Canadian Crisis Read online

  “Larry” turned out to be one Lawrence Attica, a crew boss in Staccio’s Syracuse arm. They had never “met”—but Bolan’s mental mug file clicked to an immediate make.

  The guy came hurrying over, carrying the ID wallet like it was an explosive device. He returned it with a flourish and a beaming smile. These guys did not often meet a Black Ace—a troubleshooter from La Commissione. Such honors were usually reserved for the higher ranks, though it was generally known that the men with the Black Ace IDs frequently operated incognito within all family groups.

  “Mr. Ruggi, it’s a pleasure,” Attica said, almost turning inside out with his smile. “Georgie tells me you been across the river all this time.”

  Bolan showed the guy an ironic smile as he replied, “Larry, don’t ever believe it when they tell you that some day you’ll be leaving the shit details behind you.”

  The crew boss howled with much more appreciation than the humor deserved.

  “How are things in Syracuse?”

  Attica made a so-so gesture with his hand. “Town’s getting out of control, Mr. Ruggi.” He snickered. “Too much crime in the streets.”

  Bolan grinned at that and told him, “My name is Frank.”

  “Sure. Thanks. Uh, what’s this Georgie is saying? We’re pulling out?”

  Bolan grinned on. “Don’t you think it’s about time?”

  “God yes! These shit details send me up the walls, Frank.”

  “Call your boys in. Tell ’em it’s time to go get laid.”

  Attica beamingly passed the chore on to Georgie who was apparently the number-two man in the crew. It took less than a minute to break camp, as there were no dragging feet in that regard.

  “You got a way into town, Frank?” Attica wanted to know.

  “Glad you mentioned it,” the Black Ace replied. “I’m leaving my partner in the area. He might need the car.”

  “Hell, it’s an honor—we got plenty of room. You ride with me.” Attica snapped his fingers at the second in command. “Georgie—it’s just me’n Frank in the Chevy. You take the boys back. See you at the hotel.”

  Georgie smiled at Bolan and went his way.

  And Bolan went the way of all of them—as honor guest of the crew boss from Syracuse—directly to the Mafia Arms of Montreal.

  And, sure, bravura was the word.

  7: ACES UP

  Since leaving Vietnam, Bolan had developed the military concept of “role camouflage” to a high art. To “be seen but not discerned” was the basic premise of any camouflage job. Role camouflage went a step farther and involved quite a bit more than mere physical disguise. The method school of acting taught similar techniques—and perhaps Bolan was, after all, a consummate actor and a master of disguise. The “disguise” itself, though, was always finely subtle and came mostly from within the man.

  Simply put, in Bolan’s own words: “Perception and recognition occur entirely within the mind. It’s a pretty frail faculty for most humans. Show them something very familiar and they will leap to an automatic identification. That’s one of the problems of our society. We leap to identify from the flimsiest perceptions. Long-haired people must be hippies. Short-haired people are rednecks. Cops are pigs, young people are always screwed up, anyone past thirty is senile. That’s human perception. And that’s what makes role camouflage work.”

  It worked beautifully for Mack Bolan. By the time they reached their destination, Larry Attica would have gladly killed for him—at the snap of a finger. He even told him so: “Listen, Frank you can depend on me. I know you got a tough job and it must get pretty lousy sometimes. But I want to say this, and I mean I got to say it. You’re an all-right guy. You need something done, you just look at me and snap your fingers. You get what I mean.”

  Bolan had it, precisely. “I got a feeling you won’t be around Syracuse much longer,” he told his new disciple. “And I guess you get what I mean.”

  The irrepressible smile beaming from Attica’s self-satisfied face signified that he certainly had it. The guy was a third-echelon ranker in a more or less second-echelon organization—young enough to want more, old enough to have started entertaining worries that he never would. Association with a Black Ace was gift enough from heaven; to find favor and patronage from such an exalted one was heady stuff, indeed.

