Sunscream (4 page)

Bolan jerked again, harder. The man flew over his head and belly flopped into the pool.

Bolan was on him before he had time to turn onto his back or surface. The guard struggled desperately.

The pool became a maelstrom of foam and thrashing limbs. Bolan had the advantage of surprise and superior strength. The guard was holding a gun, but right now his overriding desire was for self-preservation... his need for air, to feed his bursting lungs.

Bolan found his wrist, applied a nerve grip, forcing him to drop the weapon. Remorselessly he forged through the water, shoving the drowning guard toward the deep end.

Finally Bolan maneuvered the hardman to the side, where a ladder led back up to the flagstone patio. He hooked his arms over the top of the ladder while he thrust down with his feet to keep his victim submerged until at last the frantic struggles weakened and then ceased.

Bolan left the body floating facedown in the pool, recovered the Beretta from where he had dropped it on the terrace, and hurried back to the house. He turned another corner and looked across sloping lawns to a hedge over which the distant lights of the city made a faint glow in the sky.

The ground rose here, leaving a railed area circling the building. Bolan looked down through the top half of tall windows to a large paneled room in the center of which eleven men sat around a boardroom table. He caught his breath. So, this must be the “important” meeting.

Crouching, he saw that the room was surrounded by a gallery. A short flight of steps led to a door that was clearly an entrance to this gallery.

At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was not locked. A fraction of an inch at a time, he eased open the door, waited, pushed lightly. The door swung silently inward and he slipped through.

Carved wooden balusters railed in the gallery, which was in deep shadow. The room below was lit by three green-shaded lamps that hung, poolroom style, over the vast table. Bolan lowered himself to the floor and peered down between two balusters.

A big ornate chair at the head of the table was empty. Sanguinetti, the owner of the property — Bolan recognized him from newspaper photos — was installed at the foot. The other ten men were ranged five on either side.

They were talking among themselves. Bolan could make out no individual words, could hear no names. But he did not have to. He realized he was looking at ten of the most powerful men in the world.

And the most evil.

Facing him beneath the low-hanging poolroom lamps, Bolan saw the rock-hard features of Vincente Borrone, whose family controlled docks and transport Stateside; Luigi Abba, the undisputed boss of Vegas and the West Coast; the Unione Corse capo, Renato Ancarani; Arturo Zefarelli from Sicily; and Pasquale Lombardo, who ran the Mob in Toulon.

For a while Bolan was unable to pinpoint the crime emperors with their backs to him, but the conversation around the table was animated, and eventually each had turned toward a neighbor sufficiently for the Executioner to pedigree the other five.

The first he recognized was Girolamo Scalese, king of the Camorra in Naples.

Next to him was the Baron Etang de Brialy, a small gray-haired Frenchman with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, who was the Mister Big behind all organized crime in Paris. Between this couple and Sanguinetti were two hoods whose names Bolan could not remember but who controlled, he knew, the Mafia in Chicago and Detroit. The quorum was completed by Jean-Paul.

It was the first time Bolan had seen the Marseilles gang leader in the flesh, and he looked at the man with interest.

J-P was impressive. He was a big guy, almost as tall as Bolan, and appeared to be in his early forties. He was trim, bronzed, the sharp planes of his face etched with laugh-lines, his head unexpectedly capped with thick white hair.

Bolan smiled wryly. If he had known his future “employer” would be at the meeting he probably could have entered the fortress openly and even been invited as a guest. As it was, he would have to get out fast before the absence of the two men he had killed was noticed. He couldn’t afford to have Sondermann associated with that.

But first, he wanted to find out the purpose of the meeting. Nothing was happening right now: the eleven men appeared to be waiting for something. Or someone.

A few minutes later, Bolan heard the clattering whine of an approaching jet helicopter. The noise increased and then it subsided as the chopper landed somewhere on the far side of the pool.

A whistle sounded. Almost immediately the aircraft took off again and flew out to sea.

As the rotor whine faded in the distance, conversation in the room below the gallery dwindled too. A door opened; a voice made an announcement.

A thickset man with a shaven skull marched into the room, nodded briefly and took the vacant chair at the head of the table.

Bolan choked back a gasp of astonishment.

The man was in military uniform; he wore the insignia of a Colonel in the Red Army.

His name, Bolan knew, was Dimitri Aleksandrevitch Antonin. And the last time they had met, Bolan had shot him in the shoulder and left him for dead. So, the liaison between the KGB and the Soviet military intelligence agency, the GRU, was still alive.

Bolan didn’t get it. On one of his daring one-man raids into Soviet Russia, Colonel Antonin had been in charge of the manhunt ordered at all costs to stop him from leaving the country with a defecting scientist.

