Vendetta in Venice

by Don Pendleton

  "Matter of faith," the guy explained. "We've always had a good reputation. Based on mutual trust. You don't seem too happy. Okay, to show you we're on the level I'm giving you half back. You can hand it over when we get you safely to Zurich. Right?"

  Bolan nodded, reflecting with a wry smile that if by chance the man was treacherous and aimed to kill the client and keep the money, it didn't matter who held the money at the time of his death.

  "Time we moved our asses," his guide was saying. "We cross the border at a very small frontier post, on a dirt road nobody ever heard of. There's only two night men on duty, and they'll be half asleep by now. I want to get there before they freshen up to meet the 6:00 a.m. relief."

  "Yeah, but twenty miles..."

  Placing a finger on his lips, the tough little man walked a few paces to one side and parted a screen of bushes in back of the rest area. Hidden by the leaves, a panel truck stood facing the highway. Bolan could just make out lettering on its sides that announced the name of a firm of electrical suppliers in Linz.

  "They're used to seeing this heap go through," his guide said. "At this time of night? Piece of cake. They probably won't take a look in the back, but we took precautions just the same. Get a load of this."

  He opened the rear doors. In the small delivery space were two half dismantled television sets, a few old-fashioned radios, a brand-new electric cooker and a huge refrigerator.

  "The freezer is empty," the guy went on. "We took out all the shelves and like that. When we near the border, you better squeeze in there, just in case. I'll wise you up in plenty of time. Until then, you can sit where you like here in the back."

  He handed Bolan into the truck and then, with a curt nod, slammed the doors, hurried around to the cab and started the engine. A moment later the truck bumped out onto the road and headed for the Austrian frontier.

  In the black interior, Bolan made himself as comfortable as he could among the rattling, banging, bouncing items of electrical ware. The longer he could stay out of that refrigerator, the happier he would be.

  16

  His name was Bartolomeo Baracco, and he was Corsican. Bolan found out at once that he rated himself a very tough character indeed. Maybe he was right. But if he had a fault — and for the Executioner this was a plus point — it was that he found himself unable to resist telling anyone who would listen just how tough, tough was.

  It was crazy, a compulsion to blab on the part of a key man in an organization that owed its success to the fact that nobody ever talked — and he had to be a key man because it was obvious that this was "Bart," the guy who had coldbloodedly ordered the watchman at Montigny to liquidate Bolan. But whatever the reason, Bart craved an audience, and it suited the Executioner just fine to pin back his ears and take in everything that came his way.

  They had plenty of opportunities to talk. The escape organization preferred to move its clients in short, sharp bursts, changing vehicles often and working mainly at night. Since abandoning the electrician's panel truck somewhere south of Linz, they had traveled in a dilapidated hearse, a cattle truck and a motor home that must have been at least twenty years old. Each time they switched, it was in a car junkyard, and that tied in with Bolan's theory of how the network functioned and why it worked so well.

  He ran over in his mind all the points that had occurred to him in the Montigny scrapyard. The Minerva... the Paris garbage truck...the two-tonner he had escaped from...the wreck that had taken Secondini from Avallon to the airfield... the dump truck in Montigny... the transport they had used since Linz — every single vehicle in the escape chain except the genuine moving truck that had spirited him away from the Czech capital. All of them old, all of them fit only for the junkyard. Except that beneath the decrepit exterior they were mechanically sound.

  There were two more points to consider: one, none of these trucks, vans or cars had ever been located; two, there were wreckers' yards every few miles along all the main trunk roads in Europe.

  Yeah, it stacked up. What better place to conceal ancient vehicles than a junkyard? What was more anonymous than a wreck apparently heading for the scrap heap? What was more serviceable to the network than one of those wrecks with an engine tuned to showroom standard?

  And if there were a chain of these yards spread across Europe, each with a doctored "Q-truck" waiting someplace among the write-offs?..

  It would be a near-perfect blueprint for a clandestine transport service.

