Assault on Soho (6 page)

Marinello had been watching Castiglione during the speech. He nodded, his eyes still on the man from Virginia, and said, "Our word is our honor, Joe, like always."

"Okay, just so we all understand that. Otherwise, if I got doubts myself, then Bolan will tumble to it, and then Joe Staccio is in one bad spot."

Castiglione smiled wryly and observed, "I believe Joe is superstitious."

"No, he's right," Marinello said. "I go along with that, Joe. If we can come to an agreement here, between us, then we'll set up a telephone conference with the others and we'll get it all ironed out. So what do we say. Are we agreed to try it?"

"We gotta know the terms and the details, Augie," Pennsylvania said.

"Well we got all night to knock it around, huh?" Marinello replied.

"Let's talk my end first," Castiglione suggested. "I'm already thinned out over Bolan. I'd like to have a crew from each family, and that means they pay their own way, too."

"I'll loan you Jimmy Potatoes and his crew," Pennsylvania shot back.

"I'll send Tommy Thompson and company," said Marinello.

"Scooter Rizzo," chimed in another New York boss.

"Okay, that's great," Castiglione said. "When you set up that phone council, I'll want talent from each of them, too."

Marinello solemnly nodded his head. "Okay. This is a great approach. Now let's talk about the other end. How do you figure we can support your effort, Joe?"

"Well, first of all, let's talk about the package I'm going to offer Bolan. It's got to be attractive. I mean, not just a truce, but something he'd really go for, something with a future. Let's talk about rank in the organization. With the Talifero boys temporarily out of the picture, we need a hard arm for the
Commissione
. I'm thinking—"

"Aw shit!" Castiglione cried, aghast with what Joe Staccio was thinking.

"No now, wait a minute, Arnie," Marinello said, favoring his old buddy with a sly wink. "Let's let Joe talk about it. Go ahead, Joe, I believe we're getting somewhere."

"Okay," Staccio said, "what I'm thinking is…"

And so it went, into the long night at Mafiaville, with frayed nerves, heated passions, cold fears, and a stab at reality. The final result of this "crisis conference" would find a terrifying impact on Mack Bolan's violent domain, and the severest test yet of his holy war with the underworld. Bolan's long night had not ended. It had only just begun.

Bolan awoke to total darkness. His hand found the grip of the Beretta and he lay very still until his mind had found its place and he knew where he was. With this knowledge came a wavering image of a beautiful girl with flawless flesh snuggling to him in a warm embrace, and he had to wonder if the memory was valid. He was alone in the bed now, that much was certain; he pushed silently away and reconned the darkness until satisfied that no other presence shared the apartment with him.

He returned to the bedroom and turned on a lamp. His digital calchron revealed that fourteen hours had elapsed since his arrival at Queen's House, and the clutching at his stomach was indicating that he'd been much too long without food. The flat's heating system was functioning now; he had no sensation of discomfort as he padded nakedly about the bedroom for his clothing. He donned the black nylon nightsuit and strapped on his gunleather, then went straight to the kitchen. Eggs, milk, and bacon were in the refrigerator. He immediately stirred two raw eggs into a class of milk and consigned this to his clamoring stomach, then lit the fire under the coffee pot and returned to the bedroom.

It was then that he found the note from Ann Franklin. It lay across his stack of money and read, "Meet me at Soho Psych at 11:00 P.M." Lying atop the note was a glossy book of paper matches, the embossed cover proclaiming that Soho Psych was the swingingest place in London. It also provided the address of the meeting place.

Bolan finished dressing, adding herringbone tweed slacks and jacket and a fresh shirt and tie over the skinsuit. He pondered briefly over the money, then transferred most of it to the little pouch at the waist of the nightsuit. The only small bills, two American fifties and five British 10-pound notes, went into his wallet.

By 9:30 he had consumed a comfortable mass of bacon and fried eggs, and the quart of milk, and was topping off with lukewarm coffee. It was time to move out. He went quietly down the rear stairs to the garage, opened the trunk of the Lincoln, and contemplated his arsenal. The
Vzi
submacbinegun went under the front seat, along with a stack of ammo clips. It was a fine little weapon, using the standard NATO round and featuring a folding stock which reduced overall length to about seventeen inches. After a brief mental debate, Bolan took the Weatherby and a belt of ammo to the apartment and stashed it in the bedroom closet. Then he returned to the car and drove to the edge of the Soho district, found a parking place on a side street around the corner from
Ronnie Scoffs
, the renowned jazz club, and joined the foot traffic on Frith Street.

