1

“Coincidence?” Mack Bolan said. “Uh-uh. There is a link between those killings.”

“Naturally, there is a link, monsieur;” the Swiss Interpol chief agreed. “All four of them...”

“Were Mafiosi? Sure. But there is something more. I can’t see any connection between the four guys or the territories they worked, but those hits were put out by the same source. Why were they killed within a few hours of one another!”

“We were hoping, Monsieur Bolan, that maybe you could enlighten us,” the superintendent from the French Counterintelligence Service put in. “You have a reputation as the most successful anti-Mafia fighter ever. That is why we asked you to come to this meeting.”

“I thought I was on the blacklist,” Bolan said.

The superintendent coughed. “The dossier has been... mislaid,” he said. The warrior raised his hand to save further explanation. He had no fight with these men. They saw fit to call him in on this problem and that was all he cared about right now.

The three of them were sitting around a mahogany table in a private room on the fourth floor of a Geneva Hotel. Outside, squalls of rain blew across the lake and obscured the mountains to the east.

Bolan looked from one to the other of the two law-enforcement officers. “Four unrelated mobsters. We have to figure out what they’d been planning, separately or together, that was such dynamite.”

The Frenchman, whose name was Chamson favored Bolan with a wintry smile. “It must have been a big deal.” He turned to the Interpol chief. “Could we have another rundown on those killings, Telder?”

Colonel Telder picked up a document case, opened the case and took out a folder. From this he removed a single sheet of typescript and began to read aloud.

“Nice, France, early afternoon on the eleventh. Jean-Miguel Balestre — thirty one years old, tough, good looking — blown to pieces by a floating mine while water-skiing. Detonation of the explosive is thought to have been by remote control. Probably a radio beam. Balestre was Corsican, a fast-rising Cosa Nostra boss on the island.

“Same town, same day, a couple of hours later. Jan Ralfini, a district chief working for the Camorra in Naples, killed when his private jet crash-lands at the airport. Preliminary investigations suggest that landing gear, altimeter and warning lights had all been sabotaged.

“Half a world away in Montego Bay, Jamaica, morning of the eleventh. Alvaro Scotto and his mistress shot to death by a rifleman in a fishing boat. Scotto was one of several gang bosses who had agreed to a carve-up of the Marseilles territory.

“Three hours later, in central France, Frankie Secondini, a low-ranking mafioso from Paris, apparently falls from a train on his way to Marseilles.” The colonel slipped the sheet of paper back into his case, then looked inquiringly at Bolan.

The Executioner watched the window rattling in its frame as wind scattered raindrops against the glass.

“Looks like typical Syndicate hits,” Bolan said. “The method in each case was different, but they have one thing in common: ruthless efficiency.” He turned to Chamson. “I believe you ran the four names through the Central Register computer in Paris. Come up with anything?”

“Nothing that looks like paydirt,” the Frenchman said. “All of them were small-time bosses and all were into prostitution, protection rackets of one kind or another, and each had gambling connections.”

“Drugs?”

“Only two — Ralfini and Balestre — are on the narcotics bureau files, and they didn’t work the same circuits. Scotto smuggled arms; the others didn’t.”

Bolan hoisted his muscled, six-three frame from the chair and walked to the window. The killings intrigued him. Through countless bloody campaigns, he had broken the Mafia stranglehold on society in his own country, flushed away a good part of the slime-bucket corruption that threatened to pollute America and made the world safer for innocent civilizers. More recently he had fought international terrorism, in particular the hydra-headed conspiracy masterminded by Soviet Russia’s infamous KGB. And it was because of a KGB plot, framing him for the murder of a European labor leader, that he was now an outlaw himself.

Lately, Bolan felt he had fought a successful containment action against the U.S. Mafia. Still, he considered it a minor victory, because he had no idea where the grim specter of the Mob would rise again! Well, now he knew.

“Any lead among the victims’ effects?” Bolan asked.

“One,” Chamson replied, taking a folded computer printout from an inside pocket. He smoothed it out on the table, before he spoke again. “Scotto was due to fly to Paris the day he was killed. He also had an onward booking to Marseilles. Secondini was headed for the same city. Ralfini was landing at Nice, but his pilot had already filed a second flight plan for later that evening. His destination was the Marseilles airport.”

“And Balestre?”

“He was due to check out of his hotel that evening, too. I think he and Ralfini would have flown to Marseilles together. Why else would the plane have landed at Nice?”

Bolan nodded slowly. “So the four of them had a meet fixed in Marseilles. And someone didn’t want them to make it.”

“That’s the way we read it,” Chamson said. “But why?”

Bolan was thoughtful. “I’m all for mafiosi liquidating one another. But in this case, I am curious. I think those four guys were aiming to horn in on something, but somehow it doesn’t seem to stack up in this case. The details are vague at this point.”

“It may not be as difficult as you think,” Chamson said. “There was a fifth death, you see, that you don’t know about.”

“A fifth?” There was renewed interest in Bolan’s voice.

“Not a murder this time. A fatal road accident. The victim was a hit man from Hamburg. He was headed for Marseilles to work for one of the gang bosses there. Not Scotto. But the four guys we’re concerned with aren’t the only ones to get on the wrong side of the mobsters.”

“Go on,” Bolan said.

“None of the Riviera hoods have met this gorilla. They’ve only seen photos. Nobody knows about the car smash: we kept the news under wraps.”

Bolan said nothing.

“There’s a distinct resemblance,” Telder said. “With the minimum of disguise, you could pass for the German — you could get away with his ID.” He paused for effect, then added, “We think it might be a good idea if you went to Marseilles in his place.”

“Right,” Bolan said, wryly understanding that while these people needed his expertise, he would still be regarded as an outlaw.

Chamson said, “We understand from certain rumors that have been filtering in for some time that something big is brewing in the Riviera underworld. But we have no idea what. It may not be connected with the four killings, but we thought that here was a perfect opportunity to find out from the inside. What do you say, monsieur?”

“I say it’s a start,” Bolan replied.

And that’s all it was, nothing more, the big guy knew.

“But will you use it? Your feelings about the predators in our society are, as I said, no secret. We thought perhaps you would welcome the chance of striking another blow. We would stand by to give you any help we could.” In his turn, Chamson paused. “Monsieur Bolan, will you help?”

“This Hamburg hit man — where did he die?” was all Bolan said.