Sujic stopped the car halfway down a twisting lane that led into a small square. The tall medieval houses around them were shuttered and silent, but light from a single streetlamp splashed lozenges of silver onto the ancient stones through the branches of a linden tree in the center of the square. More light streamed across the sidewalk from the open door of a nearby tavern. The braying wheeze of an accordion surged from time to time over the sound of blaring voices.
Colonel Sujic leaned forward and opened the door of the staff car. "Very well, my friend," he said quietly, "now it is up to you. You know where to go. You know what to do. Just remember that the real Cernic is known to the people of this neighborhood simply as 'Milo.' And do not forget the limp."
"With this lump in my shoe? You must be joking." He got out of the car.
"As we agreed," Sujic continued, "there is too much risk attached to any liaison between you and the SNB or myself. If you are contacted, therefore, allow yourself to be smuggled out of the country... and then check out the best way to eliminate the organization with your Mr. Brognola. The only thing that interests us, after all, is the destruction of the network. How this is done, we leave to you."
"And if I'm not contacted?"
"I am sure, Per Bolan, that it would not be the first time you crossed a frontier without papers," the Czech said suavely. "Or the first time you omitted to present yourself to the border guards."
Bolan nodded. As he melted into the shadows, the door of the Tatra clicked shut and the colonel called softly, "Good luck!" The car turned and whined away down an even narrower street, leaving the warrior alone with his new identity.
Much of the flight from Geneva had been spent, with Sujic's help, in memorizing a detailed street map of the area and learning the position of the few stores Cernic patronized. It was no problem, therefore, finding the right route, and Bolan — once the snarl of the Tetra's exhaust had been swallowed up in the distant rumble of the city — emerged from the darkness and headed for the square.
The stairs that led to the attic where Cernic had been living were on the far side of the square beyond the tavern, a bar in which the escaped con passed an hour or two at the beginning of every evening. As Bolan limped past, two men reeled out of the open door and hailed him.
"Hey, Milo!" one called. "Where the hell have you been? Haven't seen you around for days. What have you got up in that eagle's nest of yours — a dancer from the opera?"
"Yeah, how's life, you old soak?" the other guffawed.
Okay, the Executioner thought. You passed muster on the visual. But how will you make out with the words? You don't have a clue how this character articulated: all you know is that he spoke in kind of a growl.
"Life?" he repeated in the surliest voice he could manage. "None the better for your asking. It'd be a damned sight better if I could get out of this hole and finish with the likes of you." He spit scornfully on the cobblestones and stumped on toward the alley leading to his stairway.
It seemed, for the moment, that he'd made it. Then there was a burst of laughter behind him. "Who was that?" a woman's voice asked. Bolan glanced over his shoulder. She was standing in the doorway of the tavern, a slender silhouette against the smoke-filled interior: young, blond, wearing an unbuttoned trench coat.
"That?" one of the drunks echoed. "Ol' Milo, the mos' bad-tempered guy in town. What a character! Never been known to smile."
"I don't see that's anything to boast about," the woman objected. "Who is this boor, anyway?"
"Oh, some hick from the east," the first man said, tiring of the subject. "A rube. Comes from KoSice in Slovakia. What the hell... it's time for another drink."
"He doesn't look like a countryman."
"Forget him," the second man said. "He probably worked in the bauxite mines or something. Come on, Nagy, move your ass."
"If you ask me, he looks more like a crook. He probably came here to escape the police..."
"Then he's safe here, ain't he?" the first drunk interrupted. "For you don't catch them down here often. They'd rather wait until we make it to the bright lights and put the arm on us then."
"Well, if you ask me..." the woman started again. But the rest of the sentence was lost in a fresh burst of laughter, mixed with drunken singing, as more patrons of the tavern spilled out into the square. Somewhere beyond the linden tree, a window frame squeaked open and a voice called angrily for quiet.
