Washington I.O.U. Read online

  “Yeah, well … it’s been nice, Pointer. Uh, use that in your contacts with me. Scramble it good when you’re talking. You know the routine.”

  They shook hands, and the man from blood walked quickly away.

  The meeting had consumed only a minute or two.

  But it had been refreshing as hell.

  That was a man back there, he was thinking.

  Where the hell were all the others?

  13: PACERS

  The pace of the Executioner’s war on Washington shifted from deadlier to deadliest immediately following that mid-afternoon meeting with Harold Brognola. A series of strikes, obviously planned and timed to perfection, sent shock waves through official Washington and brought on “a crisis” in the unified police establishment.

  The first target of that new round was a fashionable residence in the city’s northwest section, not far from Embassy Row. It was the rented home of “Jaffie” Little, a budding Washington socialite who had risen to national prominence as “the Pearl Mesta of the younger set.”

  In the words of the police lieutenant who headed that investigation, Bolan “rousted Miss Little, forced her to open a wall safe, terrified several female house guests, and shot dead in their tracks two security officers employed by Miss Little.”

  Bolan himself would later report to Harold Brognola, “You can fill in another block and name it Jaffie Little. She’s been supplying drugs and sex for the VIP beautiful children, catering specifically to the diplomatic community. I smell an underground UN operation, built on the same brand of intimidation they’re using on our federal people. Fill in the block and then cross it out. Jaffie Little is now out of business. And, oh yeah, get word to the people in New York. Jaffie’s counterpart there is a gal called Trudy Hamilton.”

  The trail from Jaffie Little led to a physical culture “spa” in Georgetown. The official police report from that sector used the terms “bloody rampage” and “wholesale carnage” in describing that strike.

  “This was no hit on the Mafia,” declared a federal officer. “Bolan just ran wild in there, slaughtering innocent civilians. I don’t see how any of his apologizers can justify this one. He gunned down four reputable citizens in a sauna room and another six in the recreation area. Those last six he tossed into the swimming pool after he shot them. These ten victims were all highly reputable attorneys engaged in various lobbying and counseling activities in and around the capitol. None of them were armed. Some folk hero. He shot those people down in cold blood. Then he robbed the place.”

  Bolan’s report to Brognola had a different ring. “The Georgetown Gym and Health Club is the home away from home for Lupo’s inner circle. It has been the nerve center for coordinating the interlocking operations. I discovered this much: that club is the revolving door into Lupo’s home operations. Every member has direct access to the top of the pyramid. But you’ll have to cross off ten of them. I found out that they had reached the last few hours of their countdown. Things are much worse than I would have believed this time yesterday. Lupo actually has the country in the palm of his hand. All he has to do now is close the fist. I’m doing my damnedest to keep it open, but its getting very gory. I need some help. Get some people off their asses, will you? Spread the word, this one is for all the marbles. I’m sending you some captured documents by special messenger. And get a good look at this messenger, Hal. The guy is going to need all your protection if he lives through this. His name is Aliotto. Take care of him for me.”

  Twenty minutes after the hit in Georgetown, a lone man in a pale blue suit walked into an office in the Federal Triangle and calmly gunned down two minor officials of the Health, Education and Welfare department. He left a marksman’s medal behind and vanished in the resultant confusion.

  Ten minutes later the same man put in an appearance at the Supreme Court building, executed an “important employee of the Court,” rifled an office, and made good an escape in a waiting car despite the fact that more than a dozen federal marshals took up pursuit.

  This pattern continued until five o’clock, ranging across the length and breadth of the city, and involving a total of eight such lightning strikes against specific targets.

  A spokesman for the unified police activities hinted during a special news briefing at 5:15 P.M. that a shakeup of the police command was in progress, announcing that Treasury Agent Jim Williams was now heading up “the special command group responsible for stopping Mack Bolan’s rampage.”

