The rented Mercedes emerged from the forest and sped downhill to Vienna. Bolan's first impression of the city, as he drove along the broad highway that led from the airport, was that it had more lights than any city he'd been to.
Their brilliance mapped the city against the night, glittering along the main streets, garlanding squares, parks and promenades. Stores, theaters, hotels and public buildings were ablaze with light — and what made the spectacle even more arresting was that the lights were the same. Instead of the usual multicolored neon jungle, surrounded by flashing advertisements, yellow sodium lights and blue floods, the place was lit with regular white lamps: a firmament of silver stars coruscating against the sky in the cold, crisp air.
The warrior left the car in an elevator at a multistory garage in the old Marktplatz, where it was whisked aloft and stacked in a numbered niche someplace far above. He crossed the square and checked into the plush nineteenth-century magnificence of the Hotel Ambassador.
Later, in a steel-and-glass office overlooking the Karntnerstrasse near the cathedral, he was brought face-to-face with the present day.
The small, secret, highly efficient research unit, which dated from four-power occupation days and was attached to central police headquarters, was run by a statistician, a onetime market research genius who held a chair in psephology and had been seconded to this post at the insistence of the Ministry of the Interior. The man had met Brognola at the Amsterdam conference and was willing to help.
If there was anything to be discovered about Brognola's escape network, Bolan knew he would find it here. The quick-thinking little Austrian with the goatee and the thick-rim glasses would come up with the answers.
"Ah, yes," the computer expert said as he pushed the glasses up onto his forehead and scanned the printouts. "The computer lists five different species of escape network existing in this country — Assisted Movement Operations, if you will."
"Five?"
"Oh, yes. Five. Section One (a), positive — an organization for taking willing undercover agents east of the so-called iron curtain. It operates rather clumsily beneath the umbrella of a student cultural exchange group. And it is, of course, financed by the CIA. Section One (b), positive — a similar network for infiltrating East European operatives into countries on this side of the curtain."
"Run, I assume, by the KGB?"
The professor nodded. He ticked off two items at the top of the printout with a gold, black-tasseled ballpoint. "Section Two (a), negative — is organized by a different branch of the KGB. It occupies itself with the ferrying of unwilling persons from West to East — and it is, not to put too fine a point on it, an agency for the kidnapping and drugging of scientists, military defectors or other fugitives they want back, for one reason or another, at secret police headquarters in Moscow.
"Section Two (b), also negative — attempts with less success to do the same thing in reverse. Except that, instead of running it themselves, the CIA employ out-of-work mercenaries, ex-paras from the Foreign Legion, retired military security personnel, people like that.
"I don't have to tell you the kind of clients these networks have. Burgess, Philby, Blake, Fuchs; the East German security boss who defected and was then kidnapped and taken back again; the Israeli spy found drugged in a trunk at the Rome airport, and the other one who gave Israel's nuclear secrets to a newspaper and was tempted away from England by a honey trap; that French colonel who was abducted in Munich and delivered, bound and gagged, to the DST in Paris; the Chinese legation people in the Netherlands. All of these, even if they didn't pass through Austria, used one of the networks that exist here."
"But they're not exclusively Austrian organizations?"
"No, no. It is just that, because they have branches here, they appear on our computer records."
"I get it," Bolan said. "And the fifth category?"
The man with the goatee riffled through the printout material. "Ah, yes- Now this... this appears to be rather a different matter. Let me see... Section Three (a), positive...it says, and I quote, 'a nameless, noncommitted and nonaligned commercial organization set up to convey malefactors illegally and secretly across frontiers; an escape chain similar to those underground networks passing along Allied escapees during World War II; an organism for removing wrongdoers from the jurisdiction of those who condemn them.' Dear me, what pedantic terminology!"
"Does the data say anything about the way it works or who runs it?"
The Austrian looked at the paper again, frowned, slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and frowned again. He turned the paper over, as if he might find on its blank back an answer to the problem puzzling him. Finally, shaking his head, he said unbelievingly, "But, no. Nothing at all. It is amazing, but we seem to have no information whatever on this network. None at all."
"But it does exist?" Bolan pursued.
"Exist? Oh, yes, it exists well enough. It spirited Rudi Preisser and Otto Schlumberger away to Madrid only last week, despite the fact that the entire police force was looking for them after they had absconded with the funds of an insurance company."
* * *
"Exist?" the police captain in Madrid repeated. "Certainly not. There is no such organization. And I am in a position to explain to you that, if it did exist, we should assuredly have laid its workings bare and apprehended the miscreants operating it. They would be safely incarcerated in our jails, you may be sure of it. Yet there are no such persons imprisoned in Spain. You may visit the cells and see for yourself. It follows, therefore, that there can be no such organization."
"I've heard, nevertheless," Bolan ventured, "that two men, Rudi Preisser and Otto Schlumberger, are rumored to have arrived last week from Austria."
"There are always rumors," the officer replied coldly.
"Evidently. Yet these particular rumors seem to be well founded. Immigration authorities revealed to a foreign journalist..."
