The Executioner (№6) - Assault on Soho

"But you can't leave now," she protested weakly.

"The hell I can't." His voice softened as he added, "Look, you did a gutsy thing down there at Dover, and I'm indebted to you. But I didn't invite you in, you know, and gratitude can stretch just so far. For openers, it won't cover being locked up in a house of sick sex and watched with a hidden camera."

The girl's eyes fell. She said, "Sorry about the security. It isnecessary, you know. I mean, don't imagine that we installed all that expressly for your benefit. If you're wondering about Charles, he's in the cellar, the security station. But don't please go down there bothering him. He's a nice old love who wouldn't harm a flea."

Bolan said, "This is more than just a museum, isn't it?"

"Of course." Her eyes met his, almost defiantly he thought. "Every one has a right to sex, even if their outlets are… limited. We provide that outlet here, at de Sade."

"With whips and racks," he observed drily.

"Oh, those are just props. Psychological, you know. Our members are not psychotics. Their need is for… stimulative fantasy. It's rather like pornography."

"I see," Bolan said. "A trip through the maze of horrors and they're ready to swing, eh? Come on now, that doesn't even make sense."

"We have… a paid staff," she explained in a small voice. "Certain… stimulating services… may be purchased."

Bolan decided the girl was trying to delay him, to keep him there. Until what? He told her, "Well, that's none of my business. Who are we expecting?"

"What?"

"You're trying to keep me here until someone else arrives. Who?"

She said, "I told you earlier that I had to ring up the directors."

"What's their interest in me?"

"Permit them to tell you that."

"No. You tell me. Right now, or I'm walking."

"They want to help you."

"Why?"

She moved her shoulders delicately and replied, "They want you to help them, also. But I shouldn't be discussing this, really. You must wait and let them tell you."

"Tell me what?"

Her hip swung into contact with his thigh. She quickly jerked it back and laughed nervously, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You Americans can look so fierce and frightening," she said.

"Do I frighten you?"

"Of course." Her other arm went up and she pressed full against him with a soft little sigh, then pushed herself regretfully away and turned her back to him. "All right," she said. "Go on. Start walking. I couldn't blame you for that."

Bolan watched her for a moment, trying to read her. Such a lovely thing… what part did she play in the nutty goings-on at this house of kinks? He sighed, deciding there would be too much involvement there for a guy bent on blitzing through.

"Thanks for Dover," he muttered, and moved quickly toward the door.

A man stood there, blocking the way out, a Hollywood casting director's idea of a retired British military officer, complete to tidy little moustache and stiff tweed suit. The hair was combed straight back, thin and streaked with gray, and the stiffly erect posture made him appear much taller than his five seven or eight.

Bolan's hand moved inside his jacket and he said, "Well, here's Charlie."

"Wrong," the man snapped. "Charles is busy replacing a very expensive camera which you destroyed for no reason. Really, Bolan, that was a beastly reaction to an offer of friendship."

Bolan replied, "Friends don't lock me up." The Beretta was in his hand and he was moving toward the doorway again.

The little man stood his ground, blocking the exit.

"There's no time to explain all that now. The point is, Bolan, that you cannot possibly leave here now. You'll walk onto that street to certain death. Our mutual enemy is out there in force, waiting for you to show."

"How do you know that?"

"I saw them as I was coming here. The entire square is sealed off."

Uneasily, Bolan asked, "Just who are you talking about? The police?"

"Of course not, though I imagine they're not too far off either."

Bolan sighed. "You said 'mutual enemy.' Explain."

"The same people who want you are trying to destroy usin quite a different fashion. We helped you get into England, you know. We thought—"

"Okay, that explains one small mystery," Bolan interrupted. "But Dover was also swarming with Mafiosi. How did they know?"

"Yes, well, that bothers us also, you know. Security leak somewhere, no doubt. Never worry we shall find it."

"I'll buy that for now," Bolan told him. "So what does my presence here mean to you? An executioner for your side?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. "That's putting it rather bluntly but… yes, I suppose that's it. You're dedicated to the extinction of certain elements. We have them here, you know, right here in London. We decided •. . well, we took the vote, Bolan."

"What vote?"

