There was a cab stand outside the entrance to the Four Seasons, and Lattuada shrugged off the doorman and jerked open the door of the first. Bolan was no more than a dozen yards behind. He shoved a couple of marks into the doorman's hand while the hood was climbing in, then signaled to the next in line.
"I know this sounds like a bad movie," he told the driver in English as he leaned in through the open window, "but I'd like you to follow that cab. No kidding."
The cabbie chuckled hoarsely behind the layers of woolen scarves muffling the lower half of his face and pulled the double-jointed bend of arm that his profession has developed to open a rear door. "Jawohl, Herr James Bond," he said. "Jump in and we shall see what can be done."
The doorman saluted and closed the door. The cab spun its rear wheels on the packed ice, pulling out into the traffic stream, and the driver took an encore on the arm-bend routine, sliding back the glass panel between him and the rear of the vehicle. He tilted his head backward. Bolan heard the gruff voice over the whine of gears and the diesel knock of the worn motor. "The man in front, does he know he's being tailed?"
"No way," Bolan said. He reckoned he could lay money on that.
"Would it tip him off if he saw you? Does he know your face?"
Bolan saw the point. He'd happened on a driver who used his head. Traffic was heavy, the surrounding streets were narrow, there were red lights. Keeping a screen of other vehicles between the two cabs might be a surefire way of losing Lattuada.
"He never laid eyes on me," the warrior said. "Wouldn't know me from the German chancellor if he did. You can close right up behind him and he won't suspect a thing, not even if you drop me off at the same street number."
The cabbie nodded and slid the panel shut. He strong-armed his way across the stream heading for the bridges, the Dammtor railroad station and the radio center, turned past the opera house and joined the slow-motion merry-go-round circling the Stephansplatz on the way to the wide parkway leading to St. Pauli.
At one point in the jam the two cabs were side by side, and Bolan stole a glance at the mobster. He wasn't sitting on the edge of the seat, or shouting at the cabbie or biting his nails. He was lounging against the seat with no expression on his blue-jowled face, taking an occasional peek at the gold Rolex on his wrist. He didn't look like a big-time hood planning a heist; he looked like a guy who was just beginning to become a little impatient because his cab was stalled in the Stephansplatz.
They made good time down the parkway and the Reeperbahn. And then, past the sidewalk whores wearing today's fashions and yesterday's faces, Lattuada's cab turned into a network of mean streets on the fringe of the fish market and put him down on a corner in sight of the river.
"Eleven marks fifty," Bolan's driver announced, switching off the meter.
He'd made a U-turn and deposited Bolan on the far side of the intersection. Smart guy. Bolan handed him fifteen marks. "Keep the change," he said. "Could be I'll need a reliable man sometime. Have you got a card?"
"My thanks. Yes, I do." The cabbie unlocked two layers of topcoat, thrust his hand inside a third and fished out a surprisingly crisp, clean pasteboard rectangle. "That's the number of the stand I work from," he said. "South side of the Atlantic Hotel. The other guys will take messages if I'm not there. The other number — the one written in ink — is where I live. But you'd have to make it early in the morning or after eight at night, unless you left word with the wife."
"Okay," Bolan said. "See you around maybe."
He tucked the card into his breast pocket and was hurrying after Lattuada, who had vanished up an alleyway, when the cabbie called after him, "One more thing, 007. Keep a fucking firm hand on your hip pocket while you're in this neighborhood!"
Bolan grinned and waved a hand as he turned into the alley. Lattuada led him out the far end, down a short street where dockside cranes showed above the rooftops and through an archway that led to a lane running parallel with the river. Then the mobster turned past a corner news agent and cigar store, and Bolan found himself in an area of the city that might well have been the backside of hell.
He'd been in a few crummy neighborhoods in his time, from Belfast's Sandy Row to the Amsterdam Oosterdok, from the shanty towns above Rio to Smoky Hollow and the Bowery. But for his money Andreas Bernersstrasse, in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, had them all beat for sheer sleaziness. Halfway along there was a vacant lot, and the smokestack of a freighter was visible against the blank wall of a warehouse on the far side of the Elbe, but Bolan reckoned he'd never set foot in a place that radiated evil and the lowest depths of crime more directly than the 250-yard length of that German street.