Bolan limped on. Beyond the forced gaiety of the square, darkness and silence closed in on him. The rain, which had stopped falling while the Tatra was navigating the city center, started again. Down the alley, turn left across the courtyard and go through the arch. Walk up three stone steps and take the second cul-de-sac on the right... There it all was, exactly as the colonel had described it.
The old buildings leaned together across the passageway, so that from the leaded windows of one projecting top story to the peeling shutters of the one opposite, the gap was narrow enough for a man to jump. Ancient, bowed beams cradled tile, brick and crumbling plaster. At the corner, a turret with a conical slate roof was etched against the night sky by light from a lamp set in the stonework of the arch. And ahead, zigzagging up the wall blanking off the end of the alley, a wooden staircase led to a door beneath a sagging dormer. Behind it was Zoltan Cernic's hideout.
Bolan climbed the stairway and thrust the iron key he had been given into the lock. It turned silently, and the door swung open. He felt inside for the cracked porcelain cover of a light switch. The feeble illumination from a single forty-watt lamp showed him a large room with a varnished pine floor, a bed, a table and two wicker chairs, one on each side of a dark mahogany closet. Cans of soup, dried food in packets and a bottle of milk that had gone sour jostled for position on top of a cheap trunk.
Bolan crossed to a small window beneath the sloping ceiling, opened the shutters and leaned out into the dark. Rain pelted down on the chaos of roofs, gurgling in the gutters and misting a distant curve of lights that marked the embankment by the river. But the air was fresh, cold and tingling. In a few minutes the musty, stale atmosphere in the room had dispersed.
In his role as the escaped con in hiding, Bolan had no papers, no firearms, and no clothes other than the shabby garments he was wearing. He had decided against carrying a gun because, if it was seen by anyone who knew Cernic — and knew where he had come from — his cover would have been blown at once. The only weapon he had permitted himself was the small throwing knife, which was strapped to the inside of his left ankle.
The room had a skylight, and through its grimy glass an agile man could reach a slant of massive curled shingles beneath which was hidden the equivalent of three hundred and ninety thousand dollars.
With these two rather differing assets as the only entries on the credit side of the ledger, the Executioner installed himself in his hideout and settled down to wait.
14
It rained incessantly in Prague for two days. It was raining all over Europe, but the downpour was heavier, more relentless, and seemed somehow even wetter in the Czech capital.
Mack Bolan sat in Cernic's attic room, listening to the ceaseless drumming on the roof and wondering if the damp was penetrating beneath the shingles and damaging the hoard of bills. He had been told not to touch the cache until he was contacted by the escape organization, then he could take enough to pay for the ride and leave the Czech security forces to recuperate the rest.
Each morning he took a raincoat from a hook behind the door and battled his way through the deluge to a general store on a corner in the lane below, where he bought beer, black bread and parkys— the succulent local sausages that he cooked on a battered electric ring that was the attic's sole means of heating. In the evening he went to the tavern on the square and, as Cernic would have, drank steadily, speaking to nobody in particular and keeping his general remarks surly and pessimistic.
Presenting a tough, villainous and boorish facade was the most difficult part of the operation for Bolan,
who — except in his dealings with the savages of the world — was usually a mild-mannered guy. Indeed, in Nam he had been dubbed Sergeant Mercy because of his compassion for civilians caught up in the horrors of war.
The first time he went into the store, the owner — a stout red-faced man in round spectacles — called out, "Ha! So you made it back again! What happened to you yesterday and the day before? We were scared you'd been run over or something."
Bolan took the cue. "What has it to do with you where I was?" he shouted. "You should learn to mind your business, friend. And your business is selling people what they want, with no questions asked. My business is... well, that's my business."
"All right, all right," the storekeeper said hastily. "No need to bite a man's head off. I was just passing the time of day."
"Well, don't pass it prying into other people's affairs," Bolan growled. Then, since it might be wise to account for Cernic's two-day "absence," he added, "I was laid up with a dose of influenza, if you must know."