"We decided to sponsor you for a stay in London."

"I'm not for hire," Bolan quietly replied.

"Of course not," the man said quickly. "I did not mean to suggest… we offer you only cooperation."

"What sort of cooperation?"

"We'll provide you with intelligence, and protect you in every possible way."

Bolan was thinking it over.

"And," the man continued, "when you've finished here, we will help you safely out of the country."

Bolan had reached his decision.

"No deal," he reported, in a tone which left no hope for negotiation. "Now stand aside. I'm leaving."

A strained smiled pulled at the man's lips. "Kipling's cat," he said musingly.

"What?"

"I was thinking of one of Rudyard Kipling's stories, about a jungle cat. 'He went back through the wet wild woods, waving his wild tail, and walking by his wild lone.' That's you, Bolan, a wild jungle beast that walks by himself. Quite admirable, really. I'll see that it's carved onto your burial stone."

Bolan said, "Thanks." He jostled the man aside and passed on to the stairway.

The girl cried out, "Wait!" and hurried after him. She overtook him at the bottom step and pressed a key into his hand. "Queen's House," she whispered, "front flat, upper. Across from the park on Russell Square. You'll find it easily. It's safe there, and you're welcome any time."

Bolan kissed her forehead, murmured "Okay," and went on. The key went into his pocket, though a flat on Russell Square seemed the remotest of all possibilities for him at the moment. If the stiff little man had not been trying to con him, a street full of Mafiosiawaited him just outside. He took a deep breath and checked the load in the Beretta.

The cat that walked by himself, eh? Bolan grinned faintly to himself and fingered his spare clips: he liked that. He was going out there to wave his wild tail through those wet wild Mafia woods, and that was okay. Bolan had learned jungle law and how to live by it. All jungles were alike; the same law operated through them all. Kill quick and hard, then fade to return and do it again. Bolan knew the law. It was older than mankind, older than men's laws. And Bolan himself could quote a bit of Kipling.

"Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky."

Or how about, "Through the Jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh—He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!"

Yeah, Bolan decided, Kipling had been there too.

He went back through the grim little cells of the second floor and down through the carved labia and spreading buttocks into the harem room. This trip through he noticed the phallic statuary, vases shaped like leather hipboots, lampshades made to look like corsets, and various other items of erotic decor. He shook his head sadly, thinking of the girl upstairs, and passed quickly on through to the clubroom.

Then he found an elderly man kneeling beside an open panel of the wall. The man looked up with a frown at Bolan's entry, then averted his eyes from the fierce encounter.

Bolan commanded, "Show me a quiet way out."

Charles heaved to his feet and said, "Down through the cellar is the best way, but it'll only deposit you just across the square. I'd call it a very tiny advantage."

"Fine," Bolan said. It was all he needed, one tiny advantage. He'd make it stretch all the way through the wet wild woods.

Chapter Three

Death in the spot

Charles, it developed, was his family name. The given name was Edwin but he preferred to be called Charles. Per Bolan's earlier voice judgement, he was indeed a former army officer—twiceretired he was quick to point out. During World War Two, Charles had been a high-ranking staff officer in liason with the American cloak and dagger outfit, OSS. He'd grown to know the Americans quite well, admired them, and jolly well understood and admired Bolan's quick reaction to "the security watch" at de Sade.

Bolan would have had a tough time judging the old man's age; he hung it in at about seventy-five, realizing that he could be five years off in either direction. Judging purely by mental spryness, Bolan would have scaled down the years considerably. Charles was alert and quick, with plenty of fire remaining behind the old eyes. Only the physical gave away his age, and even here only in his movements, for he was tall and straight, slim without appearing bony. He had once been a very powerful man, Bolan guessed. His jaw was long and hard, he was clean-shaven, his hair was thick and wavy, though snowy white. Bolan decided he would have liked to know Charles thirty or forty years before.

The escape route from de Sadehad been a sewer at some time in ages past. Charles accompanied Bolan out, proudly pointing out places where they had "restructured" around WW2 bomb damage to keep the old tunnel passable. Not too many years earlier, he added, a secret route of escape from the townhouse had been a must; now the tunnel was regarded as just another museum piece to be carefully preserved, as a link to the past.

