"Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" the newsboys cried into the rain at the head of the taxi queue on the approach ramp. "Wanted man in daring court escape! Read about his death-defying climb!" Bolan bought a copy and hurried to a cheap cafe on the far side of the street. Over coffee and a sandwich, he folded the paper to an inside page and read the lead story.
Skipping the sensationalistic introduction, which gave an accurate, if highly colored, account of his courtroom escape and the air shaft adventure that followed it, he translated from the German:
Kriminalkommissar Conrad Fischer, the detective who arrested Belasko, told our reporter, "He will not get far. All railroad stations, ports and airfields are being watched and we are already following a definite lead. I expect him to be back behind bars within forty-eight hours." The police description of the wanted murder suspect is: over six feet tall, of spare build, with blue eyes and dark hair. When last seen he was wearing a dark suit and was hatless, but it is thought that he may now be dressed in a dark blue raincoat and a peaked, military-style cap.
Turning to another page, Bolan casually removed the cap from his head and placed it on a shelf beneath the wall counter where he was sitting. There would be plenty of tall guys in blue raincoats on the streets today, many of them sparely built, and some of those lean men might wear military-style caps. But a combination of all three, together with an American accent, would be tempting fate. He had to get new clothes without delay, preferably garments that already had a used look.
The rain fell ceaselessly from a gray sky. The cold wind that drove the ragged clouds over the rooftops sent it gusting across the streets in squalls to splash calf-high from the streaming sidewalks. By the time Bolan located a used clothing store in a run-down neighborhood behind the station, his pants were sodden from the knee down and the raincoat was letting in water at the shoulder. It seemed a good enough reason to want a change of clothes.
"I just arrived from the north," he told the old man behind the counter. "The snow had changed to rain when I left, but not like this! I've got a lot of calls to make today. I guess I have to think of something a little more robust!"
Suits were impossible because ot Bolan's height. Rather than draw attention to this, he went for separates: gray pants and a sport jacket in brown tweed. The pants were baggy around the hips and the jacket sleeves short, but he was able to choose them quickly enough not to draw attention to his difficulty with sizes. A tan trench coat soiled enough around the collar and sleeves to have been worn for more than one winter completed the outfit.
"Now what about these, sir?" the dealer asked, gesturing toward the pile of sodden garments at Bolan's feet. " I could give you a small discount if you'd care to…"
"No, no, the wife would kick up hell if I came home without these clothes. Thanks just the same." The warrior dared not admit his desire to rid himself of the telltale garments. As soon as he was gone, the dealer would see the rips in shoulder and lapels torn by the broken glass in the courthouse window. If he read the papers, or if the cops checked out secondhand dealers, he'd make the connection at once. And then the law would have an up-to-date description of what their quarry was wearing. Folding the jacket carefully, he wrapped it in the wet pants and raincoat and allowed the old man to package them in brown paper and string.
He walked out into the rain, bought a narrow-brim fedora at a department store and headed for St. Pauli. In a lane that twisted through a quarter of medieval houses near the river, he junked the package by a row of garbage cans stuffed with the fabric discards from a tailor's workshop.
St. Pauli was dangerous, sure, especially with the cops convinced that he was the mysterious Yank running the rackets there. But if he wanted to finger the murderers of Dagmar and wrap up the whole Mob scene, it was the only place to start. Maybe the law would even figure it was the last place a man on the run would go. It was a chance he had to take.
In a dockside saloon he sipped a beer and read the early editions of the evening papers. The accused foreigner in the St. Pauli Blonde case, he noted with satisfaction, had been sighted at the car ferry terminal linking northern Germany with Denmark at Grossenbrode. He had also been positively identified near the Kiel Canal, at Hannover airport and among the crowd in a Kassel beer garden. An early rearrest was expected.
It was difficult, just the same, for the Executioner to decide on a plan of action. The physical resemblance enabling Lattuada to frame Bolan would now work equally against the hood. Since the police description fitted him as well as the hunted man, he would probably lie low, for fear of getting hauled in himself, until the heat was off or Bolan was back behind bars. So how was a stranger in town to get next to him?
