Dead Man's Tale

by Don Pendleton

  A check of the timetables showed that there was a service that would have deposited Zulowski in Luxembourg twenty minutes before the time of the shooting. And that was as far as the Executioner could get.

  The inquiry came at the end of two days of painstaking and frustrating legwork, during which Bolan went over three times the route Zulowski would have taken from the car rental office outside Brussels airport to the village where he abandoned the vehicle.

  He drew a blank at expressway toll booths, roadside diners, gas stations and taverns. Nobody remembered a particular Peugeot 205 GTi convertible on that day, or had noticed anyone who fit Zulowski's description. Nobody else had been around asking the same questions either, which seemed to confirm that the Mob knew where Zulowski had been. Presumably because they'd been chasing him.

  That could also explain a slight time discrepancy. Bolan knew the time the Peugeot had left Brussels and the time it must have been abandoned in Betzdange. And they were too far apart — not much, but a little too far apart — for a guy in fear of his life driving like hell on the most direct route.

  So what was the answer? The time lag wasn't enough to allow for a stopover and a visit to the post office in some town on the way. So it looked like Zulowski could have been making detours, trying to shake them off. Sighing, Bolan started varying the route.

  And it was here that he hit the one positive lead in the whole investigation.

  At a hamburger stand near Clervaux, in the Little Switzerland region of Luxembourg, he found a twelve-year-old boy who collected the license numbers of passing foreign cars.

  And, sure, the kid remembered that day very well. He'd thought they were having a race, the small open Peugeot and the black Mercedes sedan — and although it was exciting, he'd Figured it was pretty dangerous, broadsiding around corners on these twisty roads through the woods. He couldn't recall the people in the cars, but he did remember the plates. The convertible wasn't interesting: it was only from Brussels. But the Mercedes — he thought it was a 300 or maybe a 350 — was not only from Italy, the registration was Palermo, Sicily, the first he'd ever seen.

  Bolan handed the kid a ten-spot and headed for Luxembourg city, satisfied, finally, that he was getting somewhere. Palermo, cradle of the Mob worldwide. That was the clincher.

  They'd picked up Zulowski near Brussels, chased him down into the Grand Duchy, hung in there however much he twisted and turned, and finally caught up with him near Ettelbruck, hosing his car with lead but losing him when he jumped the bus in Betzdange.

  That hadn't stopped them from calling ahead and setting up the ambush across the street from the post office.

  Why the post office?

  Because they knew he was on his way to mail the second part of the hologram secret. And they had to stop him from sending it to the States at all costs.

  Well, they had stopped him, all right, and whatever the medium was, it hadn't arrived in the States. But they hadn't got it into their hands, either. Bolan's own experiences proved that.

  So, for the hundredth time, where the hell was it?

  The latest intel narrowed the field.

  Zulowski still had it when he left the wrecked Peugeot at Betzdange. There was no time for him to have stopped and hidden it someplace between the village and the capital. And even if he had, why would he have been going to the post office without it?

  So, logically, he was carrying it when he made it up those post office steps. Yet nothing had been found on his body. And the Mob was still looking.

  This mystery was beginning to appear unsolvable.

  But there could be one other explanation. He did have time to stash the medium somewhere in Luxembourg city itself, in a place between the bus terminal and the post office.

  In which case, knowing they were close behind him, he could have been on his way simply to send a message to Brognola, a cable telling where the medium was.

  Whichever, it seemed crystal clear to Bolan that the answer must lie in that section of the Grand Duchy's capital.

  It was about time that Mike Belasko, insurance investigator, made it to Luxembourg and started asking questions himself...

  17

  Mack Bolan arrived in Luxembourg city after dark. The stores were closed, the central post office was closed and there was only a reduced night staff on duty at police headquarters. He checked into the Hotel Cravat, opposite the cathedral of Notre Dame, and paced out the route Zulowski would have taken from the bus terminal to the flight of steps where he was shot.

