Vendetta in Venice

by Don Pendleton

  He whirled toward the smashed cupboard, pumping out two rounds at Pig-bristle, whose hand had flashed between the lapels of his jacket. Both 9 mm flesh-shredders scored — one drilled the back of the guy's hand, riveting it to his rib cage, the other smashed through the heart, bursting out through a shattered shoulder blade. Pig-bristle spiraled to the floor, spewing scarlet.

  Bolan staggered sideways as the fourth man cannoned into him, seizing his gun arm in both hands and forcing it up toward the ceiling. The Walther spit flame again; a third slug plowed through the rafters. Then the Executioner twisted violently sideways, throwing the thug off balance. A knee zeroed in on the guy's crotch, folding him forward. But he still had a hold on Bolan's gun arm, pumping it up and down with a nerve hold on the wrist, so that the automatic flew from the warrior's fingers and skittered beneath the trundle bed.

  For an instant the adversaries seesawed back and forth, then Bolan kicked the guy's feet from under him and they went down with a crash that shook the room. Bolan rolled, freeing his arm to wedge the palm of his hand beneath his attacker's chin. The hood fought furiously to keep the warrior's other hand from circling behind his head. But Bolan was bigger, stronger and in better shape. Inexorably he began to exercise pressure.

  The thug writhed beneath him, uttering unintelligible cries. His fists pummeled, scratched, gouged uselessly. Then there was a terrible, dull snapping noise and he went limp.

  Bolan thrust away the body with its lolling head and upturned eyes, and clambered to his feet. He was panting. Mischa stood by the ruin of the cupboard, trembling with terror, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

  "All right," Bolan said, jerking his head at the door, "get out of here. And remember — if I ever see you again, you're dead."

  Mischa's forehead was dewed with sweat. He gabbled some reply and bolted. Bolan heard his panicked footsteps clatter down the staircase and out across the cobbled courtyard.

  He wasn't worried about repercussions. Not in this quarter. And leaving the surviving thug free to run wasn't a bad idea: it would bolster Milo-Cernic's reputation as a hard man, once the guy started talking. Word would get around. And if the people running the escape network hadn't heard of him before, they would now.

  Bolan maneuvered the two men he had shot through the skylight and down a slanted roof. They dropped seventy feet onto a stone stairway that led up from a different street. He pushed the man with the broken neck over the rail of the wooden stairs outside his own door. Too bad he missed his way in the rain.

  The fight had created a lot of noise, but there was no reaction from either side or below. The lower floors of Cernic's old house were entered from the stone stairway where the bodies dropped, and the buildings flanking it were used as offices and stores. Bolan locked his door and went to sleep.

  When he awoke he realized he could no longer hear the rain on the roof. He threw the shutters wide and looked out on a different city. The downpour hadn't been over long, but the sky was now an impeccable blue and pale sunshine sparkled from a million droplets of moisture beading the chaos of roofs, gutters and chimneys outside the window. In the narrow streets of the quarter shopkeepers and their customers wore cheerful smiles, and several food stores displayed crates and baskets of fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk. There was no sign of the body beneath the wooden staircase, or the dead thugs on the stone steps six floors below Bolan's skylight.

  He feit justified in making a break with tradition: he went to the tavern at midday, passing off ribald references to this lapse with a snarl a little less surly than usual. The blonde wearing the trench coat — her name, he had discovered, was Mariella — even favored him with a half smile when he came in, and the proprietor was quite cordial.

  "Better, isn't it?" he asked, taking Bolan's order. "Makes the world a happier place, I always say, when there's sun around."

  "For those that have time to notice," Bolan replied sullenly. "Me, I wish I was a thousand miles away."

  "Why, comrade? It's not such a bad city. At least there's life here."

  "Life? I'd give a lot to get out of it, life or no life. And I mean right out. The place stinks. All I want..."

  "Well, if you hate it so much," the proprietor interrupted reasonably, "why don't you get out? There doesn't seem to be anything to keep you here. You've no job, no family..."