"Anything goes in London these days," the old man told Bolan, his eyes twinkling. "Rather takes the fun out of sin, what?"

When they arrived at the other end, Bolan thanked him, delivered an offhand apology for the shattered television camera, then he climbed an iron ladder and lifted himself to the surface.

Charles, his face dimly illumined in the side glow of a pocket flashlight, was peering up at him with considerable anxiety. "Remember to look before you leap, Yank," he called up.

Grinning, Bolan replied, "Okay, I'll remember that, Brigadier."

"This crackling museum of ours. You should realize that it has a deeper meaning, quite aside from its obvious purpose. It's a symbol of ourtimes, Bolan. Remember that. Ourtimes."

Bolan's grin faded. He gave a curt wave and lowered the door on the concerned face. What, he wondered, prompted a grand old man like this into such questionable activities? He should be sitting out his days in a quiet clubroom somewhere, recounting the glories of days gone by. Instead, he played Secret Agent at a house of kinks.

Bolan shook Charles out of his mind and took up the problem at hand. He was in the basement of another building situated directly opposite the Museum de Sade. The Sades operated this establishment, too. It was a book store and sexprop shop. A dim yellow bulb revealed the basement was a storeroom, with cartons of merchandise stacked about rather haphazardly. Bolan went up the flight of rickety stairs, found a key where Charles had assured him he would, and let himself into the shop. Here was utter darkness, except for a limited penetration of street light through the windows up front.

Bolan moved quietly to the edge of darkness and took up a patient surveillance of activities outside. The fog was gone, except as a faintly visible pall hanging just above the rooftops. A half-dozen regularly spaced street lamps broke the darkness here and there about the square without actually relieving it. After several minutes of watchful waiting, someone just outside the shop but out of Bolan's range of vision lit a cigarette. Bolan saw the glow from the match and seconds later a puff of smoke drifting past the window. The guy was close.

Some minutes later a large car cruised past, moving slowly. It was an American make, quickly identified by Bolan as a Lincoln. Four, perhaps five persons were inside. Bolan's attention was drawn to a large spotlight mounted on the driver's side. These boys were a hunting party.

Shortly after the vehicle moved out of view, a man sauntered into the light of a street lamp across the way, seemed to consult a wrist watch, then he too faded into the darkness.

Yeah, it was a hard set.

The Lincoln returned some moments later and halted on Bolan's side of the square, out of his field of vision. A large man with thick shoulders immediately strolled past the shop, barely ten feet from Bolan's position, and disappeared in the direction of the vehicle. Almost at the same moment, the door opened at the Museum de Sadeand Ann Franklin came out. Bolan watched her tensely, wondering about her reception by those waiting in the street. She crossed the traffic circle and halted in the small park at the center, standing beneath a street lamp. She seemed to be looking toward the bookshop; Charles had told her, no doubt, of Bolan's mode of exit.

Bolan fidgeted and watched the girl. What the hell was she trying to do? As he watched, a man came out of the darkness walking directly toward the girl. He made a close pass and went on by, Ann swiveling to watch him out of sight. Had they spoken? Bolan could not tell; it had appeared not.

Seconds later a taxicab eased into the circle and halted alongside the girl. She entered and the cab went on. A moment later another vehicle which Bolan had not seen earlier swung into view and circled around to fall in behind the taxi.

No, she had not spoken. They'd made an identity pass, pulled the make, and were now following her. They were missing no bets.

Nor was Bolan. His quiet surveillance had gained him a rather valid impression of the terrain out there, and of the forces arrayed against him. It was a mighty hard set, too hard for any ideas of a frontal assault. So, once again, Bolan's time had come.

He went back through the shop and let himself out through the rear entrance. The alleyway was narrow, smelly, and densely dark, running along the side of the shop and dead-ending a few feet to the rear. Bolan took the only way out, moving cautiously toward the square, and rounded the corner in a casual stroll. The big man he had noted earlier outside the shop was now standing just downrange, leaning against a building about halfway between the shop and the Lincoln, arms folded across his chest in a stance of tired boredom. He did not see Bolan until they were in an almost direct confrontation, then he started visibly and whispered, "Shit, don't come up like that. You scared the—"

Bolan told him, "Relax. I don't think the guy's over there. I think it's a bum stand." He edged in close to the man, keeping a distant street lamp behind him.

