Continental Contract Read online

  Gil Martin had been stopped also, Bolan noted with some satisfaction, and was not faring quite so well; he obviously handled French not at all, and an English-speaking inspector was being dispatched to the scene.

  Bolan’s inspector was smiling at him and comparing his face with the image on the passport. Bolan fingered the growth at his face and lightly commented, “La moustache, les pattes, c’est un difference, eh?”

  The inspector chuckled and replied, “Vive le difference, Monsieur Ruggi. Combien de temps comptez-vous rester?”

  He wanted to know how long Bolan would be in France. “A few days,” Bolan told him. “Quelques jours.”

  The inspector smiled again and returned the passport. “Bon visite, Monsieur.”

  Bolan thanked him and went on toward the customs section. A porter intercepted him and tried to take his bags, insisting that he could smooth his way and save him money. Bolan declined, kept his bags, and selected a fast-moving line. The inspection seemed to be little more than a formality, with most of the delay being caused by the confusion of the passengers rather than by the officials. Bolan lit a cigarette and casually looked back for a progress check on Gil Martin. The look-alike had finally cleared Passport Control and was hurrying into the customs area, following closely on the heels of a porter who was carrying an overnighter and a matching larger bag. To an untrained eye, this was the status on Gil Martin; to Bolan’s eyes, much more was developing. Martin was quietly and inconspicuously being surrounded by a crew of plainclothes cops who, even without Martin’s knowledge, were maneuvering him toward one of the private inspection rooms. At the last minute, Martin seemed to realize what was happening. He balked at the doorway and raised his voice in an angry argument but was pushed on through, the door closing behind him and sealing in the heated discussion.

  Bolan grinned and moved on to the inspection desk. He declared 40 cigarettes and no booze, and was courteously passed through without inspection. At this point, he dropped the casual pose and began moving in an attitude of planned haste. That could be Bolan back there in that private room just as easily as Martin; he wanted out and gone before the error was discovered. He stopped at the Orly bureau de change and took on a supply of francs, then went directly to a ticket window and bought space to New York on a flight leaving later that day. Then he found the door marked Messieurs and went into a private closet, stripped off his coat, retrieved his gun and sideleather from the suitcase, and strapped it on. Next he deposited his luggage in an airport locker and went out to find transportation into town.

  It was late enough that dawn should have been edging into the night sky, but the fog had thickened if anything and the outside lighting was making a very limited penetration and eerily illuminating the transportation circle. People were moving about here and there through the soupy stuff but Bolan experienced a feeling of isolation in the surrealistic scene. Something in the atmosphere there cautioned the Executioner and prompted him to step away from the entrance to the terminal, where the light was fairly good, and into the misty shadows beside the building. A crowded airporter bus wheeled through and disappeared. A suggestion of vehicles occupied a barely visible taxi station some yards up the drive; two private autos idled at the curb just below Bolan, their headlamps muffled and impotent in the heavy mists.

  Then out through the lighted doorway strode Gil Martin, an angry scowl distorting his face. The same porter followed immediately behind with the luggage. Martin pulled up almost within touching distance of Bolan and turned about to snarl at the porter, “Get the lead out! Get a cab over here, I’m not walking another step. I oughta go straight on to Rome, I shouldn’t even go into this nutfarm of a town. I don’t know what the hell I …”

  The porter had silently deposited the baggage on the sidewalk and raised his hands in some sort of signal. Instantly another man came through the doorway and stepped up behind Martin; the American immediately ceased his snarling complaints and froze and a small leather case fell from his hands. One of the vehicles which Bolan had noticed earlier eased forward, a door opened and another man moved onto the sidewalk; then Martin was entering the vehicle and the porter was hastily throwing the bags into the luggage compartment. Bolan marveled at the smoothness of the snatch, aware that he had recognized it as such only when it was too late to intervene; the vehicle was disappearing into the fog, the second car following closely.

