EM?
Hell, yes! Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Edwina Mueller, the young woman shot down in front of him outside the Black Tie. The beginning of it all. The cops had found nothing, but it seemed she was a drug pusher who had succumbed to temptation and kept some of the income for her own use. Silly girl.
And talking of puzzles — he flipped pages until he came to the Monday of the current week — there remained that one burning question: what were members of the Team doing in the woods at Aumuhle after their bosses had left the Millpond Club? And how come Benckendorff's men had been there to rescue Bolan when he was attacked?
The answer was spelled out in Zuta's handwriting: "Precocious child reports that B may try to retake the shipment and channel it to Berlin by rail. Second Unit to keep watch in woods."
Precocious child was presumably Sally Ann, confusing things as usual and probably ordered to lay a false trail so the Team wouldn't get wise to the fact that they were prospecting two places in a sensitive area, one of which was actually their enemies' HQ.
Bolan knew that freight trains still went through to Berlin on the Aumuhle line at night. What Zuta called the Second Unit must have been left in place, waiting for more intel, with the hope of intercepting any attempt to smuggle the drugs out of West Germany. And their scouts had happened on an intruder prowling the woods and apparently casing the bosses' meal ticket, so they had opened fire. After that it wasn't difficult to work out why Benckendorff had intervened.
There was no mention anywhere of Kraul. Bolan read on, skipping the stuff he knew because he had been involved in it, and then suddenly he was sitting bolt upright on the edge of the tub, rereading a detailed instruction, or the blueprint for one, which left him gasping, even after what he had discovered already.
It was no less than a plan to get rid of him and lover boy Lattuada in a single move!
He read the entry for the third time. Now he understood the bedroom setup in the house behind: it was just that he had stumbled the day before on a dry run for the real thing. Now he realized why he had been kept on ice for over twenty-four hours. Now he knew why Zuta hadn't handed him over to the law once she'd tired of him.
That was much too crude a move for her kind of endgame. What she had worked out was this: a man's body was to be found beaten to death outside that steamy bathroom at the foot of that cutely rumpled bed. Bolan's.
Zuta had been having an affair with him, the story would run. She was, as everyone knew, a red-blooded woman. She had no idea, of course, that he was a wanted man. But there would be plenty of witnesses from the club that they had been living it up together. Then, suddenly, bingo, the cast-off boyfriend, Lattuada by name, returns from an out-of-town trip, finds them in bed together and kills the interloper in a fit of mad jealousy.
Distressed though she was, the lovely club owner, one of the few clean people in a dirty business, would tearfully be able to give an eyewitness account, a blow-by-blow description, of the killing. Others would no doubt testify to hearing the sounds of the struggle, voices raised in anger, a woman screaming and so on.
Result: Bolan out of the way for keeps, Lattuada sent down for his murder, and Zuta, now that the hood had set up the organization she hired him for, would be able to run the racket on her own. With no need to cut him in, and no inconvenient witnesses to how it was set up and how it worked.
Would such a crazy plan work? The way it was planned, Bolan figured it would. It bore the same trademarks, evidenced the same thinking, as the Dagmar Schroeder setup, and that had worked only too well. Lattuada wouldn't have a chance. Not with such a respectable lady, with such highly placed connections, saying she actually saw him do it; not with the perjured testimony she'd fix; not with his record; not the way it had been planned down to the last detail. They had even remembered not to mark up Bolan's face so that the wounds, when they were inflicted, would stack up with the time of death. The intended murder weapon probably had Lattuada's fingerprints on it already. Bolan almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.
He stood up abruptly. The time of death? Damn, that was his death! The hell with mobsters: what about this poor bastard?
The frame would be fixed for around a half hour after Lattuada's train hit town — just time, in theory, for him to come home and find Zuta. in the sack with a stranger.
And the train pulled into the central train station at 7:35.
Another time check. The digital figures read 6:23. He had an hour and twelve minutes in which to save both their lives.
