Beyond the parapet at the top of the hotel's rear facade, there was a flat area two or three yards across before the slant of wet tiles. He swung around. The roof of the apartment was flat all right, but the asphalt was dotted with obstructions — water tanks, ventilators, finned air-conditioning ducts, the housing that covered the exit from the emergency stairway.
The maximum straight-line run available to a man who wanted to launch himself across the gap between the two buildings was no more than six or seven yards. The gap was at least twelve feet across. With a greasy, soot-grimed wet surface to take off from and a parapet fencing in the landing space on the other side, it was obviously no go.
Bolan sighed and trod quietly back down the fire escape. As he emerged from the alley, a tan Mercedes limousine slid onto the Valentinskamp sidewalk and stopped beside him. A door opened, and he sensed a waft of heat seasoned with the odors of expensive leather seats and cigar smoke.
The man at the wheel was wearing leather, too, an expensively cut black suit with a white shirt and maroon necktie. He leaned across to the open door and said quietly, "Perhaps we could offer you a ride, Herr Belasko — up to the second floor of the Hotel Oper garage, for example?"
Halted in midstride, Bolan stared.
"We haven't officially met," the driver of the Mercedes said. "Let me introduce myself. The name is Kraul."
Chapter Twelve
During an instant of hesitation, Mack Bolan saw that there were two stony-faced characters in the rear seat of the Mercedes, each grasping an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. Both weapons were lined up on him. He got into the car and closed the door.
The Mercedes glided away from the curb. "All right," Bolan said, "I'll buy it. What's the pitch? What's this about a garage?"
"Oh, come, Herr Belasko," Kraul said, "let's not be foolish and pretend ignorance. You've spent a good half hour casing the hotel's entrances and exits in the hope of finding a way in past the police guards, so you can reclaim the BMW parked on the lowest level."
Bolan glanced at the man. Kraul's face was square-jawed, with deep lines etched between the nose and the corners of the mouth. His eyes, as far as the Executioner could see in the greenish light reflected from the instruments, were pale and slightly slitted. "If all that's true," Bolan asked, "why would you help me out?"
The German turned his head with a thin-lipped smile. "Let's just say it suits me to have you more mobile than you've been since you made your spectacular escape from the courthouse."
"And in return?"
"I ask nothing. Nothing, that is, that you wouldn't have been doing had you not been put out of the way on a trumped-up murder charge."
Bolan frowned. He didn't get it. "You've got a screwy sense of direction," he commented. "We were only a couple hundred yards from the hotel when you picked me up. We're a good mile away now, and heading north!" They had, in fact, just passed the arched bulk of the elevated Dammtor subway station, its huge windows gleaming dully through the mist.
"We can't just drive you straight in there," Kraul said irritably. "We have to go by my place first and make certain arrangements."
Bolan was silent. Maybe it wasn't a stall. After all, with two armed torpedoes in the back, the guy had no need to dream up the hotel parking scenario to persuade him to take a seat. The warrior decided to keep a low profile and play it by ear.
The Mercedes cut across to the lakeside drive, passed the neon lights of the Ferryhouse Restaurant and turned in between two gateposts topped by stone lions. The house at the end of the graveled approach was a three-story mansion with a pillared portico. A houseboy in a white jacket ran down the steps and opened Bolan's door as the car stopped.
The hoods with the silenced automatics were already out in the open, one on either side of the limo. "Perhaps you'd care to accompany our friends indoors while I put away the car," Kraul said. Bolan climbed the steps, crossed a marble hallway and preceded the two heavies into a room that looked like a library — two walls lined with books, white hide armchairs, a miniature billiard table, a log fire burning. The rock-faced hoods took up positions beside the double doors, their guns —.45-caliber Combat Masters, Bolan noticed — still in evidence. Soon afterward Kraul joined them.
In the brightly lit room, Bolan got a better picture of Kraul. He was lean, not very tall, with pale blond hair that arched above a lined forehead. About forty-five years old, the Executioner reckoned. "All right, I'm listening. Lay it on me."
