Bolan didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going to be allowed to remain on the sidelines much longer.
Marcel Sanguinetti’s property on Stromboli satisfied the same desire for privacy that was apparent at La Rocaille. It was separated from the houses of the island’s one poor fishing village by a low headland of black volcanic basalt that ran out under the sea.
The villa was in the style peculiar to the islands: square, flat roofed, spread over many terraces and approached beneath an arbor of grapevines supported on lime washed masonry pillars. A rough track led there from the village: the arbor was directed toward an expensive landing stage.
The volcano on the island, no more than three thousand feet high, is active, liable to erupt at any time.
As they neared the island, the boatload of mafiosi saw with some trepidation that a wisp of dark smoke curled upward from the crater.
“Hell,” a minor mobster from Marseilles exclaimed. “The bastard’s gonna puke hot rocks and bury us all!”
“Nah!” commented one of the bodyguards accompanying Zefarelli, the Sicilian chief. “She’s always blowin’ a little steam — nothing to worry about.”
Some of the hoods laughed. One or two looked as dubious as the guy from Marseilles. Otto Schuyler, a hood from Amsterdam who had not been at the original meeting in Marseilles, scowled and spat on the floor. “Hell, I thought this was supposed to be a goddamned get-together of guys with guts,” he sneered.
Bolan listened to the interplay and wondered what was the best way to capitalize on such paranoia that it would complete the disintegration he himself had started.
Right now, he had to let the subject drop. There was a long rattling rumble as Bloody Mary dropped anchor.
Jean-Paul walked into the bar with Sanguinetti and the Sicilian boss. “Okay, you guys,” he called, “break it up. We’re going ashore.”
Antonin’s chopper was due before dusk. Before that, Coralie Sanguinetti, who had arrived on the island the previous day, organized an open air meal prepared and served by locals, on a huge patio.
It was suffocatingly hot on that windless afternoon. The sun glared from a sky the color of hammered pewter, the sea scarcely stirred and the wisp of smoke veiling Stromboli’s crater remained motionless.
Jean-Paul had decided to deliver a last-minute pep talk on the necessity for a united front. He strode up and down among the senior mafiosi — Bolan, along with strongarm men, was being fed in an adjoining courtyard — brandishing a leg of cold chicken as he urged the vital importance of total agreement.
He was emphasizing how essential it was for Antonin to be convinced that there was not the slightest hint of discord, when the clatter of an approaching helicopter floated over the murmur of voices around the patio.
Almost at once the rotor whine was itself drowned out by the rasp of a powerboat surging in toward Sanguinetti’s private landing.
For an instant Jean-Paul paused, and then he resumed his harangue. He had hardly spoken when hurrying footsteps echoed along the stone walk beneath the arbor that led from the harbour.
Two thickset men burst onto the patio, each carrying a Walther PPK automatic. One of them wore a white hospital bandage around his neck.
Through the archway separating the two courtyards, Bolan recognized the hood whose throat he had pierced with the paper knife. The other guy looked as though he could be Scalese’s son. Surreptitiously Bolan checked that the Beretta slid easily in its leather.
Jean-Paul stopped in midspeech. “What the hell?..”
“What kind of shit are you bastards trying to pull?” the guy who looked like Scalese’s son shouted. “Where the hell does this mother get off...” the two men surged toward Jean-Paul, furious and menacing “...sending in his goddamn gorilla to break up my old man’s place, trying to crease the old guy?”
“All right. Cool it, damn you.” Two angry spots of color burned on J-P’s cheeks. “What do you mean by busting in here like this! Who the hell are you talking about?”
“De Brialy, that’s who,” Scalese Jr. yelled. “Where is the creep? I’ll tear him to pieces!”
Pandemonium all around the patio. Some of the hoods were protesting, some laughed, some stood up to see better. There was a sudden increase of noise as the helicopter passed low over the villa and hovered above the landing stage.
De Brialy rose slowly to his feet, small, prim, gray. “Just what exactly am I supposed...” he began.
“My old man may not live: his skull is cracked, his bones are broken, he’s all busted up inside,” Scalese raved. “Seven of his housemen are wasted. And all because of some crap relating to cathouse kids. Don’t deny it, you frog bastard: it’s all on the tape.”
The guy with the bandaged throat obviously found it too painful to speak, but he nodded violently, gesturing with his gun at Etang de Brialy. One or two of the mafiosi had unobtrusively circled behind the two intruders and now they were covered on all sides.
Jean-Paul sighed. “Maybe it would be better if we continued this indoors,” he said.
Together with the two enraged Italians, Etang de Brialy and a handful of the other capos, he hurried toward a colonnade running outside Sanguinetti’s quarters along one side of the patio.
Passing the arch that led to the second courtyard, Scalese’s companion looked up and saw Bolan sitting among the gorillas. He froze, tugging at Scalese’s sleeve as he croaked something unintelligible in a raucous ghost of a voice. Scalese whirled. “That dude? He’s the bastard did the job?”
Bandaged-throat nodded, his own eyes murderous.
The barrel of the PPK swung up.
“Cut that out!” Hard as a plank, J-P’s hand chopped down on Scalese’s wrist, knocking the gun to the ground. At the same time Etang de Brialy twisted the other Walther away from the bandaged hood.
“This is a time for talking, not shooting,” the Marseillais rapped sharply. He glanced up as a shadow swept across the patio. Swooping low above the building, Antonin’s chopper was about to set down. “And a damned awkward time it is,” Jean-Paul muttered.
He looked across at the inner courtyard. “Sondermann, you’d better come along, too, until we get this whole mess sorted out.”
Bolan was already on his feet. Time for the showdown, yeah, just as he had expected. He flipped open the single button of his jacket for easier access to the shoulder rig, but from behind two hands closed in on his biceps and Smiler’s voice drawled: “Not so fast, Fritz. I always did think there was something creepy about you. Now I smell a rat — a rat with a not-quite-strong-enough German accent.”
Chuckling to himself, Raoul snared the Beretta from its armpit rig and the two of them marched Bolan indoors after the others. “Better for the boss he should be in no danger when he gets wise,” Smiler rasped.
Inside the villa they crowded into a wide, low-ceilinged room with huge windows looking out onto a terrace of black volcanic ash planted with orange and lemon trees. The branches of the trees thrashed as the helicopter settled down between the terrace and the landing stage.
Jean-Paul stood with his back to a vast marble chimneypiece. The remainder of the mafiosi stood awkwardly among the cane tables and chaise longues furnishing the room.