By hanging in there, hoping to pick up a lead, the way he had before Dagmar's death, and then following it up one hundred percent, Bolan thought. But first he had to find a base. He would search out a likely location, correction, the most unlikely location possible, as soon as he dared recover the BMW from the hotel garage. Maybe a foreigner arriving in an expensive car at some country Gasthaus outside the city would get by. Meanwhile he would continue his round of the taverns in the red-light district, eavesdropping on the conversations around him, looking for a clue, a hint, a name quoted, that could put him on the right trail.
He was in a bar full of stevedores and off-duty hookers when a voice murmured in English just behind him, "Well, well. If it isn't my American friend."
Bolan swung around. It was Hugo, the doorman from the Mandrake Root. Bolan raised a finger to summon the bartender.
"If you'll take a person's advice, you'll leave this area pretty damn quick. The word's gone around and the Team's after your balls."
"What'll you have, Hugo?"
"Somethin' short, by the Lord's grace," the doorman replied. "For if we're not out of here in about two minnits, there'll be a hot time in the old town tonight, I'm tellin' you."
"A glass of Irish whiskey for the gentleman," Bolan told the barman. And then, "I sure appreciate the tip-off, Hugo. But what's going on? And why trouble yourself to warn me?"
"Brutal it is, my friend. I'll answer the second question first, though. It's just that you seem a right old bugger, and maybe I've a soft spot for the underdog, too. The Irish in me, no doubt." He raised his glass and drank. "As for what's going on, why nothin' at all, nothin' at all. Everythin' has to be paid for. That's the way of it. And it seems you're havin' to pay for a certain, shall we say, curiosity and inquisitiveness that could inconvenience various parties who shall be nameless."
"And the price?"
"At bargain-basement rates, a beatin', a heavy one. In the higher price range, an unexpected encounter with the demon barber and his razor, or maybe even a headstone. Unless they just hand you back to the coppers."
"Would the nameless salesclerk answer to Hansie?"
"I wouldn't like to say," Hugo answered truthfully. "C'mon now, finish that drink and away to the toilets with you. I'll be joinin' you there in a minnit."
Bolan drained his glass and left the bar.
The window in the men's room looked out on a narrow passageway that ran down to the quayside. Bolan and Hugo dropped to the cobblestones and hurried through. It was almost dark, and a cold drizzle misted the pools of light thrown by the dockside lamps. Footfalls were deadened. Trucks moving away from a Greek freighter discharging a cargo of citrus fruit in cases appeared and disappeared in the murk as mysteriously as phantoms. Unless the east wind returned there could be fog again before morning.
"How the hell did they know I was in that particular joint?" Bolan asked. "I guess they did know, from what you say."
"Sure they knew. Did you ever hear tell of the Mafia, mister?"
Bolan nodded, grim knowledge written on his face.
"Well, that's what goes on here, in a manner of speakin'. I don't mean the protection lark. That happens all over, and not just with Sicilians. I mean like the old-time routine, the Black Hand and all that. There's an Italian colony here in St. Pau
li. And Greeks and Turks and I don't know what-all. What the Yank does is put the Team onto them, mostly small shopkeepers, delicatessens, restaurants and that. He don't just put the bite on the clubs and the cafés. He's strong-armed all these foreigners into workin' as his legmen and lookouts, see. Once the word goes around in this part of town, every move you make goes straight back to His Eminence quick as a phone can be dialed. Likewise when a guy has to be collected for treatment, like with you this evenin'."
"You heard they were coming to get me at that bar? That could be difficult, couldn't it? With all those people, and those girls? Or did you just hear the word, as you say, had gone out, and you happened to know where I was? You'd heard someone tell somebody, perhaps?"
"Sure, it don't pay to look closely at some things," Hugo said. "Isn't there a proverb or some such regarding the gift horse?"
Bolan shrugged and let it drop. It was enough, as the doorman had said, that he'd been spirited away unharmed. And, if nothing else, it proved the search, his search, was growing warm.