  The hotel was not Montreal’s largest but it certainly qualified as one of the finest. A uniformed doorman took the car at the curb and ran it down for further handling by parking attendants. It was mid-afternoon but the lobby was filled with arm-waving conversation and good nature. There was not a woman in sight. Hard-looking guys stood in clumps everywhere, renewing old friendships and forging new ones.

  It was, in every sense of the word, a convention. A convention of criminals, despite the colorful banner proclaiming a welcome to the “World Trade Association.”

  “Is the whole joint ours?” Bolan asked his companion.

  “Rest of the week, yeah. Just be careful with the help. They belong to the hotel.”

  Some guy in a checkered vest and Prince Albert coat ran up and pumped Bolan’s hand, murmuring something warm in a foreign tongue. Bolan said, “Yeah, yeah. How’re things in Zurich?”

  The guy laughed and went on to another hand.

  Attica chuckled.

  Bolan told him, “I don’t want a lot of people knowing I’m here. Not just yet.”

  “Sure. I understand.”

  “I get it that Staccio is the official host here. Right?”

  “Right, Frank. He’ll be coming in late tonight.”

  Bolan understood that protocol. Staccio, as stand-in for Augie Marinello, would be the last to arrive—that is, the last official delegation to this first international congress of crime. He told Attica: “I’ll use Bobby Gramelli’s suite. He won’t be showing.”

  Attica clucked his tongue and said, “Yeah, I heard about that. Too bad. Bobby was an all-right guy.”

  They were working their way across the lobby. “I’ll be working his shed,” Bolan confided.

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  “You’re the first to know. I’ll want you to round up all his crew chiefs and get ’em up to the suite one hour from now.”

  “Okay,” Attica replied happily. “You want me to sit in?”

  “You know it.” Bolan gently slapped the guy’s bottom and told him, “Go get the key, eh.”

  Attica grinned and took one step toward the desk. That was as far as he got before a smallish figure in hand-tailored threads stepped across his path.

  “Larry Attica, isn’t it?” the guy asked pleasantly.

  “Yeah, oh—hey—Mr. Turrin. Pleased to see you. Hey, I want you to meet a—” Attica’s gaze swept back to Bolan, the eyes asking the obvious question. Bolan nodded. “I want you to meet Frank Ruggi, out of the corporate office.”

  “I thought I’d seen you,” Turrin said, neither hot nor cold as he acknowledged the introduction.

  “This is Leo Turrin, Frank. Western Mass.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah, I know. Good to see you, Leo. Go get that key, Larry.”

  The guy grinned and hurried on with his mission for the “all-right guy.”

  Turrin lit a cigar, casting cautious glances about the lobby as he did so. “I don’t believe it,” he quietly declared. “I see it, but I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s what you don’t see that counts,” Bolan reminded his old friend from Pittsfield.

  Leo Turrin had already invested several precious years of life in a quiet undercover operation for the federal government when Mack Bolan came blitzing into his world, an avenging angel bent on destruction of everything Mafia. With blood ties to the reigning regime, it had been a natural setup for the serious little fed with a Mafia-disgust which was at least equal in depth to Bolan’s. The blitzer from Vietnam had proven almost too much for the man with a foot in each world. Bolan belonged to neither. Both of Turrin’s worlds wanted the head of that guy—but it was a head which Leo Turrin
had come to respect and admire, later to genuinely love, and the two had come out of the Pittsfield conflagration welded into a friendship that only death could dissolve.

  It had been a dangerous game for Leo Turrin—even before Bolan. Now it was, half the time, pure insanity. The bosses of both worlds regarded Turrin as the foremost “Bolan expert” and frequently called upon him to assist in the apprehension of the fugitive (as identified in one world) bastard (as better known in the other).

  Quietly, though, the two continued their close friendship and mutual support of the goals of each. Bolan fed Turrin and vice-versa. The arrangement had worked out very well for both. Bolan was still alive, with a pretty steady finger on the pulse of the enemy. Turrin was moving up swiftly in both worlds—now an underboss in Massachusetts and a highly prized, upper-echelon undercover operative for the US Justice Department.