  "You mind your own damned business," Bolan shouted, thumping the bar. "It's got nothing to do with you why I stay here. What I do is my own affair, and I don't want any interfering snoopers meddling." He drained his glass and walked out, leaving the man staring.

  Anyone at the bar who didn't suspect by now that "Milo" was a criminal on the run, the Executioner thought grimly, had to be pretty dense.

  That evening he returned to the tavern and took his usual table, but he affected anger and kept more than ever to himself. In any case there was none of the customary "Hey there, Milo!" routine. He wondered if word about the fight had gotten around. If so, the sooner the contact he expected was made the better; otherwise he might have awkward police questions to parry.

  It was several hours after he had returned to the attic that the soft knocking on the door penetrated his consciousness. He got out of bed, drew on his pants and opened it a crack. In the light of a half moon he saw a woman standing at the top of the stairway.

  She wore an open trench coat, and the moonlight glinted on her pale hair.

  It was Mariella.

  "What do you want? What the hell's the idea, waking me at this time of night?" Bolan snapped ungraciously.

  "Let me in," the woman whispered. "I have something to say to you. It's important... Oh, come on. The longer I stand here, the more likely someone is to notice."

  Grumbling and growling, the Executioner opened the door wide and stood aside to let her pass. Once she was inside, he closed it and turned the key before switching on the light. Mariella, pushing thirty, was thin-faced and had large gray eyes.

  "You're Zoltan Cernic, aren't you?" she asked.

  "Zoltan who? Never heard of him." Bolan didn't ask her to sit down.

  "Look, don't waste time denying it. I know you are Cernic."

  "I tell you I never heard..."

  "Oh, forget it, then! You're not Cernic. But you keep on beefing, saying how much you want to get away from here, don't you? Obviously you're on the run, or you would just go, right?"

  Bolan ran his tongue over his lips. "Supposing I was on the run?"

  "If you wanted out of the city unseen, without the risk of identity checks, with no chance of being asked for papers, if you wanted to get out of the country even..."

  "Well?"

  "Well, I think — if you have money — I think I know someone who can arrange it for you."

  15

  At ten-thirty the following evening Bolan stood on a corner of Wenceslas Square and watched the crowds thronging the wide sidewalks beneath the trees. Glittering with lights, bordered by stalls selling hot parkys, the square pulsed with the gleam of fast-moving traffic. In a few minutes the Executioner would have to act, but for the moment he was content to stare and take in the scene. There was no telling when he might have to return to Prague on some other mission.

  He had argued and protested the previous night for a credible amount of time before permitting himself to be persuaded to talk seriously. He had guarded his suspicion and hostility until the last possible moment. But finally he had given in and allowed the woman to make her proposition.

  After blustering and bargaining for an hour, he had at last agreed to pay what he considered privately to be an incredible sum for the privilege of being secretly transported to Zurich, Switzerland.

  Mariella had refused to provide any details regarding how this was to be done. She had merely told him that the organization was known well enough to need no references. And she had made a rendezvous for the following night and told him to bring the cash with him.

  Since then, he had made it onto the roof again and removed the correct amoun
t from the hoard beneath the shingles. He had also — in case the network was keeping him under surveillance — pretended to take the balance and mail it to himself in Zurich. But the three bulky envelopes had in fact been stuffed with newspaper. The police would no doubt, as arranged, collect what remained and return it to its rightful owners.

  The police, too, he was sure, would be keeping him under surveillance. But it would be just for the record... and in any case, when the cards were finally on the table, they could hardly have acted against the woman and her accomplices for transporting a citizen of the United States from Prague to Zurich!

  Clutching a cheap document case to his chest, Bolan stood among the crowds, watching the minute hand of the huge clock beneath the domed tower of a building across the street. When it moved to 10:35, he shifted the document case to his left hand and walked fifty yards up the hill to where the streetcar lines forked into double tracks. He crossed to a traffic island and stood as if waiting for a streetcar.