"Is that what Danno thinks?"

"Yeh," Bolan replied. His mind was clicking out the name. Danno Giliamo? Could be. A lieutenant in a New Jersey mob. Bolan probed. "Jersey was never like this, eh," he said disgustedly.

"Any place is like this at two in th' morning," the man replied. He was showing an interest in Bolan's face and having a bad time at identification in the London blackness.

Probably, Bolan guessed, wondering about rank. People in the mob were very rank conscious. Bolan pushed his advantage. "Go on over and get some coffee," he commanded gruffly.

"They got coffee over there?"

"I saidcoffee, didn't I?"

The man sighed, mumbled something disparaging about "English coffee," and dug in his pocket for a cigarette. Bolan slapped the pack out of his hand, snarling, "Whatta you, nuts? You don't go lighting no fires out here!"

"You said it was a bum stand," the man replied quietly. He retrieved the cigarettes and dropped them into a pocket. "Look," he added, "I didn't come all the way over here for a cup of lousy coffee. I want a shot at that hundred thou. Now if the guy ain't here, then I say let's go find out where he's at."

A contract man, Bolan thought. Bounty hunter, twentieth century style. Not even in the mob, but a freelancer. This intelligence opened interesting possibilities. Bolan pushed a step further.

"What's your name again?" he growled.

"Dunlap," the big man replied defiantly. "Jack Dunlap. You want me to spell it?"

"Just don't forget, Jack Dunlap," Bolan said, playing for all the marbles now, "that Danno and me are standing your expenses." He chuckled drily. "I like a hot-trotter. You get over there and have yourself some coffee. And you tell Danno that Frankie says you get a spot up front. Understand? Where the action is. Eh?"

The man was grinning. He said, "Sure, Frankie. You won't be sorry. What I hit stays hit, you'll see."

"Just save enough to identify, eh?"

"Sure." Dunlap chuckled. "I go for the gut, so I hope you don't identify by belly buttons." He made one last futile attempt to get a good look at Bolan's face, then moved on out and started across the street.

Bolan immediately glided down to the Lincoln which was idling at the curb just downrange, lights out, engine running. A stir of interest inside the vehicle greeted his approach. He bent down to speak through the driver's window and snapped, "You boys get out there and cover Dunlap. He's spotted something."

Three doors opened instantly and quiet feet began moving off into the darkness. The driver remained in his seat. Bolan swung the door open and snarled, "You too, dammit, get out there!"

The man leapt out and ran quietly after the others. Bolan leaned inside and found the control lever for the spotlight. An instant later a brilliant beam stabbed across the darkness of the square and picked up the sauntering figure of Jack Dunlap.

Bolan roared, "There he is!"

Dunlap froze for an instant when the beam hit him, then he spun about with a large revolver in his hand and tried to dive out of the sudden brilliance. Others reacted quicker, and a hail of fire swept the spot, jerking the man about Eke a rag doll and punching him to the ground.

Bolan was behind the wheel and easing the car forward. "Wrong guy!" he yelled, and the spot picked up another figure running in from the far side of the square. This one halted stockstill and thrust his hands high overhead.

"Not me!" he screeched as another rattling volley descended, and sieved him, and flung him into eternity.

Bolan had the vehicle moving swiftly now, out into the traffic circle with all lights extinguished, and angling toward a broad exit. Sporadic bursts of gunfire continued to disrupt the stillness of the night and an excited voice over near the Museum de Sadewas loudly demanding a ceasefire.

Bolan opened the big car up going into the turn. A gun crew at the corner gaped at him as he roared past, but no shots followed him. Apparently the confusion was complete.

Allies, Bolan was thinking, should at least know each other. They should, also, know their enemy.

This was an admonition which the executioner would have cause to remember later. For the moment, he was free and running through the wet wild woods of Londontown.

Chapter Four

The closing jungle

Danno Giliamo was a mighty unhappy man. Twice in one night he had set a flawless trap for that Bolan bastard, and twice in one night the bastard had skipped lightly away and left a pile of bleeding bodies behind him.

