The face contorted. Froth appeared between the cracked lips.
There was a single bullet left in the Beretta. Bolan pointed the muzzle at the center of the dying mans forehead and triggered a mercy round.
3
Maybe Im the ultimate optimist, Mack Bolan had once written in his journal. I believe my sword hand is guided by thoughts of victory. I command myself to win. Therefore, I have the advantage.
The advantage, yeah. But too often in his everlasting war, the hellfire warrior had to forge that advantage in the flames of overwhelming disadvantage.
Bolan was no superman. He knew the limits of his abilities. And he also knew that at any moment a stray, indeed a well-placed bullet, could finish him in the hellgrounds. The thought made him frustrated and anxious because he sensed a growing possibility of victory by the dark forces of the world.
Bolan believed that the savages, the evil legions of animal man, should not be allowed to inherit the earth. The Executioner considered their defeat his vocation. He was prepared to sacrifice love, a home life, a normal career, everything to fight those legions, and if possible to halt the advance of evil man so that gentle civilizers would no longer live in fear. And every ounce of his soldiers resolution was dedicated to that cause.
Learning his deadly skills in the jungles of Vietnam, Bolan had subsequently, in the murderous one-man war that virtually destroyed the Mafia, transferred those skills to the urban jungles of his homeland.
Later, there had been the antiterrorist crusade, fought with covert government approval from Stony Man Farm, a fortress headquarters in Virginias Blue Ridge Mountains. As Colonel John Phoenix, he had in this phase of his life escalated his efforts into open war with the KGB. And it was this sinister arm of Soviet oppression that had stage-managed the demolition of the Stony Man operation and the frame-up that had made Bolan an outlaw.
It was as a loner, therefore, a supreme warrior who knew that each victory only brought him face-to-face with a new threat, that Bolan had been coopted for the present campaign.
So he understood now why Telder, Chamson and their superiors had chosen him. If the deal went sour for Bolan, they would not be responsible and theyd have nothing to worry about. Because he was an outlaw on just about every continent. If something big was planned and Bolan stopped it... well, theyd simply smile and relax, reap the honors. In any case, Telder and Chamson would come out of it with clean hands.
Okay, if that was the way the cards were dealt, hed play the hand.
His mandate was to uncover the something big that was being planned in the Riviera underworld, to find out what black conspiracy was being hatched in the cold minds of the men running that crime empire.
Before he ventured on the inside, where his movements might not be as free as he wished, he determined to follow up the only lead he had: a few strange words choked from the scorched lips of a dying goon.
A meeting was about to take place. And it was, according to the burned hardmans last words, important, to be held somewhere called La Rocaille.
Bolan was experiencing a gut reaction that it was important for him to be around when that happened.
Once in Marseilles, Bolan wasted no time. He knew precisely who would give him the information he needed.
He entered a noisy bar on the Canebiere. La Rocaille? the swarthy man behind the counter repeated. Sure. Its the old Delamour joint, on the coast between here and Cassis.
Bolan took a cab. La Rocaille was an islet, no more than two hundred yards offshore, below jagged cliffs separating the city from the famous little fishing port. There were a couple of acres of undulating ground above the limestone wall surrounding the islet, and here, sheltered by tall hedges and set in a cypress grove, an extraordinary building had been erected.
It was a huge house, built on several different levels, combining gothic turrets with Oriental domes above a fantasy of Moorish arches and windows.
Who owns it? Bolan inquired.
It was built by Deborah Delamour, the silent screen star of the twenties, the cabbie said. After her death, the property remained empty until the mid-sixties. It was bought recently and restored by an industrialist named Sanguinetti.
Are visitors allowed? Bolan asked conversationally.
Are you kidding? the cab driver replied. Sanguinettis got guard dogs, closed-circuit TV, electrified fences, you name it. He gestured across the stretch of calm blue water. In Delamours time, there used to be a suspension bridge, but thats the only way you can get there now.
He was indicating a small concrete jetty projecting from the base of the cliff on the landward side of the islet. Steps cut from the rock zigzagged to the top of the limestone face, and there was what looked like a cable car rail, with an open car, rising directly from the jetty.
A white power launch was tied next to the steps, with two burly men wearing blue sailors jerseys lounging nearby. Another guard stood by a tall wrought-iron gateway at the top of the stairway. No beaches on the other side of the island? Bolan asked.
The taxi driver shook his head. Sheer cliffs all the way around, he said.
Bolan glanced right and left. The heat had gone from the sun, but there were still vacationers bronzing themselves on the sandy strip below the road. Kids swam in the shallows, and there were half a dozen windsurfers offshore, waiting for a breeze.
Beyond a line of automobiles parked on a low bluff, he could see striped umbrellas and a beach restaurant at the inner end of a pleasure pier. A thicket of sailboat masts clustered around the wooden piles. They use that pier? Bolan asked.
Uh-uh. They got a regular service of those floating bars... he nodded toward the launch ...bringing them out, sometimes from the city, mostly from Cassis.
Bolan nodded, as if dismissing the subject but the whole area intrigued him. Boatloads of people were ferried from Cassis to a heavily guarded property owned by an industrialist, and there was to be an important secret meeting... more than ever Bolan determined to smuggle himself onto that islet. Okay, lets go to Cassis now, he told the driver.
The village was five miles away, around a bend in the cliffs, but to get there the road circled behind some wild rocky slopes. Sanguinetti sure had picked himself an isolated retreat, Bolan reflected.
Bolan paid the cabbie, rented a Volkswagen and drove down to the dockside. From a ships chandler store he rented scuba equipment, a waterproof neoprene satchel and a spear gun. Then he drove back toward Marseilles and down to the coastal road, which petered out a few hundred yards beyond the bluff where he had stopped the taxi.
At the end of the road, he concealed the VW behind an immense boulder and returned to the bluff on foot. He changed into the diving suit, strapped on the oxygen tank, drew on helmet and facemask and stowed the Beretta in the satchel. Picking up the flippers and his spear gun, he moved toward the waters edge.
The night was very warm. The three-quarter moon was not due to silver the cloudless sky for another hour. The sea was calm. Bolan stepped into the flippers and waded in.
Several boats had already chugged out from Cassis to Sanguinettis jetty. He could see the riding lights bobbing at the base of the cliff. Voices and laughter drifted across the water, and there was a hint of music from the house above.
Bolan submerged and swam slowly and steadily toward the small island, using a luminous waterproof wrist compass to maintain direction. The sea became progressively colder as he approached the islet. There were deeps along this stretch of coast and the fissured limestone let in many small creeks, one of which he hoped to find on the seaward side of Sanguinettis fortress.
Fifteen minutes after he had entered the water, Bolan surfaced. He was west of the property, about thirty yards out from the cliff. There was a swell here that had not been evident from the shore; he could hear the suck of the waves as they lapped against the rocks.