Canadian Crisis

by Don Pendleton

  There was no mistaking the sincerity in those eyes, but a conditioned wariness prompted Bolan to move into the shadows as Chebleu departed the room.

  He checked his weapon and left it on the ready as he returned it to the sideleather.

  It was a short wait. She must have already been in the house. A headquarters, yeah. She wore the same silk chemise, and she entered the room with that same quick grace he’d noted at the hotel.

  The girl did not immediately see him. She looked around in some confusion, then started as he moved partially from the shadows.

  “Hi,” he said softly.

  Still she could not get a good look at him. “You wished to see me, M’sieur?”

  He moved fully into the light. “Don’t vaporize on me, now.”

  She gave him the shocked reaction, staring dumbly for a timeless moment—and, when she spoke, it was an incredulous whisper. “You? Mack Bolan?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to play games with you.”

  A thousand thoughts were obviously chugging through that pretty head, questions answered, new ones forming—and, finally, horrified embarrassment.

  He held a chair for her and suggested, “Sit down.”

  She did so, placing a tiny elbow on the table and lowering her head, face down, into the upturned palm. “I thought you were someone else,” she mumbled into the hands. “At the hotel, I mean. Ohhh, I feel like a fool.”

  “Damned pretty one,” he quietly observed. “Don’t feel bad about the mistaken identity. It’s a compliment to me. You said you were studying acting. True?”

  “True,” she said miserably.

  “How’d I do?”

  “Oh. Wow. Right up to the nitty gritty, you were great, just great.”

  “Like you,” Bolan said kindly.

  She giggled and raised her head to look at him. “I thought I would die!” she said, in a conspiratorial whisper. “When you said, ‘Take it off!’ Oh my God!” She shrieked with the memory of it, and Bolan was not sure that she was laughing or crying. A mixture of both, probably.

  Anyway, the embarrassment was gone—and they were buddies who’d shared a delicious experience. They small-talked for perhaps a minute, then Bolan told her, “I need your help. Will you come back to the hotel with me?”

  She raised luminous eyes to his and told him, “You know, I was scared to death you weren’t going to ask.”

  14: THE PROMISE

  The name actually was Betsy Gordon. Her father was an American engineer who’d come north with the industrial movement, married a Quebeçoise, and made a permanent home in Montreal.

  Though her father had done his best to anglicize her, the genetic endowment from her mother had proven the strongest. Betsy Gordon was very definitely a Quebeçoise.

  She was a bit older, also, than Bolan had allowed her. With three years of college under her belt, she was certainly no “juvenile”—though there were those moments when he still had difficulty believing it.

  She would not discuss Quebeçois Français, during that ride back to the hotel, in anything but the most general of terms—and she very deftly parried Bolan’s expert probes into the political stance of Andre Chebleu.

  Bolan did not mention her disappearing trick at the hotel, earlier, but he did inquire into the purpose of the visit.

  She explained that readily. “That was supposed to be Mr.Gramelli’s room. When Andre returned with the news that Gramelli was dead, we thought it would be a good idea to have a look at that room.”

  “We?” Bolan prodded.

  The question merely provoked one of those girlish responses. She giggled and said, “That room was supposed to be empty. I nearly died when I saw you lying there with a gun on me. I thought, at first, that Gramelli’s death had been greatly exaggerated.” She laughed at her little joke and added, “I thought I was a goner, for sure. I decided, very quickly, that it was time for Betsy to grow up and become a woman.”

  He gave her a studied gaze, then commented, “You’ve been resisting that, eh?”

  “I suppose,” she said, tossing her head in the reply. “I guess it’s easier to be a kid. But I thought for sure, for a while there, that I was going to die a kid.” She giggled again. “Now that’s not exactly the same as being a kid.”

  “So you decided to pose as a hooker.”

  Those eyes danced. “First thing that came to mind. What is that—a Freudian commentary on the true role of women?”

  Bolan chuckled at that. “Sounds more to me like the will to survive.”

  “Same thing, isn’t it?”

  He looked her over from a fresh viewpoint, then told her, “I think maybe you’re a better actress than I realized. Were those tears genuine?”

  The giggly mood had vanished.

  She waited a moment to reply, then told him, “Well, let’s say that they were inspired.”

  Son of a gun. He was remembering how quickly the waterworks had shut down when Joe Staccio knocked.

  “Suckered me, didn’t you?” he said quietly.

  “I thought you were a mobster,” she explained. “Maybe even Gramelli’s replacement. I figured, heck, I was there, wasn’t I? I may as well find out what I could.”

  He said, “Without sacrificing too much in the bargain.”

  “Well … I sensed a—a sort of gallantry or something in the way you were—I mean, I thought I could handle it.”

  “You did,” he told her. “Very well.”

  “Well … to be honest, I was scared silly.” She giggled, bringing the kid back. “I’m really not that good an actress—not yet.”

  Bolan was not so sure of that.

  He withdrew into silence and was rethinking the entire Betsy Gordon question when she asked him, “What sort of help do you need from me?”

  He thought about his answer for a moment, then told her, “I want you to show me how to get into that hotel without being seen.”

