"Yes, you handle things beautifully," she murmured.
He told her, "That isn't hard when you're handling beautiful things."
"Mack... don't waste yourself on an insane war."
"It isn't insane," he replied. "You said something about tasting life, Judy. Listen... I don't know about women... but a man hasn't begun to live until he's found something to die for."
"I... guess I understand that. And I think I'm... ready to try my novel again, Mack."
He smiled at her, his teeth gleaming in the subdued light. "I'm glad to hear that." He went to the closet for the rest of his things.
"It isn't going to be The Confessions of J, either."
Bolan placed his gear at the door and went over to kneel at the bed. He kissed her lightly on the lips and said, "No?"
"No. I think I shall call it No More To Die."
"What's that mean?" he asked, smiling solemnly.
"I don't know, except that I've been dying for years, and for no good reason whatever. I suppose I'll have to write the book to find out what it means."
He kissed her again and quickly stood up. "You'll find out," he said gruffly.
"Do you realize how very profound you are, Mr. Bolan? You've found the mystical secret of paradoxical logic. You are truly alive, aren't you?"
He went to the door without replying, opened it, picked up his things, then said, "Au revoir, Judy."
"Don't say that. Say a tout a l'heure see you later."
"I hope so," he said.
"Me too," she whispered.
He went out and down the stairs and onto the street. It was shortly past two o'clock. All was quietly deserted out there now. He went up the street without challenge, got into his car, and headed for Champs d'Elysees.
Sure, he was truly alive. A man who lives in the constant shadow of death is always very much aware of being alive. He knew nothing of paradoxical logic or the strange workings of psyche that led a refined English girl into French joie service, but he did know that he had made a possibly fatal mistake of weakness back at that house of death.
He had left a survivor. He had humbled the guy and allowed him to beg for his life, then compounded the shame by walking away and leaving him alive. No man who was tough enough inside to survive in the world of Mafia could live for long with that kind of humiliation eating at him. The Rudolfi guy would have to vindicate his own aliveness now. He would have to answer to his own high priest of human pride and manliness, and the reply would undoubtedly be along the lines of what the English girl had termed paradoxical logic. Rudolfi would have to kill because he regarded himself as unfit to live. Of such questionable fodder were born the world's holy wars. Bolan understood this. Rudolfi would have to kill Bolan, or else lose his own right to live. This type were the enemies who mattered. Bolan understood this, also.
He only partially understood the English girl, God love her. Searching for her soul in a French whore house! He tried to relate her search to his, but quickly gave it up as a hopeless intellectual exercise. He quite frankly did not understand the female mind. Women lived for different reasons than men. They were nest-builders, civilizers. Even in prostitution they labored toward an affirmation of life, consciously or not.
Bolan, too, affirmed life but in that paradoxical way. His supreme affirmation would be in his own death and that awaited him around every corner.
He sighed and tried to bring his mind out of the depths into which it had been plunged by the set-to with Judy Jones. He sent the little car along Quai Voltaire and across the Seine at Pont du Carrousel, then swung up Quai des Tuileries past La Place de la Concorde and onto the Champs.
The skies had cleared, traffic was extremely light, and he found himself enjoying the quiet drive through early-morning Paris. It was with a feeling approaching regret that he pulled into the hotel garage.
He left the car with a sleepy-eyed attendant and took the elevator directly to his floor, bypassing the lobby, and was thinking of the contrast between left-bank and right-bank Paris as he entered his suite. It was like two separate worlds. With all this luxury, he was thinking, the crumbling little hotel on Rue Galande had held something for Bolan that all this elegance could not supply. He went into his bedroom and switched on the light and abruptly changed his mind regarding Champs d'Elysees accommodations.
The girl in his bed was wearing nothing at all from the waist up. What he could see was solid elegance, and he could guess about the other areas. She sat up abruptly and held her arms out to him, her eyes straining for an adjustment to the sudden light.
"Gilbear," she crooned in a gently chiding tone, "I 'ave wait all night for you."
Oh hell, Bolan told himself.
Her eyes found the adjustment they sought. She did a startled little double-take at Bolan and jerked the sheet up to cover the delectably bare torso.
"But you are not Gilbear," she quietly decided. "And so, 'o are you?"
Oh double hell, Bolan thought.
And he was not using paradoxical logic.
10
New Parameters
The chateau at the edge of Paris was ablaze with lights, but there were no sounds of revelry in the big house this night. A large charter bus was parked in the circular drive; groups of heavily dressed men walked restlessly about the lighted grounds or stood in quiet circles and spoke of solemn things.
Inside, in a large game room with a cathedral ceiling, Tony Lavagni perched atop a bar stool conversing in low tones with a statuesque French woman, the lovely Roxanne Loureau confidential secretary and mistress to Thomas Rudolfi a charming woman whose good breeding showed in her every gesture.
Gathered about a billiard table but obviously not overly interested in the game were five of Arnie Castiglione's most trusted hardmen. Each of these captained a crew of ten guns, all of whom had been personally handpicked by Castiglione himself.
This was a no-nonsense company of pros which had descended upon the Republic of France. The dismay and cold fear which lurked in the depth of Roxanne Loureau's eyes revealed that she, too, recognized this truth. Speaking in precise English, she told Lavagni, "I am certain that Mr. Rudolfi will be along most any minute now, Mr. Lavagni. But perhaps it is unreasonable to expect you to wait longer. Perhaps you would like to get some rest and..."
"The night's shot already," Lavagui growled. "Look, we didn't just drop in for protocol purposes. I need to make sure that Monzoor's covering us I mean, you know, official-wise."
"But I have given you the necessary papers."
Lavagui grinned at her. "It takes more than that, and you know it. We want the right words in the right places, so's we can all go home when the job's finished. I ain't leaving no boys of mine in no bastille."
The woman was gazing at a list of names in her hand. "If they all are here, then have no worry. They will be protected."
Lavagui said, "I'd like to hear Monzoor tell me that."
"It is the same that I have told you."
Lavagni could almost believe it. This was a woman to be respected. He was telling her, "Just th' same, I'd like..." when the screech of tires on the drive diverted his attention. He slid off the stool at the same moment that the huge Negro, Wilson Brown, stepped in from outside.