Blowout

by Don Pendleton

  "I'm not going to pull the 'justice is above us mere mortals' line on you," Fischer said to Bolan. "Corners are sometimes there to be cut, and the Minister of the Interior is rather busy at the moment. I'll need statements, depositions and signatures, of course, particularly this man's testimony on Schiller and the Schroeder killing. But if you're prepared to skip certain formalities and waive certain rights, I think we can arrange everything to our mutual satisfaction." He cleared his throat. "Only thing is, you'll have to be out of the country pretty damn quick, and by quick I mean within twenty-four hours. Tomorrow's papers are going to be full of the chancellor's speech, but after that they'll be looking for copy and questions will be asked."

  "Suits me," Lattuada said.

  Bolan shrugged. Both his objectives had been gained, at the expense, he hated to admit, of giving Ferdie Kraul back his stranglehold on the St. Pauli underworld. But if he was going to try to break that one, it would have to wait until another time.

  The lights flashed green, and the car surged forward. "Don't think," Fischer continued, "that I'm handing out favors, but the police commissioner, Kunstler, has been laying for these mobsters a long time, watching and waiting. Your two statements should give us the lever we need to move in and nail them." He shook his head and tapped the diary Bolan had handed over. "And you say this proves the mastermind behind it all is the Krohn woman? My God, there'll be some red faces at city hall when that comes out. The Coliseum's a favorite haunt of a lot of big wheels." He chuckled happily.

  "If I do give you the lowdown on the whole deal," Lattuada said, "how do I know you won't go back on your word? I mean, like drag me back to stand trial with the others, use my own stuff against me?"

  "You don't know," Fischer said. "You have to take a chance, but you should be used to that. Even if the others snitch on you, and they will, the most we could go for would be conspiracy and uttering threats. And with you singing like a bird, the sentence wouldn't be worth your transportation to the court. There'll be nothing else against you if you can help me put Schiller away for killing that girl."

  The car stopped at another red light. "Of course," Fischer said, "if you don't want to take my word, you're free to get out now and take your chances with the boys. No warrant's been sworn out for you, and there's nothing I could do to stop you." He paused, eyebrows raised, his fingers resting on the door handle.

  "Forget it. Let's hit the station and get it over with, huh?" Lattuada growled.

  Bolan had the impression Fischer was hiding a smile. "As for you, Meinherr," he said, "it's fortunate that you were able to, shall we say, remove yourself from the court's jurisdiction before you pleaded. I'd never have been able to fix things myself once you'd been indicted. And, believe me, you would have been."

  Bolan smiled wryly. "How do you like that? When it's a question of my word, I get pushed around and shouted at like a long-term con. But on the word of a convicted hood that I've been framed and, in fact, am in the clear, suddenly I'm Meinherr! Maybe, Herr Kriminalkommissar, you, too, should take a chance from time to time. Like on the word of, well, let's say an American newspaperman."

  Fischer shook his big head. "We never take chances."

  The police car continued cruising down a wide street toward the city center when a white Cadillac convertible came steaming past at about seventy miles an hour. Zuta was driving it herself, with Hansie in the passenger seat beside her. The windows were down and four or five of the local muscle were jammed in the back beneath the car's soft top.

  As the Cadillac passed, its tail end shook as the tires hit the wet remnants of old streetcar tracks protruding through the asphalt in the middle of the roadway. Then, just before a half-completed underpass that took the center lanes beneath a busy intersection, Zuta swung the wheel hard right and cut across the patrol car's front.

  That had probably been her intention, at least, either in an attempt to force the police car into the curb and dispose of its occupants there by hand, or in the hope of a shrewd, glancing blow that would tip the car on its roof and eliminate them that way. Bolan saw Hansie's malicious smile, and he saw Zuta's furious scowl. And beyond them he saw what they were too hooked on his destruction to notice.

  A twenty-ton dump truck trundling up the slope from the unfinished tunnel.

  The truck surfaced and bounced onto the road at the very instant the Cadillac was turning at a sharp angle in front of it. The driver didn't have a chance. The Caddie was still traveling at around fifty, and the massive steel pushbar in front of the dump truck's giant wheels slammed into it just aft of the rear wheel.

  With the impact hurling it one way and the steering and engine another, there was only one thing, dynamically, for the car to do. It leaped into the air and crashed down onto its soft roof, cartwheeled into a steel sand bin on the edge of the sidewalk and then bounced back across the road to smash, still upturned, into the iron railing protecting the entrance to a subway station.

