Anvil of Hell
Page 4
"And the coffee shop?"
"Maybe that's the most useful of all. You know what they used to say: if you wanted to know what went on in the big houses, you'd ask in the servants' hall. Well, my coffee shop's a little like the old servants' hall. We get seamen from the boats, waiters from the consulates, porters, hit men, all kinds. Sure, I'm like a recording angel in here, preserving every little thing that comes in — and the coffee shop's one of my main microphones, as it were."
"I was surprised that you knew I wanted to talk to you."
"And isn't that the simplest thing! Wait'll I show you." Tufik sent the chair wheeling around to the console and flicked a switch. A pilot light glowed red on an indicator board. "What'll you have?" he asked. "The bar? Second table on the left? The far end where the gorillas are standing?"
He thumbed a series of buttons ranged across the board. As each one was depressed, a colored light glowed above it and a snatch of conversation boomed from a speaker at one side of the console.
"... asked the consul's daughter to slip the package into the diplomatic bag, but the bitch doesn't snort herself, so..."
"Jean-Marc! Three flats and a glass of white!"
"Shit, all you have to do is listen at the bedroom door..."
"...should wipe that damned smile off your face if I were you, or there's one or two of us'll wipe it off for you!"
"A goddamn flic, that's what the bastard is. I knew it as soon as I came in..."
Bolan recognized in the last surly voice the ill-tempered guy who had shouldered him aside at the bar. He had noticed his suspicious glare before the barman led him away, and he had no doubt he was still the subject of speculation. "Very ingenious," he said. "You have each table wired for sound, and other mikes concealed at strategic points around the room. How do you know when to listen to what?"
Tufik was delighted. He giggled like a high-school freshman. "Good, is it not?" he crowed. "As to listening, all conversations are recorded automatically. I have two secretaries who go through the tapes each morning and transcribe anything they think might interest me." He pointed to two huge spools revolving on a complex deck beyond the speaker. "Multitrack, recording both sides."
"At least that material costs you nothing," Bolan said.
Tufik burst into a wheezing laugh. "That's right. This stuff is gratis — it offsets all the bread I lay out in other directions!"
"There must be one type of intel you can't pass on."
"Something Tufik cannot provide? You name it." The fat man bristled, his professional pride at stake.
"I mean details of what one client has asked you. You wouldn't reveal that information to another client, would you?"
"Ah, no, you're right there. Wouldn't be just, now would it? In a business relying on discretion, I couldn't do that at all."
Someplace amid the jumble a telephone was ringing. Tufik eventually located it beneath a heap of Sunday supplements. "Hello...? Yes, it is... Good evening, Colonel, and the same to you." He listened for a few moments and then said, "Yes, I think I can. Just hang in there a minute, will you...? Now wait. Where did I put that cutting?"
He hunted among the sheaves of papers, propelling himself around the room with extraordinary speed. At last, with an exclamation of triumph, he came up with a clipping printed in Japanese characters that included a photo. "Got it!" he announced proudly into the mouthpiece. "Model girl from Tokyo who works in New York. Name of Umino Takimoto. They stayed at the Imperial in... Let's see... Yes, from the twenty-first to the twenty-seventh of April last year. Tried to duck out of a group photo in the Miami Herald, but they're identifiable top left, walking out of the shot, issue of April 28..."
"Military attaché," he said as he put the phone down. "Now there's some poor politico who's going to have the bite put on him."
"Your work must make you unpopular sometimes," Bolan said.
"It does that. There's plenty who would try to put an end to it, believe you me. They nearly did once. That's why you see me here in this contraption. 'Twas when I was younger and stronger, and I had a mind to even the score with a gang of rascals who was spreading lying tales about me behind me back. They was trying to put me out of business, and I went up there to sort them out — only they had more friends than I did an' somebody put the boot in. Result: a spinal injury and partial paralysis."
"You seem to have plenty of protection now."