At that time, Antonin had been assistant to Major General Greb Strakhov, the evil genius of the KGB responsible for the frame that had outlawed Bolan. He wondered now if Antonin had taken Strakhov’s place as head of the KGB’s “wet affairs” death squad. Or if he had returned to his original post as KGB-GRU liaison under the department’s Third Chief Directorate.

Moscow was a hell of a long way from Southern France. And what was he doing here chairing a meeting of international racketeers?

Whatever it was, the Executioner knew, it would be something as corrupt as it was illegal.

He craned his neck trying to hear every word exchanged around the long table below. The conversation, which had been in French, had now lapsed into an English with more varieties of accent than Bolan had ever heard in one place.

“You know why I am here,” Antonin said curtly. “It is a matter for you to decide among yourselves — here, now, and I want a decision before I leave — whether you are prepared to accept my offer.”

Bolan’s eyes opened wide. He was eavesdropping on some evil scheme that the KGB was anxious to promote, that was clearly going to link crime with sedition.

“Very well, Colonel,” Jean-Paul was saying, “we are aware of the general strategy. Now let us hear the details.”

“They are not complicated,” Antonin replied. “You and the elements you represent are locked in permanent combat with the law, both nationally and internationally. Is it not so?”

He paused. “I am not,” he continued, “concerned here with questions of so-called morality, with the bourgeois-imperialist concepts of good and evil, right or wrong. In my country we subscribe to the doctrine that victory goes to the strongest, that might, as you Westerners have it, is right. I make, therefore, no value judgments in assessing your particular role in your society. I view it objectively.” Another, longer, pause. “And objectively speaking, you are weak.”

Several of the mafiosi shifted uneasily at Antonin’s words. Weak? That was the last term they would apply to themselves. They were the emperors of crime, and people lived or died according to their orders.

Scalese, the Camorra boss, muttered something under his breath to Renato Ancarani. The New York capo, Borrone, scowled and only just managed to check a heated reply that sprang to his lips.

“You are weak,” Antonin repeated, thumping the table, “because you are always in an inferior position relative to your lawmakers. However important the scale of your operations, you are scared of the law.”

He held up his hand as the murmurs of dissent around the table rose to an angry climax.

“I am not questioning your personal courage. My criticism is aimed at the position from which you mount those operations. And no reasoned analysis of the current situation could characterize your position as anything but weak.”

In the gloom of the gallery above, Mack Bolan grinned. The hoods were being fed home truths... and they didn’t like it.

Antonin pressed on relentlessly. “What I am offering is the means to reverse this situation. If you accept the offer, soon
you
will be in the driving seat; the law and its enforcement officers will be scared of
you.”

“And just how,” Toulon’s Pasquale Lombardo rasped, “do we get to be that way?”

“Your present inferior position,” Antonin said, “is largely a matter of logistics. That plus a lack of coordinated command and a generalized resistance on the part of the public.”

“Oh, yeah?” This was Borrone, and he clearly did not understand Antonin’s words. “And how the fuck do you figure we could change all that?”

“An unlimited supply of arms,” the Russian said calmly. “We cannot, of course, be directly involved, but I can arrange for Omnipol, the official Czech arsenal, to furnish you with Kalashnikov AK-74s, Tokarev and Stechkin automatics, Skorpion machine pistols, explosives, RPG-7 grenade launchers, ground-to-ground guided missiles, anything you want.

“With the firepower these sophisticated weapons will give you — especially if they are in unlimited quantity — you will have the police running for cover any time you choose to show your faces.”

“Shit, I ain’t buyin’ that,” Arturo Zefarelli said. “Even with that amount of heat, the different goddamn families’ll never...”

“Ah, but there is a corollary,” Antonin cut in.

“Come again?”

“A condition without which it’s no deal. Naturally we do not make such an offer without the hope of some... recompense.”

“Here it comes,” Ancarani whispered to Scalese. “The fucking bite!”

“Our interest,” Antonin said, “is in the destabilization of Western society. You know that, of course. I am assuming that none of you... disapproves.” The sneer in his voice was evident. “No? Very well, then. I will add that we believe this society carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. The existence of organizations such as yours proves the point. But we wish to hasten the process so that communism can take over more rapidly.”