"The trouble," Danno complained to his local contact, "is that I'm trying to do a job with nothing but a bunch of two-bit amateurs. We're never going to nail that guy with this kind of talent."

Nick Trigger, a powerfully built man about forty-five, thoughtfully chewed the end of an unlighted cigar, and studied the troubled caporegimefrom Jersey. Known earlier by various names—Endante, Fumerri, Woods, to list only the most recent—Nick had been a trigger man with various eastern mobs since the late forties. He had come to England less than a year earlier, with false papers and under the name Nicholas Woods, and with a singular mission to perform for the council of bosses back home in the U.S. In coded communications travelling between the two countries, this veteran triggerman was identified as Nick Trigger, and the code name had stuck.

Nick's mission in England was true to his trade. He had been commissioned to discourage organized competition with the mob's British arm during their entrenchment there. A better man for the task could hardly have been chosen. Tough, tenacious, highly intelligent and coldly merciless, he is thought to have figured directly or indirectly in more than a hundred Mafia executions during his criminal career. Many of these victims had formerly been close associates.

Now, as Nick Trigger, this same assassin was chief British enforcer for the Council of Capo's, reporting directly to the Commissione—and he was not entirely happy with the untidy bundle being edged into his lap by the man from Jersey. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and quietly asked his visitor, "How many boys you running with, Danno?"

Nervously, Giliamo replied, "I brought a dozen of my personal crew, and now two of them are hurt. I got about twenty freelancers left, ones I brought with me. Local talent I never know about, it keeps varying. For every one that gets shot, I lose ten to the trembling shakes."

"Well how many locals you think you got right now?"

"I think maybe a couple dozen."

Trigger whistled softly. "Hell, you got a regular army. You can't nail Bolan with all that?"

"You gotta see this guy to believe it," Giliamo said. "It ain't numbers that's going to get him, it's talent. Now I got some pretty damn good boys with me, Nick, but I ain't got any in thatbastard's league. As for these tagalong rodmen, it's almost criminal neglect to even put them on the firing line. This Bolan just whacks 'em down and sends for some more. You ought to see what he did to us on this last hit, and I bet he didn't fire a shot hisself. He had my boys shootin' each otherup."

"He's pretty tricky, eh?"

"Cunning is the word, Nick. This fuckin' boy is cunning."

Nick Trigger chewed his cigar for another thoughtful moment, then asked, "Just what is it you want from me, Danno?"

"I thought maybe you'd like to take it over, Nick."

"This Bolan hit?"

"Yeah. I don't know anybody else off hand could handle this job except Nick Trigger."

"I hear he put down the Talifero brothers in Miami," the other murmured.

"Hard, he put them down damnhard, that's right. I was there. I saw it. Not just the brothers got put down. The whole place was a disaster area."

"The Talifero's are about the two meanest boys around anywhere," Nick Trigger observed, sighing. "What the hell, maybe this boy Bolan is as big as his reputation."

"He is, Nick," Giliamo quickly affirmed. "Bigger maybe. He scares the living shit outta my boys, I gotta be honest about that. They're so jittery and keyed-up they start shooting holes in each other if anything moves. I gotta be honest about this. I don't know anybody could take this boy except maybe you."

The veteran triggerman smiled grimly. "Don't try buttering me up, Danno. I don't take jobs on butter."

"I'm just being honest," Giliamo assured him. "You know I'm just being honest, Nick."

"Yeah." Trigger was thinking about it. "I been walking a thin line here in England, you know. I mean, a lot's at stake and we don't have things nailed down too good. I have a hell of a big job without all this other trouble."

"I know, Nick, I know. I was just thinking that…"

"We got a lot of legit money invested around. Hell we got movie companies and theatres, clubs, casinos— hell, we got a lot of money strung out around here, Danno. We even have musical groups and records and that kind of stuff. And it's tight—the competish is tight. Nobody's on the make in this town, neither. I mean the cops, the government people—they don't have any handle to grab hold of. I never saw such an honest damn country as this one."

"I understood you wasn't involved in the business end of things," Giliamo said. "I mean, you're enforcing, right?"