  Turrin had long ago thought that he was beyond surprise at anything the indomitable Mack Bolan might pull off. But he was not.

  “You’ve got to be out of your head,” he growled through the sudden cloud of cigar smoke.

  “Same to you, friend,” Bolan growled back. “Rest of these troops wouldn’t know me from Mahatma Gandhi. You’re right up on the block with me, now.”

  “We need to parley.”

  Attica was hurrying back, officiously twirling the key to the late Bobby Gramelli’s hardsuite.

  “Drop in any time,” Bolan said to his old friend and partner at the knife’s edge—adding, for Attica’s benefit, “I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else. Bring a bottle and we’ll jaw it around.”

  Turrin nodded, rather coldly, and Bolan spun off toward the elevators. Attica hung behind for a moment to polish another apple. He flashed the room number at Turrin and hissed, “He’s a Black Ace, Mr. Turrin.”

  “That explains it,” said the underboss from Pittsfield.

  Attica hurried away to catch his new “sponsor.” Leo Turrin watched the two of them enter the elevator. Then he tapped his cigar, sighed forlornly, and muttered, “Aces you’ve never seen yet, Larry.” Then he ambled on across the lobby, resuming the check on his Bolan detail. It was, he’d long ago decided, a nutty world.

  Joe Staccio had called him in Pittsfield, hardly twelve hours earlier, all in a lather. Mack Bolan was sure as hell headed for Montreal. Leo was the only guy in the whole organization who Joe could appeal to—nobody else, not nobody, could be entrusted with such an assignment.

  It had already been cleared with the headshed.

  Leo was to get it up to Montreal and take over the security arrangements for the meet.

  Nobody else could be counted on to spot and stop that Bolan bastard. Bobby Gramelli was lying in his own blood in Buffalo, thanks to that same bastard, and Bobby had been the security chief. Up ’til then, of course, the security had been a pretty routine thing. Not now. The mere shadow of Mack Bolan, hovering above that do-all conference in Montreal, had changed everything.

  Sure, Leo would be glad to go to Montreal.

  Bolan was some kind of bastard, that was sure. Many people around the country were already convinced that the guy was some kind of damn phantom who came and went as he pleased, sat down and ate with them, joked and jawed and entertained them while setting them up for the knockover. Only Leo had lived through any of that.

  Leo Turrin had quickly become the man of the hour in Montreal. In a week, or a month, or a year—if he should live so long—it was almost certain that Leo Turrin would be wearing a boss’s ring. The value of that, in Washington, would be inestimable. Leo would be sitting in on the councils, participating in international strategy sessions, working all the angles from the very highest level of underworld authority.

  It all came together to make things pretty tough for a guy like Leo Turrin. He loved that big blitzing bastard like a brother—more than that, even, he knew that Mack Bolan was a truly unique human being—an entirely selfless, comitted, all-together individual. He was a shining symbol to Leo Turrin of what a real man ought to be.

  On the other hand, there was that sense of duty to Washington—Turrin’s own commitment to an ideal, the ideal of justice under law, loyalty to a responsibility, service.

  Yeah, it was a nutty world.

  Mack Bolan and Leo Turrin were sharing the same suite for the Montreal Meet.

  Aces, yeah—God! Aces like nobody had ever seen—and very probably would never see again.

  It did not seem possible that Mack Bolan would be leaving Montreal alive. But—God!—what a way he’d picked to go!

  Turrin smiled sourly at his own introspections and continued his appointed rounds. In life, so in death. Linked. The little underboss from Pittsfield had known it for a long time. Leo Turrin and Mack Bolan, when the time came, would die together.

  Aces, yeah. In a dead man’s bluff.

  8: IN THE HOLE

  There were two basic problems in Montreal to be approached. Of prime consideration was the big parley itself—the international meeting of crimelords designed to form the basis for Cosa di tutti Cosi. Bolan needed to break it up, to send the delegations scurrying back to their own turf. This was the minimal goal. It would not, of course, be enough. Like flies shooed from a piece of decaying meat, they would flock back at the first opportunity—or alight upon another likely victim—and business would proceed as usual.

