Don Pendleton - Continental Contract

Bolan did not know the place but he knew the street and vaguely recalled the area of Boulevard St. Germain where budget hotels were prominent. For a guy in good shape it was within walking distance, but for his hurting companion... He guided Martin toward the metro station. If he remembered correctly, Metro Odeon would put him somewhere in the ballpark and he could find it from there.

As they approached the station, Martin gasped, "Why are we... running? Let's... find a cop."

Bolan replied, "We can't do that."

"Why not?"

"All right, change that to read I can't do that. Do you want me to leave you here, or do you want to go on my way?"

They had reached the entrance to the metro station, and in that light Bolan got his first good look at the kidnap victim. Martin's arms were folded across his stomach, crossed at the wrists so that the fingers could find support upon the forearms. His face was welted and lumped, one eye closed completely, the upper lip puffed and bloodcaked. Beneath the coat and inside the shirt, Bolan knew, would be found more horrors. The mob did not take kindly to the adventures of Mack Bolan. His voice was softly sympathetic as he asked Martin, "Well? Are you with me?"

The actor was staring at his benefactor with quiet gratitude. In his one good eye was a light of revelation as recognition flared there. He nodded and said, "I'm with you, Bolan."

Bolan smiled and helped him down the steps. If things should work out, the actor would be with someone else very shortly and a brassy-talking airline stewardess would have her chance to put up or shut up. And maybe she'd get herself a bonus layover, after all. But not Bolan. The Executioner was even then mentally committing himself to a hellish layover. He felt an attack of Mafia Fever coming on, an infection to which the sharpshooting sniper from Vietnam was most susceptible.

There were but two cures for it.

Death, or Mafia blood.

Bolan was ready for either.

Bolan pushed the door full open and planted his burden in the doorway. "We need a bed, and quick," he told the startled girl.

She fell back into the room with a stifled yelp and allowed Bolan to maneuver the injured man to the bed.

The girl wore a terry cloth mini-sarong which didn't quite make it over jutting breasts and bottomed-out just below the hips. A small bath towel was wrapped about her head in a neat turban. She looked pink and shiny-scrubbed and a hell of a lot prettier than the airline uniform had made her. She fussed about with the pillow and guided Martin's head to it, then she turned to Bolan with a sick look and said, "Don't tell me he got that way hurrying here to keep a date you neglected to confirm."

Bolan muttered, "You still have it all wrong."

Her mood was visibly shifting from startled concern to one of marked hostility. "Oh no," she told him, "I have it all right. You're Johnny Charming sans face wig, and this poor slob has taken one too many dives for you. How does it work, Mr. Martin? You take the women and he takes on the infuriated boyfriends?"

Bolan read it that she had been smarting under her own overplay on the plane, and was now letting him know that the game had changed. He pressed Martin's passport into her hand and said, "I tried to tell you that you had it wrong." He turned back to the bed and left her staring at the passport photo. He asked Martin, "How is it?"

"I'll live."

Bolan wished to make sure. He carefully opened the shirt and peeled up the undershirt with gentle hands. The guy's chest was one big blue-blotchy mess, with angry red bloodblisters spaced about. "They did this with their feet?" Bolan inquired. He was tenderly probing the ribs with sensitive fingers.

Martin grimaced and replied, "Yeah. The belly, too."

"Must've had steel caps on the shoes." Bolan opened the waist of the trousers and bared the lower torso, took one quick look, then shook his head and stood up. "You'll have to have a doctor," he told the actor.

"I'm for that. My hands... God, my hands."

Nancy Walker bustled in with a wet towel and began carefully dabbing at his face. She told Bolan, "Don't worry about him. I'll get the doctor."

He replied, "Okay," and paced nervously about the room for a moment, then he went back to the bed and told Martin, "I'll be leaving you now. Uh... guess I don't have to say it... but... well, I'm sorry for those lumps."

The actor winked his one good eye. "Lumps I can take. You just watch it, eh?"

Bolan said, "Yeah," and chewed his lip for a moment. He hated to leave the guy this way. Mafiosi could be persistent hunters. Sanity dictated, however, that he get out and let the guy have some medical attention. He dropped Martin's wallet on the bed and told him, "You'll be needing this. The girl has your passport." He spun about, stepped past Nancy Walker, and went toward the door.

"Bolan!"

He halted and turned back. "Yeah?"

"Maybe you better take that passport. You know?"

"No, I..."

"You could fake it out, you know that by now. And the French cops already have egg on their face over me. You be Gil Martin for a while and I'll take a rest. I needed it even before this."

Bolan hesitated, thinking about it. Martin was thinking in terms of cops. Bolan's mind was occupied with Mafia.

The girl was staring from one to the other of them, a quizzical half-smile prettying her face. She told Bolan, "I heard what he called you, and the message now is loud and clear. His offer makes sense." She tossed him the passport folder. "Trade. Give me yours."

"Take all the identification," Martin urged. "Money too, if you need it. Or use the credit cards. Just don't go wild, I'm not that wealthy."

A warmness was spreading through Bolan's gut. He had almost forgotten the feeling. It was damn nice, if for only a fleeting moment, to feel the touch of genuine friendship. On that note of warmth he traded wallets and passports with the actor, thanked the girl with his eyes, and got out of there. He figured the trade at about fifty-fifty, in terms of personal danger. Some of the mob had egg on their face over the Gil Martin mix-up also; others of them might still be sniffing along that false trail, and it was this consideration that tipped the decision for Bolan. If the mob came looking for anyone, he wanted them to find him, not some poor defenseless Hollywood type who couldn't even spell kill.

The more he thought of the set-up the better he liked it. Let Martin stay down and out of the line of fire, at least until the action had swirled away into another part of the world. When the time was right Martin could present himself to the police, explain what had happened, reclaim his place in the world, and relate a true-life adventure which would fill columns of free publicity for a long time to come.

As for the girl, she had a battered but very much alive movie star in her keep for a few days... and who could say how that relationship would ultimately work itself out?

Bolan returned to the metro and found his way to the glitter-side of Paris. As Gil Martin he checked into a large hotel on the Champs-Elysees, left stern orders as to his right to privacy, and turned over the key to the airport locker so that his bags could be picked up. Then he ordered a rental car, to be kept at his disposal in the hotel garage, and went up to his suite for breakfast, a lingering shower, and a tired tumble between the sheets.

As his eyes closed on Chapter One in Paris, the time was barely nine o'clock on the autumn morning of Bolan's first day in France. Already it had seemed a lifetime. The days ahead were to seem as epochs in that strange life-as-death eternity which had come to characterize the bloody pathways of Mack Bolan, the peoples' gladiator and high executioner — and now, in certain Parisian neighborhoods, L'Americaine Formidable.