  At 10:37 precisely a car — a Skoda Octavia in anonymous beige — stopped beside him. A door opened, and Bolan climbed into the passenger seat.

  Mariella was driving, her slender hands and feet expert about the controls as she whisked the car in and out of the traffic clogging the great square. "Where are we going?" Bolan asked suspiciously. "Surely we can't drive out of town openly like this? There are too many cops around. We could be asked for our papers anytime... and my face is known."

  "Relax," the woman replied. "It's all under control. But it is best to start with a short car ride, in case anyone is following. We have a rendezvous not far from where you were staying."

  "Then why the hell drag me all the way to Wenceslas Square when we could have..."

  "I told you to relax." Mariella sighed.

  She turned toward the Charles Bridge and then right along the embankment. Soon she doubled back, drove into the old town and stopped by the long, blank wall of a warehouse. The building had once perhaps been some civic center, for there were turrets at each end and the high wooden gates were enclosed by an ornamental arch. "See," Mariella said, "we are beside the repository you see from your window. The entrance to the lower floors of your building is just around the corner."

  She pointed to the archway. "And there is where you have to go now. There is a small pass door in the left-hand gate. Soon, the night watchman leaves to fetch his beer. After he has gone, go through the pass door. It has been... arranged that it will be open."

  "And then?" Bolan kept a tinge of suspicion in his voice.

  "Inside there is much furniture, stored on all the floors. But there is also a loading bay with a big Tatra semi and trailer. They are already packed full. Get into the semi — not the trailer — and squeeze as far forward as you can. Right at the front you will find a clothes closet, facing away from the rear doors. You climb into this — it will be quite comfortable, with rugs and pillows — and you wait."

  "For how long? I don't like vague arrangements like..."

  "Me, neither. But here we have no choice. There are, as you say, many police. And you are very much wanted. Besides, the people arranging this may make good business out of it, but they must also take risks. So they have the right to state the terms. You understand me?"

  "Very well, very well," Bolan growled. "But I still don't like it."

  "Now," Mariella said briskly, "we must act. See, the watchman is leaving to visit the tavern." She waited until an elderly man wearing coveralls had walked from the gates to the corner, and then vanished, before she continued, "You have the money with you? So. Good... No, no. Keep it. They will ask for it when it is time. You may go now, quickly, while the man is away."

  Her long face creased into a smile and for a moment, in the lamplight, she looked quite beautiful. "Perhaps I will say one thing more," she added. "I wish you luck." She leaned across and opened the passenger door.

  "It's a damned nuisance, not knowing how long," Bolan muttered under his breath. He got out of the car and limped off along the sidewalk, the document case still clutched to his chest, without a backward glance.

  The pass door, as Mariella had promised, was unlocked. As he stepped through, he heard the Skoda's engine start, and then the whine of gears as Mariella turned the vehicle in the narrow street and drove back the way they had come.

  Inside the warehouse, a light burned behind the glass windows of a hutch where the watchman obviously sat between his rounds. Sausage, black bread and pickles were laid out on a newspaper, awaiting the arrival of the beer. Off to one side, a low-power electric lamp hung above the platform at the rear of a loading bay. Otherwise the huge furniture warehouse was in darkness.

  The truck and its trailer looked enormous — two leviathans of the road silhouetted against the sheeted stacks bulked in the dark. Bolan paused to listen. Very distantly he could hear the sounds of the city — a roar of far-off traffic, shouts and a snatch of music from another street, a siren on the river, bells. But nearer at hand there was nothing — no footsteps, no demanding voice, just a scuffle and a squeak as a rat scurried away down one of the aisles... and the thin, high singing of silence in a large space.

  Satisfied, the Executioner walked to the rear of the semi. The double doors were ajar. Pulling one open, he climbed into the interior and edged his way between chairs, tables and crates exuding straw toward the front of the vehicle. The closet was deep and wide. He made himself a kind of nest in the dark and settled down to wait.

