The Aztec Avenger

CHAPTER TWO

I refused Gregorius’ offer of lunch, but I did have coffee while he put away a huge meal. He didn’t talk while he ate, concentrating on his food with almost total dedication. It gave me a chance to examine him while I smoked and sipped at my coffee.

Alexander Gregorius was one of the world’s richest and most secretive men. I think I knew more about him than anyone else because I had set up his incredible information network when Hawk had put me out on loan to him before.

As Hawk had said, “We can use him. A man with his power and his money can be a valuable help to us. There’s just one thing for you to remember, Nick. Whatever he knows, I want to know, too.”

I’d set up the fantastic information system that was to work, for Gregorius and then tested it by ordering information gathered on Gregorius himself. I passed that information on to AXE’s files.

There was damned little hard information about his early years. Most of it was unconfirmed. Rumor had it that he’d been born somewhere in the Balkans or Asia Minor. Rumor had it that he was part Cypriot and part Lebanese. Or Syrian and Turk. Nothing was completely definitive.

But I’d discovered his real name was not Alexander Gregorius, something which a very few people knew. But even I couldn’t learn where he’d really come from or what he’d done during the first twenty-five years of his life.

He emerged from nowhere right after World War II. He appeared on an immigration record in Athens as having come from Ankara, but his passport was Lebanese.

By the end of the 50s, he was deep in Greek shipping, Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian oil, Lebanese banking, French import-export, South American copper, manganese, tungsten — you name it. It was almost impossible to pin down all his activities even from an insider’s seat.

It would be an accountant’s nightmare to uncover his exact holdings. He’d hidden them by incorporating in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Panama — countries where corporate secrecy is virtually unbreachable. That’s because the S.A. after the names of European and South American companies stands for Societe Anonyme. No one knows who the stockholders are.

I don’t think that even Gregorius himself could pin down the exact extent of his wealth. He no longer measured it in terms of dollars, but in terms of power and influence — and he had plenty of both.

What I’d done for him, on that first assignment from Hawk, was to set up an information gathering service that consisted of an insurance company, a credit checking organization, and a news magazine with foreign bureaus in more than thirty countries and well over a hundred correspondents and stringers. Add to that an electronic data processing firm and a market research business. Their combined investigative resources were staggering.

I showed Gregorius how we could put all this data together, compiling completely detailed dossiers about several hundred thousand people. Especially those who worked for companies he had an interest in or that he owned outright. Or who worked for his competition.

The information flowed in from correspondents, from credit investigators, from insurance records, from his market research people, from the files of his news-magazine. It was all fed into a bank of IBM 360 computers at the EDP company located in Denver.

In less than sixty seconds I could have a printout on any one of these people packed with such thorough information that it would scare the hell out of them.

It would be complete from the time they were born, the schools they went to, the grades they got, the exact salaries earned on every job they ever held, the loans they ever took out and the payments they have to make. It can even compute their estimated annual income taxes for every year they worked.

It knows the affairs they’re having or have had. Right down to the names and addresses of their lovers. And it included information on their sexual proclivities and perversions.

There’s also one special reel of tape, containing some two thousand or more dossiers with both input and output, handled only by a few carefully selected ex-FBI men. That’s because the information is too secret and too dangerous to be seen by anyone else.

Any U.S. District Attorney would sell his soul to get his hands on the data reel on the Mafia families and Syndicate members that had been compiled.

Only Gregorius or myself could authorize a printout from this special reel.

Gregorius finally finished eating. He pushed away his tray and leaned back in his armchair, dabbing at his lips with the linen napkin.

“The problem is Carmine Stocelli,” he said abruptly. “You know who he is?”

I nodded. “That’s like asking me who owns Getty Oil. Carmine runs the biggest Mafia family in New York. Numbers and dope are his specialty. How are you mixed up with him?”

Gregorius frowned. “Stocelli’s trying to muscle in on one of my new enterprises. I want no part of him.”

“Give me the details.”

Tin in the middle of building a number of resorts. One in each of six countries. Imagine an enclave consisting of a luxury hotel, several low-rise condominium apartment buildings adjacent to the hotel, and some thirty to forty private villas surrounding the entire package.”

“And restricted to millionaires, right?” I grinned at him.

“Right.”

I did a quick estimate in my head. “That’s an investment of some eight hundred million dollars,” I remarked. “Who’s financing it?”

“I am,” said Gregorius, “Every penny going into it is my own money.”

“That’s a mistake. You’ve always used borrowed money. How come it’s your own this time?”

“Because I’ve borrowed to my limit on a couple of ventures in oil,” Gregorius said. “North Sea drilling is goddamned expensive.”

“Eight hundred million.” I thought about it for a minute. “Knowing how you operate, Gregorius, I’d say you expect a return on your investment of about five to seven times that amount when you’re finished.”

Gregorius looked at me sharply. “Very close to it, Carter. I see you haven’t lost your touch. The trouble is that until these projects are completed, I can’t collect a penny.”

“And Stocelli wants his fingers in your pie?”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“How?”

“Stocelli wants to put a gambling casino in each of these resorts. His gambling casino. I’d have no part of it.”

“Tell him to go to hell.”

Gregorius shook his head. “It could cost my life.”

I cocked my head and questioned him with a lifted eyebrow.

“He can do it,” said Gregorius. “He’s got the men.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“At the time he outlined his proposition to me.”

“And you expect me to get Stocelli off your back?”

Gregorius nodded. “Exactly.”

“By killing him?”

He shook his head. “That would be the easy way. But Stocelli told me point-blank that if I tried anything so foolish, his men had orders to get me at any cost. There’s got to be another way.”

“And it’s up to me to find it, is that it?” I smiled cynically.

“If anyone can, you can,” Gregorius said. “That’s why I asked Hawk for you again.”

For a moment, I wondered what could have made Hawk lend me out. AXE doesn’t work for private individuals. AXE works for no one but the American government — even if ninety-nine percent of the American government was ignorant of its existence.

“You really have that much confidence in my ability?” I asked.

“Hawk does,” said Gregorius, and that was the end of that.

I stood up. My head almost touched the ceiling of the Learjet cabin.

“Is that all, Gregorius?”

Gregorius looked up at me. “Every one else says Mr. Gregorius,” he commented.

“Is that all?” I asked again. I looked down on him. The chill I felt, the dislike came out in my voice.

“I should think that would be enough of a task even for you.”

I made my way out of the Learjet, down the steps to the desert floor, feeling the sudden heat of the day strike me, a heat almost as intense as the anger that was beginning to build up inside me.

What the hell was Hawk doing to me? N3, killmaster, forbidden to kill? Carter to go up against a top Mafia boss who was surrounded with button men— and when I got to him, I wasn’t supposed to touch him?

Christ, was Hawk trying to get me killed?