  Luxembourg is built on a plateau one thousand feet above sea level. It is split through the center by the Clausen ravine, at the bottom of which the Alzette River loops through the capital, separating the old town from the new. Below his hotel, Bolan saw that the forty-five degree slopes of the Clausen were covered with floodlit lawns, dropping to an ornamental garden beside the river five hundred feet lower down. But on the far side of the cathedral, the walls of the canyon were almost perpendicular and the cliff faces were honeycombed with thousand-year-old caverns linked by passages hollowed from the rock.

  Below them, steeply slanting roads zigzagged down to ancient buildings that bordered the river. The warrior stared at the descending panorama of stone facades and lamplighted roofs, of turrets and spires above the dark surface of the water. It could be the site of hundreds, thousands of dead-letter drops, secret niches or hiding places where a man on the run could safely stash an envelope, a package, an apparently innocuous strip of plastic or glass.

  Bolan checked it out. The illuminated warren of medieval defense positions hewed from the rock was open to the public. It would still have been open between the time Zulowski got off the bus from Betzdange and the moment he was murdered on the post office steps.

  But there was no way Brognola's agent could have made it to the caverns and hidden his package between those two points in time; the detour was too long, there was too much ground to be covered, even if he had run all the way.

  No, Bolan was convinced the answer lay somewhere near the site of the killing and decided to confine his investigation to that area.

  * * *

  The police captain wasn't overanxious to reopen the case of a murdered foreigner — an apparently motiveless killing — that had already been dumped in the Unsolved file at the Commissariat archives. But the Interpol chief whose signature had been forged on the Executioner's letter of introduction was very important.

  "Our files are at your disposal, Mr. Belasko," the captain said, hoping that his men hadn't been too perfunctory in their inquiry. If only someone had said that the damned American had been some kind of spook from the CIA or whatever...

  He picked up a folder from his desk and cleared his throat. "The facts of the case, sir, are that the unfortunate gentleman was shot down with a rifle by a marksman standing at a window on the sixth floor of an unfinished apartment building. The structure is two hundred meters away from (he post office, directly across the street, and it was the evening rush hour."

  "Nobody saw the killer... on the stairs, anywhere?"

  The policeman shook his head. "Like I said, nobody lives yet in the building. The apartments are empty and the doors to the entrance are not yet being installed."

  "So anyone could have gotten in or out unobserved. What about witnesses to the shooting, people who saw Zulowski fall?"

  "There are many. Two ladies in the flower shop next to the apartment building, a man and his wife who operate the tobacco stand beside the steps and the newspaper vendor. Not to mention the girl who runs a necktie store, a match seller, passersby. Many people."

  "Witnesses, I guess, to the fact that he was hit, fell down and died outside the post office."

  "All but one. The man who sells matches is blind. He didn't of course actually see the assassination. But the man collapsed and fell in front of him, where he sits at the bottom of the steps."

  "I meant that none of these people heard or saw the sniper fire."

  "Aha!" The poli
ce captain was pleased. "But you're mistaken, sir! One witness did happen to be looking at the new building and observed the three puffs of smoke. He was confident enough, our killer, not even to use smokeless powder! Then, as the victim fell, the witness heard the noise of the shots. Otherwise we might still be looking for the place where the murderer stood. There are many tall buildings, and a dead man spins around as he falls, so there's no indication of where the shots came from."

  "And your witness?" Bolan prompted.

  "A lady. She was descending the steps as Zulowski ascended. That's how we know he was entering the post office and not leaving or just passing by."

  "Did he have anything on him, such as a package? Would anyone have had an opportunity to approach the body and, well, take something away?"

  "We think not."

  "He was supposed to deliver a package. If it wasn't with him, I reckon he'd hidden it somewhere and was on his way to send a coded cable to his boss to tell him where it was. He must have known a killer was after him."