There was no traffic. Most of the houses were shuttered, the paint on the woodwork cracked and peeling. The only store was a dirty bookshop with girlie magazines racked inside and the boss behind a one-way mirror. There weren't even any streetwalkers to be seen — just half a dozen guys propping up walls or slouched against rusted iron railings. Hell, the Executioner thought, ten paces away from Hamburg's answer to London's Soho, and here I am in the first reel of a Gothic horror movie!
He saw one mean-faced little runt in a cloth cap and a white muffler picking his teeth with a matchstick. Two more stared with blank eyes from a doorway at the end of a passage lined with stinking trash cans. The most sinister was perched on the curb like a vulture — a lean, stooped character with a hooked nose, a razor scar warping one side of his face and skin like used sandpaper.
None of them moved as Bolan rounded the corner. They didn't even turn their heads. But they were all watching him. For an instant he checked his step, wishing he hadn't stashed the gun in his hotel room.
Lattuada was striding into an entry fifty yards away. The icy wind hustled low clouds across the strip of sky between the rooftops and skittered torn strips of paper along the pavement. Nothing else stirred.
Then he thought: what the hell! This is Germany's second city, in daylight, in the middle of the afternoon; surely even down by the docks an inoffensive visitor can walk through St. Pauli without risking… what? A mugging? A knife between the ribs as the billfold is lifted? A beating because Lattuada had protection and nobody followed him?
Bolan shrugged. He figured he could take the whole damn streetful if he had a wall to back up against. He walked on toward the entry. He had seen some pretty low-down gorillas stateside during what he privately called the Mafia Wars, but even the meanest punks, even the most soulless killers had more human warmth in their faces than the human dregs he passed in Andreas Bernersstrasse that afternoon. The guy with the scarred face had the coldest stare he'd ever seen.
Bolan headed down a paved walk only five yards wide, lit by a single streetlight. Lattuada turned beneath an archway at the far end, just as the Executioner heard the sounds of a fight.
The squalid four-story row houses on either side of the alley were railed off from the pavement, with rusty gates opening on steps that led down to narrow, ill-smelling areas. In one of them was another of Hamburg's ubiquitous drinking clubs. An open doorway, garish with yellow paint, sported a sign decorated with palm trees and the words Coconut Grove. The noise came from someplace inside — the stamp of feet, voices shouting, the crash of furniture and breaking glass.
In that neighborhood Bolan would have normally quickened his step and closed in on Lattuada… if he hadn't heard the scream. It was a girl's voice, high-pitched and taut with terror. And if Andreas Bernersstrasse was a set from a Gothic movie, Bolan was now plunged into the world of comic strips, for the words he heard in German were as corny as speech balloons in a horror comic: "Help! Help! For the love of God, someone help me!"
The warrior hesitated. Lattuada was already out of sight; another few seconds and he would lose him. On the other hand, he didn't know that the mobster was in town to operate some criminal racket. Was it worth following up what was no more than a hunch when there was something wrong, really wrong, happening literally under his feet?
Befor
e he'd made up his mind, the girl screamed again — and the scream was stifled halfway up the scale as though a hand had been clapped over her mouth.
That did it. The Executioner wheeled around, flung open the iron gate and charged down the steps.
Chapter Three
It was the usual blueprint clip joint. After dark there would be a tout in a doorman's cap at the entrance to the alley, directing suckers to the yellow door with murmurs of, "Private club, Meinherr. Beautiful girls!" A showcase on the wall would display titty pix or girls with whips, none of whom would be performing — or would ever have performed — on the premises. Inside it would be the stock scene: canned music, dim lighting, a tired stripper who undressed four times each hour in four different «clubs» of the same type. There would be half a dozen overpainted and underclothed harpies at the bar, and a cocktail atmosphere combining one part cheap scent and one part wood alcohol with three parts stale perspiration.