Here was London night life in all its late twentieth century splendor… and squalor. It was Greenwich Village and Fisherman's Wharf rolled into composite, an assortment of joints, dives, stripperies, fish-and-chip houses, fine restaurants of all nations, and the ever-present discotheques and go-go palaces. Bolan strolled casually through the neon jungle, orienting himself and getting the feel of the area, walking in an atmosphere of far-out jazz, electronic flashers, and the jarring crescendos of rock amplitudes. He found Soho Psych precisely where the matchbook advertising promised he would, "on Frith, just off the square," snuggled in between a Pakistani restaurant and a rundown theatre whose billboards offered "the best in London flesh."

Bolan was an hour early, and this was by design. He went on by the club, crossed the street at the corner, and wandered back slowly. Diagonally across from his target was a budget self-serve restaurant, calling itself a tea house but very obviously a cafeteria. It provided tables near the front windows, and though Bolan's appetite had been fully sated in Ann Franklin's kitchen, he entered and went through the motions of purchasing a meal, filling his tray with an assortment of selections from the buffet.

The girl at the cash register glanced at his tray and said, "That'll be six and six, sir."

Bolan was reaching for his wallet. He said, "Six and six what?"

She smiled understandingly and inquired, "American?"

Bolan nodded and slipped a ten pound note from the wallet.

Still smiling, the cashier explained, "Your bill is six shillings and six pence, sir." Then she saw the ten pound note, the smile faded, and she asked, "Is that the best you can do?"

He muttered, "I'm afraid so."

The girl made change for his seventy-eight cent purchase from an equivalent twenty-four dollar note, gave it to him rather grumpily, and watched disapprovingly as he casually dropped the change to the tray and made his way to a front table.

He dawdled there for forty minutes, forcing himself to eat some of a steak and kidney pudding, grilled tomatoes, and several other tidbits of English diet. His view of the street was unobstructed, and he was cataloging all traffic in and out of Soho Psych.

At ten minutes before eleven a cab stopped at the club and Ann Franklin emerged. Bolan lit a cigarette and watched as she leaned back in to say something to another passenger, a man, who was obviously staying with the cab. Then the vehicle went on and the girl entered the club. Bolan waited and watched. Another cab came up minutes later—perhaps the same one, Bolan surmised—and a man got out. Bolan recognized him as the big one who had chauffeured them from Dover—Harry Parks, the girl had called him.

In the corner of his vision, Bolan became aware of another vehicle quietly edging to the curb some yards behind the cab. It was a smallish car of English make. Two men debarked and threaded their way casually along the sidewalk, then entered Soho Psych a few steps behind Harry Parks. The car moved forward and another man stepped out just above the club, and crossed over to Bolan's side of the street. Bolan watched this last man, studying him intently, as the man lit a cigarette and leaned back against a lamp pole as though waiting for someone.

Bolan knew who the man was waiting for. He sighed and unbuttoned his shirt, withdrew the Beretta and held it in his lap as he affixed a silencer to the barrel, then returned the pistol to the side leather. The stage was fully set, it seemed, awaiting only the appearance of the principal.

So the principal left his observation post and went outside.

Bolan stood at the curb, gazing up and down the street for any further obvious signs of the hardset awaiting him. There were none, but the man at the lamp pole immediately stiffened to attention and flipped away his cigarette. Somewhere along that street, Bolan knew, another outside man had been waiting for that cigarette to fly. Bolan casually stood his ground and waited. Evidence came quickly from the direction of Soho Square, as another man hurried across the street and took up a position on Bolan's other flank. • Bolan smiled grimly to himself and crossed over to the club. He was not overly appreciative of intrigue; the time had come to make the cut between friend and enemy, to determine precisely where Ann Franklin and the Sades stood in that separation, and to engage the enemy—whoever they might be—in open combat. As he entered the club, the two men behind him started across the street.

An immaculately dressed older man stood just inside the door at a foyer desk. A quiet sign announced that only members were allowed on the premises. Bolan went immediately to the desk and told the man, "I'm meeting a young woman here. Maybe you—"

The doorman interrupted. "You'll still be required to purchase a membership, sir. It's the bloody law here-abouts. It takes three quid, sir, plus another ten bob entry fee."

Bolan dug for his wallet and asked, "How much is that in pounds and ounces?"

The man chuckled. "Bloody confusing for you Americans, I know sir. Never mind, we're shifting to the decimal system ourselves by and by. Then well all be bloody well confused."

