"Дон Пендлтон. California Hit ("Палач" #11) " - читать интересную книгу автора

"You'll help me best by standing clear," Bolan told him. "Allies get in
my way, and I don't like to walk on their backs."
The statement was not given as an insult, nor was it received as one.
"There is more evil in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan, than one man alone can
possibly hope to overcome. It goes beyond your Cosa Nostra. It embraces not
only you and me, but your children and mine and their children after them.
It rides the breast of the global seas and glides upon the atmospheres of
all the continents, both east and west, north and south."
The old man gave his head that slow mandarin shake of authority. "A
warrior without allies will not survive the day in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan.
We do not need you. You need us."
And suddenly Bolan knew who Wo Fan was. He was the Chinese equivalent
of a Capo - the big daddy, probably, of the San Francisco tongs. There was a
difference, though, and Bolan was trying to pull the thing together in his
mind.
The early tongs, or Chinese secret societies, had been as influential
in their spheres as the Mafia had become in the Occidental world of today.
In San Francisco, especially, they'd been the boys with the lotteries, the
opium, the prostitution and even actual slavery, the murder shops, and all
the other varieties of underground activity in the Chinese community.
Now - if Bolan's intel was on the right track - now Chinatown's vice
lords were aligned with the larger mob, the Mafia, and the leadership of the
tongs had passed into more respectable hands. The secret societies of the
Chinese had turned their energies into the constructive side of commerce and
politics, and a fresh new wind had been blowing across the Chinese-American
landscapes.
A little flag sprang up in the Executioner's mind, a flag buried there
in Las Vegas by his friend Carl Lyons, the undercover cop from L.A.
"Red China," Lyons had said.
"What?"
"Yeah. How's that for a mob combination? And the trade, we hear, is
lively?"
"In what?"
"In everything. It's developing into the largest invisible market in
the world."
And now Wo Fan was sitting here talking about the evil that rides the
seas and hovers above all the continents.
A chill trickled along Bolan's spine, and he told the old one, "I live
by the hour, one of them at a time. Every new day I see is an unexpected
victory. Whether I live another day or drown in my own blood an hour from
now is not the greatest worry of my life. Thanks for your offer, but I have
to fight my war my way."
It was a long speech, for Bolan.
Wo Fan seemed to understand that the young soldier was simply trying to
get the cards out cold for all to see. He smiled and said, "As you wish."
He went out then, and the bodyguards scooped up their weapons and
followed without a glance at Bolan.
Mary Ching hurried out behind them, remained briefly in the hallway,
then came back into the apartment and closed the door with a bang.
She was angry, and she was making no effort to conceal the fact.