Dead Easy Read online

  By the time he found the snobbish residential quarter where Reinbecker lived, the shower had become a downpour.

  On the way he passed the only other visible connection with Montenegria — a long line of hopper cars loaded with ore being hauled out of a freight yard by a shunting locomotive. Like the northern part of Ononu's crooked kingdom, the land around Baarmbeek was rich in cassiterite, the chief source of tin.

  The tin mines were discreetly hidden from view by a fold in the hills. But the wealth that they brought was clearly visible all along Valley Road.

  Big properties, mostly in the Dutch Colonial style, most of them standing well back in several acres of well-manicured garden, were shaded by subtropical trees and equipped with stables and pools beyond the flowered verandas. Several of them were guarded by uniformed security men, standing with slung shotguns at the white-painted gates, chained German shepherds lying at their feet.

  Greystones was something else.

  It was a massive stone-structure that resembled a nineteenth-century European school or seminary, complete with clock tower, gothic window embrasures and sham battlements.

  It was built around a square courtyard, entered through an arch beneath the tower. Between the house and the road, seventy yards of velvet-smooth, tree-shaded lawns had recently been mowed.

  The property, which included a small wood at the rear of the main building, was surrounded by white-painted fencing. The gates, of tall wrought iron supported on imposing pillars, were overlooked from the inside by two khaki-clad local policemen armed with assault rifles.

  Bolan didn't know how much a rural prison governor earned in South Africa, but it sure seemed quite a place for a civil servant, unless he had considerable private means. It was raining hard now — and the Plymouth's wipers were defective, naturally — but he glimpsed a white Cadillac Fleetwood and an Alfa-Romeo sportster parked in the courtyard as he cruised past.

  He went on driving. The Plymouth would have been noted by all the security men he passed. It was anonymous, all right — but in a classy area like this it was too damned anonymous; the very fact that it was old and scratched, that its owner wasn't making a point, would render it conspicuous. It wasn't the sort of car you could park at the curbside and then pretend you were reading the racing results while you staked out a place. Not in Valley Road.

  Bolan decided to circle the block. Maybe there was a service road in back from which he could work out some way of getting inside the Greystones perimeter. In any case, if he wished to avoid attracting unwelcome attention, he had better not drive past the main entrance to these mansions again.

  But that was precisely what he had to do. Half a mile farther on, the road ended in a cul-de-sac fringed by tamarisk trees and oleanders in bloom.

  There was just one gateway on the cul-de-sac, wrought iron again, with stone pillars topped by sculptured lions. On the far side the driveway twisted out of sight between high banks of rhododendrons. The house was not visible, but there was a small lodge inside the gates.

  A tough-looking guy came out of a side door with the collar of his leather windbreaker turned up against the rain. He held a double-barreled shotgun in the crook of his arm and he was accompanied by a Doberman pinscher on a leash.

  He walked across to the Plymouth as Bolan maneuvered the car in a three-point turn to head back the way he had come.

  "You looking for something?" he inquired. The voice was not friendly.

  Bolan wound down the driver's window. "Guess I must have missed my road," he said easily.

  The gateman glanced scornfully at the Plymouth. "Damn right, you did. This is private property. We don't want any rubberneckers or insurance salesmen."

  "I'm not selling anything." Bolan pretended to be down and out on his luck. "I got a call to pass by the assembly plant, where they make the tractors and stuff. Can you tell me which way to turn when I get to the end of this street?"

  "Get your ass out of here and ask someone else," the man replied. His tone was suspicious. "Get out fast, and don't stop on the way."

  "Look, you don't have to take that attitude with me," Bolan began, affecting an injured tone.

  "Beat it."

  "I don't have to take…"

  The guy leveled the twin snouts of the shotgun threateningly at Bolan.

  "On your way," he gritted, then swung on his heel as Bolan flipped the selector into Drive and laid rubber, in simulated anger, on the wet macadam. Between the rain spots on the outside mirror he saw the guard unhook a phone from the wall of the gate house.