The two men had come in from the street and were hovering near the door, trying their best to look disinterested in the proceedings at the desk.

Bolan fingered the bills in his wallet and asked, "How much?"

The doorman was looking at something on a note pad. He said, "Would that be Miss Franklin you're meeting, sir?"

"That's the one."

"Then I'll beg your pardon, your entry is all piped up. Sorry sir, I just took the carpet at eleven, and I 'adn't time to read me notes."

"Does that mean I go on in?" Bolan asked.

"Oh yes sir, to be sure sir. You proceed on through the bar, down the stairs, across the clubroom, and up again to the mezzanine. Room number three, sir."

Bolan dropped a tenner on the desk and said, "Let's keep our little secret."

The ten pound note disappeared immediately beneath the doorman's hand. He said, "We're the soul of discretion, sir. By the by, are those two gentlemen at the door accompanying you?"

Bolan said, "Not hardly."

"I'd say that's a bit unfortunate then, sir. Those chaps are Scotland Yard."

Bolan's eyebrows rose. He murmured, "Thanks," and went on into the spider's den.

The game had changed, disconcertingly so, but there was no turning back now. The only way out led straight into the jungle.

Soho Psych was fairly representative of the rock music clubs that proliferate upon the London scene, most of them appearing and disappearing with amazing rapidity. This one was unique chiefly because of its seeming permanence. It had remained on the "in" list for several seasons, drawing locals and tourists alike and packing the house nightly while competitors rose and fell in cycles typical of the new mod culture of swinging Londontown. The club had become a favorite watering hole for local musicians as well as visiting ones, and thus was also a favorite of the "groupies"— the young girls who followed the rock groups about.

The bar itself offered no live entertainment, unless the nude models who posed in glass cases, tall tubes, really, all about the place could be classed as entertainment. The bar was overflowing with a standing room crowd and the conversational level was about equivalent to roaring surf on a rocky shore. The only light came from the glass tubes of the living mannequins, in varying and changing shades, each girl changing her pose with each alteration of the lights. No one seemed to be paying much attention to them.

Bolan paused in front of a statuesque blonde mannequin to light a cigarette, wondering why the two cops had not moved on him out there in the lobby. Perhaps, Bolan surmised, they were under orders to attempt no immediate apprehension—perhaps Bolan had popped up before they'd had time to get set the way they wanted to be. So now they would be getting set, and with jaws of steel.

He lingered at the girl's tube, wating to see if the two would come in from the lobby. As a matter of idle curiosity he tried to catch the mannequin's eye but she seemed totally oblivious of his near presence. Then her light changed from red to a deep purple and she shifted from a demure wood-nymph pose to one of ecstatic abandon—head thrown back, one knee raised and angled across the other leg, hips thrust forward. Bolan grinned and went on. London could be an interesting town, he was thinking, to a guy who had plenty of time for playing. Not so for Bolan; Scotland Yard had just invaded the bar.

Bolan found the stairway and descended to the major arena. It was a large room with a seemingly endless sea of close-packed humanity, deafening amplifications of wild music, and a bewildering display of psychedelic lights. On a center bandstand a large rock combo seemed to be in a noise competition with a singing group who were screaming into separate mikes at the limit of their physical systems.

He pushed through the riotous confusion and reached a stairway at the opposite side, then paused to gaze back along his route of travel. The two "chaps" were on the other stairway, anxiously perusing the crowd below them. Bolan went on up to the luxuriously carpeted mezzanine and along a narrow hallway to a private dining room with the numeral three on the door.

It was hardly more than a cubicle, darkly intimate in candlelight, with a small round table for two positioned at a draped window overlooking the clubroom. A low couch occupied one wall; a couple of small harem pillows completed the picture. The room was also partially soundproofed, the noise from below only faintly audible.

Ann Franklin sat at the table, a glass of water clenched tightly in both hands. She had been peering through a crack in the draperies, watching the scene downstairs. Her head snapped toward the door as Bolan entered. Something on his face froze her smile as it was forming. It wavered and collapsed and her gaze went quickly back to the window.

The man called Harry Parks pushed himself up from the couch and exclaimed, "You're late! We was beginning to wonder if—"

Bolan snapped, "Cops followed you here. At least four of them are in the club right now."

Parks gave his head a concerned shake and replied, "Yes, I was just telling Annie I thought someone was on our tail. We was 'oping you wouldn't be coming in. Thank the lord they didn't spot you."