"Sure I do. I never go out. I have my girls and my work. I keep in touch, as you might say. Then there's Hassan and Jean-Marc and a couple more good ones to cover me. Wait'll I show you..." Tufik clapped his hands twice. "Bruno!"
A shutter slid open behind a blank space in the bookshelves and the muzzle of a machine pistol, capped by the long snout of a silencer, poked into the room. Above it, watchful eyes gleamed in the reflected light.
"All right, Bruno. Just a demonstration," the fat man called over his shoulder. The shutter snapped back into place. "But there you are, you see. My visitors are covered all the while."
Tufik drained his glass of Izarra and leaned back in the chair. "Now talking of visitors, I don't want to rush you, but I have callers expected. What did you want to know?"
"You must have helped my private investigator friend."
"These many years. I never knew who he worked for — that wasn't my affair — but, sure, I helped him many times."
"I'm following up a lead of his. He was killed before he could take it any farther. My question is simple. He was trailing a consignment of a certain commodity. I have reason to believe it's left Marseilles — or is about to leave — for Alexandria on a freighter. I want the name and address of a contact in Alex who'll be able to finger the consignment when it gets there — and who can fill me in on its final destination. Can you oblige?"
"I can, as it happens. At least the first part. Now we have two systems in this business: we have the subscription account, which is fine for clients like that military attache, who constantly require snippets of information. But it'll hardly interest you. Then we have the one-off operation, for the flat fee."
"Which is?"
"For every isolated piece of important information, no matter how simple or complicated, off the top of me head or involving research, one thousand dollars. It may seem a lot, but if it's unobtainable anyplace else..." He shrugged. "And, as you see, I have my overheads."
Bolan had come prepared. He removed a wallet from his breast pocket and counted out ten hundred-dollar bills, then laid them on the table.
"Plus fifteen percent service charge," the fat man continued suavely. "The boys here are on a percentage. That's one of the reasons I get such good protection. And that's why Jean-Marc spurned your bribe."
The Executioner opened the wallet again and took out another hundred and five tens, placing them on top of the bills already on the table.
"And one percent state tax."
Bolan raised his eyebrows sardonically.
"This is Marseilles. There's different kinds of protection, you know."
Bolan shook his head in disbelief as he pulled two crumpled five-spots from his pocket.
"Right." Tufik's voice was suddenly brisk. "I can answer the first part of your query without any research. We get a lot of seamen in here, see. I can tell you that your consignment — let's just say that it's highly radioactive — left here at dawn yesterday aboard a Panamanian-registered freighter called the Esperanza. It's packed in a lead canister that's much heavier than it looks."
"Good. And the contact on the other side?"
"That's something I'll have to arrange for you."
"There's a limit to my largess."
"All part of the service," Tufik said smoothly, gathering up the bills and stuffing them into an inner pocket. "No extra fee. Now what you have to do — you'll be flying to Cairo and then driving to Alex?" At Bolan's nod, he continued. "Good. The day after tomorrow, in the afternoon, you take the Corniche and you go to Stanley Bay. It's the usual sort of bathing beach with a seafront
and an esplanade. At the far end, on the landward side of the road, there's a restaurant called l'Oasis. It's a run-down sort of a place, standing by itself. You couldn't miss it. Order a Turkish coffee and an Izarra and wait. You'll be joined by a wee man called Ahmed Ibrahim, who works in the port weights and measures office. When there's stuff to be smuggled ashore by men on the boats, he's the man who fixes the routine. I think he will be able to help you."
"What time in the afternoon?" Bolan asked.
"Well, now, that lies beyond my competence right now, for I can't be after speaking for Ahmed's work schedule. But the harbor at Alexandria's a queer and interesting place, they do say. If you was to take a walk down there in the morning, say around eleven-thirty, and ask where the Esperanza will berth later in the day, I shouldn't be surprised if someone contrived to get a message to you that would fix a time."