  Back in town Bolan found a cigar store where he could buy a large-scale map of Baarmbeek and the surrounding country.

  According to the map there was a road that skirted the rear of Greystones and the other mansions. It was described in the legend as "unmetaled." Bolan guessed this meant it was a dirt road. If the scale was exact it ran within a quarter of a mile of the Reinbecker place, meandered past a couple of farms and then degenerated into what was marked as a hill track that eventually looped down to the lake.

  The difficulty now was the Plymouth. It was possible that the guards he had seen patrolled the whole property, and if the same guys happened to be in back when he passed along the lane…

  The car had to go, for sure.

  Beyond the freight yard, on a slope of land that led down past workers' huts toward the mines, Bolan found another used-car lot.

  It was surrounded by ten-foot corrugated iron fencing, which suited him fine — any transactions in there would be invisible from outside. Fifty yards from the gates, a wooden shack stood between a mound of wrecked auto bodies collected for scrap and the double line of parked vehicles that were for sale. Some of the used-car bargains were scarcely distinguishable from the wrecks on the mound. Bolan reckoned that the clientele must be drawn largely from the black workers employed in the mines.

  A balding Asian wearing blue coveralls stood in the open doorway of the hut. He was about forty years old, unshaven, with dark-brown cash-register eyes.

  Bolan braked outside the shack, rolled down the window and explained that he wished to trade in the Plymouth for something better. "The wipers are gone," he said.

  The Asian stared at him. Dark clouds scurried low across the sky. The rain fell heavily, blown almost horizontal now by the freshening wind, bouncing knee-high off the cracked asphalt of the yard and drumming a loud tattoo on the shack's tin roof.

  The Asian made no reply. He walked around the Plymouth, frowning critically. He rapped with his knuckles on the hood and side panels. He kicked a tire. "I do not see much chance here for a trade-in," he said. And then, evaluating the driver and clearly rating him a better economic risk than the car, he added, "It will depend, sir, naturally, on what you want to buy."

  "Something tough," Bolan said. "For a long, rough trip. But something reliable." He pushed open the door and got out into the rain. The Asian's coveralls were already sodden, but what the hell — there was a possible sale in view.

  They splashed through the rain to the double line of bargains. Bolan's glance ranged glumly over rusted Fiats, Citroens drooping on worn-out hydraulic suspensions, nineteen-sixties American convertibles with bodywork like crumpled paper.

  The salesman fielded the glance. "For you, sir," he said quickly, "frankly there is not one of these carriages I could recommend. This is shit, sir, for the poor. For you there is only one car on this lot, and she is behind my office." He gestured toward the hut. "My personal transport, but I sell her to you."

  "Too kind," Bolan said. "What is it?"

  "She is a Volvo station wagon. A little old maybe, and a little rough on the outside — but she goes real good. The engine, sir, is new. The brakes are fine. And she is very tough. You have my word. Also there is a thirty-gallon, supplementary gas tank beneath the floor in back."

  "Show me," Bolan said.

  The Volvo certainly did have a beat-up air. Beside it, the Plymouth looked almost in showroom condition.

  The wag
on's fenders were scratched and dented, the massive front bumper bar was crumpled and the one at the rear had disappeared altogether. The paintwork had been reduced by years of high veld sunshine to a lusterless, neutral color that was neither white nor cream nor gray.

  But the salesman was right about one thing. The engine note was crisp and the acceleration brisk. Even driving up and down the muddy yard Bolan could see that the car would perform well. The brakes, too, were good, although the tread remaining on the tires was minimal.

  What really made him decide was the extra gas tank: getting out of the country in a hurry, along the route he planned to take, that could be important.

  "Okay," he said, climbing from the driving seat, "how much do you want?"

  "For you, sir, five hundred American dollars."

  "I'll give you two-fifty."