"They spotted me, all right," Bolan corrected him. "And they could have easily moved on me, but they didn't. The question is… why not? They're setting something up. I guess I'd like to know what and why."

The big man took a step toward the door. "I just guess HI be finding that out," he declared.

"Quietly," Bolan commanded.

"I know me business," Parks muttered, and went but.

Bolan dropped into the chair across the table from Ann Franklin. Their legs collided. The girl hastily withdrew hers, threw Bolan an embarrassed glance, and hastily lowered her eyes.

He told her, "Thanks for warming my bed."

Softly she replied, "You're quite welcome."

"Thanks for a lot of things," he added solemnly.

The gravity of the situation overcame the girl's embarrassment. Her hand shot out to rest on his and she hissed, "You must get away from here. You are in very great peril."

Bolan said, "Hell, I know it. But you set this up. Now what's it all about?"

"Major Stone requested the meeting. He should have been along before now, and" I'm quite worried that he isn't."

Bolan, also, was "quite worried." He asked her, "Why meet here? Why not at the museum?"

"For many reasons," she replied. "None of which are worth discussing now. Just please go."

"Uh-uh. Not until I get the story."

"What story?"

"I find myself in the middle of some very messy intrigue. I don't like it, Ann. So you tell me now, quick and straight, what's it all about?"

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. Obviously it was all she intended to say.

"Okay and bye bye," he said, just as quietly.

He was up and moving when the girl cried, "Wait!" and ran after him, catching him at the door.

Bolan took her in his arms and folded her into a bruising kiss. The movement took her by surprise and for an instant she resisted, then she melted into the embrace and gave herself entirely to the moment of passionate delirium. When he released her, she moaned and held onto him, pressing in for more.

Gruffly he demanded, "Tell me about the Sades. Why all the interest in Mack Bolan?"

She was breathing raggedly, still in the grip of the tensions engendered in that tight clutch. "I don't know it all," she gasped.

"Then give me what you do know."

She disentangled herself and leaned against the door, struggling to regain her composure. "Mack, I-I'm sorry for acting like a… a…"

"Forget that," he growled. "Come on, you owe me some answers, and my time is running out."

The girl took a deep breath and said, "The American Mafia has moved into London. I suppose you're aware of that. They are trying to take over everything here, as I hear it. It's a big power play, involving politics and industry and just very nearly everything. And they were not being too successful."

"Until what?"

Her eyes skittered away. "Until somehow they got onto Major Stone's club. Somehow they came into possession of… of some highly damaging and politically explosive, uh, items of evidence."

Bolan sighed. "Okay, I could have guessed," he commented quietly. "I take it that some of the members of your club are Very Important People."

She nodded. "And they are now in a terrible squeeze."

"That bad, eh?"

"Yes. You've heard of the Profumo scandals, back in the sixties?"

Bolan said, "Who hasn't?"

"Yes, well—this could be ten times worse. These gangsters have information that could rock the government—perhaps topple it."

"Is the Major directly involved in this?" Bolan inquired.

"Not directly, no. But he feels responsible. It was
his
security that was breeched."

Bolan said, "Tell him I'll be thinking about it."

She murmured, "It's like a terrible nightmare, all of it."

He glared at her for a brief moment, then smiled suddenly and said, "Don't take it so hard, well figure something out." His hand found the doorknob. "Where will I find the Major?"

She shook her head. "I can't imagine, nor can I imagine what has delayed him. If you can get out of here, return straightaway to Queen's House. We'll try to contact you there."

Bolan's smile broadened. "Come to think of it, we do have some unfinished business there, you and I."

She managed to keep her gaze steady, and whispered, "Yes, so we have."

He patted her arm, cracked the door for a quick look, then slipped outside and pulled the door shut behind him.

Harry Parks moved up quickly from the stairway and hissed, "You were right, mate. It's getting to be a beehive down there."

Bolan pointed to another stairwell at the far end of the mezzanine. "Where does that go?" he inquired.

"Rooms, next floor up," Parks replied, then added, "
Bed
rooms, for them that can't wait."

"And above that?"

The man shrugged. "I never felt a need to know. Do you mean to go out that way?"

Bolan said, "I mean to try."

"Then I guess I'd best be going the other way, and raisin' a fuss."

"I'd appreciate that," Bolan told him.

The big man grinned and said, "It's me specialty," and went quickly back along the passageway toward the main clubroom.