  The porter returned to the doorway and bent to retrieve the small case which had fallen from the kidnapped man’s hands. A foot appeared from seemingly nowhere to imprison the case on the ground—and when the porter elevated his eyes, he was gazing into the bore of Bolan’s .32. He froze, stiffly off balance, and murmured, “Que veut dire ceci, M’sieur?”

  Bolan said, “You tell me what it means, Frenchy.”

  “Je ne parle pas Anglais.”

  Bolan pulled the man upright and replied, “Then I guess I’ll have to just shoot you and get it over with.”

  “No, I speak,” the porter hastily admitted. “What is your wish, M’sieur?”

  Bolan shoved him clear of the lighted area, scooped up the case and dropped it into his pocket, and joined his prisoner in the shadows of the building. He jabbed the little gun into the man’s belly and said, “Who pulled that snatch?”

  Something in the glint of the Executioner’s eyes discouraged cuteness. The man sighed and his shoulders slumped and he said, “This is most dangerous, M’sieur.”

  Bolan increased the pressure of the pistol and told him, “I’ll take my chances. Are you ready to take yours?”

  The porter sighed again. “So, they have the wrong man. Non?”

  “That’s it, and you have the right one. For about ten seconds, Frenchy, unless a flood of words changes the situation.”

  The porter shrugged his shoulders and replied, “C’est la vie, one is as bad as the other. I am not one of them, M’sieur. For two hundred francs I sell my honor and perhaps my life, non?”

  “So who did you sell it to?”

  “He is called Marcel. He is known for les maisons de joie, comprenez-vous?”

  “Joy houses? Yeah, it figures. And where do I find this Marcel?”

  Another shrug of the shoulders and, “Les Caves, M’sieur.”

  “The basement joints? Great, there’s only about a hundred of them. You have to do better than that.”

  “I have seen him about Place St. Michel.”

  Bolan patted the man’s pockets, found his wallet, and extracted an identity card. He studied the card, then slipped it into his pocket and returned the wallet. “Okay, I’ll check that out, Jean. If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll be looking you up. If there’s something you want to add, now’s the time.”

  “There is this maison de joie, M’sieur,” the man replied, sighing, “on the Rue Galande, near the point where Boulevard St. Michel meets the Seine. Marcel is known at this place. His other name I do not know. He is simply Marcel. He is known there, simply ask for Marcel.”

  Bolan cautioned the porter regarding the value of silence and discretion, then released him and watched him quickly disappear into the terminal. A moment later, Bolan was in a taxicab and telling the driver, “Take me to the nearest subway station.”

  “M’sieur?”

  Bolan pushed his limited knowledge of the language into a hesitant, “Conduisez-moi metro proche.”

  The driver nodded and the taxi lurched forward, challenging the restricted visibility in a suicidal rate of advance. Bolan relaxed and put his life in the other’s hands; he had decided some years earlier that Parisian cabbies employed guardian angels—and there were other considerations more urgently demanding and with an outcome not nearly so certain. Gil Martin had made no favorable impression on Bolan’s mind. He had, in fact, formed a definite dislike for the man during that short flight. Nevertheless, Martin had obviously stepped into a Mafia trap laid for the Executioner, and Bolan could not simply stand by and allow another to suffer in his place—not even a Gil Martin.


  He pulled out the leather case which had been dropped by the victim, and discovered it to be a wallet. Obviously the betrayed had been about to reward the betrayer, though certainly not to the tune of two hundred francs. In the wallet was Martin’s passport folder, a wad of francs, an American Express credit card, and an identification card from American-Independent Studios in Hollywood. A newspaper clipping found in one of the pockets was praising Martin’s role in a recent motion picture. So … the guy was an actor.

  Bolan had never been much of a movie-goer, and he had never had much interest in screen personalities. He wondered just how big a name Martin actually had in the business, and how much of a fuss would be raised by his disappearance.

  An actor. Bolan would like to see him act his way out of this mess. All the bluster and indignation in the world wouldn’t … Bolan was staring dumbly at the wallet. The guy had even lost all his identification. The seriousness of the situation for Gil Martin settled into Bolan’s bones like the cold fog outside. The name Gil Martin possibly meant no more to the French Mafia than it had to Bolan. What could the guy tell them—what could he say or do to convince them that they had the wrong man? One part of Bolan’s mind was hoping that Jean the porter would beat it to a telephone and pass the word; another part feared that he would do so, and that Bolan was advancing into another drop.