"It's very simple," Kraul said. He fished a cigar from an inner pocket of his black leather jacket, unwrapped it and clipped the end with a gold cutter. "Georg, Nils, you can put the hardware away now."
The silenced guns disappeared, although the torpedoes remained on guard.
"The nucleus of the matter, Herr Belasko," Kraul resumed, "is this. Certain parties whose activities are, shall we say, inimical to my own methods of business are, it seems, on your own private hit list. Obviously, then, it is to my advantage to put you in a position where you can continue your own chase. Whether you like it or not, you'll be helping me."
"I get it," Bolan said. "Lattuada, Hansie and the Team have strong-armed you out of business. You figure if I'm free I can do your dirty work for you and leave you free to terrorize the District once more. Right?"
Kraul picked up a gold-plated cigarette lighter and lit his cigar. "Crudely put," he said, "but that, roughly speaking, is the position."
"You're in a crude business," Bolan said. "Don't think I rate you any higher than Lattuada. As far as I'm concerned, the whole damn lot of you, whether you smoke cigars or put the boot in for pleasure, should be six feet under."
The German smiled. He blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling and subsided into one of the white hide chairs. "As long as I get what I want, you can think what you like."
"What makes you think I'll help you anyway, even if you do get me my car?"
"My dear fellow," Kraul protested, "use your head. You have no choice. You can't do anything else. To free yourself from the clutches of the law, you have to nail this American and prove he was responsible for the death of the young woman, the pusher who was once a dancer. And doing that, you have to be helping me."
Bolan's thoughts were racing. Unless he dropped the whole thing and got the hell out, the guy was right.
The Executioner never quit in the middle of a mission. Apart from nailing those who had framed him, he was determined to put an end to the evil activities of Lattuada and the scumbags working for him, not to mention the drug kingpin, Arvell Asticot. "What makes you think I wouldn't go after you just as hard once I'd made it?" he asked bleakly.
Kraul flicked a glance at Georg and Nils. "I'll take care of that when, and if, it arises," he said. "Just remember, we may temporarily be…inconvenienced, but I still have soldiers happy to do anything I say. Anything at all."
"All right," Bolan said, "so how do I get back to my car? And incidentally, how the hell do you know about it?"
"My influence isn't confined to Hamburg. You've been followed ever since you left Frankfurt. As you know, I've got a special interest in Lattuada and Schiller, as well as Arvell Asticot, so I keep an eye on their movements. I don't know exactly who you are, but I do know you're efficient, and for the moment that's enough for me. As for the car, the operation depends on the fact that, by chance, I have a BMW of the same model, in the same color, right here in my garage." The racketeer smiled thinly. "It may not have quite the arsenal concealed beneath the front seat, but with the help of a young friend of mine, I think it can prove useful." He raised his voice. "Very well, Fräulein, you may join us now."
An inner door opened. The girl who came into the room had dark skin, plum-colored lips and a wild hairstyle. She was dressed in jeans and a tight sweater that contoured her breasts. It was Sally Ann.
"Well," she said with her impudent smile, "look who's here — the reluctant lover himself… and a non-smoker at that!"
He turned his back on her. "Perhaps you
should know," he said to Kraul, "that Sally here can't be trusted. She's certainly well enough in with Lattuada and his thugs to walk unharmed out of an ambush, a crossroads attack involving an SMG and two automatics that murdered a cabdriver and could easily have finished me. I'm not even sure she wasn't the one who tipped them off I'd be there."
"Oh, you!" Sally Ann pouted. "You're still upright, aren't you?"
"Whatever," Bolan said, ignoring her, "she's playing a double game."
"I am well aware of it," Kraul said equably. "If we were in the espionage business, she'd be what you call a double agent. Herr Lattuada and his cronies use her to run occasional errands, to make the odd contact…"
"Such as setting up foreigners for a kill?"
"And in return, by permitting her to do this, I gain an eye and an ear, shall we say, in the enemy camp. So far, however, she's been unable to find an answer to the most important question."
"Which is?"
