The Executioner (№6) - Assault on Soho

The battle for Britain was on, and the Executioner's jungle was again closing in on him.

Chapter Five

The running tide

Bolan had definitely not desired a hot war in London. He knew neither the land nor the people, and his intelligence concerning local Mafia activities was practically nil. There were several names in his target book, and that was all: he had no addresses, no rundown of activities, no feel whatever about the enemy. The only logical course of action that presented itself to him was to get the hell away from there, and with as little lost motion as possible. His intention upon his departure from France, had been to skim through England and quickly out again, U.S. bound. This initiative had been taken away from him, though, with the appearance of Ann Franklin into his life. For the moment, he had felt it best to run with the tide—and he had done so.

The brief skirmish outside the Museum de Sadewas now more than an hour behind him. He had been running loose since that time with no particular objective in mind except to keep moving. He had driven aimlessly, winding and circling through the maze-like metropolis while considering alternate plans of action.

Ann Franklin and old Charles kept crowding into his mind, along with the cocky little rooster who'd stood unarmed in his path in that upstairs clubroom and the anonymous men who had helped him out of Dover and through the police lines into London. Why? Why all of it? Why anyof it? The lengths they had gone to, all the planning and intrigue and personal danger… what manner of peril had prompted them into such a hazardous undertaking?

Bolan was feeling guilty about his treatment of the people of the de Sade. He recognized this, and attempted to combat the feeling with logic. Regardless of their motives, he argued, few things could be more perilous than an alignment with Mack Bolan. Recent history substantiated this conclusion. Everyone who had held out a hand of friendship to the Executioner had gotten that hand promptly chopped off, in one way or another. The Mafia did not take kindly to active sympathy for their enemies. Bolan's list of beloved dead stretched all the way back to the California battles, and hovered on his conscience like an open wound. And in France he had damn near…

He wrenched off the thought and flung it away. The Executioner could not afford the luxury of mourning. Following that heart-rending action in France, Bolan had sworn to never again allow himself any involvements with friendly units. And now he was reaffirming that position; he would not involve the Sades.

Case closed.

Next problem, get out of London. This could be no easy chore in a "hot" vehicle, especially a big foreign job that stood out like a neon sign.

As an additional complication, Bolan was lost. The appropriated car had come complete with a street map of the city, but only principal thoroughfares and notable landmarks were shown. Since his discovery of the map, Bolan had found nothing to offer him an orientation to the lay of the city and his relative position in the sprawling confusion.

After several minutes of travelling the maze, however, he came out on a broad avenue and shortly thereafter passed a planetarium and Madame Tussaud's wax-works. Now Bolan had his fix. He was on Marylebone Road, just south of Regent's Park and Zoological Gardens.

He swung into the park and stopped the car to study the map and develop some logic of the London layout. He was far north and a bit west of center. London Airport lay south and even further west. He quickly traced a street route between the two points; then, on impulse, he got out of the car and went back to inspect the trunk compartment.

As soon as he looked in Bolan knew that he had gained far more than a set of wheels; he'd inherited an arsenal. The trunk was crammed with weapons— among them a sawed-off shotgun, an efficient little Israeli Uzisubmachinegun, and an impressive high-powered bolt action piece, a Weatherby Mark V with a sniperscope and about fifty rounds of .460 Magnum heartstoppers. This last find evoked a low whistle from the arms expert. It came in a leather case vriaidi may have cost as much as the rifle itself; the gun was loaded and ready to roar, and it had been sighted-in with calibrations up to 1,000 yards. In a pocket of the guncase Bolan found a trajectory graph and a ballistics chart. This drew another appreciative response. According to the graph, trajectory drop was less than five inches at maximum calibrated range, and the point-blank range (no correction required) was a little better than 400 yards.

The Weatherby was a precision piece, and it had been further refined by a real craftsman. Bolan was not only happy to have the gun—he was damned glad that an enemy no longer had it. Anyone who could work-in a rifle like that would certainly know how to make the proper use of it. This item of knowledge also sharpened the Executioner's respect for the enemy. All were not clowns; some were masters of death, and the Weatherby served to remind him of this grim fact.