The KGB officer sat back in his chair and laid his hands on the table. “Our other efforts have had a limited success. And I am speaking of our support for the so-called extremist or terrorist groups, mainly among the Arabs, the Armenians and the Irish. But it is all too minor — too slow. That is why we have come to you. Properly organized and armed, you could wreak havoc with the world as the capitalists have ordered it. I emphasize: properly organized.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that even with the arms, I suggest you would remain a loosely connected but disparate
collection
of units. What we want is a single integrated group. The offer, therefore, is conditional on your establishing one individual worldwide crime syndicate, entirely disciplined, and obeying orders from a single central command.”

“Which you would wish to control?” Jean-Paul asked.

“Not control,” Colonel Antonin said suavely. “We should be pleased to offer advice.”

“Okay, so what’s in it for us?” the gang leader from Detroit demanded.

“For you there would be rewards a thousand times greater than anything you have achieved so far. But first you
must
unify.”

“So what happens when the society’s fucked over and the Reds move in? I mean, what happens to us?” Luigi Abba said sourly. “I mean, I don’t see no Syndicate cat-houses or dope rings or numbers games in your friggin’ commie paradise. Me, I don’t fancy no salt mine detail.”

“It is not a problem that is likely to arise for some time. Even if our project succeeds.” Antonin’s smile was bland. “In any case, room can always be found for men of enterprise and initiative.”

Etang de Brialy, the Parisian, spoke for the first time. “This flood of arms you so generously offer,” he said mildly, “just how will it be paid for?”

“Not with money, if that is what worries you,” Antonin replied. “Let us say by the rendering of certain special services.”

“Such as?”

The Russian did not reply directly. “You have a system, I believe,” he said, “for the removal of unwanted individuals. Well, from time to time we shall feed
you
contract jobs that call for the liquidation of elements embarrassing to us. Labor leaders, diplomats, an occasional politician. Maybe a journalist whose views we find uncomfortable. People with whose disposal we must on no account be directly connected. The success of such operations will amply reward my superiors for any... logistic help... they can supply.”

Flat on his face in the gallery, Bolan could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. This was the conspiracy “brewing in the Riviera underworld” that Telder and Chamson had suspected.

The KGB were now planning to recruit the entire Mafia brotherhood worldwide. They were deliberately marshaling the forces of crime to further their own despotic ambitions.

Bolan was under no illusion as to the threat a global KGB-Mafia partnership would pose. With the means at their disposal, and the whole weight of the Soviet Union secretly behind them, they could — as Antonin prophesied — drive democracy to the wall.

He wondered if the hoods below could see things equally clearly; if they were dumb enough to believe that the KGB would allow them to direct their own organization once they had accepted Russian aid.

Bolan himself knew damned well what would happen. Once the Mob had accepted the KGB handout, they would simply become reinforcements to the seven hundred thousand agents already implementing Moscow’s plans all over the world.

Right now, though, Antonin was spoon-feeding them the story that all would be best in the best of possible worlds. Hell, this is all the world needs, Bolan thought savagely.

“Okay, okay,” he heard the Chicago gang boss say. “So we make with all these shooters and get the cops running. What if they bring in the army then?”

“Yeah,” Borrone said. “Cops with .38 Police Specials or Brownings is one thing; paras with all the gear they have is another.”

“The fact that the army might be involved would add to the confusion,” Antonin said smoothly. “People would see their world collapsing; they would be traumatized. In any case, you would still have the advantage.”

“No kidding!” Zefarelli scoffed. “Just tell me how.”

“Simple,” said the Russian. “The army would have to be careful to avoid civilian casualties in any shootout. Otherwise the political repercussions would be disastrous. You would work under no such restrictions. The more bystanders shot down the better. Calling in the soldiers is already an admission that the situation is out of hand. Either way we win.”

“I don’t know,” one of the capos said dubiously. “We make enough bread the way things are. Why take a chance and...”

“You would be taking no chances,” Antonin interrupted. “But there is no hurry. Talk it over. I shall be here until midnight. Why don’t we, uh, join the ladies? You can let me know what you have decided when you have discussed it among yourselves.”

A smart time to ease off on the hard sell, Bolan figured. There was a scraping of chairs as the mafiosi stood up. Led by Sanguinetti, they filed, talking heatedly, toward a door leading to the main part of the house. Bolan pushed himself to his hands and knees. Time to split before they found the guards he had zapped.

Now that he knew the score, it would be great if he could somehow patch in to the hoods’ decision. He glanced over his shoulder at the garden exit.

And froze.

Eighteen inches from his head there was a pair of glossy black high-heel boots. Above the boots, glove-leather pants and a matching draped jacket clothed a shapely brunette. She held a small blue-steel automatic in her right hand.

“The knockdown power is nonexistent,” she said softly. “But at this range, in experienced hands, it can be lethal. And I assure you I am experienced. I think you had better come with me.”