Don Pendleton: Continental Contract

Bolan grinned and moved on to the inspection desk. He declared 40 cigarettes and no booze, and was courteously passed through without inspection. At this point, he dropped the casual pose and began moving in an attitude of planned haste. That could be Bolan back there in that private room just as easily as Martin; he wanted out and gone before the error was discovered. He stopped at the Orly bureau de change and took on a supply of francs, then went directly to a ticket window and bought space to New York on a flight leaving later that day. Then he found the door marked Messieurs and went into a private closet, stripped off his coat, retrieved his gun and sideleather from the suitcase, and strapped it on. Next he deposited his luggage in an airport locker and went out to find transportation into town.

It was late enough that dawn should have been edging into the night sky, but the fog had thickened if anything and the outside lighting was making a very limited penetration and eerily illuminating the transportation circle. People were moving about here and there through the soupy stuff but Bolan experienced a feeling of isolation in the surrealistic scene. Something in the atmosphere there cautioned the Executioner and prompted him to step away from the entrance to the terminal, where the light was fairly good, and into the misty shadows beside the building. A crowded air-porter bus wheeled through and disappeared. A suggestion of vehicles occupied a barely visible taxi station some yards up the drive; two private autos idled at the curb just below Bolan, their headlamps muffled and impotent in the heavy mists.

Then out through the lighted doorway strode Gil Martin, an angry scowl distorting his face. The same porter followed immediately behind with the luggage. Martin pulled up almost within touching distance of Bolan and turned about to snarl at the porter, "Get the lead out! Get a cab over here, I'm not walking another step. I oughta go straight on to Rome, I shouldn't even go into this nutfarm of a town. I don't know what the hell I..."

The porter had silently deposited the baggage on the sidewalk and raised his hands in some sort of signal. Instantly another man came through the doorway and stepped up behind Martin; the American immediately ceased his snarling complaints and froze and a small leather case fell from his hands. One of the vehicles which Bolan had noticed earlier eased forward, a door opened and another man moved onto the sidewalk; then Martin was entering the vehicle and the porter was hastily throwing the bags into the luggage compartment. Bolan marveled at the smoothness of the snatch, aware that he had recognized it as such only when it was too late to intervene; the vehicle was disappearing into the fog, the second car following closely.

The porter returned to the doorway and bent to retrieve the small case which had fallen from the kidnapped man's hands. A foot appeared from seemingly nowhere to imprison the case on the ground — and when the porter elevated his eyes, he was gazing into the bore of Bolan's .32. He froze, stiffly off balance, and murmured, "Que veut dire ceci, M'sieur?"

Bolan said, "You tell me what it means, Frenchy,"

"Je ne parle pas Anglais."

Bolan pulled the man upright and replied, "Then I guess I'll have to just shoot you and get it over with."

"No, I speak," the porter hastily admitted. "What is your wish, M'sieur?"

Bolan shoved him clear of the lighted area, scooped up the case and dropped it into his pocket, and joined his prisoner in the shadows of the building. He jabbed the little gun into the man's belly and said, "Who pulled that snatch?"

Something in the glint of the Executioner's eyes discouraged cuteness. The man sighed and his shoulders slumped and he said, "This is most dangerous, M'sieur."

Bolan increased the pressure of the pistol and told him, "I'll take my chances. Are you ready to take yours?"

The porter sighed again. "So, they have the wrong man. Non?"

"That's it, and you have the right one. For about ten seconds, Frenchy, unless a flood of words changes the situation."

The porter shrugged his shoulders and replied, "C'est la vie, one is as bad as the other. I am not one of them, M'sieur. For two hundred francs I sell my honor and perhaps my life, non?"

"So who did you sell it to?"

"He is called Marcel. He is known for les maisons de joie, comprenez-vous?"

"Joy houses? Yeah, it figures. And where do I find this Marcel?"

Another shrug of the shoulders and, "Les Caves, M'sieur."

"The basement joints? Great, there's only about a hundred of them. You have to do better than that."

"I have seen him about Place St. Michel."

Bolan patted the man's pockets, found his wallet, and extracted an identity card. He studied the card, then slipped it into his pocket and returned the wallet. "Okay, I'll check that out, Jean. If I find out you're lying to me, I'll be looking you up. If there's something you want to add, now's the time."

"There is this maison de joie, M'sieur," the man replied, sighing, "on the Rue Galande, near the point where Boulevard St. Michel meets the Seine. Marcel is known at this place. His other name I do not know. He is simply Marcel. He is known there, simply ask for Marcel."

Bolan cautioned the porter regarding the value of silence and discretion, then released him and watched him quickly disappear into the terminal. A moment later, Bolan was in a taxicab and telling the driver, "Take me to the nearest subway station."

"M'sieur?"

Bolan pushed his limited knowledge of the language into a hesitant, "Conduisez-moi metro proche."

The driver nodded and the taxi lurched forward, challenging the restricted visibility in a suicidal rate of advance. Bolan relaxed and put his life in the other's hands; he had decided some years earlier that Parisian cabbies employed guardian angels — and there were other considerations more urgently demanding and with an outcome not nearly so certain. Gil Martin had made no favorable impression on Bolan's mind. He had, in fact, formed a definite dislike for the man during that short flight. Nevertheless, Martin had obviously stepped into a Mafia trap laid for the Executioner, and Bolan could not simply stand by and allow another to suffer in his place — not even a Gil Martin.

He pulled out the leather case which had been dropped by the victim, and discovered it to be a wallet. Obviously the betrayed had been about to reward the betrayer, though certainly not to the tune of two hundred francs. In the wallet was Martin's passport folder, a wad of francs, an American Express credit card, and an identification card from American-Independent Studios in Hollywood. A newspaper clipping found in one of the pockets was praising Martin's role in a recent motion picture. So... the guy was an actor.

Bolan had never been much of a movie-goer, and he had never had much interest in screen personalities. He wondered just how big a name Martin actually had in the business, and how much of a fuss would be raised by his disappearance.

An actor. Bolan would like to see him act his way out of this mess. All the bluster and indignation in the world wouldn't... Bolan was staring dumbly at the wallet. The guy had even lost all his identification. The seriousness of the situation for Gil Martin settled into Bolan's bones like the cold fog outside. The name Gil Martin possibly meant no more to the French Mafia than it had to Bolan. What could the guy tell them — what could he say or do to convince them that they had the wrong man? One part of Bolan's mind was hoping that Jean the porter would beat it to a telephone and pass the word; another part feared that he would do so, and that Bolan was advancing into another drop.

Other questions bothered him also. If this had been New York or any other city at home, Martin would right now be lying in his own blood on the sidewalk outside the terminal. Were the Frenchies more cautions — less inclined to open gunplay? Or was there a deeper significance to the snatch?