Now he had cause for wonder about the big Lincoln and its proposed role in the British squeeze on Bolan. These gunners had obviously come loaded for bear, and it seemed unlikely that a couple of brief firefights would deter them from their hunt.

Bolan resecured the weapons in the trunk and sent the car along to his next point of reference, the intersection of Marylebone Road and Baker Street, then along Baker to Oxford and over to the broad Park Lane at the eastern edge of Hyde Park. He passed the London Hilton and circled to Knightsbridge, then began angling toward Cromwell Road and London Airport.

His first port o' call would be the air express terminal to pick up the bag he had sent ahead from Paris. It contained items he could use immediately—such as a change of suits and a pair of shoes with both heels intact. There were also some special cosmetics he'd picked up in a shop at Marseilles which might prove beneficial.

As for the weapons now in the trunk of the Lincoln, Bolan had already written them off. If things worked out right he would not and could not make any use of them—Bolan was fading, not charging. There was a twinge of regret over the Weatherby. As for the other stuff, general weapons could be picked up anywhere, when and as the need arose. For the moment, the Beretta was weapon enough.

London Airport presented itself as a confusing sprawl. Overseas flights used one terminal, intra-European flights another. To complicate matters, the road signs directing traffic into the complex could have meant as much to Bolan if printed in Singhalese, and the fog was much worse in this area. After some twenty minutes of trial and error, he found his way to the freight terminal. Then he devoted another ten minutes to a soft recon of that part of the airpark. When finally he went inside to claim the bag, Bolan knew all the ways in and out and the Lincoln was ready for an unobstructed departure.

His business at the express office was conducted quickly and without difficulty. The customs formalities had been taken care of at the shipping point, and Bolan identified himself with a fake American passport he had purchased in Paris. He returned to the car and deposited the bag on the rear seat, then set off for the overseas passenger area. Here he parked in a zone reserved for buses from the BOAC Air Terminal in London, grabbed the bag, and walked briskly toward the flight facility.

When he was within a few yards of his goal, hurrying footsteps sounded at his side and a strained emotional voice advised him, "You musn't go in there, Mr. Bolan."

Ann Franklin, it seemed, was not yet entirely out of his life.

She was compellingly appealing in a London Fog minicoat, a jaunty little hat, and a very worried face. Bolan's hand slipped inside his jacket, and he growled, "Why not?"

"Charles thought you'd wish to know," she reported breathlessly. "The CID is out in force, searching for you. Here too. Charles says there will be an undercover man at each booking stall."

"At each what?"

"The ticketing windows—the places where you purchase… never mind, you simply cannot get out this way."

Bolan's decision was typically quick. He took the girl by the arm and returned to the parked car, put her and the bag inside, then slid in behind the wheel and quietly departed.

When they were clear of the airport proper he said, "Thanks again. But just how clean are you?"

"What?"

"You left the museum with a Mafia tail."

"Oh, that." She gave the lovely head a disdainful toss. "I left them chasing their own tails around Piccadilly."

Bolan turned her a warm grin. "You're something else," he said in a quietly respectful tone.

"In American, I hope that's good," she replied, smiling.

"Yeah, it is." He sighed and added, "How long have you been standing out in the cold waiting for me?"

"Not long," she assured him. "We weren't all that certain that you hadn't slipped out before. Charles rung me at just past four. I came straight out. Major Stone took the BOAC Terminal. Harry Parks, that's the large one who chauffeured us into London—Harry went to intercept you at the West London Terminal." She laughed nervously. "I think it perfectly fitting that Idrew the lucky spot."

Drily, Bolan said, "Yeah. Lucky you."

She ignored the sarcasm. "By the by, that was a smashing escape from Soho. Charles described it for me. We're all so very proud of you, you know."

Bolan was feeling more the heel with every passing moment. Very solemnly, he asked the girl, "What do you people want from me, Ann?"

"Just now," she told him, "all we want is that you remain alive. And we want you to allow us to help you accomplish just that."

Bolan could not argue a jungle logic into the situation. He smiled faintly, a barely visible twisting of the lips, and said, "Okay, we'll play it that way. For now. But keep one thing in mind. As long as you are friendly to me, you have inherited all my enemies—and those people play very rough games. On the other hand, if you turn out to be myenemy… well, I have my rough moments also."