"Foreign newspapers frequently malign this country when the facts show the picture — the true picture — to be far from dark. It is doubtless a matter of the language difference."
"The language difference?"
"Things become distorted in translation," the Spaniard said. He flicked a speck of dust from the polished belt whose shoulder straps crossed his spotless olive-green uniform. "If it should happen that this man — Preisser, did you say his name was? — should by chance be with his companion in this country, then it must be assumed that they entered legally by one of the normal routes. Had they not done so, as I have already pointed out, they would have been discovered and the clandestine agents who brought them arrested..."
"And there are no such persons under arrest. I know." Bolan stared out the window. It was ten o'clock at night. Under the chestnut trees in the brightly lit avenue below, the crowds were strolling, shopping, pausing for a drink at a sidewalk café, gossiping with friends or merely promenading to see and be seen. Nobody had mentioned "clandestine agents" before. He drew a deep breath and tried again.
"Captain," he began, "if we might, for the sake of argument, assume that two such illegal immigrants had been smuggled into your country, how exactly would your undoubtedly efficient counterintelligence services start to..." He broke off as the policeman rose to his feet, one elegant hand upraised.
"You must forgive me, Señor Belasko..." his smile was charming "...but I cannot officially entertain such theories. We deal only in facts here. We cannot permit ourselves to examine such wild assumptions. Now you must excuse me. I am truly desolated, but we can help you no further."
* * *
If the Spanish authorities weren't going to admit the presence of illegals, the Executioner found no trace of this official reticence in Turin.
He called by an address not far from the Corso Alessandro, where a special police unit allied with the SID, the Defense Department, had its headquarters, and asked to see the person in charge.
The man was huge, fat and affable, with a luxuriant black mustache. "But of course it exists, thi
s organization," he exclaimed. "It has been working for some time now — maybe one year, maybe two. Many times, too, we have been given a tip-off: raid this club, be at this house at this hour, search this apartment, watch a warehouse. But always nothing happens. Each trail is a dead end."
"But if the network is so secret — if it's one hundred percent impossible to make contact — how do people approach the organization and explain what they want?"
"I think the shoe is on the other foot, signor. I think — I am not certain and there may be exceptions — that the person wishing to get away quick is himself contacted by the organization. They say, 'We can help you, but you will pay much.' This way they are avoiding the small fry who have not stolen enough money to interest them."
"When was the last time it was used?"
"One week. Very embarrassing," the fat man said, dabbing his neck with a huge handkerchief. Although it was autumn, the outside temperature was eighty-five degrees and the heating was set high. "A jailbreak in Milan. Three Sicilians, mafiosi it has taken us twenty months to convict. And now they are telling me they have arrived in your country."
"Mafiosi?" Bolan's interest quickened. "Could the network itself be a Mob operation?"
The man shook his head. "I think not. I believe it was convenient for them at the time, and so they used it. But many others also, with no Mafia connections, have been helped."
"And the Mob isn't in business to help outsiders. Yeah, that figures all right," Bolan said.
"I am sorry, but that is all I can tell you."
* * *
The short man with the barrel chest and the jutting chin replaced the receiver carefully in its cradle. "Here are the photographs," he said to the redhead on the other side of the desk. "Find out all you can about him. Everything. Use your employer's facilities. If necessary I will myself subscribe, but I prefer to remain in the background."
The woman was big-breasted, slender in the waist, with long, tapered legs emphasized by the tight-fitting jumpsuit she wore. She stared at the three shots of Mack Bolan standing by a canal in Amsterdam. "Easy enough to pick out in a crowd," she observed. "And tall with it, from the look of him."
"Smart, too. He blew away a couple of Conrad's boys just like that. They were supposed to be stalking him, but he had the drop on them, wasted them and took off without a scratch!"
"Did you have to kill Conrad?" the woman asked. "That hasn't been our thing, Bart. You always said you'd stick to the escape routines and leave the dirty work to the hired help. And apart from the risk, making a personal appearance in Amster..."
"Conrad screwed up," Bart said harshly.
"Yes, but he didn't know that Wünsche had been..."
"He didn't know about the boat? So what? He should have checked. He shouldn't have let them pick up the first guy who happened along. And pick up some damned spook, at that! I pay good money and I expect the hired help to earn it. If they screw up that means they're inefficient. For inefficient read unreliable. And unreliable people can talk." He shook his head. "Conrad didn't know much about me," he said, "but it was too much for my peace of mind."
The phone rang. He scooped up the receiver, muttered one or two monosyllables, said "Thanks for calling back so quick" and hung up.
He pushed the phone toward his companion. "Latest on Bolan — he's heading for Paris." He thought for a moment, plucking at his lower lip, and then added, "Call Mathieu for me, honey. Use the Montparnasse number. Tell him I want to put out a contract...'
* * *
Superintendent Robichon sat behind his desk in a dusty office near the Palais de Justice, four floors above the Seine River. His eyes were watering and his nose was red. He was suffering from a cold, and he was feeling sorry for himself. Across the room, Mack Bolan leaned against the window-sill. Behind him, rain fell from a gray sky on the roofs of the Latin Quarter.