  The client was picked up near the point of his escape and driven away in a wreck on wheels — but only as far as the nearest junkyard. There he was transferred to another jalopy, indistinguishable, apart from the engine, from the beat-up carcasses surrounding it. And like that, from yard to yard, each time the organizers reckoned they were pushing their luck or wanted to switch for security reasons.

  Bolan had to admit it was a smart idea. One wreck looked much like another, so who was going to notice the substitution in a car cemetery where there were hundreds of vehicles — especially if the men on the gates were in on the deal?

  Right now, Bart and the Executioner were in a used-car lot behind a truck stop less than twenty miles from Salzburg. They were still only seventy miles from the Czech frontier, waiting for nightfall so that they could run a delivery truck out from the lot and make it to the next yard, in Innsbruck.

  The little man with the big jaw had bought a newspaper at the truck stop. "They suspect you made a getaway from Prague. But Baracco is too smart for them..." the Corsican favored the braggart's third person, which was often used by monomaniacs "...and he has been cunning enough to get you this far without them once seeing you. But he has to be careful. From now on Baracco must use all his skills, for the paper says you are heading southwest and again it is suspected you will try to reach Switzerland. It is suspected!" He laughed contemptuously. "They will need more than suspicion to match the guile of Baracco!"

  Bolan laughed, too. He elbowed open the door of the truck's cab and spit into the dusk. "I'd like to see the frontier guards who could stop me getting through once my mind was made up," he boasted.

  "The question will not arise. Baracco has arranged it so that no guard will see you."

  "You arrange things well. You seem to have a talent for it," Bolan observed. "But tell me. Such things cannot be arranged in a day. It takes time to organize. You could not do all this without planning. Even I could not. Tell me, how did you and your friends start this thing?"

  He hoped the question would start the Corsican off on another ego trip, for he was becoming increasingly tired of playing the ruthless killer — a vainglorious, self-vaunting role it seemed essential to play if he was to command the little man's respect.

  The ruse paid off. His eyes gleamed in the half-light. "To many," Baracco began, "I would say mind your business. But you are a man. You have done such things as a man might do. So I will tell you."

  He leaned his head against the rear of the cab and went on. "I was born in a small village near Venaco, in the center of Corsica. My family was very poor. We never left the village. But once a year I was asked by the local curé to go with other kids to the coast to see the sea. We would climb into an old motorbus and go for the day to Aleria, to Folleli, or even perhaps to Corso, near the Capo Rosso. It was very beautiful. And all the time when I was a child I wanted nothing more than to be near the sea.

  "I would have liked to have been a fisherman, or worked on the boats that went from Bastia and Ajaccio to Nice and Marseilles. But for folks like us that was impossible. You had to work on the land all the hours of daylight to get enough to eat. So, as a young man I became just another peasant in the mountains. But I never forgot the sea. Always in my heart I longed to live beside it, to see the sun rise over the horizon, to watch how the colors changed all day long, to listen to the fury of waves in wintertime. And then, when my parents died, I did go to the coast. But I could get no work.

  "So I stowed away on a boat and I made it to Marseilles. But still th
ere was no work for me on the sea — I had no experience, I did not know the right people. The best I could do was work as a mate on the poids lourds, the great transport trucks that hauled merchandise from the Marseilles docks to Paris and the north.

  "I became a driver. I had my own trucks, and I made some money. I saved. But still I could not find what I wanted. It is not much, you would think, for a man to want. I did not desire riches. All I wanted was a cottage from which I could regard the sea, a place to retire.

  "But the sea has become a preserve of the rich. Every inch of coast — at least where the climate is acceptable — is parceled out. Each stone has its price, and the price is too high for people such as us. But I swore, just the same, that I would have my rich man's morsel one day. I would get my cottage on a cliff or die in the attempt."