"Who hired that American mobster to come over here and disrupt what was a perfectly good business? Who, in a nutshell, is Lattuada's boss? It is hardly credible, I agree, but this is a complete mystery. Nobody knows!"
Bolan raised his eyebrows. This was the third time he'd heard the mystery man mentioned, once before by Charlie Macfarlane, once by the enforcer Hansie Schiller, whose fear of the boss's reaction had saved Bolan from being carved with a knife in the Cadillac. He said, "It wouldn't be Asticot, would it? He's certainly…" Bolan smiled slightly"…not unknown in the narcotics world."
Kraul shook his head. "Herr Asticot makes his money exploiting situations like the one we have in this city. One day he'll prove too clever and anger everybody at the same time, and that'll be the end of him. For the moment, however, he's kept his nose clean. But I can tell you definitely that he's not the brain behind Lattuada's schemes. There's too much risk of some of the dirt rubbing off on him."
The racketeer paused, tipping an inch and a half of cigar ash into an onyx ashtray. "I can tell you something else, since you're so anxious to locate Asticot…"
"What makes you think that?"
"Why else," Kraul said blandly, "would you have followed him from Munich to Frankfurt, and from Frankfurt here? I can tell you that at the moment he's in Lübeck, supervising the shipment of certain merchandise from a Greek freighter to a private individual. By chance, Lattuada is also in the same town today, but on quite a different mission."
"And you're hoping if I get my car back that I'll go after both of them?"
"I don't see what else you could do," Kraul said.
Bolan compressed his lips. It was clear that Sally Ann was a stalking-horse. And if he allowed himself to be dragged into the hunt, he suspected it wouldn't be long before he'd be the stalking-horse for both sides.
On the other hand, as the racketeer had pointed out, given the circumstances, what else could he do? "Suppose I go with this two-timing kid," he demanded. "What's to stop her turning me over to the other side, as one of her… errands?"
"The fact that I'd break her pretty neck if she did," Kraul replied. "And you'll have to take my word for that."
"Okay," Bolan sighed. "So what do we do?"
"It's quite simple. She drives my BMW into town. You'll be hidden in the trunk. She parks the car in the Hotel Oper garage, taking care to exchange a couple of words with the police on duty. They're not going to note the license number of a car going in — especially if it's driven by a sexy-looking woman."
Kraul's cigar was almost finished. He placed it in the ashtray. "Sally Ann kills an hour, maybe doing some late marketing. She returns to the garage and drives out. 'So long, boys, she says. Try to keep warm, but don't do anything I wouldn't do! She pays her ticket and leaves. You're still in the trunk. Only this time it's your BMW you're riding in. Later, some time tomorrow, I send someone in to collect my own car. He pretends that he lost the ticket and asks how much he owes, and so on. The car's clean, so no questions are asked. How does that sound, Herr Belasko?"
"Suits me," the Executioner said. "I can't find anything wrong with it. But let me make one thing clear. You can get back my car for me and the gear I need, but it doesn't buy you any immunity. I'm making no promises. I see no difference between you and Lattuada. If I succeed in putting him out of the way, it's in the cards that I might one day be chasing you just as hard. Is that dear?"
Kraul laughed aloud. He seemed genuinely amused. "Sally Ann," he said, "show our guest to the garage."
Chapter Thirteen
The keys of the rented BMW and the parking ticket were taped inside the sedan's rear bumper. Bolan was thankful he had taken this precaution: it meant the police had no idea he had transport, for there had been no evidence among the papers taken off him when he'd been arrested.
The only thing wrong with Kraul's escape plan was that the two cops on guard were still stationed at the top of the ramps leading to and from the lowest level, as they had been when the Executioner had first cased the place. And it was on that level that the BMW was parked.
There were no vacant slots nearby. No chance, then, for Sally Ann to drive out the «wrong» car without the cops noticing once she had done her shopping, especially since she had dutifully joked with the two guys on the way in.
She drove up to the fourth level and let Bolan out of the trunk.
"The important thing is to get the car out," he said when she had explained the problem. "That's the number one priority. I can make it with the stuff beneath the seat once we're away."
