Blowout

by Don Pendleton

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  There was a T-junction blocking off the Kirstenallee at the next intersection. Either he had to turn right, take the main drag, lose time and risk the Golf and Cadillac, or run back into the narrow one-way street and make the train, at the expense of whatever shit Zuta would throw in his way. For her phone, he knew, would be busy, too. He turned left and went into high gear.

  Stores were still open along the street: delicatessens, grocers, an ice-cream parlor and a milk bar as well as a fruit-and-vegetable market with cases of apples and oranges stacked outside the window. Customers in the deli and folks on stools at the milk bar stayed as rigid as the subjects of a painting as he pelted past each radio or TV, the chancellor's words swelling and fading in his ears: "You must believe me when I say… no question of altering the status of Berlin…guaranteed by four-power agreement… no mention of unification on the proposed agenda…"

  One of the paintings jerked itself into a movie. Three guys came out of the fruit-and-vegetable market and spread across the sidewalk and roadway. They were dark, sturdy types with tough chins and curly Mediterranean hair. But they didn't look like professional hoods; they were just neighborhood muscle carrying out the boss's orders.

  Once again Bolan banked on the belief that they would be dumb enough to figure him for dumb. Instead of trying to force his way through or outflank them, he jumped up on the ranked displays in front of the shop. His feet squelched through tomatoes and pears, skidded on beets and squashed melons. He turned his ankle on a tray of potatoes and kicked cabbages, bananas and a huge basket of onions tumbling to the sidewalk. By the time the boys were plugged into the change of plan, the sidewalk was jumping.

  One of them tripped and fell. Another smashed his shin into a wooden crate and staggered off balance toward the warrior. The third, the nearest to the storefront, got his hands on the edge of Bolan's jacket.

  The warrior whirled toward him, chopping at his neck with the fiat of one hand as he came down off the displays. The guy grunted and swung a huge fist. The blow caught the Executioner high up on the left side, just over the heart. It didn't hurt him, but it knocked him off his stride and allowed the goon to wrap his arms around Bolan's thighs and bring him down among the winter produce.

  For a moment they thrashed around in the salad, grappling for an advantage. Then the guy who had fallen threw himself down with the aim of smothering the quarry with his weight. At the same time the third man picked up the crate he'd run into and swung it at Bolan's head. The teamwork would have been great, if the Executioner hadn't kneed his adversary in the balls and rolled aside at the crucial second. The second man dropped on the character who had floored Bolan, and then had the crate splinter over his head. By the time they sorted themselves out, Bolan was on his feet ten yards away and running.

  They started after him, yelling, "Stop, thief!" There was noise farther back down the street, too. And Bolan knew that Hansie and the prowling cars could materialize anywhere.

  There were still five, maybe six blocks to cover before he reached the comparative safety of the crowded Steindamm, and at the end of that wide stretch of asphalt was the bus terminal and the train station.

  He ran as fast as he could. The blood was roaring in his ears, and his feet were beginning to feel as if there were lead weights attached to the ankles. As he raced past, a husky Italian was moving reluctantly toward a shrilling phone inside a low-ceilinged store hung with sausages, hams and wicker bottles of Chianti. Behind him a fat woman sat at a cash register, frowning in the direction of a small television screen that showed the mournful face of the chancellor in close-up.

  Bolan thanked his lucky stars that it took time to dial, speak, replace the handset, wait for another tone and then call again, even for someone as determined as Zuta. He was over the next cross street before the big man made the sidewalk. A block away down the cross street he saw the rear end of the Cadillac vanish around a corner.

  "One has to give in order to receive," the chancellor's voice thundered from the interior of a cabbie's shelter. "I would ask you, therefore, to approach these proposals with an open mind…"

  Two more intersections, a row of brightly lit stores and the Hansa Theater separated the Executioner from the glass-canopied entrance to the train station. About a quarter of that distance lay between him and the thugs clattering up the narrow one-way street in pursuit. Two men ran out of the shelter and headed across the street toward him. The phone must have been ringing in there, too.