  A commentator on a nationally televised news program at six o’clock that evening mentioned “uneasiness” in the White House itself, but he went on to point out that “the quality of police cooperation” which had emerged in that city was “historically unique”—and the newsman predicted that Bolan would be “stopped” before another dawn.

  “As a standard format in the development of folk hero myths,” the commentator went on, “the saga of Mack Bolan is at long last beginning to drag upon the rocky shores of bitter truth. The tale had to turn this way. There could be no acceptable alternative. Once launched upon the path of bloody retribution, any self-propelled and self-elected quote champion of the people unquote must ultimately discover the final truth about himself. He is not God. Being human, he errs. And however any of us may feel regarding the American justice system, trial by jury, duly constituted authority … whatever … it is certain that tonight a nation shall weep over another of its folk myths turned sour.

  “Mack Bolan today stands revealed as simply another tragic zealot who tried and failed to play God. He is the victim of his own vendetta. He is a common murderer, no matter how exalted his personal ideals, and he shall be brought to justice. That is not a prediction … that is a foregone conclusion. And, yes, we the people will undoubtedly go on weeping over our lost gods.”

  Bolan put the case to his personal diary in this fashion: “I’m not in this for votes or decorations. I killed a hell of a lot of people today, and I won’t pretend to feel good about that. But I can’t feel bad, either. Every one of those guys were rotten to the core, forget their impressive titles and offices. They were rats. And yes, damn it, I shot them out of the barrel. The battle has hardly begun, though. I still have to find Lupo.”

  The search for Lupo was also the subject of much anxious conversation in another quarter of Washington. In a private cubicle deep within the bowels of IMAGE headquarters, the object of Bolan’s feverish search was taking reports from his general staff.

  Raymond LaCurza advised his worried boss, “I’m telling you, the guy has gone plumb wild. Everywhere he stops he leaves bloody meat and the message, I want Lupo! He’s after your ass, and I mean he’s hot for it. He’s already knocked off half of our operation. I’m telling you, we can’t afford to sit around and take it any longer.”

  “What would you suggest we do, Raymond?” Lupo quietly inquired.

  “I dunno,” the right arm murmured.

  “You dunno,” Lupo mimicked. “You can’t even find Claudia! She’s been calling every son of a bitch in town and you can’t even run her down!”

  “She hasn’t stood still long enough,” LaCurza complained. “That broad is no dumbbell, Jack. I’m telling you.…”

  “You’re telling me horse-shit,” Lupo growled. He stabbed a finger toward his intelligence chief, a young-old man in a wrinkled shirt who wore the dreamy look of an absent-minded scientist. “The professor here tells me she dinged fourteen numbers on our watch list. She spilled her fucking guts all over the place. And every one of those numbers turned right around and called this guy over in Justice, this Brognola fink. They’re starting up a dialogue, Raymond. That’s what they’re doing. They’re putting their heads together. And all because of our little Claudia. I told you I wanted that bitch, Raymond!”

  The Chief of Staff shuffled his feet uncomfortably and made a half-audible reply.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said let ’em talk. We’ve got them by the balls, anyway.”

  Another
man commented, “Those balls are getting very slippery, though. Brognola is a bastard. There’s not a handle anywhere on that guy.”

  “I guess we got some trouble,” LaCurza admitted.

  “Exactly!” Lupo grumbled. The usually genial face was set in a deep scowl. “So let’s hear some suggestions.”

  “Pull back,” the dreamy-eyed intelligence boss offered. “We’ve lost the fine control already. Even if you got to Bolan in the next five minutes the timetable is crippled and wobbly. Maybe beyond immediate repair. I say pull back. Regroup. Wait. Let the fur settle. Nothing has actually changed. Most of our casualties had become expendable, anyway, at this point of the proceedings. We still have the clout. The thing to be decided now, the way I see it, is simply when to exercise it.”

  “This timetable is no arbitrary thing, professor,” Lupo argued. “We have to observe the realities of the political schedule. The primaries are breathing down our necks already.”