"Yes, but… I mean, like they have your description. And I can't very well go to that car when I get back, not when the guys have already seen me drive up to…"
"Okay, okay," he said soothingly. "No sweat. We'll take it for granted that neither of us dare go anywhere near that BMW while those guys are there."
"Then how the hell do we…"
"I said while they're there. What we do," Bolan said in a low voice, "is fix it so they're not there but someplace else. We decoy them away, long enough for you to make it to that first level, untape the key, start the car, pay your ticket and get out."
Sally Ann stared at him. "How?"
"We turn Kraul's plan upside down, or, to be precise, inside out. The plan had two aims: get me in here secretly, then take the car out openly. We'll reverse that. There are only two of us, and if one has to act as decoy, it has to be me… because you have to drive. So I'll show myself openly, lead them up to the top floor maybe, while you take a powder with the car. Okay?"
"You really figure you can hack it…" The girl stopped speaking as elevator doors clanged open. A young couple appeared at the far end of the level, started an Audi 80 and drove away down the ramp.
"Just leave it to me," Bolan said. "Have you got a watch on you? Right. Be back here at exactly nine-fifteen, at the foot of the ramp, ready to pay your ticket. You'll hear the noise when I make my play. As soon as you do, run up to the car. It's that simple."
She still looked dubious. "But that way your gun will still be in the car while I drive it…"
"I don't shoot cops," Bolan interrupted harshly. "We didn't all go to the same school as Herr Lattuada."
"Wouldn't it be easier if we both got into the car and crashed that little barrier pole at the foot of the exit ramp?"
"It might be if we had a bulldozer. The poles are steel. They're designed to stop folks crashing them. It's much simpler if you pay your mark, feed the release ticket into the machine so that the pole rises, and drive quietly out."
The hollow boom of an exhaust echoed up the ramp. An Opel Senator rose into view, turned onto the slope that led to higher levels with a screech of rubber and disappeared. Soon afterward they heard the slam of doors and the whine of an elevator.
"Just do as I said," Bolan said. "Wait for me at the end of the street when you're out, and I'll drive you back to Kraul's place before I head north."
When the girl had gone, he stole back down the ramps until he could peer around the corner and take in the lowest lev
el. The two cops were sharing a cigarette at the top of the first slope. The BMW was parked halfway between Bolan's position and theirs. And, no, there was no way he could make the car without being seen. He went back up to the second highest floor.
At 9:12 he summoned the two elevators. One he sent up to the hotel on the penthouse floor. He wedged open the doors of the other with an empty two-liter oilcan he had found, immobilizing the cage at his level.
Two minutes later the unmistakable sounds of a struggle resounded throughout the garage. Bolan jumped on the hood of a sedan and thumped the roof. Back on the concrete floor, he uttered incoherent cries, battered the side of a panel truck that was parked opposite the downslope and hurled himself repeatedly against the body.
He smashed the truck window with his elbow and then, as the imploded fragments of glass were still clattering inside, he shouted clearly, "Help! I just saw him, the murderer! It's Belasko! The man who escaped from the courthouse! Help! He's trying to take my…"
From below he heard shouts and the stamp of feet. The elevator that was free went down toward the lower levels. Someone was running up the ramp. As Bolan had hoped, one of the cops was approaching on foot while the other took the elevator. He ran a little way down the slope so that he would be in view — enough to be identified — when the first man made it to the level below.
The cop appeared at the top of the access ramp, saw the Executioner there and yelled, "Stop, or I'll shoot!"
Bolan ran back to the upper floor. The earsplitting rasp of a machine pistol thundered among the parked vehicles; splinters from a concrete pillar hummed past his head.
He reached in through the broken window to release the truck hand brake, shoving the vehicle forward. The wheel was locked, but it ran down with increasing speed and crashed against the concrete barrier where the ramp curved, blocking the cop's pursuit. He jumped aside, cursing, and dropped to one knee, spraying a second burst up against the low roof of Bolan's level. But the deathstream missed the Executioner by several inches: he was already racing for the blocked escalator.
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