"We understand all that," she replied in a small voice. "And we accept all risks."

Bolan had no ready response, and they drove in silence for several minutes, heading back toward London via Cromwell Road. Then Ann told him, "Gloucester Road is just ahead. Take a left there. We'll go up Paddington and cross to the north."

"Where's our destination?" Bolan muttered.

"Queen's House," she replied. "You have the key in your pocket, I believe."

"That's your place," he said.

"Yes, it's my place. My secretplace, count on that. It's safe there."

"Okay, I'll count on it," Bolan told her, staring stonily forward.

She leaned against him, resting her face on his arm. "Don't seem so grim, Mr. Bolan. It will be just you and me. And we will… get to know one another far better."

Bolan greeted the prospect with mixed emotions. A vision of the torture cells at Museum de Sadeflashed through his mind. He glanced down upon the lovely head at his shoulder and experienced a trickling little tightness in his guts.

"Let's hope," he murmured, "that our familiarity does not breed contempt."

"I have no worry about that," she whispered. But Bolan did. Which way, he wondered, was the tide running now?

Chapter Six

Crisis

Bolan dropped off to scout the area on foot while Ann Franklin circled about to put the car away in a garage at the rear of the building. Russell Square turned out to be an attractive little park in London's northeast section, close by the University of London and the British Museum. Queen's House headed a row of neat Georgian town houses which angled away to the south of the square, in what appeared to be a neighborhood of family hotels, pleasant rooming houses, and old but probably expensive apartment buildings. Bolan's recon was thorough but swift, and revealed no evidence of enemy presence. He met Ann at the garage, picked up his bag, and they went into the house through the rear entrance.

To Bolan's surprise, the girl's apartment was very plain. Somehow he had expected a continuation of the erotic motif at Museum de Sade. Instead he found minimal furnishings, an almost masculine austerity of decor, and a library atmosphere.

"Welcome to Ann's Retreat," the girl said quietly, then explained, "I don't live here, actually. It's my run-away-to place when I feel the need of privacy."

Bolan carried his bag on through the living room and paused at the windows to peer through a crack in the draperies. It was still dark out, thin fog haloing the street lamps in the park directly opposite.

"Bedroom is to the left, kitchen to the right," Ann announced. "Which are you most interested in, bed or board?"

Bolan turned to her with a sigh and said, "I'm suddenly running out of steam. Guess I'm pretty beat."

"The loo is off the bedroom," she told him.

"The what?"

She laughed. "Sorry, the bath. You look as though you'd love to have one."

"Thanks, I would." He went into the bedroom and placed his bag on a chair and opened it. The girl was watching him—rather nervously, he thought—from the doorway. He removed his jacket and asked her, "Okay if I put these things on some hangers?"

Her eyes were lingering on the gun harness at his chest. "Yes, of course," she replied in a near whisper. She pointed out the closet. "Over there."

The closet was totally bare except for a half-dozen wire hangers. Bolan put his jacket and his spare suit in there and said, "Ann's Retreat, eh?"

"Yes," she replied from the doorway. "I told you that I don't live here. I live with Major Stone."

"I see."

She came on into the room then and stood tensely by as Bolan continued unpacking. "I suppose I've given you a false impression," she told him. "Earlier, I mean. When I told you that we would… get to know each other. I did not mean… in bed."

Bolan showed her a tired smile. "Of course not," he said.

"But it's nothing personally against you," she hastened to add. "Actually I… well it's simply… that… I-I'm terrified of men, you see. All men, not just you."

Bolan stared at her through a moment of silence, then he nodded his head and said, "Okay."

He opened the false bottom of the suitcase and took out what remained of his "war chest." It had shrunk to a few thousand dollars, in bills of large denomination, and made a rather thin stack. He placed the money on a bedside table and lay the Beretta atop it, then came out of the harness and began removing his shirt.

Ann Franklin was fingering a nylon nightsuit he'd placed on the bed. "You wear black underwear?" she asked solemnly.

Bolan chuckled. "That's my combat uniform," he told her. "Some soldadosI met in Miami told me that it strikes fear into the hearts of my enemy. But that's not why I wear it. The color gives me a nighttime invisibility, and the skintight fit helps me in and out of tight places."

"Like the commandos," she commented.