They crossed a busy street. The rain was definitely turning into a mist now. Cars swam past on the greasy pavement like fish in a bowl, their yellow eyes hooded. The few pedestrians they saw materialized and then vanished like wraiths. "I'm letting you lead the way. Where are we going?" Bolan asked.
"Somewhere a person can talk without bein' interrupted."
On the far side of a narrow canal, soaring upward in the gloom, floodlights played on a single, spired Gothic tower surrounded by ruined walls. "Church of St. Nikolai," Hugo said. "Flattened by a bombing raid in World War II. Preserved as a monument."
Behind the church a narrow lane ran between two rows of old houses toward a small dock basin. Halfway along the lane a cul-de-sac led to the rear entrance of a warehouse fronting the wharf. As they passed the mouth of the entry, a huge American car, bleached white in the lamplight, turned into the lane and stopped. The rear door opened and two men got out.
Bolan recognized the car — the whitewall tires, the blinds masking the windows. He recognized one of the men. It was the vulturelike thug he had seen in the Andreas Bernersstrasse. The other was equally tall but more heavily built. He wore a brown houndstooth topcoat and a Tyrolean hat with feathers tucked into the band.
Too late, as they closed in on him, Bolan saw the cunning, and the simplicity, of the plan. Of course they couldn't snatch him in a crowded bar! Much better decoy him to a deserted alley through the use of someone he trusted. It was safer, too, than any attempt to follow him in the car and then hope to find an opportunity to shanghai him.
As the truth flashed through his mind, Bolan turned, but he was seized above the elbows in a viselike grip. The doorman's strength was astonishing. Before the Executioner could bring his unarmed combat expertise into play, the two hoods were beside him. The heavier one was buttoning a leather glove on his right hand.
Bolan struggled, but the vulture man flicked out an arm and hit him flat-handed across the throat. As the warrior gasped for air, the leather glove, balled now into a fist, pistoned once, twice, three times lazily, almost casually, into the pit of his stomach. The brute force of the blows momentarily paralyzed Bolan. He folded forward and dropped to his knees on the sidewalk.
The two men grabbed the Executioner under the arms and dragged him the few yards to the car. He turned his head as they bundled him into the rear. Hugo was staring at him, an unfathomable expression on his face.
Bolan winced, tried to say something, but could only croak unintelligibly. The rear door slammed, and the Cadillac accelerated silently away.
Slumped on the Caddy's rear seat with his arms crossed over his belly, Bolan tried to force air back into his lungs. Fingers twined in his hair, dragging back his head and jerking him upright. The gloved fist hit him again several times, always around the solar plexus or just above the groin. He tried to raise his arms to defend himself, but a hand slapped him repeatedly across the face, half blinding him.
The car stopped, started, slowed and stopped again. The window blinds hid everything but a blurred impression of lights passing, but the Executioner guessed from the total absence of echo that they were briefly out in the open, perhaps on one of the Alster bridges, heading east. "Why… go on… slamming a guy… when you… already got… him?" he ground out between the blows.
"I like hitting people, dearie," the man wearing the glove said. His face was as bleak as an Easter Island statue, with granite chips for eyes. "Beside, we don't want no fuckin' cries for help while we're stalled in this goddamn traffic, do we?" He slammed another piledriver into Bolan's diaphragm.
"Right on," the vulture man said. "How about I tickle his eye with a shiv, Hansie?"
The gloved man shook his head. "Might as well enjoy myself and put him on the deck now. There ain't enough meat on this one to amuse me once we tear the clothes off him."
"You want the shiv?"
"Wise up, shithead. What d'ya think the boss'd say with blood all over the fuckin' seat?"
The car was rolling again. Bolan glanced around the interior. A glass screen separating the driver from the occupants in back was wound up and covered with blinds similar to those masking the windows. Although the body was customized, the layout of the car seemed to be standard.