"Thanks." Bolan rose to his feet. "I congratulate you on your sources. Monsieur Tufik. I'm impressed."
The fat man favored him with an impish grin. "You know what the British say when a child asks how a person finds out something? They tell them 'A little bird told me.' And that's the way of it with me, sure. Because in Arabic, the word Tufik means... a little bird!" He smiled again and held out his hand.
Bolan shook it and turned to leave.
When the slim torpedo named Hassan had shown the American out, Mustapha Tufik stared pensively at the papers scattered across his table. He sighed. Then, propelling his chair to the telephone, he lifted the handset.
"Hello?" he said. "Brigitte? Get me the Commissaire Le Brocquet at police headquarters, will you?"
Chapter Four
Bolan was expecting the attack — Broken-nose and his cronies had been conspicuous by their absence from the bar — but the timing of it and the method took him by surprise.
He had figured on an ambush someplace in the dark lane leading to the intersection where he had paid off his taxi. In fact the assault came from above: four men leaped down on him from a balcony above the archway that linked the lane with the courtyard.
He was sent sprawling to the cobbles by a violent blow in the back. Rolling with the fall, he drew up his knees to protect his groin, so that the follow-up man jumping for his belly tripped and fell heavily beside him. Bolan chopped him viciously in the throat and twisted eellike to his feet as the three others rushed him with upraised arms.
Backing up against the wall, he dragged the Beretta from its shoulder holster. But before he could thumb off the safety, a paralyzing knock on the right arm dropped it from his nerveless fingers.
Blows rained down on his head and shoulders, and from the corner of his eye Bolan saw the lamplight gleam on the length of lead pipe that had crippled his arm.
He drove his left elbow into one man's solar plexus, brought his knee up to parry a kick to the crotch then threw another punch at the first attacker, who was groping for the gun on the cobbles. He grunted and collapsed on his face as the Executioner kicked the weapon spinning into the middle of the lane.
Broken-nose and the two other thugs were trying to drag him to the ground. With a heave of his shoulders, the warrior broke momentarily free and piled a left, with all his weight behind it, to the jaw of the man with the lead pipe. The attacker dropped like a stone, his weapon clattering to the ground.
Bolan had whirled to butt one of the gorillas in the nose, and the man now sat in the roadway with blood streaming through his fingers. The warrior now faced the last thug, who wielded a knife with a wickedly curved blade.
Backing warily away along the wall, Bolan kept his eyes fixed on the murderous face, twisting aside as Broken-nose leaped forward with a tigerish bound. The assassin spun around and crouched for another spring, his knife arm held wide.
The Executioner kept moving until he found himself in front of a recessed doorway. The moment the Arab attacked again, Bolan backed into the entry and then, using a hand on each doorpost as a lever, he launched himself feet-first.
Cold ripped through his raincoat as his heels slammed against the man's chest and knocked him to the ground. Bolan scrambled upright, stamped on the killer's knife hand and took a running kick at his head.
The metal-capped tip of his combat boot connected just below the ear, and Broken-nose was out for the count.
Bolan was panting, and his right arm hurt like hell. Broken-nose lay where he had fallen, and the man with the smashed face sat sobbing into his bloodstained hands. But the other two thugs he had taken out were stirring.
As he searched the dark alley for the Beretta, the Executioner realized that it was no longer raining. Throughout the fight, which had lasted perhaps two and a half minutes, not a single light had come on, not one curious head had been thrust out a window. Now he was suddenly aware of the persistent splash, drip and trickle of water from eaves and broken gutters all around him. From somewhere over the rooftops, a two-tone car horn blared.
But the Beretta was nowhere to be found.
He advanced farther into the lane, bent double to scan the cobbles in the dim light. The Arab's knife had slashed through raincoat and jacket, and the chamois holster for the missing autoloader — which had probably saved his life — was sliced in two. He was covered in mud, had a jagged cut on his forehead and his right arm was useless.
