"Be assured," de Champs murmured, and broke the connection.
He walked through his trophy room and a priceless collection of mementoes of his glorious ancestry, and stepped onto the balcony to survey his miniature kingdom. Could a common American hoodlum actually hope to challenge all this? These grounds were the showplace of the Riviera; the ballroom beneath him had entertained the royalty of Europe; his kitchens had pleased the delicate palates of the most prominent of international high society. De Champs was not quite so assured as he had seemed in his conversation with the panicky Vicareau. There existed, of course, a possibility of danger. But Vicareau and his whining... De Champs made a deprecatory sound deep in his throat and leaned against the railing to peer out onto the south grounds.
He smiled, remembering the conversation with the bleating goat. No, de Champs would not shutter the windows and hide in the cellar, but... The Great Danes were prowling free within the inner fences. He would love to see the cocky American gunman try those fences; he would think that he had fallen into a pit of lions as, indeed, the effect would be the same.
Just below was Pierre, the dog handler. Pierre, too, would love to see his pets exercised. De Champs called down to him, "The beasts look magnificent." He laughed and added, "They have the hungry look."
The handler was wearing a pistol in a holster at his waist. He touched the butt of the pistol with the back of his hand and called back, "I am not too sure of them myself, M'sieur. They strain for the hunt."
De Champs laughed again and raised his eyes to the south boundary of the Iron Mask Estate. A public road to the beach traversed that side of the property, fully five hundred meters from the house. A bright red automobile was stopped on the road and a barely visible human figure stood behind it. De Champs stepped into the trophy room for a pair of binoculars and promptly returned to the balcony and focussed the glasses on the vehicle. He called down, "Pierre, open the gate to the south field," and leaned forward over the railing for a tense binocular inspection.
The car was an American sports model... a tall man leaning across the roof with some object... de Champs sharpened the focus, caught his breath in a sharp gasp, and the signal to flee clanged into his brain one heart-stopping moment too late. The last image registered on the retinae of Claude de Champs' eyes was a fierce face leaning into the eyepiece of a big gunscope and a tiny puff of smoke erupting from the muzzle of a long firearm.
The hot chunk of steel-jacketed .444 closed the distance in something under three seconds, zipping in just beneath the binoculars and ripping through the soft flesh of de Champs' throat in a geysering explosion of blood and mutilated tissue.
The binoculars fell into the Courtyard of the Iron Mask and the man himself was flung backwards and through the French doors and onto the exquisite cherry-wood of the Louis XIV era trophy room.
And so died another pretender to the underground throne of France.
Not even an iron mask could have saved him.
The Sting Ray was in traction and powering along the road even as the report from the big Safari model was still rolling across the fields. Bolan turned onto Moyenne Corniche, the fabulously beautiful coastal drive, and ran south to the nearest exit, then swung inland and began the encirclement of Nice, a small section of map lying across the steering wheel and guiding him. Twice he overshot dimly-marked back-roads junctions and once had to ease his way through a small flock of sheep blocking the roadway, but he came out on the southwest edge of the city with five minutes to spare on his schedule, then headed directly for the chateau of Alex Korvini.
The photo on the dashboard showed a scowling man with hard eyes and heavy brows, a long corrugated forehead, square-jawed, grim-lipped. According to the Wilson data, Korvini had made it big from the misery of his countrymen in Italy in the grim days following World War II, hi-jacking American free aid materials and selling them at inflated black market prices to those who should have been receiving the life-giving goods without charge. Since then he had been involved in veritably every underground avenue of international thievery and trade, including drugs and the wholesale disposal of stolen goods, but his steadiest and most lucrative form of income had come from petty frauds and illicit business deals involving U.S. servicemen stationed in Europe and those of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Korvini had been a French citizen since 1961, had never been arrested anywhere, and was regarded by his jet set friends as an astute international financier. Which, in fact, he was with an almost unlimited backing of ill-gotten money.
Bolan scouted the country estate with quick passes on two sides, then found the piece of high ground best suited for his hard drop. It was about a quarter-mile distance and allowed excellent coverage of front and rear entrances, both to the property and to the house itself.
The chateau occupied a small knoll. Slightly behind, below, and toward Bolan stood a moderate-size barn. Through his glasses Bolan could see horse stalls, a small corral, an expensive American automobile parked in back, another in front of the chateau. A man in white dungarees and a blue denim packet stood at the front gate with a shotgun under his arm; another, similarly clad, guarded a small entrance at the rear of the property. Another pair of armed guards strolled about on the knoll on which sat the house.
Bolan continued the distant inspection, raising the binoculars to sweep the surrounding countryside. As he watched, two vehicles entered an intersection about a mile beyond the estate and proceeded up the lane toward the front gate. Cops!
He returned immediately to the scrutiny of the chateau. It must be soon or never. Windows heavily draped, upper levels shuttered. Some were learning. Suddenly the back door of the house opened and a stocky man ejected himself partially, said something to a nearby guard, and quickly went back inside. Bolan grinned, having caught a quick glimpse of shaggy brows and bumpy forehead as the man disappeared from view. Okay, he'd spotted the target now to get him back into the open.
Bolan went to the Sting Ray, checked his weapon, and returned to the hard drop. The vision field of the scope was highly intense, reducing to about a five-inch real-diameter focus. He targeted-in first on the back door to the chateau, then tracked slowly across to the nearest guard on the knoll, read his range, corrected to six-inches above target, tracked back to the door, again ranged and corrected, selecting a door-hinge as the spot in his crosshairs.
He swung the track several times, practicing the route and getting the feel of the swing, then he settled into the piece, laying-in prone, and found his mark on the knoll.
The guard was lighting a cigarette, turned to directly face Bolan, legs spread wide, the butt of his rifle on the ground, muzzle-end leaning against his chest. Bolan was sighting on the stock of the grounded rifle. He gently squeezed off, hanging into the recoil to maintain visual reference with the target, held there to confirm the hit as the guard's rifle took the impact and transferred it to the man, and both fell over then Bolan calmly tracked over to the mark on the door and was on the second target by the time the sound of the firing reached the chateau.
Korvini's contorted face suddenly loomed into the vision-field, mouth open, obviously yelling something. The crosshairs smoothly tracked upward to the six-inch fix above target a mixture of conditioned instinct and finely-tuned reflexes sighed into the squeeze-off, and another item of hard persuasion was roaring along the two-second course.
Korvini's heavy brows fell into the eyesockets, the face collapsing in a grotesque reception of sizzling steel, exploding inwardly and spattering the backdropping doorjamb with skull fragments and jellied frothings of brain cells.