He pulled out the leather case which had been dropped by the victim, and discovered it to be a wallet. Obviously the betrayed had been about to reward the betrayer, though certainly not to the tune of two hundred francs. In the wallet was Martin's passport folder, a wad of francs, an American Express credit card, and an identification card from American-Independent Studios in Hollywood. A newspaper clipping found in one of the pockets was praising Martin's role in a recent motion picture. So... the guy was an actor.
Bolan had never been much of a movie-goer, and he had never had much interest in screen personalities. He wondered just how big a name Martin actually had in the business, and how much of a fuss would be raised by his disappearance.
An actor. Bolan would like to see him act his way out of this mess. All the bluster and indignation in the world wouldn't... Bolan was staring dumbly at the wallet. The guy had even lost all his identification. The seriousness of the situation for Gil Martin settled into Bolan's bones like the cold fog outside. The name Gil Martin possibly meant no more to the French Mafia than it had to Bolan. What could the guy tell them what could he say or do to convince them that they had the wrong man? One part of Bolan's mind was hoping that Jean the porter would beat it to a telephone and pass the word; another part feared that he would do so, and that Bolan was advancing into another drop.
Other questions bothered him also. If this had been New York or any other city at home, Martin would right now be lying in his own blood on the sidewalk outside the terminal. Were the Frenchies more cautions less inclined to open gunplay? Or was there a deeper significance to the snatch?
Bolan leaned forward and told the driver, "Can't you speed it up? Vite, vite!"
In this fog, subsurface travel would be much quicker than the snail's pace allowed on the streets hence Bolan's desire to get to a subway. The Paris metro system was superb and easily transited. If Bolan could get to a metro station quickly enough, and if the information supplied by Jean the porter was straight, and if the abductors were being as hampered by the weather as was Bolan's driver then possibly Bolan could pop up at the right time and place to save the hapless Martin from death... or from a worse fate. It was a wild gamble, of course, but Bolan's entire life had become a series of wild gambles. At least, he knew, he had to try. In the final analysis, Bolan realized, this was the last significant difference between himself and his enemies. He had not yet lost a reverence for innocent lives. To surrender that distinction would place Bolan in the same category as the scum he sought to eradicate it would, in a sense, mean the loss of Bolan's war, the end of meaning, and another loss for an already losing world.
Yes, dammit, he had to try. He fished in his pocket and came out with the silencer for his revolver and attached it, then carefully tested the breakaway action of the sideleather. The driver was immersed in his impossible driving conditions, and was showing Bolan no attention whatever.
Bolan repeated, "Vite, vite," then settled back in the seat and commanded his memory for long-dimmed details of the Paris layout. His last time here had been as a kid soldier on furlough from duty in Germany, and it had been a memorable two weeks.
Now he had come as a combat pro on furlough from some kind of purgatory, and he was not at all happy about being snatched back into hell again.
But if hell it was, then hell it would have to be. He was not giving the Mafia even a semblance of Mack Bolan without a fight.
His destination was a house of joy. If Bolan had his way, it would quickly become a house of woe.
5
Executioner in Paris
Bolan removed his false moustache and sideburns and exited from the St. Michel metro station into a continuing fog, pausing briefly on the boulevard to orient himself. He was in the heart of the university district, not overly far from the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. St. Michel was a wide avenue of sidewalk cafes and bookstores, though now practically lifeless in the early morning mists. He turned west and into a gradual uphill climb, then down Rue St. Jacques for a block and found Rue Galande. Here was even less life, an almost choking silence, a narrow and fog-enshrouded, street of shops, old hotels, bistros, and a few basement dives affectionately known as Les Caves.
Bolan had been here once, on a pleasant spring evening many years earlier, and to a memorable caveau where a G.I. with limited means could nurse a single drink throughout the night and take in some of the hottest jazz east of New York. Warm memories stood aside for cold reality, however, as Bolan surveyed the now dismal scene. The fog had captured the odor of decay and too many centuries of living on the same spot-perhaps even too much dying... and what, he wondered, was really the difference? All of living was a slow dyingness, a gradual rundown of the clock of life, a decay-rate from the moment of conception. Violence, Bolan had long ago decided, was but a form of protest against that inexorable decay. Where the smell of decay was strong, violence somehow seemed a natural constituent also.
A chill shivered him and sent him on along the quiet street. At this hour of the morning, he knew the signs to search for, knew the telltale evidences of the form of activity he sought. The .32 came into his hand, the small weapon lengthened somewhat now by the silencer, and he walked quietly with the mists, themselves a dampener and softener and silencer of human activity.
A door opened somewhere up ahead and a woman's amused giggle entered the fog. Bolan crossed the street and moved on toward the sound of footsteps going away from him. A faint glow ahead halted him, and he heard the woman again, calling softly into the gloom a gay farewell.
He lit a cigarette and waited. Several minutes later, a repetition the light giggle, a quiet male voice saying something in hushed French, footsteps on the walk, a feminine farewell floating out to send them on their way.
Bolan had scored. The signs were unmistakable. The house of joie was disgorging its overnight clients. This time the footsteps approached Bolan. He cupped his cigarette to shield the glow in his hands and pushed back against the front of a shop. A bulk moved past him and on along the sidewalk, the man moving hesitantly and feeling his way along the curbing. Yeah, he had scored. A few years back, the maisons de joie had been a natural and accepted legality in this ancient city of charm, and there would have been no standing room within them for a free ride by the Mafia, no opening whatever for the writhing tentacles of organized crime. Now joie was banned in Paris, the city of joie, and indeed the Mafia would find a fertility in that ban.
Bolan moved in closer and the next time the door opened he had a rather good view of the couple who stood briefly in the halo of light. The woman was tall and rather well put together. Black hair was cut short and curled loosely about the ears, a shimmering wrap of some sort belted at the waist, a nylon-clad leg projecting into the early morning cold. The man was middle-aged, well dressed, a soldier of the night. He murmured, "Au revoir, Celeste. La soiree, c'etait for-midable!"
The woman's response must have been a prescription giggle, Bolan was thinking. It came the same as twice before, accompanied by, "Au revoir, Paul. A plus tard, eh?"
"Oui, certainement."
The man was on the sidewalk and moving away from Bolan. He awaited the final prescription after-call of farewell from the steps, then a swift movement placed him beside the woman. She stood there in a silently shocked reaction to Bolan's sudden presence, one hand on the door the other clutching her silk-covered tummy.
"Bonjour, Celeste," Bolan amiably greeted her. "Comment ca va?"