Husqvarna kicks the other shoulder!”
There was a look of admiration in Jean-Paul’s eyes as he watched the hired hit man.
“The lawyer’s name is Maitre Delpeche. Too damned smart for his own good. He made the mistake of advising an adverse party while he was representing me, at the same time, on the same case.”
“He lives here in Marseilles?” Bolan asked.
“Oh, sure. The TV guy’s name is Michel Lasalle. But he works out of the local Number 3 channel studios down here. You’ll have no trouble locating him; he loves to be seen in public. You probably heard of the columnist. Georges Dassin. He’s syndicated, likes to run after high-school girls — pays them to pose for nude photos! Trouble is, he was once a foreign correspondent in Moscow and he knows Antonin. If he sees the Russian here — and the guy has his sources — he might just put two and two together and run some damn fool piece trying to stir the cops on our payroll into action, and that could be embarrassing.”
“Who’s my cop?” Bolan asked. “A guy who’s
Before Jean-Paul could answer, the sound of a diesel engine in low gear penetrated the glass. J-P stood and crossed to the window. “It’s a cab,” he said. “Looks like Antonin himself sitting in back. What the hell does he want this time of day?”
Bolan cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was a confrontation with the Russian. The guy had been dubious, something stirring in his memory, the second time he’d seen the Executioner at La Rocaille. This time, wearing no wet suit, Bolan was certain he would be recognized.
“Maybe I’d better go,” he said hastily. “You’ll have business to discuss... and, anyway, there are a couple of calls I have to make...” he glanced at his Rolex “...before five.”
“You can phone from here,” the mobster said. “Besides, I’d like you in on this if he’s going to talk about...”
“I don’t have the numbers here. And they’re unlisted,” Bolan improvised. “You want quick service on these contracts, I have to get back to my hotel, check out those numbers, and...”
“Darling?”
The two men swung around. Jean-Paul’s pretty dark wife, Severine, was standing in the doorway. “J-P, darling, may I borrow Herr Sondermann for two minutes? Coralie’s with me and she’s got a problem with a passage of Hegel she has to translate for one of her test papers. If Herr Sondermann wouldn’t mind?..”
“Of course, I’d be glad to help,” Bolan said quickly. He looked enquiringly at the gang boss.
“Oh... very well.” Jean-Paul shrugged. He found it hard to refuse his young wife. “Don’t keep him long.”
Walking through the black-and-white checkerboard marble hallway, Bolan saw through the armored glass entrance doors that the Russian was getting out of his cab.
But he wasn’t paying the driver; he was asking him to wait. Bolan hoped the quote from Hegel was a long one.
Following Severine along a corridor that led to the back of the house, Bolan passed Raoul, one of Smiler’s lieutenants, in a white linen butler’s jacket, on his way to answer the doorbell.
Coralie was in a den, sitting at a table strewn with textbooks and papers. “Surprise,” Bolan said. “What seems to be the linguistic trouble?”
“As you’re being paid, anyway,” the girl said dismissively, “I didn’t see why you shouldn’t do some work for me.”
“Coralie!” Severine sounded shocked.
“It’s okay,” Bolan said, smiling. “Mademoiselle Sanguinetti and I are old adversaries!”
In fact there were very few translation difficulties in the Hegel passage, but Coralie managed to keep the questions coming until they heard the distant slam of a car door, and Antonin’s taxi drove away.
She accompanied him back to the sun room to apologize to J-P for the length of time she had kept him.
“Why did you do it?” Bolan whispered as they crossed the hallway. “That was a put-up job, wasn’t it? You had Severine come in and ask for me deliberately, to keep me out of the way of the Russian? Thanks — but why?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I think they call it woman’s intuition,” she said demurely. “I saw your face when you had to pass near him the night of my father’s... party. I figured anyone who looked that apprehensive must be in need of care and protection.”
Before Bolan could think of a suitable reply, they were back in the sun room.
“It was of no importance,” J-P told Bolan when the girl had made her excuses and left. “Antonin’s going to be away a couple of days, that’s all. He wanted me to know: he’s been recalled for consultations.”
“To Moscow?”
“Hell, no. To his base. They fly him here in a chopper from one of those so-called Soviet factory ships — they’re electronic surveillance vessels really — outside the twelve-mile limit.”
“You were going to tell me,” Bolan said, “about the contract for your cop.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jean-Paul said, “The cop. His face has been seen around here too much recently, A wise guy, asking questions. I figure he’s dangerous to the project, so he must go. You can waste the others any way you want, but this one I want shot down in public. As a warning to others.”
“What’s his name?” Bolan asked. He could see the muscles in Jean-Paul’s jaw working before he almost spat the word.
“Telder.”
11
The phone calls that Bolan made were urgent. Antonin would be back in a couple of days. He would expect to find the mafiosi ready to sign on the dotted line. With all their internal problems settled. Which meant that Jean- Paul would expect his highly-paid German hit man to have wrapped up his first four contracts.
The Executioner had no wish to massacre four innocent men, but to contrive the satisfactory “death” — or at least disappearance — of the columnist, the lawyer and the TV personality, with or without their cooperation, depending on how scared he could make them, would be difficult enough in two days.
The “murder” of Telder would be something else.
“There’s a convention of cops and criminologists and special services meeting in Avignon,” Jean-Paul had told Bolan. “It ends tomorrow. Your man Telder is one of the guys on the platform. I’d like you to take him out during the windup session.”
Bolan knew about the convention. The last call he’d made had been patched in to a secret number in the city. Ironically, the experts had been called together to discuss more effective measures against terrorism, skyjacking, juvenile delinquence and the increase in organized crime. “I want to make a point,” J-P said. “Go chase the Arabs, the Armenians, the Libyans and all the other bomb-happy crackshots, but leave us alone. Do that and we leave you alone: otherwise... well, see what happens.”
“You want this guy Telder wasted as an example of what we could do?” Bolan asked.
“Right.”
“But... in the conference hall itself? While they’re all there?”
The gang leader nodded.
“How many at the convention?”
“Around two hundred. Security’s tight, of course. But we can get you an official pass. And we have friends inside.”
“You’re kidding,” Bolan said. “This is a 561 Express that I use. Hell, the barrel’s two feet long! I can’t hobble in there with the gun stuffed down my pant leg, pretending I got too close to a bomb in Beirut!”
“So?”
“So I have to find some way of zapping the guy inside while I’m on the outside. If it has to be while he’s on the platform.”
“It does. That’s the way I want it. But I don’t see why you have to use the rifle. Why not go in close and