  “Well … my suggestion still stands.”

  “All right, that’s one idea,” Lupo said. “How about another?”

  LaCurza muttered, “I agree with the professor. We’ve come this far on finesse. I don’t see what we’ll gain by trying to bulldoze the thing through now, what with all the waves this Bolan has made.”

  “I never saw a sonuvabitch operate like that,” another member of the board commented. “Like a buzz saw. That guy gave us more grief in one day than we’ve ever known all combined.”

  “He’s a bastard, all right,” LaCurza agreed. He stared blankly at his boss. “One thing the professor overlooked, talking about our expendables. A lot of those were our muscle. We don’t have a hell of a lot left. I mean, not the kind you’d want to use in a delicate operation like this one.”

  “Yeah, there’s that too,” Lupo agreed. He sighed. “That Bolan is a … a.…”

  “He is a phenomenon,” the intelligence man said quietly.

  Lupo turned his full attention to the “egghead.” He stared at him thoughtfully for a long moment, then asked him, “How do you go about neutralizing one of those phenomenons, professor?”

  The man smiled and replied, “Pure energy cannot be destroyed. It can be diverted. It can be transformed, or absorbed into inert matter. But it cannot be destroyed.”

  “Well you better translate that for me.”

  “How many men in the organization have died trying to destroy Mack Bolan?”

  “Too damned many,” LaCurza put in.

  “Exactly,” the “professor” agreed. “So why keep on pitting one energy source against another? Obviously Bolan’s energies are superior to the best we can field against him.”

  “So?” Lupo growled.

  “Absorb him.”

  “Wait a minute, now,” Lupo replied in a slow drawl.

  The intelligence chief was smiling and nodding his head. “Let the idea find its level.”

  “You don’t mean we should buy him,” LaCurza said. “That’s been tried before.”

  “No, I wasn’t thinking of that. Simply absorb him into the operation. The same way we’ve absorbed so many others. Let’s get some face value out of this energy source.”

  A borning smile was pushing the scowl from Lupo’s face. He lit a cigarette and sent the smoke in a gusty exhalation toward the ceiling. Presently he said, “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” LaCurza groused.

  Lupo was positively beaming now. “Face value, that’s what he’s talking about,” he declared, the humor returning to his voice and punching it up to its usual bounce. “We’ll put so much heat on that bastard he’ll run screaming clear out of the damn country. If he can get that far.”

  “What the hell’re you talking about?” LaCurza demanded.

  “I believe he’s thinking about Faces Tarazini,” the professor said quietly.

  “What’s he got to do with anything?” asked another man at the table.

  It was LaCurza’s turn to start grinning. He chuckled and said, “Well God damn. How come nobody never thought of that before?”

  “I guess nobody had to before,” Lupo said, still all smiles. “What time is that meeting, Professor? That fink session with Brognola?”

  “Eight o’clock,” the intelligence man promptly replied.

  Lupo stabbed a finger at him. “Okay. Call the headshed in New York. I don’t care where Faces is, I want him here by eight o’clock. I don’t care if he’s in Istanbul or at the south pole, I want him here before eight. They can steal a military jet or whatever it takes, but I want the guy here.”

  The professor rose quickly to his feet. “You’ll have him,” he assured the emerging boss of Washington.

  “What does all this have to do with Bolan? asked the mystified member of the council.

  “Tarazini used to be an actor,” the professor told him, as though the simple disclosure would answer all questions, and then he quietly left the room.

  Lupo laughed and waved his arms over his head. “Jesus, I don’t know where I get these beautiful ideas. Can you imagine that bastard’s face when the shit hits the fan? He thinks he’s been having it rough? He thinks the cops have been hard at his ass just for knocking off a few criminal types here and there? Jesus!”

  “Yeah, that’s rich, that’s really rich,” LaCurza agreed, shaking all over with the immensity of the idea.