On foot, with no money to weigh down his pockets, a man in shape would need a minimum of thirty minutes to reach the train station at a run. And the man was securely locked into a third-floor apartment northeast of the Alster.
Don't panic, he told himself. There's still one thing in your favor: they don't know that you know. So you still have a chance to get out of here.
But how? He couldn't just throw up the window and yell for the cops. Not with a murder rap hanging over him.
No, but he could call the fire department.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It didn't take long once Bolan had decided to do it. In any case, whatever the odds were, they would be better than trying to take on Hansie's hitters.
Zuta kept a bottle of lighter fluid in the drawer of the night table, and there was a patent cleaner, probably benzene or carbon tetrachloride, behind the built-in wall closet. Bolan uncorked one, unscrewed the cap of the other and poured the liquid from both bottles over crumpled newspapers, silk sheets from the bed, the filmier clothes in the closet and anything else that looked as if it would burn nicely.
He placed one pile of flammable material against the locked entrance door and pushed a pale oak dressing table over it. The doused clothes were heaped on the closet floor. Then he struck a couple of matches and stood back.
The fumes rising from the pile beneath the dressing table ignited with a soft thump, and a moment later flames from burning paper and silk were licking against the oak. The fire in the closet was slow to start, but soon the cleaner he'd sprayed around in there was ablaze, too, incinerating two hundred thousand dollars' worth of feminine glamor from the hem upward.
Bolan waited until smoke was billowing out from the crowded dress racks and the odor of scorched varnish had been replaced by the smell of burning paint from the door. Then he did the one thing you're supposed to avoid at all costs in case of fire: he threw open the window.
The cool, moist air streaming in, sucked upward by the heat, fanned his homemade fire. It might not have stood comparison with the gutting of Benckendorff's stables, but it was impressive in terms of growth just the same.
The draft whistled in under the door, creating a minor inferno that quickly set the dressing table and door panels alight. Next to catch was the molding and wallpaper, and a few seconds later the closet floorboards were burning. By now there was choking black smoke billowing from the flaming garments. He hurried to the open window and leaned out over the sill.
He knew there was a fire station less than two blocks away, and he was gambling on their efficiency to get him out. But it was getting hot as hell, and he crossed his fingers, hoping he hadn't overplayed his hand.
Gesticulating silhouettes appeared in the lighted windows of houses across the street. At least two of them were dialing frantic emergency calls. The newsboy had run into the middle of the roadway, pointing up at the apartment, and there were waiters and club members milling around on the sidewalk beneath the entrance canopy.
The flames had begun to snarl, but it was another two minutes before Bolan heard sirens. Three fire trucks skidded around the corner and raced up to the Coliseum. The crews were still fixing their chin straps as the heavy scarlet machines maneuvered broadside-on to the street between parked cars. The men scattered, uncoiling hose, running for the fire hydrant, operating the motor to rotate the ladder.
The Executioner's clothes were smoldering. He heard the fire chief shouting orders over the whine of machinery.
He could also hear shouting from the far side of the burning door.
Zuta and Hansie would be in a jam. A roasted Bolan would kill their plan. They couldn't frame Lattuada for the death of a guy in a fire, especially if the mafioso was on a train at the time. On the other hand, if they tried to bust down the flaming door and drag him out, the blaze would funnel through to the stairway and likely burn down the whole building. Even if they could get through. A third option — dramatic rescue and Bolan off the hook — might not occur to them at first, not unless they realized he had started the fire deliberately. But once they heard the alarm bells they'd be wise to the possibility and they might try to do something to foul it up. It was Bolan's aim to get the hell out before that happened.
He couldn't wait while they telescoped the ladders out and winched a man up to rescue him. There was another way. He stood silhouetted against the flames and waved his arms as if he was in a panic.
He was black with soot, the heat seared through his smoking clothes and he could feel his skin begin to shrivel. He climbed out onto the window ledge and crouched there, covering his face.