"I guess so. That was before my time, though."

She nodded. "Mine also." Their conversation was becoming less strained, more comradely. The girl had unfolded the suit and was holding it to her body. "Does it keep you warm?"

"Pretty well," Bolan replied. He was seated on the edge of the bed, removing shoes and socks. "It's a thermal suit."

"I see."

"Did, uh, you really mean that… about men?"

She colored visibly and dropped the suit to the bed. "Yes I—it's silly, I know. I suppose it's… the men I've known."

"Like Major Stone, eh," Bolan said quietly.

"Don't misunderstand that," she quickly replied. "Major Stone is the only father I've known. He's raised me from the age of 12."

"Uh-huh." Bolan pawed through the bag for his electric shaver.

She seemed to have a need to explain. "Major Stone has never mistreated me, never. He's protected me from… all that. And he's always given me the best of everything."

"Good for him," Bolan murmured. He was suddenly very tired. "I don't suppose you'd have any coffee around here."

"Oh, yes," she said, moving toward the doorway. "You get your bath, and I'll be doing things in the kitchen."

Bolan watched her out of sight, troubling thoughts nagging at him. None of this, he was thinking, made any sense at all. He was becoming too fatigued to care, however. He finished undressing and removed his watch, noting the time at close to seven o'clock. It had been a long night. It was cold in the bedroom, but Bolan was too tired to shiver. He picked up the Beretta and the shaving case and went into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, Ann Franklin rapped lightly on the bathroom door and walked in. She carried a tray and was humming softly under her breath. Bolan was lying back in a tub of steaming water, seemingly utterly relaxed and half asleep in a sea of suds, but half-closed eyes were watching the girl's every movement.

She maneuvered a low stool alongside the tub and set the tray on it. Her eyes found the Beretta, jammed into a towel rack within Bolan's easy reach. Whimsically, she said, "I've heard of sleepingwith one's pistol, Mr. Bolan, but isn't this a bit ridiculous?" The comradely tone was gone, Bolan noted, replaced by the earlier tense nervousness.

"Survival," he replied, his speech slurring a bit, "is never ridiculous."

Her eyes fell and she said, "Of course you would know more about that than I. Well," she added, with a forced perkiness, "I have bere coffee and muffins, which are also a matter of survival. Shall we break bread over the tub?"

Bolan grinned and reached for the coffee. She placed the cup in his hand and asked him, "How long since you've slept?"

He carefully sipped the coffee, then replied, "I forget."

"Then it's been much too long." She knelt on the floor beside the tub, broke a muffin, and held it to his lips. He ate, realizing that it had also been some time since that event. She told him, "You are an unusual person, Mr. Bolan."

"Not really," he murmured. "I'm an ordinary person in unusual circumstances. Are you still afraid of me?"

She hesitated, then whispered, "As a person, no, I suppose not."

"I'm afraid of you," he told her.

Another pause, then: "I don't find that particularly flattering."

Bolan sighed. "It's the survival instinct," he explained, grinning tiredly. "I have to suspect the very worst in everybody."

"Then why survive?" she asked dully. "I mean…"

After a brief and almost embarrassed silence, Bolan said, "I know what you mean." He had asked himself the same question, many times. Though Ann Franklin apparently could not, some thinker had long ago expressed her idea rather well: when love and trust are dead, then the man himself is dead and awaiting only official notification of the fact. Yeah, Bolan had considered the idea. And rejected it. He told the girl, "I have a job to do. I live to do that job. That's what survival means to me."

Small-voiced, she replied, "You're speaking of your job as executioner."

He sighed. "Yes. That's the job."

"You live only to Mil."

"That's about it." He finished the coffee and returned the cup to her hand.

"I simply cannot believe that," she told him.

He shrugged. "Then don't."

"If you came to believe that I were your enemy, you would kill me?"

He smiled faintly. "Are you my enemy?"

"No."

He said, "I've never killed a friend."

She gazed at him with sad eyes, then got to her feet with a loud sigh. "You have no truefriends in England, Mr. Bolan. I suggest that you simply slaughter the entire population straightaway, and leave as quickly as possible."

She went out, lightly closing the door behind her.