  "Doubtless. But we found nothing on him, not even a passport. Certainly no diary or notebook or anything he could have used to encode a message. There was just a single business card with the address of his apartment here."

  "Did you say apartment here in Luxembourg?"

  "But yes." The policeman raised his eyebrows. "You didn't know? It seems the man's cover occupation for... whatever secret work he did... was as an accountant specializing in American company law. So he was frequently in Switzerland, Germany and Liechtenstein. But for some months his base has been here. The apartment remains sealed. Would you like to see it?"

  "Naturally," Bolan replied, "I don't want to go over the same ground your men have so painstakingly covered. But, yes, purely so that I could get the feel — if you know what I mean — of Zulowski's life, I'd appreciate a half hour in there,"

  "Nothing," the captain told him, "could be more simple."

  Ten minutes later, the Executioner left the police headquarters building armed with a list of the witnesses' names and addresses, the keys to Zulowski's apartment and a Xeroxed transcript of all the evidence taken during the murder inquiry.

  He was crossing the roadway to his rented Volkswagen when the sound of tortured rubber registered in his ears. At the same time a blur of sudden movement on his right actuated the sixth-sense hair trigger alarm that years of self-preservation in combat had perfected. He hurled himself against the side of a delivery truck that had drawn up on the far side of the street, crashing off the steel panels to roll in the dust as a sedan roared past, missing him by inches.

  Bolan stood and dusted himself off, refusing offers of help and descriptions of the killer car. As he pushed through the crowd of passersby who had witnessed the "accident" he saw the young woman. She was leaning against the hood of the car parked next to his own.

  "You were right not to waste time with witnesses," she said quietly. "The plates would certainly have been phony, and there are hundreds of big American sedans in Luxembourg and Belgium."

  The Executioner looked at her questioningly. "I guess I must have missed out somewhere along the line, but I don't think..."

  "GSG-9," she said in a low voice. "From Wiesbaden. Second Surveillance Unit."

  Bolan frowned. He knew that GSG-9 — Grenzschutzgruppe — was the counterterrorist arm of the West German BKA Federal Crime Office in Wiesbaden. He also knew it was now divided into four combat units, each thirty-six strong, and that the first two specialized in surveillance. He didn't know they recruited curvaceous blondes with flawless features.

  "I can't ask you to come up with credentials in the street," he said. "Just the same..."

  The blonde smiled. "Naturally, but maybe I can justify my interference — and at the same time convince you, Herr Belasko, of my bona fides — without an exchange of papers."

  "Try me."

  "Somebody tampers with the brakes of your car while you are consulting with Colonel Heller at the NATO optics laboratory near the border of my country. You have an accident and the car is wrecked, but you, fortunately, are not. After this I'm instructed to keep what my chief calls 'a benevolent watching brief on you. Since then I have observed many things, such as a clumsy attempt to abduct you from the Silver Swan hotel in Liege by a team of bogus policemen. Your escape from this on the autobahn E-5 outside the city. A second attempt, which you evaded by diving into the River Meuse. A period of two days and two nights in which you vanish. Then a forty-eight hour span that you employ by visiting many places — and asking many questions — between this city and Liege."

  "That proves you've been tailing me. Nothing more."

  "You are currently staying at the Hotel Cravat, opposite the cathedral. Last night you retired early after eating at the hotel. This morning you visited Commissioner Wenzel and discussed the shooting of a Polish-American named Rene Zulowski."

  Bolan grinned. "Okay. If you know already what my business was with the police, I guess you have to be official. But why are you watching me in the first place?"

  "We weren't. You wrote yourself into the script unexpectedly," she replied. "The surveillance target was — and still is — Vito Maccione. And of course the undesirables he surrounds himself with. The Westphalian state government isn't happy to see the onetime leader of a foreign criminal conspiracy install himself between Bonn and Cologne. Accordingly federal help is requested and the BKA handed the job over to us. I was in Belgium, and only happened to run across you, because I followed one of Maccione's hit squads across the border."