Mack Bolan's introduction to the place was a little different. There were only four or five men in there, but it seemed to him like a company of U.S. Marines flushing hostile snipers out of a Vietnam foxhole. There was just one large room behind the yellow door, and the only light filtered through a broken shutter over the area window and down an inner stairway behind the bar. Dim figures heaved and threshed in the gloom. Bolan heard groans and grunts of pain and the thud of blows. As he burst through the door, he tripped over something soft and heavy and his feet crunched on broken glass.
The girl screamed again. She was struggling with a big man behind the bar, clawing at his face as he tried to lift her in a bear hug. "Shut that bitch's mouth, and get her out of here!" someone shouted in German.
The big guy shifted his grip and raised his fist. That was when the Executioner joined the fight.
The impetus of his entrance, plus the trip, carried him clear across the room between the antagonists. Stumbling over some piece of smashed furniture, he hurled himself toward the bar. The edge of the counter caught him across the hips, and he shot facedown across the polished wood as fast as a bank robbery getaway car. His head butted the girl's captor beneath the man's lifted arm — hard.
It wasn't enough to knock out the guy, but, coming unexpectedly out of the dark, the blow threw him off balance. He grunted, fell back a pace and loosened his grip on the woman.
By that time Bolan's hand had connected with an unbroken bottle lying on the bar. The big guy was now silhouetted against the light from the inner stairway. Bolan dived to the floor on the operating side of the bar, swung the bottle and connected with the base of the man's neck. He seized the girl's arm and dragged her away while her captor was staggering, then lashed out a second time. The bottle smashed on his thick skull, and he dropped in a Niagara of alcohol and shattered glass.
The battle was still raging all around. Bolan shoved his prize violently toward the stairs and yelled in his passable German, "Run! Get up there and keep going!"
Something slammed against his left shoulder, half paralyzing his arm. A blade sliced through his sleeve. Then he was climbing like a Fourth of July rocket and a voice below was screeching, "Don't let that cow get away!"
"Who the hell's that motherfucker?" someone else shouted.
"For Chrissake, what the…?"
"Kill the son of a bitch!"
"After them!"
And then the sudden pounding of feet.
Bolan was thankful there were no gunshots. He supposed both sides were scared of bringing down their own in any attempt to block a third party while the light was poor. He was faced at the top of the stairs with a short passage that led to the street-level front door — or a window that opened onto a refuse-strewn backyard.
Remembering the Andreas Bernersstrasse, he chose the window.
He held his two forearms up to protect his face and burst through the lower part in a running dive that carried him through and down to the yard in a shower of jagged glass fragments. Turning, he pulled the girl through the gap as the pursuit hit the top of the staircase.
Something whistled over their heads, shattering the upper half of the window on its way. Bolan staggered upright, clutching the girl's hand, and found his parka skewered to a packing case with a throwing knife. He jerked free and sprinted for an open gateway at the far end of the yard, dragging the girl after him.
This time two shots rang out, and he saw puffs of brick dust spurt from one of the gateposts just ahead of him.
"Don't shoot! We need the broad!" one of the pursuers yelled.
Bolan toppled over a stack of beer crates as he dashed past and then upended a trash can to roll behind him and block the hoods spilling through the broken window. He didn't look back; it would have wasted precious tenths of a second, and they hadn't seen his face yet. He was content to leave it that way.
Beyond the gateway a cobblestoned lane ran left and right. He grabbed the girl's elbow and turned right, because he saw that the lane ended there by the arch he'd seen Lattuada pass through. He reckoned they would be okay if they could just make it to a street with real people in it; the killers would hardly dare continue the assault and battery in broad daylight, with an audience.
Unless the audience came from the Andreas Bernersstrasse.
But there was still a way to go. The goons were no more than twenty yards behind. Gasping for breath, the fugitives ran between windowless brick walls, over stones greasy with nameless garbage, through an atmosphere sickly with the stench of rotting food.
In back someone slipped, cursed and fell. But the others were closing fast. Bolan imagined he could already feel hot, beery breath on his neck.
"Get the damn girl!" the same hoarse voice cried, farther back. "Smash that fucker's head in, but bring back the girl!"
