Bolan had no hard and fast opinion on the deaths of presidents and candidates. He knew enough about clandestine Washington to realize that Gianelli might have had a dozen different handles on the Company — from Asian heroin through all the machinations aimed at Castro in the days before detente. If Cartwright was a carbon copy of his mentor, Farnsworth, he was rotten to the core.
If not, then he was dirty all the same. The Executioner had never shrunk from the concept of guilt by association. Public figures who aligned themselves with public enemies were worse than savages in Bolan's mind. They consciously abandoned sacred oaths of office, violated public trusts in the pursuit of private gain, and Bolan didn't buy their hollow protestations of indignant innocence. When you lay down with jackals, you got up with fleas... or worse.
It wasn't finished while the architects of Hal Brognola's private hell were still alive. So long as any vestige of the Farnsworth clique survived at the CIA, the Executioner himself had debts to collect. For April Rose, Andrzej Konzaki, Aaron Kurtzman — all the others who had suffered through the treachery of men presumably committed to protection of their country and its people.
It would not be finished until that debt was paid.
And then?
He shrugged the question off and knew that then would take care of itself. His debt was here and now. Before another dawn broke over Washington, the soldier meant to close that overdue account and wipe the ledger clean.
With blood.
24
"I'm telling you they blew it, Nicky. Are you reading me? A frigging homicide detective took the call!"
"Relax."
The mobster's voice was oily, self-assured, but his apparent confidence did nothing for Cameron Cartwright. It was over. They were caught up inside the worst scenario he could have possibly imagined. Somehow, local officers had found the safe house. Not just officers, but homicide detectives. That meant death, and any way you sliced it there was trouble on the way.
Brognola's family was alive. Cartwright's crew would never willingly have compromised the safe house with an on-site execution. And if forced to kill a hostage on the premises, they would have cleaned it up without involving the authorities. Police meant phone calls from the neighbors — worse, from one of the surviving captives — and a call to the police meant someone had surprised his team.
The implications of that were too frightening to consider, even for a survivor like Cartwright. It meant surviving witnesses, embarrassment and nagging questions from detectives and investigative journalists.
Even with the precautions he had taken with the safe house, there were ways to trace his men. In death, they posed a threat that none of them had ever constituted while alive. Their faces, fingerprints, surviving records that had somehow missed the shredder when they joined Clandestine Ops... There were a million ways to blow a cover, dammit, and if Grymdyke had already been exposed...
"I'm leaving," he informed his host, abruptly turning from the window to confront the man whose personal vendetta had rebounded to destroy them all. "I'm getting out."
"We're getting out," Gianelli corrected. "I could use some sun, and God knows you've been looking pale these past few weeks. You like the Virgin Islands, Cam?"
He thought about it, shrugged.
"It doesn't matter what I like," he said at last, resigned to exile. "It's as sure as hell I can't stay here. Not now."
"You're getting all worked up for nothing," Gianelli told him, smiling like a hungry shark. "We aren't hung yet, not by a long shot. Just because a couple of your boys got bumped..."
"A dozen, counting Grymdyke. And the four you wasted on DeVries."
"Forget them," Gianelli answered, waving pudgy fingers in a gesture of dismissal. "Buttons are a dime a dozen. So, tonight you lost a dime. Big deal. You catch some sun, let all the badges chase themselves around in circles for a month or so, and by the time they're finished, nobody remembers who they wanted in the first place."
Cartwright didn't buy it for an instant, but he kept his mouth shut, watching Gianelli as he rose and punched the button on a desktop intercom. The houseman's voice came back like talking gravel.
"Yes, sir?"
"Pack up some bags, Vinnie. Sunshine stuff, enough for three, four weeks. And have them bring the car around."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Gianelli."
Straightening, the little mobster killed the squawk box, turned to face his guest.
"You'll get a chance to pick up something when we land. Who knows? You might go native on me once you meet those local broads." His laughter sounded like bones rattling inside a burlap bag.
The man from the CIA was not concerned with luggage or the shopping opportunities wherever he might find himself a day or week from now. He was concerned about survival, preservation of his liberty, the heat that would inevitably follow an investigation of the shootings at the safe house.
Even if the homicide detectives couldn't trace its ownership, the very fact that they were asking questions would alert his own superiors within the Company. It was impossible to keep them in the dark, and once they started asking questions, he was finished. Dead. When they found out that he had launched domestic operations on his own authority, joined forces with the syndicate to target government employees and civilians, they would not be reckoning in terms of prosecution.
Hit-on-sight with no questions asked would be more like it. And never mind the capo's fairy-tale scenario about returning home with all forgotten in a month or two.
The honcho from Clandestine Ops knew he was never going home again. No way in hell. They wouldn't let him. Worse, they would be hunting him, alert to every movement in his old accustomed haunts, and branching out when Cartwright failed to show himself within a reasonable time. He was a man condemned without a country now, and there would be no sanctuary for him in the Virgin Islands. Maybe in Fiji or Nepal if they didn't smell his spoor and put the hunters on his track again.
He could defect, of course. The Soviets would welcome him, with certain reservations. At the very least they would protect him from his former comrades in the Company, and after he had proved himself reliable, there would perhaps be certain luxuries permitted.
While his information lasted, anyway.
He was a walking gold mine to them now, but in six months, a year...
How quickly would the Company replace him in Clandestine Ops? Tomorrow? The next day? Certainly, they would not wait until next week. And from the moment of arrival, his successor would be busy changing codes, recalling agents in the field, and generally scrambling to save CO from any damage or embarrassment. It was astonishing how many operations could be scuttled or diverted in a single day, as Cartwright knew from grim experience.
But he would still be valuable to the Soviets. Or to their ranking competition, the Chinese. So many options left before him yet, he had been premature in giving up, preparing for disaster. He could still save something from the ruin of his life... and he could still repay the man who engineered his personal catastrophe.
Before he struck his bargain with the Soviets, Chinese, whoever, Cartwright meant to settle his account with Gianelli. It was Nicky's fault, the whole damned mess, and Cartwright meant to pay him back before he faded from the scene forever.
Nicky liked the Virgin Islands. Fine. They would be beautiful this time of year, festooned with foliage, creeping vines and flowers. More than adequate, he thought, for one small wreath.
Cigar smoke wreathed his head as Gianelli watched the limo being loaded. An hour more would see them at the airport, trundling aboard his private jet and southbound, homing on the sun, deserted beaches where a man could rest in peace.