street names were earned. Anton Lemaire grew up on the streets of Paris an orphan, one of many such urchin children. He never knew his parents; his earliest memories were of living alone in the shelter of doorways. Sometimes he wondered if his mother had been a prostitute.
Or perhaps his parents were rich but killed in a tragic automobile accident, their son the only survivor, with no family to claim him. As he grew older, he stopped making up such stories. There was no point to them.
There were always homeless, always beggars, always children among the dispossessed. Such was the way of cities. Paris—despite its reputation across the globe—was no different in that respect. It had its crime. It had its decay. It had neighborhoods where no man dared walk, if he was of the wrong color or of the wrong gang or simply not counted on a list of names.
It was in the streets of Paris that Lemaire learned to hate all foreigners.
As a very young boy, he was small. Quick, yes, as were most small boys. But speed was not enough when you were outnumbered. The block that the young Anton and his friends called their own, the territory to which they laid claim, was invaded by dark-colored foreigners.
It was long enough ago now that Lemaire had allowed himself to forget their exact nationality. The nation, the boundaries, the borders of their...otherness...were not important. The fact of their alien natures was. The fact that they did not belong burned him, galled him, made him hate.
They began taking the block, slowly at first, then more brazenly and in numbers. While in those days the deliberate police avoidance was nothing like it would become in Paris’s ethnic enclaves, already law enforcement was learning to avoid the area. Lemaire remembered the first time he saw one of the dark-skinned gangs pelt a police car with rocks, driving the police back, showing that men in uniform, men of authority, were not always men of power.
Much as he admired such a demonstration, he was quickly reminded of its source. The interloper gangs beat first one of his friends, then another. Marcel, a boy roughly Lemaire’s age who often watched Anton’s back in exchange for the same protection, was clubbed so badly in an alley that he died three days later.
The act demanded retaliation. But it would be years before such retribution could be wrought.
Despite the privations and the occasional malnourishment of living on the streets, Lemaire experienced a growth spurt. As he entered adolescence, he became a strapping bull of a young man. His hunger was insatiable. He devoted most of his days to stealing food from markets and stands in an ever-widening radius from his home block.
When he was too well-known to the shopkeepers and vendors, he began focusing on other street children, preferably those with skin darker than his own. Soon he learned that this was much more efficient. He could steal food and sometimes money or other precious items without making enemies of the local merchants.
The police, on their increasingly rare forays into the neighborhood, did not care about depredations among the outcast class. If no productive citizens were involved, no crime had been committed. Not as far as the authorities, impotent as they were, believed.
Then came the day Lemaire stole a knife from a black gang member.
He remembered vividly the feeling of crushing the young man’s skull beneath a piece of paving stone. Going through the enemy’s pockets, he found the long double-edged knife. He knew immediately what a prize this weapon was.
He took the sheath, a handmade one of cardboard and adhesive tape, and put the weapon in his own waistband. He would use it to stab to death two more enemy gang members, and in so doing, he would discover yet again the gift of efficiency. Just as stealing from his fellow street urchins was more efficient than stealing from shops, stabbing a man to death was quicker and so much easier than using his bare hands.
Lemaire became bigger and more powerful as he grew to manhood. But he never forgot the lessons of efficiency. And he never lost his love of knives. The longer and the sharper they were, the more he adored them.
There came the raining afternoon in which Lemaire —holed up in an abandoned storage house with a leaking roof—had begun throwing his knife at a broken barrel. He was simply bored. But the moment the knife struck, tip first, in the barrel, he was hooked. He practiced whenever he could. He obtained many more knives.
And then he learned savate.
As huge as he was, as strong as he was, he found the dynamic kicking of savate only made him deadlier. He began taking part in street matches. These were brutal, illegal events, exactly the sort of outlet he required. As he became a man, he left behind the need to scratch daily for sustenance; he began to feather his own nest, building a gang and organizing small criminal enterprises. The most natural was a protection scheme among the neighborhood shops.
He was almost disappointed when one frail, old man proved to be a baker he remembered from his childhood. He was tempted to hurt the man badly despite the business Lemaire was trying to build. He could remember this same man calling him worthless as a child. To survive as a child, Lemaire had stolen from the old man’s bakery.
But, no, if Lemaire had learned anything from his street battles, from his time in savate, from using his fists and his blade and his will to claw his way up in the world, he had learned discipline. He would spare the baker’s life and take his money instead.
But he charged him double.
Standing behind his secondhand steel desk, Lemaire walked across the otherwise empty second bedroom of the large Paris safehouse. He could still hear his men in the larger bedroom across the hall loading and maintaining weapons. Similar sounds could be heard downstairs. The building was an armed camp, which was as he wanted it to be.
On his belt Lemaire wore two large leather sheaths, one on either hip. Each sheath held three large throwing knives. They were bolo-shaped, with circular holes in the handles to yield perfect balance. They were razor sharp.
On the wall Lemaire had nailed an old cutting board. He took a deep breath, relaxed his arms and moved to stand in front of the board, as far away as he could without backing himself into the wall.
Then he turned.
With his back to the board, he let his hand fall to the sheath on his right. His fingers found the stainless-steel haft of one of the blades.
Lemaire spun and threw.
He had practiced the motion thousands of times. It was not hard to spin and to throw a knife. It was not even especially hard to do so while hitting the fist-sized circle he had drawn on the cutting board in black permanent marker. The true challenge was in doing so without telegraphing, without the telltale flicker of shoulder muscles, without the barely perceptible change in stance that would alert an enemy to his intentions.
Even before his time with the ES, even before he learned to carry and fire an automatic weapon, to use military tactics, he knew that it was his blades that would one day save him. He envisioned a moment when his weapon was empty, when the Tokarev pistol he carried in his waistband failed him, when all that stood between him and his death was his skill with a blade.
He could fight with a knife, of course. All of the ES men were trained to wield a blade in personal combat. Lemaire’s own experience with street fighting had prepared him for fighting with a knife long before his time in the ES, too, but he had undergone the same training as all the men. He regularly engaged in practice of the same type. It helped him keep his edge sharp.
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