had dropped it on the terrace, and hurried back to the house. He turned another corner and looked across sloping lawns to a hedge over which the distant lights of the city made a faint glow in the sky.
The ground rose here, leaving a railed area circling the building. Bolan looked down through the top half of tall windows to a large paneled room in the center of which eleven men sat around a boardroom table. He caught his breath. So, this must be the “important” meeting.
Crouching, he saw that the room was surrounded by a gallery. A short flight of steps led to a door that was clearly an entrance to this gallery.
At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was not locked. A fraction of an inch at a time, he eased open the door, waited, pushed lightly. The door swung silently inward and he slipped through.
Carved wooden balusters railed in the gallery, which was in deep shadow. The room below was lit by three green-shaded lamps that hung, poolroom style, over the vast table. Bolan lowered himself to the floor and peered down between two balusters.
A big ornate chair at the head of the table was empty. Sanguinetti, the owner of the property — Bolan recognized him from newspaper photos — was installed at the foot. The other ten men were ranged five on either side.
They were talking among themselves. Bolan could make out no individual words, could hear no names. But he did not have to. He realized he was looking at ten of the most powerful men in the world.
And the most evil.
Facing him beneath the low-hanging poolroom lamps, Bolan saw the rock-hard features of Vincente Borrone, whose family controlled docks and transport Stateside; Luigi Abba, the undisputed boss of Vegas and the West Coast; the Unione Corse capo, Renato Ancarani; Arturo Zefarelli from Sicily; and Pasquale Lombardo, who ran the Mob in Toulon.
For a while Bolan was unable to pinpoint the crime emperors with their backs to him, but the conversation around the table was animated, and eventually each had turned toward a neighbor sufficiently for the Executioner to pedigree the other five.
The first he recognized was Girolamo Scalese, king of the Camorra in Naples.
Next to him was the Baron Etang de Brialy, a small gray-haired Frenchman with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, who was the Mister Big behind all organized crime in Paris. Between this couple and Sanguinetti were two hoods whose names Bolan could not remember but who controlled, he knew, the Mafia in Chicago and Detroit. The quorum was completed by Jean-Paul.
It was the first time Bolan had seen the Marseilles gang leader in the flesh, and he looked at the man with interest.
J-P was impressive. He was a big guy, almost as tall as Bolan, and appeared to be in his early forties. He was trim, bronzed, the sharp planes of his face etched with laugh-lines, his head unexpectedly capped with thick white hair.
Bolan smiled wryly. If he had known his future “employer” would be at the meeting he probably could have entered the fortress openly and even been invited as a guest. As it was, he would have to get out fast before the absence of the two men he had killed was noticed. He couldn’t afford to have Sondermann associated with that.
But first, he wanted to find out the purpose of the meeting. Nothing was happening right now: the eleven men appeared to be waiting for something. Or someone.
A few minutes later, Bolan heard the clattering whine of an approaching jet helicopter. The noise increased and then it subsided as the chopper landed somewhere on the far side of the pool.
A whistle sounded. Almost immediately the aircraft took off again and flew out to sea.
As the rotor whine faded in the distance, conversation in the room below the gallery dwindled too. A door opened; a voice made an announcement.
A thickset man with a shaven skull marched into the room, nodded briefly and took the vacant chair at the head of the table.
Bolan choked back a gasp of astonishment.
The man was in