Well hell, Bolan told himself. She'd been trying to get him to open himself up, to give her something to admire, perhaps something to pity. For what? Games of conscience. She was mixed up in something she did not like, and she wanted someone to tell her it was all worthwhile.

Well, she would not get it from Bolan. He had a hard enough time keeping himself convinced. Right now, for example, it would be so easy to simply slip beneath the warm water and give it all up. No more fear, no more pain, no more blood, just blissful euphoria and quiet oblivion in the soothing warmth of Ann Franklin's bath. Why not? After all, who the hell was Mack Bolan to appoint himself physician to a sick society? So what if the Mafia cancer was spreading into vital tissues?—weren't there other surgeons around who were better equipped than Bolan for the job?

Wasn't it sheer ego that kept him on the job? They'd called him a Quixote in the press. They should have called him a cockalorum—yeah, that would be more like it—Sergeant Self-importance, self-appointed Saviour of the Western World.

Bolan had gone for more than sixty hours without sleep. During that period he had been under constant stress, harassed by lawmen and the underworld alike while effecting a "tactical retreat" covering hundreds of miles and many different modes of transport. He had fought his way out of four death traps and eluded the police of three nations, yet he had failed to make his way back to "safe" territory. And now he was at the point of complete physical and mental exhaustion, his last bit of reserve strength fully gone, occupying a narrow ledge of questionable refuge in a world trying its best to swallow him.

Lesser men would have succumbed to the pull of defeat far sooner than this. For Bolan, the moment of defeat had come as a reaction to a young woman's visible disgust, and the wave that inundated him was the cresting of his own mind and soul in a deep pool of self-doubt.

For one infinite and timeless moment he hung there in suspension between the instinct for life and the comfort of death as he let go and slid beneath the actual waters of the warm bath—and then he came threshing out of it, coughing and spluttering and lunging for the Beretta.

Though his present danger was totally within himself, the depths of his exhaustion projected phantom enemies somewhere out there, and Bolan's response came from the very core of himself. When Ann Franklin stepped back through the doorway, in response to the commotion, Bolan was sitting upright in the tub. His fist was full of Beretta, suds were clustered about his face, his eyes were straining for focus, and he was muttering, "It's okay, it's okay."

The girl immediately understood the situation. She dropped to her knees at the tub, one arm going out to encircle his shoulders, the other hand gently and carefully working at the deathgrip on the pistol.

"Give me the gun, Mack," she whispered.

"It's okay," he told her.

Bolan was technically unconscious, and Ann Franklin knew it. "Give me the gun," she urged, "before you get it all wet." The struggle ended then. She took control of the Beretta and carefully placed it on the floor, then pulled the plug from the drain and put a towel about Bolan's shoulders. "Let's go to bed," she whispered.

He struggled out of the tub and steadied himself with a hand against the wall while Ann towelled him dry, then she moved inside the arm and helped him into the bedroom.

"It's okay," he told her again as she fought the covers back and guided his head to the pillow.

"Yes yes, I know," she assured him.

"Where's my gun?"

She returned to the bathroom for the pistol, showed it to him, and shoved it under the pillow. "How's that?" she whispered.

"Great." Bolan's eyes focussed on the girl then, awareness flashed there, and he muttered, "Hell, I'm naked."

"Utterly," she replied, smiling solemnly. "Body and soul." She flipped the covers over him and said, "Get some sleep now."

He was laboring to hold the focus. "You asked… why I bother to live. Okay. I live to win. When I die, they'vewon. Can't let them win, see. Show them… they're not God. Throw death… back in their teeth, see."

"Yes, yes, I see."

"That's all it means. Not ego… not cockalorum… it's tactics. That's the game. Beat them… at their own game, see."

"Yes. I understand that now." She began removing her clothing, her eyes steady on his.

"What're you doing?" he asked thickly.

She removed her bra, waved it delicately over the bed, then dropped it to the floor. "Getting ready for bed," she replied. "Girls sleep too, you know."

Bolan lifted himself groggily to one elbow as she stepped out of the panties. "Better not," he growled. "I'm not all that beat."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," she replied solemnly. She slid in beneath the covers and snuggled over to him. "I have a survival problem also, you know," she confided in a quivery whisper.

He clasped her in both arms, pulling her in tight, and murmured, "This is great."