Behind him the snap, crackle and pop of the fire settled down to a steady continuous roar. Below, the chief was waving his arms around. Some of the guys left one of the trucks and hustled out crablike onto the sidewalk, stretching a wide disk of canvas taut between them. The chief signaled urgently for Bolan to jump.
That signal was what he'd been waiting for. Clutching Zuta's diary, which he had stuffed beneath his jacket, he jumped.
A rush of blessedly cold air, a confused succession of noises, an impact not much harder than a collision with a Mack truck, and then he was bouncing to rest on the canvas escape sheet.
The chief helped him off it and asked if he was okay. Bolan mumbled his thanks, brushed aside the offer of an ambulance and pushed his way through the crowd to the far side of the street.
He figured his only chance was to intercept Lattuada as he got off the train, show him the dairy as proof of Zuta's duplicity and persuade him to sing to the law. That way the mobster could get protection against the Team and save his life at the expense of extradition to the U.S. to face those old tax charges, and incidentally clear Bolan, actually Belasko, of the Schroeder killing with his testimony.
There were just a couple of difficulties in the way of his plan. Bolan had to get to Lattuada before the Team did. And there had to be some cops for him to sing to.
Plus it was vital that he make a couple of phone calls first.
And he had no money.
He hated to do it, but there was one way — and one way only — that he could grab some fast. The newsboy's stand was just across the road from the Coliseum — an upended packing case supporting a headline newsbill in a wire frame, a stack of papers and an old hat in which customers who wanted a copy while the guy was absent could toss a coin and help themselves.
Bolan helped himself to a handful of marks. He scooped up the coins and ran.
Somewhere in the crowd the newsboy yelled in outrage. Over his shoulder, Bolan saw a fireman at the top of the fire truck ladder being swiveled toward the apartment window, directing the jet from his hose at the blazing interior. Floodlights had been set up, and in their livid glare Bolan saw the unmistakable shape of Hansie Schiller leaning out the stairway window, scanning the crowd below. As he saw the Executioner, pointed and then vanished abruptly, the church clock in the square at the end of the street chimed seven times.
Thirty-five minutes.
It was possible. But there were two calls to make. And it wouldn't be enough to be at the barrier and hope to buttonhole Lattuada as he walked off the train; Bolan would have to check out the place, find a corner where he could see without being seen and distance himself completely from the pursuers who would be sent out from the club any second now.
And the direct route to the train station, the only sensible way for a man on foot, lay through a neighborhood of small-time shopkeepers, pizzerias and delicatessens, many of them Italian-owned — a quarter, Charlie Macfarlane had told Bolan, where the Team was working a Black Hand-style racket, using their muscle to scare the little men into acting as lookouts, informers and, if necessary, confederates.
Racing toward the traffic lights and the square, Bolan could see Zuta in the entrance lobby of the club, her face a mask of anger as she spun the dial of the pay phone on the wall. He guessed she was even now phoning instructions ahead to block him while Hansie rounded up a posse. They would use cars, of course. But many of the streets were one-way for traffic leaving the station, and the rush-hour flow was dense enough to kill any attempt to drive against the flow.
Did they know he was heading for the station? They would if Zuta had missed her diary. But had she? Would there have been time? No way of telling. They would, in any case, quarter the area, and Hansie had seen the way he was running.
A crowd of travelers stood around a sidewalk information kiosk outside the entrance to an S-Bahn station on the far side of the square. They were watching a television screen in the window. As the warrior sprinted past, he saw the face of a local anchorman and heard the guy say, "Here is a special announcement from Bonn. We are interrupting our programs so that the Herr Chancellor…"
He remembered. The West German chancellor was to make a countrywide TV and radio broadcast on the subject of the disarmament talks.
Bolan pounded past a fruit-and-vegetable store on the corner of a narrow street. From the interior he heard the chancellor's familiar tones: "I want to speak to you frankly because this affects all of us…"
Fifty yards on there was a cross street, and he heard the voice again, coming from an open window above a sandwich bar. "I ask you to approach the subject with an entirely open mind. Many of you, I know, will have fears…"
A big, blue-chinned guy in a white apron, holding a cleaver, erupted onto the sidewalk ahead of Bolan.