Bolan was suffering from déjà vu: the same drab administration office; the same chatter of typewriters from an outside room; the same odor of cigar smoke, sweat and disinfectant; the same weary official with too much work to do.
There was a different river and a different sky, but the same damned rain and the same problem to solve.
"We got a line on Secondini quite by chance," Robichon was saying. "He made it through the cordon in a dust cart."
"A dust cart?"
"One of those garbage disposal trucks that are the same the world over, the kind they empty trash cans into. They must have had a spare set of coveralls ready and he simply joined the crew. After all, who's going to pay attention to garbage collectors?"
Bolan nodded. "Right."
"Naturally they couldn't go far. They had to transfer him to some other vehicle before they made the outskirts of town, or the dust cart with its Paris sanitary department markings would have become too noticeable. As it was, they took a risk using it because that's how we caught on: someone noticed the truck was an old one, a model the department stopped using some years ago. But they were through our cordon before they had to change cars, so they were home free."
"You got a line on the next car he got into?"
"A beat-up delivery truck, in fact. Yes, we did. They took the turnpike leading south, and we traced them to the exit just beyond Avallon. After that the trail goes cold. But there is a small private airfield between Saulieu and Chagny, in the Morvan. Bel-Air, I think it's called. My guess is that they changed cars again at Avallon and then took off for Corsica from Bel-Air."
"The guy's definitely in Corsica?"
"No doubt about it," Robichon said mournfully. He sniffed and reached for a tin of anti-influenza tablets on the desk. "I'd give a lot to be there myself right now," he added. "For some reason the autumn weather this year..."
"No clues in the van or the garbage truck?"
The superintendent produced a sodden handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and blew his nose violently. "Clues?" he repeated viciously. "We couldn't even locate the two vehicles. Nobody has seen them, nobody knows where they are. Not a damned trace. Which means the whole team couldn't have gone to Corsica: some of them must have been left behind to straighten up."
"Good organization."
"Of course it was good organization. You don't slip through a number one priority cordon by chance."
"This inter-European deal is a reality then?"
"A reality? You bet your life it is, monsieur." Robichon placed two pills in his mouth and gulped water from a glass by the phone. "I'm not saying that every malfrat on the run from the law, every smuggler who crosses a frontier without having his passport stamped, is a client. But certain — shall we say important? — fugitives have definitely been arranged, that is to say their transport has been arranged, by these people."
"Including Secondini's?"
"Including Secondini's. And that of Bizel, who escaped from Fresnes after killing a prison guard. And those of Desmoulins and Valat. And of course that of Gombrowicz, whom we had arrested and promised to extradite to Moscow. Red faces all around on that one!"
"What do they have in common?" Bolan asked. "I mean, can you tell at once whether an escape is part of this network deal or privately organized?"
Robichon pushed himself to his feet and walked over to join Bolan at the window. Beyond the Quai des Orfevres, the wash from a string of barges rolled slowly outward to fragment the reflections of trees along the left bank. Traffic, shiny in the rain, swooped along the embankment toward the Pont Royal. The superintendent sighed, sniffed and blew his nose again. "I can tell you one thing about the network jobs," he said heavily.
Bolan waited.
The Frenchman was struggling to master his feelings. "What they have in common," he said at last, "is that we have been able to find out nothing about any of them. No abandoned vehicles, no discarded clothes, no arms caches or suspicious purchases in stores. Nothing. I have men undercover in every big-time racket in the country. I have a list of informers that is the envy of my opposite numbers in Rome and Berlin
. But I can't coax as much as a whisper from these people concerning the makeup of this network, the names of its members, the way it works, how to contact it, anything."
"You think they're afraid of reprisals if they talk?"
"No, I don't. They know nothing. I am convinced of it."
Bolan fell silent. He was getting tired of this tune; he wished somebody would change the record.
"I realize this is rather surprising. In the underworld, as you know, there is always gossip. Jealousy, envy, greed or a thirst for revenge inevitably make someone talk. Except in this case, where there is nothing to say."
"At least you admit it exists, and that it baffles you. It's more than your colleagues beyond the Pyrenees are prepared to do."
"Ah, but you have to take into account the Spanish character," Robichon said. "They are a proud people, anxious not to lose face. Especially now that they have been admitted to the OEEC. It is perhaps understandable that they prefer officially to ignore a problem until they can announce that it has been solved."
"Nothing in this case is understandable," Bolan said.
And he repeated the theme, with variations, when he called Brognola that evening on the direct scrambler line from the embassy. "I've talked with the big noises in Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid, Turin and Paris, Hal. Most of them admit the existence of the organization, but no one has a line on it. I've put out feelers in the underworld myself. Nothing."
Brognola, speaking from his office in Washington, sounded irritable. "That doesn't make sense. You say these characters don't spring guys from jail?"
"That's what I'm told."
"Then how the hell do the cons who have escaped patch into the network, tell them they want transport and can pay for it?"
"If they need the service that bad — and if they can pay enough and if they're lucky — they get contacted. You know the line, Hal — don't call us, we'll call you..."
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Vendetta in Venice Page 4