  Baracco stopped talking and stared out at the angular shapes of the old cars parked in the lot. "Three years ago," he went on slowly, "I found the piece of land I wanted. It was secluded. It was covered in olive trees. It looked out over the Mediterranean between Cannes and St. Raphael. There was already a cabin where I could live, but I could build more if I wished. It was, of course, expensive. Unbelievably expensive. I put down all the money I possessed, and that only bought me a twelve-month option.

  "Then I realized that however hard I worked, even if I could persuade the owners to wait, it would take me years to raise enough to complete the purchase. So I decided to... find other means. If a man's work is not enough to bring him the small thing he wants out of life, then life must be manipulated in such a way that he is satisfied in an alternative fashion."

  "You decided on your present occupation?"

  The determined jaw swung toward Bolan like the prow of a ship. "It seemed right that Baracco's salvation should be through the salvation of others, the less fortunate ones such as I had been. Also, through my experience in transport, I had the means to carry it out."

  "You weren't afraid of the law?"

  "The law?" The Corsican spit scorn. "The law is an abstraction. Which side of the law you are on is a matter of chance. On the right side, you lie, cheat and steal and they call you a smart businessman. Do the same things on the wrong side and they call you an embezzler and put you behind bars. If you are on the right side and you kill, they give you medals. If, like yourself, you are on the wrong, they execute you or shut you up forever. Don't speak to me of the law."

  Although there was a grain of truth in Bart's outburst, the Executioner was in total disagreement with his conclusion. Bolan wasn't a determinist: for him, the side of the law you were on was a matter of choice, not chance. And he rejected a moral relativist approach to life: for him, right and wrong, good and evil were absolutes. But he had to remember the role he was playing. It went against the grain, but he said, "Yeah, a curse on the law. Let a man take what he needs, and the hell with those who would try to stop him."

  "In addition to that," Baracco rasped, ignoring the warrior's contribution, "they refused to renew the option at the end of the year. The property was sold to a famous attorney who was also a senator, a man with more money to spend than Baracco. Now the olive trees on my land have all been cut down and there is a flashy villa with a pool, a sauna, a Jacuzzi and a Cadillac in the garage." He thumped the wheel with his fist. "So much for the law."

  "But you'll find another property?" Bolan prompted.

  "Oh, sure. Two years have passed — fifteen months since I helped my first client. But if I keep up a flow of operations like yours, friend..." the Corsican glanced at Bolan's document case "...I could probably make enough to buy something similar in another three or four years."

  "So long? At the prices you charge? You must have your eye on something exclusive!"

  "I do. It would have been twenty years if I hadn't started in this business. But no sweat, friends. Nobody need worry on my account. If things go well in certain directions, Baracco will not even have to wait the three or four years."

  "But you just said..."

  "I said three or four years with clients like you. In the case of people paying more, much more, evidently it would take less."

  "Impossible! Nobody would pay more than I have. No one!"

  "No one, perhaps," Baracco said craftily. "But an organization might, an organization that was all-powerful."

  "An organization?" Bolan echoed, trying to mask his excitement.

  "Certainly. An organization with an interest in helping unfortunates on the wrong side of the law to avoid the spitefulness and malice of the bloody do-gooders. An organization that might have an interest in keeping contact with certain clients, making use of their special talents, progressing their careers instead of just removing them from danger temporarily. Such people would pay more."

  Bolan scented pay dirt. Maybe, after all, Hal Brognola had been right. Deciding to take a risk, he played a hunch. "Might such an organization have connections with your Corsican friend Secondini?" he asked.

  Baracco started. Through the darkness, his eyes gleamed suspiciously at the Executioner. "How the hell did you know about him?" he demanded.

  "In our world," Bolan said, "good news travels faster than bad. There is much admiration, even in the East, for the way you got him out of Paris."

  "It is deserved," the man conceded. "But what is this about connections?" His tone had become aggressive.

  "Everyone knows that Secondini was associated with the Union Corse," Bolan said. "You mentioned an organization that was 'all-powerful,' — and, in my book, for Union Corse you can read Mafia." He avoided carefully the direct question: was the Mob offering to take over the network and use it as a recruiting center as well as an illicit transport service?