  Ten minutes later he heard faint sounds, suggesting the watchman had returned. Later still — a church clock somewhere had just chimed midnight — voices echoed under the high roof of the loading bay. The doors at the rear of the semi were opened and then slammed shut. Retaining bars dropped into place.

  Bolan was reminded of his forced journey in the old two-tonner driven by the guy with the jutting chin. He hoped the man wouldn't be part of the team on this run: that would be the ultimate test of his disguise.

  There was a clatter of mechanical activity as the Tatra diesel whined and then coughed to life. Then, after the body of the semi began to vibrate as its engine settled into its normal idling speed, the vehicle jerked into motion and rolled out of the warehouse into the night.

  It was no sweat for Bolan to distinguish between cobblestones and asphalt; between city blacktop with streetcar lines and country byways with potholes; between the paved surfaces of city and suburb. But he soon lost all sense of direction and stopped trying to work out which compass point they were heading for. After a while, in the darkness, the monotonous rhythms of the semi and its trailer lulled him to sleep.

  Sometime later he was awakened by a bright light shining in his eyes. He struggled to sit up in his nest of pillows. "Ah, so it's you all right," a gravelly voice pronounced. "You better come outta there. We switch horses here, and we have business to transact, too."

  Bolan knuckled the sleep from his eyes and followed the guy with the flashlight past the stacked furniture and out into the dark. The night air was cold and moist, but it wasn't raining. The semi and its trailer were drawn up beneath a canopy of trees at a turnpike rest area.

  But as soon as they were standing on solid ground, the warrior's guide rapped twice on the panels and the starter whirred. The engine growled, the headlights were switched on and the double juggernaut lumbered back onto the road and disappeared down the tunnel of light that it carved out of the dark.

  Bolan stared around him. The half moon showed him hills on every side, most of them heavily wooded. A pale ribbon of road twisted down into a valley, where water gleamed by a bridge.

  The man with the flashlight was short, stocky, a powerful figure wearing overalls and a peaked cap. His face, half seen in the reflected light, was seamed and wrinkled and, as Bolan had feared, it was marked by a pugnaciously jutting chin.

  For the moment, however, there was no cause for alarm. The man who led with his chin was expecting to see a Czech fugitive, an ill-tempered man with close-cropped red hair. He saw
a character eager to quit Prague, who had close-cropped red hair, and Bolan was quick to pile on the boorish bit. There was no particular reason, after all, to connect this tall man on the run with another tall man, a dark man, who had been making himself a nuisance asking questions in another country.

  "What's going on?" Bolan asked suspiciously. "Where are we? Why did we stop? Why the hell did the truck go on without us?"

  "We are not far from Ceský Krumlov," the hoarse voice told him. "Southwest of Ceské Budĕjovice. We bypassed the town. That's the Vltava you see down there in the valley."

  "How far to the border?" Bolan demanded, looking at his watch. He had slept nearly three hours.

  "Less than twenty miles. Then it is only about the same distance again to Linz, Austria."

  Bolan figured it was time to seed in more character. "That's all very well, friend," he grated. "But how the devil are we to get there now that you've sent the transport away? Just what the hell are you playing at?" He hugged the document case to his chest and glared at the stocky man.

  The guy laughed. "Keep your cool, comrade," he said. "I only paid for Jan and his truck to get you clear of the city. He has work to do. That's a genuine load that has to be delivered. He has to get back to Kralovice, beyond Plzeň, by daybreak."

  "That's not my worry. Let him look after himself, whoever he is."

  "He's looked after you well enough, friend. Do you think we could have gotten you past the three roadblocks between here and Prague without that regular load, complete with bills of lading and other papers, and an authentic moving truck?"

  "I tell you, that's not my affair. What I'm paying you for..."

  "Ah, yes," the man interrupted. "Paying. Speaking of which... let's have it." He held out a hand for the document case.

  Bolan hesitated, then passed it over.

  The stocky man counted the money carefully in the flashlight beam. Then, dividing it roughly into two, he stuffed one half in his pocket and put the other back into the case, which he handed to the Executioner. Bolan stared at him.