He stood, in order to take in a greater area of the wet stones, and halted abruptly. By the light from the intersection below, he could see three men in long overcoats and wide-brimmed hats advancing toward him. Before he had time to react, a slug from a silenced automatic caromed off the cobbles at his feet and ricocheted past his shoulder.
The Beretta would have to be abandoned. At first Bolan had figured the attackers for minor underworld characters determined to get someone they believed to be a police spy, or two-bit crooks who thought he might have money. Strangers were always in danger of getting rolled in this part of town. But the appearance of the three pros convinced him the attack was directed at him personally. And that it must be connected with his search for the missing uranium.
He turned and sprinted uphill. He heard someone shout hoarsely close behind him. Two of the thugs who had attacked him were on their feet, lamplight gleaming briefly on the steel one of them held.
Snatching the AutoMag from his right hip, Bolan blazed off a couple of shots in the direction of the archway, two more at the goons down below then raced around a corner in the lane.
He thought he'd seen one of the torpedoes in the long coats lurch and fall, but there was no time to check. There were situations where the odds on success were too long, situations from which it was wiser to withdraw. He reckoned this was one of them — if he wanted to stay alive long enough to follow up on the radioactive isotope.
Immediately ahead of him, he saw a low wrought-iron balcony above a barred doorway. He leaped upward, grabbing the sill with his fingers.
For an instant his numb right arm gave way, and he hung by one hand. Then he managed to swing up a leg and place the wrist of his damaged arm between the bars. It was a painful struggle to lever himself to a position that would allow him to slip over the railing.
Light seeped through the slats of shutters across the window beyond. As the sound of footsteps around the corner below drew nearer, Bolan dropped to one knee and peered through. The window inside was wide open.
Voices called out in the dark alleyway. The warrior drew back his right foot and slammed it into flimsy wood halfway up the shutters. The wood splintered and gave way. He thrust an arm through the jagged space and twisted the catch, jerking the shutters open.
Inside the squalid bedroom, a woman with hennaed hair had been admiring herself in a flyblown pier glass. She jumped to her feet, flabby body quivering, as the warrior tumbled through the opening. The face painted over her features cracked open in a smile. "Not without an appointment, handsome, if you please," she croaked with mock severity.
"No sweat, honey. Just passing through," Bolan tossed over his shoulder as he walked to the door.
Counting on one leading to a stairway, he tried the door at the far end. It opened on another bedroom, and revealed a black man and a blonde lying in bed listening to a transistor radio. A baby slept in a crib near the foot of the bed.
The man started up in terror, clutching the covers across his chest. "I don't want trouble, man," he stammered. "I don't want to get involved in..."
"The stairs," Bolan rapped, interrupting him. "Where are the stairs?"
"Look, I don't want trouble. I don't want to get..."
"The stairs?"
"If you want money, man, I don't have none. If you're from the police, this here's my wife and that's our kid. I don't want trouble."
Bolan suddenly realized that these people were probably scared to death because of his blood-streaked face and muddy clothes. He turned to the blonde. "Look," he said. "I just want you to tell me which door leads to the staircase."
She stared at him through sleepy eyes. "Second on the left," she murmured. "Turn right at the bottom for the back entrance. It lets you out on another street."
"Thanks."
"Any time," the woman said laconically. "Emerson, for God's sake lie down."
Bolan jerked open the door leading to the stairs and charged down the steps, bullets splintering through woodwork as he turned right and dashed along another corridor. The rear entrance was an archway off a crude kitchen where an old Arab woman slept upright in a chair by the cooking stove.
Bolan crossed a small yard, climbed a wall with the help of a garbage can and dropped ten feet to a sunken lane on the far side. The lane traced an irregular course between shuttered houses for several hundred yards, finally terminating in a stone stairway that led down to the brightly lit streets of the La Joliette quarter behind the dockyards.