  She twisted in the seat to give him a fixed gaze. “You found the passageway.”

  He nodded. “Part of it. I need the full layout.”

  “Why?”

  He decided that he would have to take Betsy Gordon on faith. “You know what’s going on at that hotel?”

  “It’s a meeting of mobsters, isn’t it?”

  “Do you know why they’re meeting?”

  She replied, “That’s what we’ve been hoping to find out.”

  “Andre hasn’t told you?”

  “Told us what?”

  “About the nature of the Montreal Meet.”

  “Does he know?”

  Bolan sighed. She was playing it mighty cozy. But, after all, why not? Who the hell was Mack Bolan to her?

  There was no time for cute games. He told her, straight out. “The mob is trying to engineer a takeover in Quebec. Not an underground takeover but a total one. My intel says that they’re in some sort of alliance with a local militant group, that they intend to subvert this group to their own purposes. Montreal is to become the crime capital of the world. This meeting that’s scheduled to take place tomorrow will formalize that plan. I mean to stop it. I’ve established an identity at that hotel. But I need to do my work without being seen, otherwise the whole thing will crumble away. They’ll simply regroup somewhere else and go on with the cannibalization of this province. I figure I have one chance, and I guess it all depends on you. Can you show me the secrets of that place?”

  She said, “I—I need authority to do something like that.”

  “Where do you get it and how long will it take?”

  The girl sighed and twisted about in agitation on the seat.

  “I trust you, Betsy. Can’t you understand that I have a singular interest in this town? I am not your enemy. I could be your only hope. These people who are here now will not be benevolent or even humane masters. You’ve got to trust me, and you’ve got to help me.”

  “I—dammit, I … it would require a vote. From all who—a vote. Tomorrow, maybe.”

 
; “No way,” he said. “I need it tonight, right now.”

  She was gnawing her lip, head averted, staring fixedly out the window.

  “Trust your instincts, Betsy,” he said quietly.

  He stopped the car, following another moment of silence, and told her, “Sorry I don’t have time to take you back.” He was digging for his wallet. “I’ll give you cab fare.”

  “Put it away!” she said savagely. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  He smiled soberly, put the car in motion, and said, “Yeah, it’s much easier to be a kid.”

  “Just go! I suppose you want the secret way in.”

  “I sure do.”

  “Okay. Go two blocks east, toward the river. We start in the sewers.”

  “That’s a likely place,” the Executioner muttered.

  “That,” said the young revolutionary, “is my sentiment exactly.” Those eyes flashed, and Bolan knew that this was no act. “One word of warning for you, Mr. Bolan. You may have great success in your war against mobsters. Betray us, however, and you will find the meaning of war.”

  Bolan had no comment to that.

  He believed her.

  15: THE TREE

  The old hotel had been built quite a few years before the modern concepts of central heating and cooling became an architectural reality. New owners began a remodeling program in about the year of Betsy’s birth. Her father’s firm were the engineering consultants during the modernization of the old building, and again very recently during a major refurbishing in preparation for the 1976 Olympics.

  Bolan could elicit no details into the “how” or “why” of the fantastic system of secret passageways which now honeycombed the building.

  “No. My father knows nothing of this.”

  “No. The mobsters know nothing of this.”

  “It is ours. We did it. Ask no more.”

  The “we” remained also a mystery—although Bolan, of course, had his own thoughts on the matter. Betsy Gordon was quite obviously a member—perhaps even a leader—of the separatist organization known as QF.

  They went over the building plans which Leo Turrin had deposited in Bolan’s room and the girl superimposed onto the blueprints, from memory, a detail of the hidden routes.

  Bolan had been fairly accurate in his early assessment of the system. It did, indeed, cover the entire building—though obviously much of the work was not complete. Even so, direct secret access was available to about 25 percent of all the guest rooms and to every level of the building.

  He gave the girl a respectful gaze and asked her, “How the hell did you do it?”

  “The Chinese have a saying,” she replied enigmatically.

  “Which one?”

  “Did you know that there are five million Frenchmen in Quebec?”

  “That’s quite a few.”

  “Yes. Suppose each one picked up a brick. How large a building do you suppose we could erect?”

  He asked her, “How many did it take to refurbish this hotel?”

  “We are legion,” she said, and strolled to the window—ending that line of conversation.

  Bolan ended it also. He was satisfied, for the moment, that the girl was cooperating right up to the wall of her other loyalties—and it did not seem likely, at this point, that there would be an occasion for conflicting loyalties.

  “I’m trusting you with my life,” he quietly reminded her.

  “Big deal,” she said, without turning around. “Coming from a man who flings his life about in gushes and squirts, it doesn’t seem a very important trust.”

  “It’s important to me.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she mused.

  Bolan understood that. It was an international sentiment, shared on occasions by all those who live on the heartbeat. Mack Bolan and this girl had quite a lot in common. He told her, “Self-doubt is one of the occupational hazards. It’s healthy, if you don’t lose yourself in it.”

  Her voice was small and almost whispery, that pert face all but shrouded in the shadows of the night. “It gets very hard, sometimes, to separate right from wrong.”