  “I still don’t get it,” the third man said.

  “Don’t worry, Bolan will!” Lupo howled. “Hey, Raymond. Wouldn’t you love to see the bastard’s face when he realizes he’s been absorbed?”

  “I don’t get it,” the complainer repeated, feeling left out.

  Lupo was riding high, and in no mood for explanations. “Hey, Raymond, what if Bolan decides to knock off the fucking President, eh?”

  “Oh, my ass, that’s too much!” LaCurza shrieked.

  “We just might have him do that,” Lupo said, suddenly very sober. “Yeah. Yeah. What the hell? Maybe we’ll just do that.”

  An entirely new pace—and perhaps a whole new game—was being introduced into the war for Washington.

  14: THE QUESTION TO THE ANSWER

  Bolan had posed a metaphysical riddle to himself during the Boston adventure, and only now was the solution to that mystery beginning to slide into focus.

  Bolan had learned that the eternal question of metaphysics is, everywhere, why. Not how, not when, not what—but, forever, why. Even a small child unconsciously knew that. Why, Daddy? Why is the sky blue? Why is it dark? Why is it raining?

  And the Executioner had found himself wondering.…

  New York City was the financial center of the country, perhaps even of the entire world. Yet Bolan had found there not a highly organized conspiracy to dominate the financial scene, but the master plan for Cosa di tutti Cosi, the Big Thing, political control.

  Why? Why in New York, the financial nerve center of the nation?

  Las Vegas was unquestionably the gaming capital of the American continent. But there he had found not a looming conspiracy to dominate all gambling interests everywhere—instead he discovered vast sums of black money skimmed from casino profits and diverted in an unending torrent to buy political favors and influence in virtually every section of the country—and outside it.

  Why? Why political ambitions in Las Vegas, the goldenest goose of gaming in all the world?

  In the Caribbean he had stumbled onto a tropical paradise, an area ripened and ready for full exploitation by the tourist industry. But the Mafia bucks there were not moving into resort hotels and island casinos, not the bulk of it. They were going into—what else?—political power bases.

  Why? Why politics in paradise?

  What was so goddam big about politics?

  Sure, it was comforting to have influence in the power centers. But how much comfort could a guy stand? How much could he afford? Were these guys paying out all that sweaty money just for comfort?

  No, hell no; Bolan had alrea
dy come to that decision long before Boston.

  He had seen in Chicago what could be accomplished when the businessman, the politician, and the gangster were indistinguishable one from the other.

  But it had taken Boston to bring the full dimensions of this insidious master plan into true perspective.… Bolan had wondered … if New York were the financial center, Vegas the gaming center, Washington the political center … then what the hell was Boston?

  Why did that city figure so prominently in the big scheme? Why the life or death struggle there for dominance and supremacy?

  And now, in Washington, the puzzling and eternal game of insoluble riddles was leveling out.

  The answer to why was focusing-in as why not.

  The answer was paradoxical, sure, like all metaphysical truths.

  Why not take over?

  They had the money.

  They had the people.

  They had the power.

  So … why not take over? Why fool around with political influence, with more comfort?

  They could have the whole crumbling cookie!

  Why dick around with the game of politics, that uncertainest and most unpredictable of all human pastimes?

  Why even finance a political machine which is dependent upon the goodwill of the people when you can build your own perpetual monster and suck up all the votes everywhere?

  Sure. Let the suckers vote.

  Why not?

  All candidates will be servants of the monster.

  Yeah. Oh yeah. And here was a God who would give the people stones when they ask for bread. You bet your ass.

  So … why had become why not.

  And the solution to the riddle then became so painfully damned simple.

  There was no reason WHY NOT!

  As for the question of Boston and why did she figure … another of the paradoxes emerged.

  She figured because she did not figure.

  She figured because it had all started there.

  The mastermind of the master plan was a Bostonian.

  His code name was Lupo … the actual name could be anything.