  An Oriental shrug, the rain dripping from the Asian nose, the lobes of the ears. "At that price, sir, I think maybe you should look again at the bargains by the gates. A 1976 Skoda perhaps?"

  "Okay. Three hundred. Plus the Plymouth."

  "Sir, I am not in the philanthropy business. I buy and sell motor carriages. Because it is raining and cold, four-fifty."

  "Three twenty-five," Bolan said.

  "Four hundred."

  "Three hundred and fifty American dollars, cash, plus the Plymouth. As she is worth at least fifty, that meets your price."

  The Asian sighed. "At this figure," he said sorrowfully, "I am practically paying you to take this beautiful machine away. You drive a hard bargain, sir. But because you are a gentleman, reluctantly, as one up-market man to another, I accept. But if I continue with such reckless generosity, sir, I am out of business."

  "Try to survive," Bolan said. "Stay hard."

  By the time he had transferred his belongings to the Volvo and driven to the gates, the Plymouth had joined the ranks of used-car bargains. A card behind the windshield announced that it was a steal at $130.

  Bolan headed for the farm track behind Valley Road. The rain fell faster still. The Volvo's wipers worked fine.

  The farms, in fact, belonged to horticulturists raising cut flowers, garden plants and ornamental shrubs under glass.

  On an impulse he drove to the farm nearest Greystones, inspected the display in the' long rows of greenhouses and bought a few potted flowering plants. Loading the spacious rear of the Volvo with these, he arranged a close-packed row against the double doors so that they effectively blocked any view of the interior.

  This at least gave him a valid reason to be in the area of the properties on Valley Road.

  Reinbecker's house was hidden on the far side of the wood. Bolan had strolled a little way up the track toward a rear entrance while the greenhouse employees carted out his purchases. He could see men among the trees, and he thought — though he could not be sure — that there were dogs with them.

  There was a point of conscience here. Much though he disapproved of South Africa's racial laws, Bolan had no quarrel with individual police officers. In John Vorster Square it had been his life or theirs. But here it was different. Sure, he had to break the cordon and get to Reinbecker, get him alone, at all costs. But against the police? Normally he regarded the guardians of the law as allies. He couldn't treat Greystones as if it was a Mafia stronghold, shooting down cops and blasting his way in as he would have done if the place had been staffed by members of the Mob.

  He would have to find a more subtle way of getting in and out of Reinbecker's house without spilling blood.

  Except perhaps the blood of Reinbecker himself. But that would depend on the answers to Bolan's questions.

  Back at the intersection where Valley Road branched off the highway linking the mines with the city center, Bolan parked on a shoulder of the road and kept watch. Apart from an occasional limo with a chauffeur at the wheel, the only traffic making it in and out of the ritzy estate was a fairly constant flow of panel trucks making deliveries.

  The property owners of the neighborhood obviously preferred their supplies to be brought to the door rather than to demean themselves by entering a store.

  Here, Bolan felt, was his answer.

  The Reinbecker house was not a prison, even if its owner governed one. Once past the gate man and a perimeter guard, a delivery truck in Valley Road wasn't going to be subjected to a search, nor would private security men look inside a vehicle whose driver they knew.

  Bolan drove the loaded Volvo back to the farm lane and left it beneath a line of trees around a bend, just out of sight of the Reinbecker property. With luck, anyone passing would think it was connected with the greenhouses.

  He walked back to the intersection. The rain had stopped but the clouds racing across the sky were still low and menacing. The potholes pitting the surface of the lane brimmed with yellow water.

  The Executioner allowed several vehicles to turn into Valley Road before he made his decision. He chose a panel van driven by a black youth with a cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth. The sides of the truck carried blue lettering that announced:

  Baarmbeek Laundromat: Fast Daily Service. Whiter than White.

  Bolan stopped the vehicle by simply stepping into the road in front of it. The young driver hit the brake pedal, sending the van sideways across the slick pavement as the disks squealed their protest. He would have cursed, except that it paid to be careful what you said to a white man in the Transvaal.