  He had read the Corsican well. For Baracco said, "It is...better not to speak of these things. And you don't want to bother yourself with such thoughts. A man like you — what need does a strong man have for others?"

  "You are right," Bolan said. "But talking of others, what about your associates? Are you the boss of the organization? Or do you have to consult them before decisions are taken? What do they think of your money-making plans?"

  He stopped. Beside him in the darkness of the cab there was a wheezing, rasping noise. Baracco was laughing.

  Bolan waited.

  "Why do you think, friend," the Corsican said at last between chuckles, "that the escape service has always been a hundred percent success? Why do you think there is not a single police force in Europe that knows one damned thing about it? How is it that there has never been a leak, never a hint of underworld gossip? How come nobody ever talked, nothing was ever given away, the organization was never penetrated?"

  "You tell me."

  "Because Baracco was too clever for them." He paused for effect. "Because there was never anybody to talk... because there is, in fact, no organization!" Baracco laughed once more. "The famous trans-Europe escape network is strictly a one-man show. And I am the man..."

  "But that's crazy!" Bolan exclaimed. "It's incredible."

  "What do you mean — crazy?"

  "You say a one-man show, but that's not possible. There may be nobody in the underworld to give away secrets, but people still talk. And even the little I know..." Bolan had to be wary of showing how much he knew. "Even the little I know involves many other people. The watchmen at the breakers' yards, the men who crewed the garbage truck in Paris, the driver of the furniture van. And there was talk of an escape that went wrong in Holland. Of a boatman, of sailors lost in a collision at sea..."

  "I said there was no organization, as such. Baracco has no gang, no hired heavies to spill his secrets. I didn't say nobody ever helped him."

  "Okay, but..."

  "But Baracco never uses professional underworld help. That is why there is no gossip. He recruits his helpers from all over, and the really crazy thing is that they have no idea what they are doing! None of them knows he is part of a service carrying crooks beyond the reach of the law!"

  "How can that be?" Bolan needle
d.

  The Corsican swallowed the bait as his boastfulness took over. "Baracco has invented clever and often involved reasons," he said proudly. "He has painstakingly built up elaborate covers to account for the presence of the clients. The helpers never get wise to who they are. Baracco himself owns some of the junkyards. He is a licensed scrap metal dealer, and some of the older vehicles are driven from one country to another as scrap. But the other yard owners, for example, mostly think they are turning a blind eye to some minor racket involving the reregistering of stolen cars. Those whose yards are near frontiers believe they are being paid to help with the smuggling of a few bottles of liquor, a few cases of cigarettes, in an untraceable vehicle. The helpers on each side of the iron curtain are convinced they are aiding political refugees."

  "And the Dutch operation? That sounded professional." Bolan remembered Brognola's boatman, who complained that clients using the escape chain were always in a hurry. He wondered how far he dare push Baracco without revealing his own knowledge.

  "The Dutch operation did involve a network, admittedly, although it had nothing to do with me. And it was the only one that fouled up. I paid an existing organization run by a man named Conrad — an ultra-right-wing group that occupies itself smuggling ex-Nazis back into Germany, using a few of the greedier Dutch as hired help along the way. Baracco made a handsome contribution to their funds for the privileges of using their service just that once. From Denmark, it was very convenient, you see."

  Yeah, Bolan thought. Except the client was drowned at sea, the organization was blown, and the boss man was wasted by Baracco himself — presumably because he knew too much.

  On the whole, though, it was a damned original idea. Planning carefully, choosing and spacing out his clients to the best advantage, selecting only those he knew he could handle, the Corsican could dodge from city to city, from country to country, like a freighter taking on and discharging cargo from port to port on its way around the world. And, as a one-time haulage man, he'd be known to people all along the route anyway. Half the customs and immigration men at the frontiers were probably his old buddies.