  Police drivers should have quick reactions in traffic. But Fischer's man, Bolan thought, could have beaten an electric current from the switch to the lamp. Faced with a bus, a panel truck and three sedans coming toward them, he swerved the Mercedes neatly to the right, ran between the sand bin and a plane tree and nudged the hood to rest against the shutters of a closed jewelry store. By the time they had piled out, the Caddie was blazing from end to end.

  Hansie Schiller was lying on the pavement with his head at an original angle and glass sparkling in his hair. The rest of the gang was still inside the wreck, but Bolan didn't hear any screams.

  Fischer looked from the skid marks to the blood splashes and broken glass and then back at the flames. He shook his head. "Maybe I won't need to trouble you gentlemen for a statement after all," he said.

  Epilogue

  The ship, registered in Galveston, Texas, was a freighter with accommodation for a dozen passengers. She was on a coastal run, unloading and taking aboard cargo at Rotterdam, Le Havre and Genoa before heading through the Suez Canal to India and the Far East.

  Lattuada, escorted by police, and Bolan were taken aboard at dawn, shortly before the ship sailed. The faceless officials who made such things tidy on paper had probably worked late at city hall that night.

  "Pan Am, TWA and Lufthansa are all booked solid on the transatlantic run," Fischer told the Executioner. "And if we pull people off at a small field like Fuhlsbüttel, it's going to cause the kind of talk we want to avoid." The two Americans, he said, would be put ashore at Rotterdam and taken by U.S. embassy staff car with a Marine Corps escort to the international airport at Schiphol, near Amsterdam.

  Fischer stood with the warrior on the pint-size promenade deck as the Elbe widened toward the North Sea. It was bitterly cold, and yellowing clouds over the city promised a fresh fall of snow.

  "We'll put them all away," the policeman said. "Once they know the racketeer bosses have croaked, every person who ever had the bite put on them is going to come up with damning testimony."

  "Exit the Team," Bolan said, "leaving a clear field for Ferdie Kraul. That's what bugs me."

  Fischer sighed. "He's going to be a tough one," he admitted. "He's got connections in high places, and can afford to buy his way out." And then, with a quizzical smile, he added, "You wouldn't care to take a leave of absence from your 'journalistic' career and accept a short-term engagement, seconded to a West German police force, with special responsibility for straightening out the rackets in St. Pauli?"

  Bolan shook his head and grinned. Obviously Fischer wasn't buying his Belasko cover. Not surprising, considering his actions during his stay in Hamburg. "Like they say, you have to put your own house in order. But I have something here that could help."

  He dug into his pocket and produced a manila envelope. It had been waiting for him when he'd collected what remained of his gear and checked out of the Hotel Oper. With it there was a card, which he had destroyed, bearing the penciled message: "With so many thanks for your help." The card was Ferdinand
Kraul's. Inside the envelope was a thick wad of hundred-mark bills.

  "This is dirty money," Bolan said. "I haven't counted it, but there's a lot in there. I want you to take it and give one of these bills to the newspaper vendor outside the Coliseum, okay?"

  Frowning in puzzlement, Fischer nodded.

  "Divide the rest in two equal parts," Bolan continued. "Half is to go to a man named Charlie Macfarlane, a guy who lost the use of his legs. He's in a hospital near the botanical gardens."

  "And the rest?"

  "A donation to the Hamburg police department. I'd like to think this money could be used in some way — paying off informers, outbidding Kraul — against the guy who collected it in the first place."

  Fischer took the envelope. "Very well, Herr Belasko. You may be sure it will be used precisely in the way you specify."

  Before the warrior could say anything else, an American-accented voice called across the water, "Goodbye to our friends from Galveston. We wish you Godspeed and a pleasant voyage. Please come to visit us again soon."

  He turned in surprise. They were passing the suburb of Blankenese. The voice, relayed by a loudspeaker above a long, low clapboard building on the right bank of the Elbe, was followed at once by a recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that blared across the river; at the same time the Stars and Stripes was run up a flagpole.

  "The Willkommhöft, a local tradition," Fischer explained. "That is the Schulau ferry station. Every vessel entering or leaving the Hamburg docks is greeted with the national anthem and flag of its home country, along with a message in the appropriate language."

  "I'm sure it's appreciated," Bolan said, turning again as a young deckhand approached, carrying a strip of paper. "Radiogram for Mr. Belasko, sir," the boy said, saluting. "Text reads, 'Urgent. Take first available plane for Hawaii. The message is signed Uncle Hal."

  "There is something wrong?" Fischer asked, concerned.

  Bolan smiled. "Just a playful editor. Must be a big story breaking in Hawaii."

  The policeman stared ahead as the bow lifted to the incoming swell from the estuary. The icy wind stirred his hair. "Hawaii? A paradise, no? Certainly warmer than here. Of course, Herr Belasko, I imagine you'll make it even hotter."