Once he had decided Bolan was the man he had been told to stop, he stood blocking the way like an ape, feet planted wide and arms spread to catch him whichever way he swerved, shifting hairy fingers on the handle of the weapon.
The guy was pretty obvious, telegraphing the way he expected Bolan to run. The Executioner ran straight at him, planting a foot in the center of his unprotected belly. He was caught off balance with his weight on his heels and crashed over backward with a roar of rage, cracking his head against a metal crate full of empty wine bottles. One down, Bolan thought.
The street was almost empty. A few doors beyond the restaurant Bolan could hear a phone ringing. Zuta was evidently calling the next goon in her address book. Maybe he could afford to bypass that one with a one-block detour. He dodged into an alleyway and raced through to the Kirstenallee. Behind him, a dark blue Golf GTi halted by the no-entry sign at the cross street. A big American car pulled up behind it: a white Cadillac with tinted windows. So they had recovered it — and the body of the vulture man — from Aumühle.
The Kirstenallee was two stories of grimy brick above pants pressers, felt blockers, a tailor's workshop, a cobbler and the steamed-up front of a cheap laundry. On the far side of the lane there was a gas station, but it was closed, the concrete forecourt deserted, the pumps unlit. The pavement was empty, too — no cars, no bicycles, no trucks, not even a pedestrian crossing the pools of lamplight between the sleazy facades. There was just an echo of the chancellor's voice filtering through an uncurtained window above one of the storefronts.
"Our German brothers in the East… grave mistake not to treat seriously… perhaps a genuine desire for peace…"
And a glass-paneled public phone booth beyond the service station. Bolan hurled himself inside and punched out the free emergency call number.
A click, then a man's voice said in German, "Police emergency. Can I have your name, please?"
"The hell with that," Bolan snapped. "This is urgent. Get…"
"Your name, please, Meinherr."
"You've got to be kidding! Mike Belasko."
"Thank you. Would that be one L or two, sir?"
"Help yourself to as many as you want!" Bolan shouted. "I want to get a message…"
"And the address?" the unruffled voice queried.
The warrior choked back a retort. He guessed they were obliged to follow their routine. "The train station," he said as calmly as he could. "Get this message to Kriminalkommissar Fischer at the police headquarters, fast. Tell him I'm meeting the 7:35 train from Bremen. Tell him to be there if he wants to solve a murder and stop another. He'll be expecting a message from me, but tell him to hurry." Bolan slammed down the receiver before the guy could reply, then dug out the newsboy's money from his pocket. He needed it for his second call.
He fed the right amount into the box and stabbed the buttons. Freddie Leonhardt had to be at home, because if he wasn't…
He was. The receiver was picked up almost at once. "Leonhardt."
"Belasko. This is urgent. Did you pass on those messages?"
"My dear old chap," the affected would-be Brit drawled into his ear, "of course I did. The police fellow seemed a bit dubious, don't you know, but…"
"Never mind," Bolan interrupted. "Just so long as yon made contact. And the rest?"
"I called by the annex, as you asked. The printout had arrived. Do you want me to read it?"
"Forget it," Bolan snapped. "The subject met with a fatal accident." A rundown on Arvell Asticot's Hamburg connections was the last thing he needed now. "What about the service message, the one concerning Lattuada?"
"I waited for the reply, like you said. It was short. Quote. Your mistake. Stop. There are two brothers. Stop. Roberto repeat Roberto is the hit man. Stop. Ferucco is the organizer. Stop. He plans dirty deals, but so far no suspicion of killings. Unquote."
"Right," Bolan said. "That's what I wanted to know. Thanks."
"Look, old lad, if there's anything I can do to…"
"You already did." The warrior banged down the receiver. Now for the stretch, he thought as he burst out into the street again.
Blowout Page 27