  They could have been running for the line of empty cabs parked by the curb. But Bolan couldn't afford to take chances. He put the palm of his hand on top of a low iron railing and vaulted over onto a small triangle of grass in front of a cafe-bar standing back from the road. "And now," a radio just inside the open door of the bar told him, "I will summarize what has been suggested: it is not a world-shattering about-face, but it is worth…"

  A shot, the first fired in anger since Bolan had quit the blazing apartment, rang out behind the railings. He heard the sonic crack as the slug zipped past him. Glass tinkled and fell among cars parked beyond the bar. The pistol, which sounded like a heavy-caliber revolver, fired again. This time a ricochet screeched off the brick wall of the building.

  Blackened and disheveled, the warrior's scarecrow figure caused people to stop and stare as he dodged, panting, among groups moving from the bus station toward the theater. He ran across the Steindamm under the yellow lights, glancing over his shoulder at the red, amber and green traffic signals winking on and off along the wide perspective to the east. Three streets away, behind a truck, a bus and a bunch of taxis, the white Cadillac appeared, pulling over to the wrong side of the road and laying down rubber on the damp pavement, roaring toward the station.

  Bolan turned and sprinted for an alley that ran behind the theater. He raced between long lines of buses standing at the terminal and headed for a side entrance to the station. The minute hand of the giant clock on the tower jerked onto the half hour.

  Scaffolding surrounded the arched pedestrian entrance where restoration work on the wall of the building was in progress. Bolan ran between tall wooden partitions and joined a crowd of raincoated commuters passing beneath the arch. He figured he would be safe from lead poisoning now. They had to be pretty desperate to fire at him out in the open like that. Then he saw six or seven heavies, including the guys with the guns, threading their way between the buses. They must have seen him come in.

  The station concourse was crowded with travelers, porters, officials, workers, most of them listening to the broadcast over the public address system.

  "So I ask you," the chancellor's voice cried out from bookstalls, pillars, baggage checks and the tops of gantries beneath the great glass roof, "not to dismiss this relaxation of the Soviet attitude out of hand as a shoddy political maneuver. The policy of glasnost merits serious consideration, and perhaps a little faith, on the part of all those who sincerely hope for peace in our time. In the case, therefore, of an eventual referendum on the disarmament proposals, I say to you again: think before you vote. And now I wish you all a very good night… and thank you for listening."

  Reactions to the broadcast were mixed. "Bloody Russians," a porter growled as he pushed a cart loaded with suitcases toward the cab stand. "Expect us to junk our weapons, and keep their own hidden behind their backs. Mark my words!"

  "You have to trust somebody, sometime," a woman said.

  "I suppose it's just possible they might really mean…"

  "It's all right for the fucking politicians. They'll all be safely in their fallout shelters when the time comes!"

  Bolan was standing beside a baggage trolley stacked high with sacks of mail. His pursuers were checking out the commuters crowding the ticket offices and newsstand. "I'm happy to see, Herr Belasko," a quiet voice said behind the Executioner, "that you're still, as you Americans say, on the ball."

  Bolan swung around. A square-jawed, soberly dressed man wearing a gray t
opcoat was regarding him through slitted eyes.

  "Kraul!" he exclaimed. "What the hell are you doing here? How did you…"

  "You forget that I have friends in the enemy camp." The mobster's voice was suave. "And so, my friend, have you."

  Bolan grinned in spite of himself. Sally Ann was a walking news bulletin! "That's right," he said. "You were at Aumuhle. I saw you on the train. Are you telling me you're in cahoots with Benckendorff now?"

  "Let's just say I serve in an advisory capacity. A long time ago, a very long time ago, I was a Party member. I found the capitalist way of life more… rewarding. But I keep in touch, and Gottfried and I both have an interest in the dismantling of a certain organization, although admittedly for quite different reasons."

  "You, so that you can get your hooks back into the Hamburg underworld. Benckendorff, so that he can torpedo the disarmament talks, and make use of an existing network, perhaps with your help, for his espionage activities." Bolan's voice was accusative, harsh with disgust.

  "It seems," Kraul said blandly, "that there was a fire. Unfortunate. However, my half of the arrangement should still work out successfully." He smiled. "Thanks to you."

