Don Pendleton - Continental Contract

She asked, "What are you doing?"

"Turning around. I'll be leaving you at the Lyon airport."

"No! Paris is too dangerous for you now! And you could do nothing there!"

"I have to go back, Cici." He was thinking of a humiliated man with the mark of a pistol muzzle burned into his forehead. "I have to see a man on some urgent business."

"The man you seek is no longair in Paris," she declared quietly.

He shifted into reverse, then hesitated with his foot on the brake and asked her, "How do you know that?"

Even more quietly she said, "Would you believe me if I mention the name Thomas Rudolfi?"

The gearshift returned to neutral and Bolan glared at her, frozen frames of his mind flipping slowly into overlaying positions. He asked, "just what do you know about Rudolfi?"

They were halted on the shoulder of the road. The girl reached into the floor and picked up the newspaper she had brought from Lyon. She unfolded and refolded it and lay it across the steering wheel. The composite likeness of Bolan was there, blown up and occupying half of the front page beneath a heavy black headline: L'EXECUTIONER EN PARIS?

She whispered, "L'Executioner is in Paris no longer, is this not true?"

Bolan's face was frozen. He repeated, "What do you know about Rudolfi?"

"I 'ave known Rudolfi for a long time, stand-in. This is not the point. The point is that you cannot return to Paris, and also there is no reason to do so. You will find nothing there."

Bolan's mind was beginning to whirl. He snapped, "You seem to know much more than I do. So what are you suggesting?"

She showed him a wan smile and said, "On to Cannes, stand-in. You may plan your plans there, in safety. And perhaps you will be closair there to the problem."

He took her hand and squeezed it, hard. "Let's get it all on the table, Cici. I want the whole story, all of it."

"Non. Not now. But please trost me, Mack Bolan." She made the name sound like Mawk Bo-lawn. "And let me 'elp you."

He started the vehicle moving again, then his eyes flicked back to her and he said, "No go, Cici. Everybody I touch turns to ashes. I'm getting off at the next town."

"I weel not turn to ashes," she quietly assured him.

Bolan could almost believe it. He asked, coldly, "Who the hell are you, Cici? I mean, for real?"

"I am Cici Carceaux, for very real," she solemnly informed him. Her eyes moved in a somewhat muted echo of the coquette she had shown him back at the hotel. "Not many men in France would decline an invitation to Cici's villa."

An idea was beginning to form in Bolan's mind. Perhaps, he was thinking, the potential danger posed by this female enigma seated so demurely beside him would be a calculated risk worthy of challenging. Suddenly he said, "Okay. So long as you know the name of the game. You know who I am and what I have to do. If you'll risk me, then I'll risk you."

"On to Cannes, stand-in," she replied, smiling.

"Understand this," he added solemnly. "At this moment, we're even. We can say goodbye and, as far as I'm concerned, part as friends. But if we go on... and I discover that you are my enemy... well, you will be in very great danger, Cici."

"On to Cannes," she repeated, the smile remaining.

Bolan sighed inwardly and his foot grew heavy on the accelerator. Something, he knew, was screwy as hell about Cici Carceaux. At the moment she was playing the role of friend. He would accept that... for the moment. But he would watch her... and with his mind, not his heart. With ten female lives consigned to a living hell on his account, The Executioner could not afford a heart.

As for those moments in Eden... they seemed now lost forever.

Most of the trip from Lyon to the coast was conducted in virtual silence and it was nearing noon when the Rolls entered Nice and eased along the main boulevard, Avenue Jean-Medecin. Bolan's thoughts had brought him here; now Cici's directions guided him to the specific objective he sought, the Mediterranean headquarters of an American press service.

He parked just off the Promenade des Anglais, the beach-front drive, and he and Cici went separate ways from there — she insisting upon performing a particularly important service for him.

Bolan first stopped at the telephone exchange and placed a call to the Pension de St. Germain in Paris. After some small delay, the breathless voice of Nancy Walker came pleasantly across the wire.

Bolan told her, "This is the alter-ego. Just checking. Are things all right there?"

She said, "Oh my gosh, they're turning this town upside down for you! Where are you calling from?"

"A safe place," he assured her.

"Well, burrow deep! Even Interpol is nosing around. They were here early this morning."

"There? At your hotel?"

"Yes. Real tough guys. Gill thinks they were phonies, but I don't know what..."

"Where is that telephone, Nancy?"

"This one? In the hall just outside my room."

"Could I possibly speak to Gil?"

"Well... I don't know... his poor hands. I'd have to hold the phone for him."

Bolan said, "I need to talk to him, Nancy."

"Just a sec."

After a short wait, Martin's voice announced, "You've blown the cover, boy. They're tearing Paris apart for old Gil Martin. What's more, your other buddies are hot on the scent. They were here this morning, posing as Interpol agents of all things."

Bolan asked, "Did they challenge you?"

"Hell no, I was under the bed. They were calling on Nancy."

"You didn't get a look at them, then."

"Only through the window, as they were leaving. But I'd bet my residuals they were Mafia. Where are you?"

Bolan told him, "I'm with Cici."

"Cici who?"

Bolan recalled uttering those precise same words a few hours earlier, and in just about the same tone of voice. He replied, "You're old loving buddy, Cici Carceaux. I picked her up in your hotel room."

"Good work, but I've never met the lady. We almost worked together once but the deal fell through at the last minute. Where'd you get the idea that?.."

Bolan said, "This is important as hell, Gil. No cute stuff... do you or do you not know Cici Carceaux?"

"Professionally, by reputation, that's all. She's currently the hottest thing on film, the sex darling of Europe — but no, sorry to say, I do not know her personally."

"Okay." Bolan's voice was tinged with an I-knew-it sadness. "I guess that's all I wanted, Gil. Uh... you're right about that cover, it's blown all the way off. You may as well come out now if you'd like. But very carefully. Call the cops to you, don't go out on the street looking for them. They might shoot first and check identities later."

"Hell no, I'm staying put for awhile. Never had it so good."

Bolan could hear Nancy Walker's soft laughter in the background. He grinned into the mouthpiece and said, "Okay, see you in the movies," and hung up.

Yeah, Eden was a total flare-out.

He went back to the street and quickly to the press service headquarters. He stepped in off the street just as a guy was coming through the doorway from an inner office into a smallish room of quiet activity. A girl was bent over a teletype machine in the corner, another was busy at a typewriter at the far side of the room.

Bolan and the man stared at each other for a frozen moment, the guy doing a double-take on Bolan, then he stepped quickly back into the office and snapped, "Jesus Christ, get in here!"

Bolan followed the man into the private office and accepted a chair. The guy shut the door and went immediately to a filing cabinet, took out a bottle and two glasses, and told his guest, "I don't have any ice or mix, sorry."

Bolan said, "Thanks, I'd better have nothing at all."

The man promptly returned the bottle and closed the drawer, then paced nervously across the floor to his desk. Bolan told him, "Guess there's no need to introduce myself."