Bolan hastened to the other end of the mezzanine and found that the stairway he'd spotted also went down to a lower level. As he paused to ponder this revelation, Major Stone appeared below him, hurrying up to the mezzanine.

Each became aware of the other at the same instant. Bolan's Beretta leapt into his hand; the Major halted abruptly and glared at him and his face took on a vexed expression. "Out through the front, Bolan," he commanded. "You've not a moment to lose."

Bolan replied, "Can't. The joint's alive with cops."

Stone moved on cautiously to the head of the stairs, his brows knit with thought. "Then I've gotten you into a pretty pickle," he announced. "I have been darting about for 20 minutes in an attempt to shake Nicholas Woods off my tail. I finally ditched my car several streets over and made it in through the back way. But I've no assurance that I lost them, not entirely."

Bolan asked him, "And who is Nicholas Woods?"

"A local mobster, and I'm surprised that you don't know. I believe he is also referred to as Nick Trigger."

Bolan said, "Okay, I make. Now tell me, how many of them?"

The Major shrugged. "At least five, perhaps more. I suspect they're prowling the alleyway at this very instant."

Bolan sighed, his mind racing ahead to his options. He could try bluffing his way out past the cops, and if they closed on him he would have no recourse. Bolan did not shoot cops. To reverse the Major's trail would undoubtedly run him into a direct confrontation with a superior force of gunners.

He told Stone, "Okay, I'm going over the top. Ann's waiting for you in room three." Then he charged on up the steps to the floor above.

A hardfaced little man occupied a wicker chair at the top of the stairway. His eyes quickly discovered the gun in Bolan's hand and he cried, " 'ere now, what's this?"

In a rough imitation of Harry Parks' speech, Bolan told him, "It's a pinch down below, mate. Get 'em all out, quickly now!"

The man's hand jerked to a button on the wall behind him, and Bolan could hear alarm bells sounding immediately in the rooms along the hallway. The little man was on his feet and intent on scurrying down the stairs, but Bolan restrained him. "Not that way," he growled, hoping for a different exit.

"There ain't no other way," the man screeched. He tore loose from Bolan's grasp and bounded down the stairs.

Already pandemonium was erupting into the hallway as men and women in varying stages of nudity spilled out of the rooms. An angry youth hobbled past Bolan, trying to get into his trousers on the run, a shirt clenched between his teeth, shoes beneath his arms. A pretty girl hurried along in the youth's wake, fumbling with the buttons of her dress and trying to cover nakedly heaving breasts while she hurled taunting insults ahead at the boy.

Bolan felt like hell about it all, but he knew the interrupted lovers would live this problem down; perhaps Bolan would not. He watched the unhappy group stream by, then he began a quick inspection of that upper area of Soho Psych. It consisted of six rooms, three to each side, and apparently covered only the rear section of the building. The rooms to the front had windowless, blank walls—it appeared that the upper story of the building was subdivided, with a separate mode of access to that part which faced on the street. The other three rooms each featured a small window over the alleyway. Bolan's recon consumed less than a minute and revealed that he was in a seemingly hopeless situation. There was no sign of a fire escape, no way to the roof, and nothing but a sheer drop to the alley some thirty feet below.

He was about to give it up as a bad stand when he found the way out. In the ceiling above a closet in the end bedroom was a trapdoor access to the attic. He hoisted himself up and through and carefully replaced the covering, then used his cigarette lighter to orient himself in the darkness. As he had hoped, the attic was common to the entire building and yawned out in front of him with no apparent obstacles. It was rough and without flooring above the ceiling beams, and with a low overhead—very low in spots, giving evidence of a gabled roof layout. This suited Bolan fine; gables meant an uneven roof surface, sometimes attic windows, and very possibly a way out.

He extinguished the lighter and began a careful exploration, crawling across the ceiling beams and seeking a light source. Here and there a rat scrambled across his path, setting Bolan's teeth on edge. Sounds of a wild commotion on the floor below were drifting up to him when he spotted his light source—a faint rectangle of dim light far ahead. He pushed on with greater haste, knowing that every second counted now.

The light was coming through a latticed ventilation window, set into a vertical section of roof just a few feet above the ceiling beams. The lattice was composed of wood strips which were brittle with age, and the opening was just wide enough to pass Bolan's shoulders.

The strips gave easily to his gentle pressure, breaking with a dull snap as one by one he quickly cleared the opening. A brief head-through recon showed a short drop to a flat section of roof just below but very narrow—and Frith Street angling off way below.