  Bolan compressed his lips. It was true. The harder he nailed the Lattuada-Schiller-Krohn team, the more it would benefit Ferdie Kraul. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  "You know what you can do with your…" he began. But the rest of the sentence was drowned by a fresh outburst from the public address system.

  "The train arriving on track six is the 7:35 express from Wilhelmshaven, Oldenburg, Bremerhaven and Bremen. Will passengers please…"

  "It was you who dropped my knife into the cellar, wasn't it?" Bolan said. "And hung the shoulder rig over the grating? It had to be you."

  "Yes," Kraul said. "I was visiting. And it was necessary for me to be out of the way while they attended to some illiterate gorilla sent by Schiller to put the bite on the management. I considered it more helpful to my private affairs to keep you alive."

  Bolan resisted the temptation to hit him. No barriers blocked off track six as the huge diesel-electric locomotive slid to a halt in its bay. Friends and relatives surged forward; doors opened all along the length of the train; passengers carrying their baggage dropped to the platform, hurrying toward the exits to secure a porter, grab a taxi, a phone, make the U-Bahn before it became too crowded.

  Running, Bolan heard Kraul call after him, "Sally Ann tells me your man had a reservation in car 44."

  He fought his way against the tide. It wasn't very easy, locating one human being in that crush, but he couldn't afford to stand still and let Lattuada come to him. There were at least a dozen hoods in the concourse, all looking for the same guy, with orders to stop Bolan getting to him first at all costs. And Lattuada himself wouldn't know that his accomplices were now his enemies.

  The first car, immediately behind the locomotive, was numbered 32. That meant that car 44 would be at the other end of the train. Bolan shouldered his way onward, agonizingly aware of his vulnerability.

  He was aware suddenly of separate sounds. Footsteps, hundreds of them on the moist platform. Doors slamming. A hiss of steam from somewhere. An incomprehensible announcement over the public address system. The gunning of a taxi engine.

  His ears registered shouts, then Italian accents calling through the groundswell of voices. There was another sound, too, and Bolan knew then that that was no taxi engine he'd heard. The rasping exhaust note was accompanied by the dying warble of a police siren. He saw the car, a green-and-white Mercedes with an illuminated sign on its roof, maneuvering among the baggage trolleys on the far side of the empty bay beyond Lattuada's train. A bell trilled somewhere out of sight. The doors of the car swung open. Fischer, Wertheim and two cops in uniform spilled out and began clambering over the tracks in the empty bay. At the same moment the Executioner saw Lattuada.

  He was climbing down from the last car of the whole train, a tall, lean figure carrying a pigskin valise and wearing a brown raincoat. There was a cellophane cover shielding his wide-brimmed hat.

  Summoning his last reserves of strength, Bolan accelerated his stumbling run. He was happy to see that Fischer had taken his message seriously, and that he had gotten there so damn fast, but he had to see the mobster himself, alone, first. Behind him he heard a yell. "There he is! Get him! Nail the motherfucker!"

  Hansie Schiller.

  They were even more desperate now if they were going to risk an open chase in confrontation with the law. Bolan was aware of the rush of feet, angry complaints from passengers as they were jostled or their baggage overturned, curses from the Team and their henchmen. Fischer was shouting, too. Hansie's screech had focused the German policemen's attention on the warrior. But the cops had a greater distance to go.

  Bolan pulled up in front of Lattuada. He'd halted by the open door at the end of the car, narrow brow furrowed, the sallow face with its stubbly lantern jaw alert. Maybe he'd recognized Hansie's voice; maybe he'd tumbled to the fact that it was something to do with him; perhaps he just wondered what the hell was going on. "Get back in there," the Executioner snapped at him. "Fast!"

  The mobster's eyes widened, staring at Bolan's wild, unkempt figure. But urgency must have lent the warrior's voice authority, because the mafioso turned obediently and climbed back onto the step. It was only when Bolan shoved him into the corridor that he said, "What the hell…"

  "Move, if you want to live," Bolan ordered. "Move!"

  "Who the hell are you?" the hood demanded. But he moved.