A bottle shattered at the Executioner's feet. Something heavy hit him between the shoulders and dropped. Another knife hissed past his ear, struck sparks from the wall and fell to the ground. Then they were at the archway, turning into the blind end of a cul-de-sac at the far end of which he could see traffic, storefronts, men and women walking this way and that.
Even the blind alley was inhabited: the driver of a panel truck was delivering a rack of leather jackets to one of the buildings. Beyond it, a Cadillac convertible with tinted windows and white wall tires waited with two wheels up on the sidewalk.
Bolan paid it no mind. Coincidence? He would worry about that later. "It's okay," he panted. "We made it, lady. You can relax now. We're safe."
It was true. Nobody had followed them through the archway. He slowed to a walk, realizing he was still clutching the girl's arm as fiercely as a drowning man, then released her. For the first time he had a chance to look at his prize.
She was a blonde with a pageboy hairstyle and a standout body. Right now a lot of her upholstery was showing because the green silk top she wore was ripped in several places and there was no bra beneath it. The bell of pale hair was mussed, there were runs in her nylons, and the black skin was gray with dust all down one side. He couldn't see her face because she was shivering and her head was down.
He shrugged out of the parka and wrapped it around her shoulders. "Relax," he said again. "It's all over now."
She looked up then — Marilyn Monroe's younger sister before they told her about gin. But there was a graze on one cheek, her lip was split and pretty soon she would have a black eye. Somebody had been thumping this kid but good. "It's not over," she said tearfully in English. "It'll never be over."
"Ah, it may not be as bad as you think," Bolan soothed. They turned the corner, and he found they were only a couple of blocks from the street where the Black Tie was located. He took her elbow again and steered her toward a cafe. "C'mon. We'll wrap you around a nice hot cup of coffee with schnapps and you'll feel better. You had one hell of a shock and…"
"No!" she interrupted hysterically. "Not here. Nowhere around here."
"Okay, okay. No sweat." He raised an arm, and a taxi cruised into the curbside slush. "This lady's been i
n an accident," he said. "Take us to the nearest hospital as fast as you can." He opened the door and shoved her inside.
"I don't want to go to any hospital!" she cried as he sat beside her.
"Quiet," Bolan said in a low voice. "We're not going to any hospital. That's just a stall in case anyone's listening. We'll get out wherever he takes us and find some quiet place nearby where we can talk."
The hospital was an ultramodern block behind a department store across the road from the Altona subway station. There was a cafeteria on the second floor, and he piloted her to a table there, thankful to come in out of the freezing cold.
"I haven't thanked you," she said. "I don't know who you are or why you did it, but I have to thank you for getting me out of there. Why did you do it?"
"In my country we kind of feel a lady shouldn't be pushed around by a roomful of thugs," Bolan said lightly. "Who were they?"
"It was the Team," she muttered. Shivering again, she went on. "Charlie didn't have the money, and they said if he didn't come across by lunchtime today they'd… they'd break the place up and see that he never walked again."
"Charlie?"
"Charlie Farnsbarn. Oh, that's not his real name, of course, but that's what everyone calls him."
"What is his real name?"
"I don't know. Mackintosh? McKay? McEvoy? Something like that. Kind of a Scottish name, you know, although he comes from Trinidad."
"Trinidad? You mean he was — is, I hope — a black guy?"
She nodded. The tears were running down her cheeks. "Poor Charlie. I know the Coconut Grove was a clip joint, but he did run two other places, real classy clubs with a band and all. The Sugar Hill and Tondelayo's. And he's always been g-'good to me." She was sobbing aloud now, her slender body shaking each time she caught her breath.
"What happened?" Bolan prompted gently.
"What happened? Well, they broke up the place, didn't they? They did what they said they would, the way they always do when the Yank is involved." The bell of blond hair tolled a silent knell. "I had a date with him at three-thirty. It was to audition for the floor show at Tondelayo's, but the fight had already started when I got there. Not the noisy part but the… I tried to run away but Hansie grabbed me. They wanted to take me with them. The Yank doesn't like witnesses, and they didn't know I was…"
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