He told the same story to the proprietor of the tavern. "This bloody climate," he said, scowling. "I wish the hell I could get out of here. Your damn dirty city air — it fouls up the lungs of a man used to the country. Now in Slovakia, where I come from..."
It wasn't a bad idea, Bolan reckoned, to answer questions before they were asked — and the storekeeper's crack about being run over had come scarily close to the truth.
Bolan had been told that Zoltan Cernic always sat in a particular corner of the tavern, and he conscientiously carried his drink over to that seat each evening. But however gruff and unapproachable he was, there was always one thing he couldn't guard against: the arrival of an intimate friend whom he might not know he should recognize and welcome. As it happened, however, his first real test related to an adversary rather than a friend.
While he was at the bar ordering his second drink, someone took his seat. He turned around to see a large mustached man with ham-sized fists sitting at his table, nursing a tankard of beer.
Judging from the baggy pants and peaked cap, the man was some kind of manual laborer. Bolan had no doubt he had taken the seat quite innocently and had no idea it had been occupied. But he realized from the suppressed giggles and covert winks all around that Cernic would be expected to react. A sudden silence fell as he stamped across, set his shallow glass of apricot-colored baracz on an adjacent table and stood staring belligerently at the man. "I think you're mistaken, friend," he said in an unfriendly voice. "That's my table."
The big man looked up. "Your table? You bought the place, maybe?"
"I was sitting there." Bolan jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Now beat it."
"Well, I'm sitting here now," the workman said shortly. He tugged a creased newspaper from his pocket, unfolded it and began ostentatiously to read.
Scowling ferociously, Bolan snatched the paper away and hurled it to the floor. "I said that's my seat. Out."
The man half rose threateningly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled. "I've a good mind to..."
He broke off as the Executioner swept his tankard from the table with a crash. He drew a deep breath and erupted into action, trying to overturn the table onto the warrior.
Bolan slammed it down on its legs again, pinning the man behind it. The workman was a giant, half a head taller than Bolan and rugged. The warrior would have no problem taking him, but Cernic's reputation as a tough was almost certainly based on straight roughhousing and fistfights, so Bolan would have to hold back on the martial arts he knew so well. In the split second his opponent was frozen against the wall, he decided to try to cripple him with a single sharp blow... and then add some fancy punches afterward for the benefit of the gallery. And of his cover.
Leaning forward swiftly, he seized the man by the collar and jerked him facedown across the tabletop. Then, before the man could recover, he linked his hands and brought them hurtling down on the unprotected neck. The fight was effectively over at that moment: the man's reflexes were paralyzed. But the window dressing had to be put on for the customers.
Bolan growled with simulated rage, threw aside the table and thrust the guy up against the wall. Steadying him with one hand, Bolan drove three blows into the pit of his stomach, allowed the guy to slide to the floor and finally helped him on his way with a couple of contemptuous rabbit punches. The man was out before he hit the ground.
Abruptly the place was loud with chatter again. The owner stood the table upright, dusted it down and brought Bolan another drink. Waiters dragged the unconscious man outside. Bolan sat down and stared morosely into his glass.
The clientele was a rough bunch. Among them were the two drunks who had accosted him the night he had arrived. Several times he saw the blond woman who had been with them staring at him covertly. But the majority seemed to be the Czech equivalent of small-time grafters. There wasn't the opportunity for organized crime here the way there would be in a Western city, but such criminals and black markets as there were, he guessed, hung out around this quarter and this particular bar.
He was proved right sooner than he expected.
There were four of them. They sidled out from behind the archway as he left the courtyard and made it toward the cul-de-sac that led to his room.
They closed in before he could react, one on each side to pinion his arms, one behind to close a viselike grip on his neck, the last one in front to lead the way to the rickety wooden staircase that climbed to the attic. For an instant Bolan toyed with the idea of fighting back, but the man with the grip on his neck produced a gun and rammed the muzzle against his spine. "What's going on?" he demanded. "You guys buddies of that man I busted in the tavern?"