  A point of order needed to be made at Montreal.

  And that would involve the other problem, the real one, for this troubled province. Bolan’s problems with the mob itself were a large enough order. Even if he were disposed toward a meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, it seemed greatly doubtful that he could have any real effect upon the political and economic realities of French Canada.

  Bolan was a realist.

  He had not come to Canada to save Canada from herself, even supposing that he could do so. He knew, in fact, that he could not. He had come to make war upon the greater enemy—and this he knew he could do. The problem was: how best to approach the war so that the greater interests of Canada would thereby be served as well.

  It was not really a soldier’s decision—but, then, that was the only one he had available.

  Unless …

  He’d had that parley with Leo Turrin, while Attica was out rounding up the leaders of the security crews. He and Turrin had come to a general agreement regarding the conflict of roles being played by each, and then he’d told his old partner: “I want you to contact Brognola, Leo. You can tell him I’m here, but not what I’m doing. I’m not going to play Washington’s games here but I would like to hear their recommendations. I want a full briefing—the militant angle, the labor unrest, the economic situation, the full range of US-Canadian relations as they now stand, all of it. And I want an intelligence packet, complete, the full treatment, nothing left out.”

  “It’s a large order,” Turrin replied gloomily.

  “It’s a large time. You tell Hal that’s the only alternative I have to running amok here.”

  “I’ll try,” Turrin promised, then left—more disturbed than when he came in.

  Now Attica and Joe Staccio’s six hotshots were sitting there staring at him like he was chocolate cake and they were kids at a picnic.

  “You boys relax,” he told them with a grand air. “Get some drinks, light up, take off your coats. Let your peckers swing easy, then we’ll get down to business here.”

  It was exactly the right thing to say.

  The guys let it all hang out, “relaxing” far more than Bolan had a right to hope for, basking in the genial camaradie with a genuine Black Ace from the homeshed.

  They spent a pleasant thirty minutes together, discussing the problems of security for such a large and important gathering. By the time the hotshots trooped out, all smiles and happy handshakes, the man from blood knew all their secrets. “Just keep it going that way,” he told them. “You boys know your job. Don’t let me bother you none. Just stay out of Mr. Turrin’s hair. He’s on special
orders here, like me, and we just got to work around each other. You boys know how that goes.”

  Yeah, those boys knew. They were laughing it up all the way to the elevator. Bolan gave them a final wave and closed the door on that portion of the program.

  The problem he was setting up was going to require some damn fantastic numbers, played to a precision pitch—and yet he could not realistically start the countdown until he received that intel from Brognola. There was, however, the ever-present hazard in this game of “aces up”—such a masquerade could not be carried on indefinitely. Each passing moment increased the hazard with geometric progression. He could not dally for long.

  He checked the time and ran a mental calculation of the various probabilities. How long before Joe Staccio called to check the situation in Montreal—or how long before someone decided to call Staccio and verify the authority of Frank Ruggi, the man from corporate office? How long before some hotshot from another time and place ran head-on into a face he could not possibly forget? How long before …?

  Bolan sighed and tossed the calculations into the bosom of the universe. One fact was beyond calculation. He had not closed his eyes in rest for more than thirty-six hours. A guy could not run forever on determination alone.

  He went into the bedroom, removed shoes and jacket, and lay down across the bed with the Beretta thumbed-off and ready—and then he eased his wearied mind into that torpor which he called “combat sleep”: eyes slitted, systems idling but alert, intellectual centers at rest. Only “the animal” remained in that room. Mack Bolan, for the moment, had gone elsewhere. To the bosom, perhaps, of the universe.

  He snapped back at full alert, nothing moving but the eyes behind those slitted lids. What had awakened him? How long had he slept?

  He would not chance a look at his watch, but the changed lighting in the room told him that some hours had gone by; it was getting dark.

  The sensing of presence grew stronger. He was mentally preparing for a quick flip off that bed when the girl edged quietly into the doorway. She stood there for a moment, gazing silently at him, then took a hesitant step inside.