  Bolan stepped up to the window of the cab. He had decided that the only approach that would work quickly and surely was to offer money — a sum so exaggerated that it would probably be more than the driver earned in a week.

  "I want you to do something for me," he said without preamble. "It's worth fifty American dollars in cash." He produced the bills and held them out. The driver's face, sullen and resigned until he realized from Bolan's accent that he was not South African, showed signs of animation.

  But there was still suspicion there. Why would a foreigner be offering him such a sum?

  "What do I have to do? Poison President Botha?" he asked sourly.

  "You're going down Valley Road," Bolan said. "Are you delivering at Greystones?"

  "Collecting — if it's anything to you."

  "I want to get in there," Bolan said. "Without the guys on the gate seeing me. Here's twenty…" he handed over two ten-spots"…and you get the other three bills once I'm in the courtyard."

  The driver took the bills, hesitated. What was the catch?

  "I just want to see Reinbecker alone, without the sentries knowing," Bolan explained.

  The young black stuffed the bills in his pocket.

  "Listen, man," he said, "the number of friends of mine that son of a bitch has under lock and key in his jail, you could smash every picture in the place, take all his money and feed his wife to the wolves, and I'd be on the sidelines, applauding."

  "I have something to settle with the guy," Bolan said, profiting from the youth's hostility. "Something personal."

  "Don't let me stop you," the driver said. "Jump in the back among the silk sheets."

  Bolan hid between the plastic sacks of neatly pressed shirts and skirts and bed linen. In fact the panel truck was waved through without being stopped at all.

  Inside the Greystones courtyard the driver backed up to a service door at one side of the arch. Peering forward over his shoulder, Bolan saw that the main entrance to the big house, flanked by stone beagles on either side of an imposing flight of steps, was on the far side of the flagged enclosure.

  The yard was embellished with ornamental troughs bright with geraniums and other blossoms. In the center, behind the Caddy and the Italian sporster, bronze dolphins in a fountain tried to outdo the rain, which had started to fall once more.

  "You wanna get inside the dump?" the driver asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  "That's the idea," Bolan said.

  "Wait until I bring out the first hamper then. The housekeeper here's suspicious. She follows me to make sur
e I don't steal anything, then again when I fetch the second hamper. You can slide in after us. Take the first door on the left, the one covered in green stuff. That lets you into a passage that goes past the library, the billiard room and whatever."

  "Thanks," Bolan said. He handed over the remaining three bills and ducked behind the plastic sacks.

  "My pleasure," the driver said. "You've got time: the old man won't return before six, six-thirty."

  He climbed out of the cab, opened the rear doors and rang a bell at the side of the service entrance. Pretty soon the door opened and a thin, starchy white woman in a gray coverall beckoned him in with a jerk of the head.

  Two minutes later the two of them emerged from the house, the driver with a large wicker basket full of linen in his hands.

  He shoved it over the tailgate and toward the plastic sacks to make room for a second load, favored the hidden Executioner with a broad wink and turned away to go back into the house with the woman.

  Bolan thrust aside the sacks, glanced quickly around as he crouched momentarily between the van's open doors. The courtyard was deserted. Gothic windows all around stared emptily at the rain drumming on the two cars. He jumped to the ground, ran across the wet flagstones and slipped into the house.

  Bolan smelled floor polish and wood ash with a hint of some rich stew in the background. He could hear voices around a corner. The green door was immediately on his left as the youth had said.

  The warrior pushed it open and edged through.

  He was in a long corridor, with windows on his left following the line of the courtyard. Two doorways broke the paneling on his right; the far end of the passageway was closed off by double doors of frosted glass.

  The green door hissed shut on an autostop as Bolan trod carefully along a creaking parquet floor.

  Beyond the frosted glass, the corridor turned at right angles, tracing the line of the courtyard toward the main entrance. He could hear the distant drone of a vacuum cleaner but there were no voices in this part of the house.