  Other questions bothered him also. If this had been New York or any other city at home, Martin would right now be lying in his own blood on the sidewalk outside the terminal. Were the Frenchies more cautious—less inclined to open gunplay? Or was there a deeper significance to the snatch?

  Bolan leaned forward and told the driver, “Can’t you speed it up? Vite, vite!”

  In this fog, subsurface travel would be much quicker than the snail’s pace allowed on the streets—hence Bolan’s desire to get to a subway. The Paris metro system was superb and easily transited. If Bolan could get to a metro station quickly enough, and if the information supplied by Jean the porter was straight, and if the abductors were being as hampered by the weather as was Bolan’s driver—then possibly Bolan could pop up at the right time and place to save the hapless Martin from death … or from a worse fate. It was a wild gamble, of course, but Bolan’s entire life had become a series of wild gambles. At least, he knew, he had to try. In the final analysis, Bolan realized, this was the last significant difference between himself and his enemies. He had not yet lost a reverence for innocent lives. To surrender that distinction would place Bolan in the same category as the scum he sought to eradicate—it would, in a sense, mean the loss of Bolan’s war, the end of meaning, and another loss for an already losing world.

  Yes, dammit, he had to try. He fished in his pocket and came out with the silencer for his revolver and attached it, then carefully tested the breakaway action of the sideleather. The driver was immersed in his impossible driving conditions, and was showing Bolan no attention whatever.

  Bolan repeated, “Vite, vite,” then settled back in the seat and commanded his memory for long-dimmed details of the Paris layout. His last time here had been as a kid soldier on furlough from duty in Germany, and it had been a memorable two weeks.

  Now he had come as a combat pro on furlough from some kind of purgatory, and he was not at all happy about being snatched back into hell again.

  But if hell it was, then hell it would have to be. He was not giving the Mafia even a semblance of Mack Bolan without a fight.

  His destination was a house of joy. If Bolan had his way, it would quickly become a house of woe.

  5: Executioner in Paris

  Bolan removed his false moustache and sideburns and exited from the St. Michel metro station into a continuing fog, pausing briefly on the boulevard to orient himself. He was in the heart of the university district, not overly far from the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. St. Michel was a wide avenue of sidewalk cafes and bookstores, though now practically lifeless in the early morning mists. He turned west and into a gradual uphill climb, then down Rue St. Jacques for a block and found Rue Galande. Here was even less life, an almost choking silence, a narrow and fog-enshrouded street of shops, old hotels, bistros, and a few basement dives affectionately known as Les Caves.

  Bolan had been here once, on a pleasant spring evening many years earlier, and to a memorable caveau where a G.I. with limited means could nurse a single drink throughout the night and take in some of the hottest jazz east of New York. Warm memories stood aside for cold reality, however, as Bolan surveyed the now dismal scene. The fog had captured the odor of decay and too many centuries of living on the same spot—perhaps even too much dying … and what, he wondered, was really the difference? All of living was a slow dyingness, a gradual rundown of the clock of life, a decay-rate from the moment of conception. Violence, Bolan had long ago decided, was but a form of protest against that inexorable decay. Where the smell of decay was strong, violence somehow seemed a natural constituent also.

  A chill shivered him and sent him on along the quiet street. At this hour of the morning, he knew the signs to search for, knew the telltale evidences of the form of activity he sought. The .32 came into his hand, the small weapon lengthened somewhat now by the silencer, and he walked quietly with the mists, themselves a dampener and softener and silencer of human activity.

  A door opened somewhere up ahead and a woman’s amused giggle entered the fog. Bolan crossed the street and moved on toward the sound of footsteps going away from him. A faint glow ahead halted him, and he heard the woman again, calling softly into the gloom a gay farewell.