  “All the time,” he corrected her.

  “What’s right about you, Mack Bolan?”

  He said, “I never ask.”

  “Afraid of the answers?”

  He shook his head. “Afraid of the question. The answers all come out the same, in the end.”

  She turned to face him, then, arms folded at her breast, eyes gleaming at him from the gloom at the window. “I guess I lost you there, somewhere.”

  “You never found me, kid.”

  “I tried. I’ve been trying all evening.”

  He sighed. “And every time you look at me, you see yourself.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “You don’t like what you see.”

  “I guess that’s what I’m trying to sort out,” she said softly.

  “A mirror image can be confusing,” he said. “The left hand looks like what the right hand is doing. It gets even worse when you look for yourself in another. It bothers you that I wade in human blood.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wonder: ‘Is that what I am going to become?’ It’s the question that shakes you. The question, not the answer. You haven’t even arrived at the answer, have you?”

  Her lips formed the “No” but there was no articulation.

  He waited a moment, than asked, “How good are your weapons?”

  “Very good,” she whispered.

  “How strong are your people?”

  “Very strong.”

  “Abe Lincoln gave the answer to your question, Betsy, a hundred years before you were born. He told us that revolutions do not move backwards. Will you become like me? Yes, if you live so long. Will you ever know right from wrong? No, not unless you die too soon.”

  “That’s pretty heavy,” she told him.

  “So is war,” he said quietly.

  “I need to ask you. I’ve never had the opportunity to ask a master. Does it bother you?”

  “Killing?”

  “You sit here, going over these plans, like a cold machine. It isn’t a war you’re mapping—a glorious war, with drums beating and bugles sounding—it isn’t a dash across the plains with banners unfurled. It’s pure and simple murder. You plot deaths by the hundreds. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  Bolan lit a cigarette and turned away from that searching gaze. Of course it bothered him. What did bother have to do with it? He quietly told her, “It sounded like you were describing the Charge of the Light Brigade. That was an actual event, you know. Happened in the 1850s. The French marshal, Bosquet, was there. Know what he said?”

  “Something fitting, I’m sure,” the girl murmured.

  “Depends on your point of view. Bosquet said, ‘It is magnificent, but it isn’t war.’ So you tell me, lady guerrilla. What is war?”

  “Let’s get back to revolutions,” she said tensely. “And stop lecturing. I don’t need a—”

  “You don’t like answers, do you? Just questions. You can play with questions for the rest of your life and never have to worry with answers. Look at me, Betsy. Here it is. I am your answer. Look at it.”

  “I—I better be going.”

  “I think you’re right. Thanks for your secrets, Betsy. Forget the lecture, huh? You’ll find your answers—your way.”

  She had gone to the escape panel. She turned back to look at him as he spoke the parting words—and, for that final moment, there, the kid was back. “I—I guess I’ll stick to the questions,” she whispered—and then she was gone.

  “Yeah,” Bolan sadly said to the blank wall. That was precisely what worried him about young revolutionaries. They played with politics, not war. Questions were great stuff, for the classroom.

  On the field of combat, though, questions became answers. Suddenly. Finally.

  A war was never a question.

  War, this master knew, was an answer—good or bad, an answer.
/>   And it could be a hell of a place to find a surprising one.

  Leo Turrin arrived as Bolan was making his final review of the building plans.

  “I see you found my package,” the little guy said, for openers.

  “Yeah, thanks, Leo. Come take a look at the eighth wonder of the world.”

  The underboss from Pittsfield strolled to the table, bit into his cigar, and took more than a look.

  Bolan was explaining the markups: “Vertical shaft, see, roof to basement. Porthole at the bottom of the well—voilà—welcome to underground Montreal. These sewers interconnect. You could hide an army down there—and supply them from guess where.” He tapped the blueprint. “It’s like a tree—roots running underground, the broad trunk running up through the hotel center, branches everywhere.”

  “What the hell is it for?” Turrin growled.

  “Vive la révolution,” Bolan declared grimly.

  “Then there really is something cooking.”

  “Looks that way. Did Chebleu file an official report with Ottawa?”

  “Apparently he did. They’ve clammed up over there. Not a peep, not a rustle. We get it, though, there is some sorty of hush-hush cabinet meeting in session, has been since early this evening. The time coordinates.”

  “Yeah,” Bolan said glumly. “Well—there’s going to be hell to pay. I get the feeling that someone is being taken with the slickest con of the century. I just hope it isn’t me.”

  “You contacted Chebleu, didn’t you.”

  Bolan nodded. “Small comfort. I can’t read that guy, Leo. I’m playing him strictly on instincts. I’d sure like to know what he told Ottawa.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Damn little. He’s been walking both sides of the street for so long, I get the feeling he doesn’t know anymore which side he belongs on.”

  “Watch it,” Turrin growled playfully. “You’re touching mighty close to home.”

  “So you can appreciate the situation,” Bolan said. “Suppose you and I had just met, just this minute. I know you’re a fed. I also know you’re a Mafia overlord. Now how do I know for sure who has infiltrated whom?”