  "And West Germany doesn't want neighboring countries pushed around by criminals based in its territory?"

  "Right. The authorities aren't terribly happy either, to be honest, when gunfights occur in their own territory. As happened at the castle where Maccione lives. But doubtless you know nothing of that."

  "Doubtless," Bolan said dryly.

  "My name is Alexandra Tauber. If you could give me some idea of what you are doing, and why, perhaps I could help you."

  Bolan gave her the expurgated version. "Zulowski, the guy who was shot outside the post office, had a package he was supposed to mail to the United States. A very important package. He was killed before he could, but he didn't have the package on him. He'd stashed it somewhere. My job is to find it and deliver it into the right hands."

  "And Maccione's people?"

  "They want the package too. That's why he was killed. But they didn't find it, and they don't want me to find it."

  "So how can I help?"

  "Right now," Bolan said, "you could come with me to an apartment Zulowski rented here in town, and see if we can locate any clues overlooked by the police — or the Mob for that matter, who must have searched the place by now."

  "Let's go."

  The neat, two-room apartment was on the tenth floor of a new building near the radio and television station. They drove past the huge gray building that housed the head office of the European Coal and Steel Federation and crossed the great single-arch Pont Adolphe that spanned the Clausen ravine one hundred and fifty feet above the river. Two policemen were deep in conversation outside the entrance to the radio station. As the blonde got out of her car, Bolan saw a nondescript man carrying a rain coat raise one eyebrow a fraction of an inch as he strolled past. Two youths lounging against an ornamental fountain in the lobby straightened up and moved away as Bolan pressed the button to call the elevator.

  "The commissioner, I see, likes to make sure that his, uh, guests are welllooked after... and don't run away with the keys."

  "Naturally," Alexandra replied. "These are determined and ruthless people. They will undoubtedly try again. And since we have asked for the cooperation of the local police... well, however much they may admire our own efficiency, and yours, it has to be admitted that this is their home ground. I'm sure that Herr Wenzel feels simply that there may be angles unknown to us that he can cover just by being around."

  Zulowski's bedroom was stocked with a selection of
clothes a little on the staid side, a closet full of linen, drawers of socks, neckties, underwear, a stack of freshly laundered shirts on top of a signed photograph of a girl. The contents of the fridge announced his bachelor status: fruit juice for the morning, ice for drinks, end of story. The living room was a mass of paper: brochures, prospectuses, invoices, accounts sheets. Reams of notes concerning Zulowski's cover activities overflowed the desk, littered the bookshelves and tables, and even lay strewed over the top of a sophisticated stereo system.

  "What are we looking for?" Alexandra asked.

  He'd given the question some thought. It was useless to say simply a package: if there had been one, the police or the Mob would have taken it long before. But it would be equally stupid to refuse to say. Since the West German federal government would eventually be as concerned as Uncle Sam to squash the Mafia expansion plans in Europe, he saw no reason to hold out on the woman. He explained about the hologram medium without specifying exactly what it was that Zulowski had photographed.

  But although they had a better idea than the Mafia thugs or the police regarding what they were looking for, they drew a total blank. The apartment yielded no half-silvered mirrors, no sheets of ground or frosted glass, no inserts of semitransparent plastic. After they'd spend more than an hour emptying and refilling drawers, closets and bookshelves, Bolan shook his head and walked to a window overlooking the entrance. A sallow-faced man with a lock of hair hanging over one eye was driving a Lancia convertible out into the street. "We're wasting our time," the warrior said. "There's nothing here the others would have missed. Every damned piece of glass in the place is a fixture. There's not even a portable shaving mirror."

  "What about the photo of that girl?" Alexandra asked.

  "It's all in the dossier the commissioner gave me. She's the daughter of a Frankfurt hotel keeper who he stayed with whenever he was in Germany. It seems they were... kind of close."

  "She hasn't received any packages with a Luxembourg postmark recently?"