  "Get into the washroom, Lattuada, or you're a dead man." Bolan hustled the guy into the tiny cubicle at the end of the car, slammed the door, swung the lock over and leaned his back against the flimsy panels. Maybe because the use of his name surprised him, the mafioso had gone along with Bolan so far. But now his right hand hovered between the lapels of his raincoat. "Look, asshole," he snarled, "I don't know who the fuck you are, but…"

  "The name's Belasko. Mike Belasko." The Executioner saw recognition flare in the hood's cold eyes, then he rasped, "Don't be more of an idiot than you've already been. Junk the iron unless you want me to ram it down your throat." The car rocked slightly as heavy feet stamped along the far end of the corridor.

  Lattuada hesitated, then plucked a short-barreled.38 Police Special from a shoulder holster, looked around, shrugged and dropped the gun into the toilet bowl. It was too big to fall through the hole. Bolan slammed the lid shut and leaned one foot on it.

  "Just what the fuck are you playing at, mister?" Lattuada said softly. They were jammed together pretty tightly. His breath smelled of mint with a slight scent of liquor.

  "Down there. Try the toilet," a voice called from outside the door.

  "Listen," Bolan said. "We've only got a few seconds. You know Zuta's handwriting, don't you?"

  "Sure I do," the mafioso said, scowling. "What the hell has that…"

  "Then read this, and read it well… patsy." Bolan pulled the diary out from under his jacket and handed it over, opened to the page where the mobster's fate, and his own, were blueprinted. "MB is me," he said.

  A heavy hand explored the grooved brass knob on the other side of the door. The panels against Bolan's back shifted to an inquiring shove.

  "Holy shit!" Lattuada said. He flipped back a few pages, more to convince himself that what he read was part of a continuing plan than because he doubted the authenticity of the dairy. "The dirty stinking bitch," he said. "The whoring goddamn…"

  "Sure," Bolan cut in. "In spades. Me, too. Thing is, are you going to play ball?" He lurched forward a little as the door behind him heaved violently. Luckily their toilet door was the one parallel to the corridor and not the one set diagonally at the end of the car, which would have given the besiegers more space to maneuver.

  "What's the pitch?" Lattuada finally asked.

  "The cops are out there, as well as Hansie and his muscle. There's nothing against you in this country. No charge has been
made. The cops know what you set up, but they don't even know your name."

  "So?"

  The door shivered and shook to a heavier charge. There had to be two of them there now. Bolan said, "So forget your connection with the Team and the racket you organized. Turn yourself in and plead guilty to those old tax charges back home. Have them extradite you. Get the hell out." He hated to allow any scum tied in with the Mafia off the hook. But knowing that however dirty his hands, Lattuada wasn't the killer he had thought — that it was Hansie who had murdered Dagmar — made the play at least morally more digestible.

  "The IRS will crucify me. Three to five, most likely."

  "You should worry. Zuta will crucify you for keeps. We'll both be sitting ducks if we stay here. Listen, they'll even tangle with the cops to get us!"

  Sounds of cursing and struggles were audible outside now. Feet stamped the platform. What Bolan didn't know was that Kraul had sent in his two bodyguards, Nils and Georg, to mix it up a little while the Executioner made his play. In the car, the toilet door was splintering and Bolan's back was getting bruised.

  Lattuada's sullen expression tightened. He had made up his mind. "Okay," he said, nodding.

  "You'll have to wise them up some on how the Team works if you want the free pass. That includes the lowdown on the Schroeder killing."

  The mobster nodded again. From below the frosted toilet compartment window, on the tracks, Fischer called out, "Give yourself up, Belasko! You can't get away!"

  Leaning his back for the last time against the disintegrating door, Bolan launched himself forward with one leg held stiffly out in front of him, pushing the frosted glass out of its frame and down onto the rails. "Coming!" he shouted.

  Ten minutes later he was squashed, together with the mafioso, in the back of the patrol car with Kriminalkommissar Fischer, waiting for the lights to change so that the driver could turn into the Glockengeisser Wall. Wertheim was in front, nursing a black eye and a split lip. Three of the Black Hand guys had been arrested for disorderly conduct and taken away. Hansie and his Coliseum muscle, more professionally, had melted into the crowd as soon as Lattuada and the warrior had escaped through the broken window; there was no percentage risking good soldiers when the prize was already in the hands of the enemy.