"Yeah you're right, Danno, but what I'm staying is all this makes my job tougher. If you can't buy security then you got to takeit—right? I mean, hell, if the local biggies won't cooperate then you have to carve out a territory the best way you can. And that means I'm busier'n hell, Danno."

"Well, I figure you could handle this job just one two three, Nick. And it would be a real feather in your cap. I mean, you know, it'd show everybody once and for all that you're two heads bigger than the Talifero boys. Right?"

Nick Trigger let out a tired sigh. He plucked at his tie and pushed a coffee cup in little circles about the table. "I'd have to clear it with the people back home," he said.

"That wouldn't be any trouble," Giliamo assured him. "They want Bolan more'n they want Manhattan. I'd appreciate it, though, if you'd put it in a way that wouldn't make me look like an ass. You know. Just tell 'em I don't know the town or something, and you'd like to take over and get this Bolan out of your hair real quick. You know. Don't make it look like I'm flat on my ass."

"Yeah, well, what you say is true, Danno." Trigger told him. "Many more open gunfights around here and the whole town will pull up tight. I don't need the CLD swarming around my operation. Those boys are bad news all the way."

"What's that ODD?" asked the man from Jersey.

"That's what Scotland Yard calls their dick force, Criminal Investigation Division. They're worse news than the feds back home."

"So that's what you tell 'em," Giliamo quickly replied. "Tell 'em you want to take over, and that I'll stick around to help out."

"Okay. Let me think about it," the British enforcer said quietly. But he had already thought about it. Bolan would be a real plum, and at just about the right time. Nick Trigger had the British territory in much better shape than he'd let on to Danno Giliamo. Pretty soon he'd be needing to move onward and upward. And it wouldn't hurt a thing to come home looking two heads bigger than the Talifero brothers. Hell no, it wouldn't hurt a thing.

In an imposing building beside the Thames a group of grim faced men were sitting down to a new day with a rather large sized new problem confronting them. They were solemn, some sleepy and obviously newly awake. There was a minimum of conversation. The time was barely four o'clock.

Their leader stood stiffly in front of a wall chart of the city of London, his arms folded against his chest, and waited until all had been seated and the subdued greetings quietly exchanged. Then he dropped his arms to his side, advanced a couple of steps to a small rostrum, fiddled with a paper lying there, and said, "Well, it's a brisk hour to be starting the day, isn't it? I can see that we're all fired up and anxious to be cracking along, so I'll make this as brief as possible."

He paused, as though expecting some reaction to his dry humor. Receiving none, he plunged right in. "It's this chap Bolan, the American answer to overpopulation. We have good reason to believe that he entered this country at Dover late last night."

He received his reaction then. Sleepy eyes suddenly became wide-awake, a fellow at the rear closed his mouth in mid-yawn, others exchanged significant glances which meant that a rumor had just been confirmed.

"So you can understand the early hour call. There's much to be done and not nearly enough time, we fear, to get it all in. Please listen alertly, take notes, question anything that isn't crystal clear to you. Very quickly now, here are the facts as known at this…"

The meeting took forty minutes and revealed the full scope of Scotland Yard's reaction to the Bolan presence in England. All routine police business had been temporarily suspended, all furloughs indefinitely cancelled, shift rotations halted, and the full force of the most impressive police establishment in existence brought to bear directly upon the problem of Mack Bolan.

It was an extraordinary reaction, but a carefully considered one. Bolan's presence in France, and the resulting uproar there, had been closely noted by the men this side of the channel. The chance that Bolan would come to England had been weighed as a fifty-fifty question, and a rather thin security screen had been set up at all likely points of entry. Bolan had slipped in and in the space of a few hours two explosive and widely separated gun battles had erupted.

Contingency plans had been drawn up at Scotland Yard some days earlier, ready to be put into operation at a moment's notice. Already the machinery was in motion, the inexorable gears of British crime control meshing into the problem. Special squads were activated, undercover contacts alerted, and hot lines opened to underworld informers all about the city. All public transportation terminals were placed under close surveillance, car rental and taxicab companies were alerted, and a watch was established on all persons known or suspected to have connections with organized crime.