"Uh huh." A moment later Ann felt his embrace slacken. Borderline consciousness had surrendered to complete exhaustion. She pushed him onto his back and adjusted the pillow to his head, studied the strong face for a moment, then impulsively kissed his lips.

"Big bad Bolan," she whispered, then nestled her face in his throat and very contentedly joined him in sleep.

For both of them, man and woman, a survival crisis had been reached and passed, each in their own way. It was not to be the final one for either of them.

Chapter Seven

Counterpoint

The Executioner's long night had ended, but across the Atlantic, in an eastern U.S. city, that same night was just beginning, with an informal meeting of Mafia bosses. The site of the conference was the suburban home of Augie Marinello, head of a powerful New York family: the subject was Mack Bolan, and what to do about him.

Contrary to popular myth, there was no "boss of all the bosses," or Chief Capo. There had been none since the violent demise in 1931 of the first and final Capo di tutti Capi, Salvatore Maranzano. Instead, each Cosa Nostra "family" now had representation on La Commissione, or Council of Bosses, which ruled the sprawling crime syndicate.

The present meeting was not a full council, but considerable power was represented there. In attendance were Marinello and the bosses of two other New York families, plus the overlords of several neighboring territories. Only once since the embarrassingly aborted 1957 summit meeting at Appalachia had a new full conference been attempted. And that one, at Miami a short few weeks earlier, had become a fiasco to wipe Appalachia out of the mind forever, thanks to Mack The Bastard Bolan.

Now the eastern power clique sat in sullen thoughtfulness. Each of the men present had been present also at Miami; some bore visible wounds to remind them of the traumatic event; all bore wounds of the soul which would never heal, haunting their dreams and irritating their waking moments. Miami would never be foregotten. Nor would the man who had caused it all.

Two burly men in tailored suits moved silently about the conference table, pouring wine from napkined magnums. With this chore completed, they quietly withdrew and closed the doors on the convention of royalty.

Augie Marinello, host of the occasion, broke the silence with a deep-throated growl. "So the" bastard turns up in England," he said.

Arnesto "Arnie Farmer" Castiglione, chief of the lower Atlantic seaboard, shifted uncomfortably in his chair and explained, "So I guess we didn't get him in France. I got to apologize for the bum dope. But I would've sworn… I mean, I just don't see how the bastard could have got out alive."

"It looks like he did," spoke up a Pennsylvania boss.

"Bet your ass he did," said the man from Jersey. "I got a bunch of dead soldiers over in England to prove it."

Arnie Farmer grimaced. "Don't tell me about dead soldiers. We're still counting the dead in France, and tryin' to get the rest out of jail."

Marinello sighed loudly and sibilantly. "I got word from Nick Trigger." His glance flicked to the Jersey boss. "He wants to take over the Bolan hunt."

"I got a full crew over there right now, Augie," the Jersey man advised.

"Sure, but how're they doing?" Marinello asked thoughtfully.

"Well… like I told you, they've made contact twice."

"We made contacts all over the place down in Miami," an upstate boss pointed out. "So what's that make anything?"

"They're good boys," Jersey argued. "I think they're on top of it pretty good."

"Bullshit," said Arnie Farmer.

"Whattaya mean, bullshit?" Jersey flared back.

"I mean I sent a whole damn army to France, a regular AEF f'Christ's sake, and not even half of 'em got back. That's what I mean bullshit. I mean boys like Sammy Shiv and Fat Angelo and Quick Tony went to France and never came back, that's what I mean bullshit." He tasted his wine, returning the angry glare from New Jersey over the rim of the glass. "So who've you got in England that's on top of it pretty good?"

"I got Danno Giliamo and his boys," Jersey replied through flattened lips.

Arnie Farmer raised his eyebrows in respectful receipt of this news and replied, "Okay so I'm surprised you sent Danno. I take it back the bullshit remark."

"Danno's a regular bulldog," Marinello put in. "Nobody'll say different to that—and listen—it's no dig at Danno that I'd like to see Nick Trigger take over the hit. Nick tells me that he talked this over with Danno— and Danno says it's okay with him. Listen, this is no time for hurt feelings. We've got to stop this boy, hard and fast. And the cost is getting out of hand, it's getting awful."