  He lit a cigarette and waited. Several minutes later, a repetition—the light giggle, a quiet male voice saying something in hushed French, footsteps on the walk, a feminine farewell floating out to send them on their way.

  Bolan had scored. The signs were unmistakable. The house of joie was disgorging its overnight clients. This time the footsteps approached Bolan. He cupped his cigarette to shield the glow in his hands and pushed back against the front of a shop. A bulk moved past him and on along the sidewalk, the man moving hesitantly and feeling his way along the curbing. Yeah, he had scored. A few years back, the maisons de joie had been a natural and accepted legality in this ancient city of charm, and there would have been no standing room within them for a free ride by the Mafia, no opening whatever for the writhing tentacles of organized crime. Now joie was banned in Paris, the city of joie, and indeed the Mafia would find a fertility in that ban.

  Bolan moved in closer and the next time the door opened he had a rather good view of the couple who stood briefly in the halo of light. The woman was tall and rather well put together. Black hair was cut short and curled loosely about the ears, a shimmering wrap of some sort belted at the waist, a nylon-clad leg projecting into the early morning cold. The man was middle-aged, well dressed, a soldier of the night. He murmured, “Au revoir, Celeste. La soirée, c’était formidable!”

  The woman’s response must have been a prescription giggle, Bolan was thinking. It came the same as twice before, accompanied by, “Au revoir, Paul. A plus tard, eh?”

  “Oui, certainement.”

  The man was on the sidewalk and moving away from Bolan. He awaited the final prescription after-call of farewell from the steps, then a swift movement placed him beside the woman. She stood there in a silently shocked reaction to Bolan’s sudden presence, one hand on the door, the other clutching her silk-covered tummy.

  “Bonjour, Celeste,” Bolan amiably greeted her. “Comment ça va?”

  Judging from the expression of dismay on her face, “it” was obviously not “going” too well at the moment. She shrank into the doorway, trying to put the door between Bolan and herself. He defeated the maneuver and moved inside with her. In the better light, Celeste looked better in the fog. Too much eye makeup and an overabundance of scarlet lipstick emphasized rather than softened the image of dissolution and too many years of horizontal trade. The body was still exciting enough, however; Bolan allowed that a dar
kened room would work about the same brand of magic as the fog.

  They were in a tiny room which obviously had once served as the lobby of a small hotel. Two couches and several plain chairs overfilled the place. Bolan recognized the set. A stairway at the rear would lift to a larger, more sumptuous reception room which would, during the height of business hours, serve as a gay showplace and selection chamber for the wares of the house, and as a frolic center for refreshments and naughty conversation and perhaps a bit of dancing between acts. Le chambre de soiree.

  At this time of morning, that upstairs chamber would be deserted and dismal, reeking of a mixture of alcoholic fumes and cheap perfume and perhaps even of expended passions. Passing through it on his way out, a guy would wonder what he had found so exhilarating about it a few short hours earlier.

  Behind the lobby where they now stood would be the living quarters of the madame and maybe one or two of her pet pimps. It would smell like boiling vegetables and more cheap perfume, stale tobacco smoke, and dry rot.

  Madame Celeste’s eyes were flattened with fear as she contemplated the gun in Bolan’s hand, particular interest going to the silencer. “Chic alors! C’est sinistre!”

  Bolan said quietly, “I want Marcel.”

  “Non! Americaine?” She raised her voice to call out, “Marcel! C’est l’Americaine!”

  Immediately the door at the rear of the lobby opened and a man of about 25 entered, a short but powerful looking Frenchman with a wide grin of welcome. The grin faded into uncertainty as he stared at Bolan, then another man pushed in behind him.

  The second man got a good look at the visitor, yelped something in excited French, and whipped a pistol from the waistband of his trousers. Bolan’s .32 phutted dully and blood geysered from between the man’s eyes. He hit the floor dead, his pistol clattering across the floor and sliding to a rest almost at Bolan’s feet. The first man was diving back toward the door. Bolan’s second round helped him get there, the slug plowing into the back of the skull and dropping him in the doorway.