"You know better than that, Cernic," the man on his right said.
"What's with this Cernic? My name's Milo. Anyone will tell you that. You guys are making a mistake."
"No mistake," the man in front said. "And no talking. Until we get you inside, and then you'll talk plenty. Because we're going to get that loot before we leave."
"Loot? What loot? I don't know what you're talking about. I tell you I..."
"Shut up."
"But you got me wrong. I don't know..." Bolan broke off with a gasp as the point of the front man's elbow drove backward into his belly.
Inside the attic he got a good look at his captors. They looked the way small-time chiselers look the world over — rat faces, mean little eyes, cheap suits. The leader, with red-rimmed eyes and pig-bristle hair, looked like a failed prizefighter.
Bolan didn't believe for a moment that they had anything to do with the escape organization he wanted to contact. They weren't intelligent enough. He figured them for hustlers who had somehow gotten wise to the real Cernic's identity and determined to carve themselves a piece of the action. He knew he would have to deal with them fast if the evening wasn't to go sour on him. These guys meant business.
He ran quickly over the options as Pig-bristle looked around the shabby room. The two flankers still held his arms. The man with the gun — it looked like a Walther PPK — stood with his back leaning against the door. The gun was held loosely, the barrel pointing at a spot on the floor halfway between the gunner and Bolan. The guy looked as if he knew how to use it.
Should he fake cowardice, pretend he was caving in and start blabbing in an attempt to stall and have them relax their vigilance? No way. He was known, both as Cernic and as Milo, as a hard man, too tough for that kind of behavior to ring true. Should he continue denying there was a connection between Milo and Cernic? Negative. They were well informed, maybe they knew the bank robber by sight, they wouldn't believe him anyway. And, hell, the whole aim of this Prague stakeout was to convince people that he was Zoltan Cernic.
"Keep him covered," Pig-bristle said to the man with the Walther, "while we tear this rat's nest apart." He turned to Bolan. "Unless you want to save us a lot of time and yourself a heap of trouble and strife."
"The dialogue's threadbare," Bolan said. "You want to
change the disk." And then, contriving a crafty note: "Suppose, just suppose, I was this character you think I am — Cernic, did you say — and just suppose I did know something about some kind of loot, what did you have in mind?"
"Tell us where the stuff's hidden, and you get to keep twenty percent. We take the eighty. After all, there's four of us and only one of you," Pig-bristle said. "But if we have to beat the shit outta you to learn the secret, you get nothing. Take my tip, Cernic. Get smart and take the twenty."
Yeah, Bolan thought. And a bullet in the back as soon as the money is uncovered.
Aloud, he said, "The terms don't interest me. I take the eighty. But it's worth twenty percent to get you guys off my back."
The hood gritted his teeth. "Okay, if you want it the hard way." He opened the door of the cupboard where Bolan's meager food supply was stored. "Mischa and me will get started. You two strip the son of a bitch and tie him up."
One of the thugs pinioning the Executioner stepped forward. He wrenched the cupboard away from the wall and threw it to the floor, scattering the supplies over the floor. He began ripping away the flimsy wood panels at the back while Pig-bristle took a short jimmy from his pocket and pried up a floorboard near the wall.
The gunman moved away from the door and the fourth man relaxed his grip on Bolan's arm. "Okay, drop your pants," he growled.
Bolan unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned the fly and pushed the thick woolen pants to his ankles.
"All right — step out of them," the man with the Walther ordered.
They were the last words he uttered.
Bolan straightened as he kicked one leg free, the short, squat throwing knife that had been strapped to his ankle in one hand. Before he was fully upright the razor-sharp blade was buried in the gunman's throat.
The guy choked, gurgling blood as he fell. His hands spasmed open, flying instinctively toward his savaged neck. Bolan hurled aside the fourth man and dived for the Walther, fielding it before it hit the floor.
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