The hoods had made two mistakes, perhaps overconfident because their quarry had been such an easy mark. Instead of neutralizing Bolan totally by sitting one on each side of him, they had crowded him into the far corner of the rear seat, leaving the Andreas Berners-strasse thug on his right and the guy with the glove facing him on the tip-up occasional seat. Between the prisoner and the outside world, on one side, was only the door.
Bolan made his move. "I guess the fairy must be Hansie Schiller," he said to the vulture man. "I'm surprised to see a nice guy like you in such low company. You know, some of the shit that particular fruit grows in could rub off on you, and it sure as hell won't smell good."
The Executioner's head snapped back on his shoulders as the fist crashed against his jaw. "Sweetie, I don't like mouthy punks," Hansie said. He punched Bolan in the gut while the other torpedo held his arms. "Try this one on for size. It'll give you an idea of what's comin' if you don't shut up." The black glove slammed into the pit of the American's stomach again.
Bolan jackknifed forward until his chest was against his knees. He made gagging noises with his mouth. The hinges were at the leading edge of the door. The chromed handle beneath the armrest should open downward, he thought.
The Cadillac swung around a sharp left-hand curve and slowed. The two hoods swayed toward the center of the car, but Bolan had been waiting for just such a movement, and he leaned outward, against the thrust of centrifugal force. As if to steady himself, he shot his left hand out, hitting the handle and depressing it. The wide, heavy door suddenly swung open.
From his doubled-up position, Bolan somersaulted forward and pitched into the roadway. A confused impression of lights, wind, squealing brakes and the oily hiss of tires, and then he hit the wet pavement with his shoulder, rolling frantically toward the curb after the stunning impact, in case there was traffic following close behind.
Brakes screeched again. There was an angry honking of horns. Someone shouting something. Then he was on his feet, running for the sidewalk, dodging among the scatter of pedestrians in the misty lamplight. But the car made no attempt to stop. The door closed. The Caddy picked up speed and turned-right at the next intersection. He had guessed right: they wouldn't try anything in front of witnesses.
He saw books in an illuminated shop window, a red sign spotlit above the doors of a tavern, another store displaying stationery and box files. He was in the Koppelstrasse, behind the Atlantic Hotel, less than a mile from his hotel on the other side of the Alster. It was completely dark now and the mist was thicker. He decided to walk there and try once more to gain access to his BMW.
When he got to the Hotel Oper, he saw two uniformed cops talking to the doorman and the hall porter beyond the gla
ss doors. They were standing between the elevators and the reception desk. Each carried a Heckler & Koch machine pistol slung over his right shoulder with one hand resting on the breech. Bolan didn't want to try out his unarmed combat routines against a twin stream of 9 mm parabellum rounds pumped out at a rate of eight hundred per minute. He walked to the garage entrance.
The entrance and exit ramps were side by side. No police were visible. Bolan stole up to the ticket dispenser at the foot of the entrance ramp. He dodged past the striped barrier pole and advanced a few yards up the slope.
Above, on the first level, he heard a cough. Then a scrape of feet, a faint chink of metal as if, say, the buckle of a uniform belt had brushed against the steel casing of an autoloader magazine. He crept back down to the street.
No way.
In back of the hotel was an alley. On the opposite side of the narrow passage a fire escape zigzagged up the rear face of a modern apartment building. The block had a flat roof. Across from it he could see a parapet, the hotel's elevator housing bulked against the sky, a slope of shallow tiles. He moved to the fire escape and began to climb upward carefully.
More than half the windows passed by the iron stairway were lit, most of them with shutters closed or curtains drawn across to blank the interior. Inside one room with the draperies drawn back, a man and a girl were gesticulating, apparently in the middle of an argument; in another, a heavyset man sat at a table, staring morosely at a bottle and a tumbler half full of liquor. Bolan catfooted past like a shadow, his rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the metal grilles.
The fire escape didn't stop at the top floor but continued to roof level. Bolan stood on the railed platform and looked across the width of the alley at the hotel roof. The mist wrapped clammy hands around him, condensing on his eyebrows and the fur collar of his trench coat.
Blowout Page 11