"And we know the kid is right, too. Anybody could make the hits and leave that crap behind, to blame Bolan, you agree?" Brinato looked at the other faces for confirmation.

"But it's crazy!" Frode screamed, rising to his feet and pounding on the table. "Why would I hit my own guys? Why blow up my town? Cops all over the fucking place. A sub-chief of the federal judicial police from Rome on my doorstep while I'm at breakfast."

"I remind you that is why we are here," said Ricercato from Palermo. "You can't keep your Family in line." He shot a quick look at Astio. "Maybe it's time for a change."

"No!"

Into the silence following Frode's terrified shout, Astio said, "As a matter of fact, gentlemen, if I am permitted to speak?"

"Speak!" commanded ice-throated Brinato.

"There is a witness."

They all stared at Don Tronfio.

In a single smoothly gliding move, Astio got from his chair, crossed the room and opened the door. He motioned and a soldier dressed in an obvious imitation of Astio came into the room with Hilde. Astio took the girl's hand and nodded. The soldier withdrew, closing the door. Astio guided the blonde across the deep carpeting and sat her down in the chair he'd just vacated.

"Now, Hilde, tell these gentlemen exactly what you told me. Go on, don't be afraid." A thin edge of raw intimidation came into Astio's voice. "Tell them, exactly."

"I ... was … was with Signor Mezzano — " She swallowed heavily and looked up at Astio standing by her side. Astio put a hand on her shoulder, and she remembered the cruel little Corsican and the incredible pain, and the more recent dose of pain almost as bad, and she flinched under Astio's touch. "Tell them, Hilde."

It all came out in a rush then.

She had been with Mezzano the night before when a man walked in on them.

Yes, she had seen him before. No, not his name, only that others called him Dito, The Finger. He was dressed in black and armed with a long-barreled gun, she did not know what kind. Dito threw one of those, she gestured toward the metal objects on the table, on the bed, and then he laughed. He said the old man was tired of Mezzano skimming off too much from the top of the business for himself.

"And then he just shot him," Hilde said woodenly.

"Lies, lies, alllll lies!" Frode cried out, sobbing, beating his fists on the table. He thrust his hand at Astio. "He's taking me down, using Bolan's hits to take me down. Look at that goddam German whore, look at her! She's terrified. Strip her, for the sake of God, and you'll find she's been tortured."

Frode leaned across the table. "Tell them, girl. Tell them."

Astio's hand squeezed Hilde's shoulder and she shuddered with fear. Astio shouted, "Rana!"

The door opened and the same soldier came into the room. His face had a froglike look, and his imitation of Astio's wardrobe helped his appearance very little. He carried a sack in his left hand.

Astio gestured and Rana came to the table, opened the sack, pulled the bottom corners, and a head rolled out. Even the dons gasped and recoiled with horror and disgust. Hilde screamed and Astio jerked her from the chair by her long blonde hair. He slapped her three times, hard, and she grew silent except for deep, shuddering sobs. Astio pointed.

"Is that the man who killed Mezzano?"

Hilde nodded.

Astio slapped her again. "Look at the face."

He twisted her hair and forced her neck to turn and made her look. "Is that the man?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," Hilde screeched and jerked free of Astio's grip, stumbled backwards and fell. At the nod of Astio's head, Rana jerked the girl to her feet and walked her out the door.

"Get rid of that filthy thing," said foppish Ricercato, holding a handkerchief to his face, turning away.

Astio shouted again and Rana returned to the room, rolled the head back into the sack and carried it out.

Astio stood behind his chair and placed his hands on the back. "The head you just saw belonged to Ibrido Delatore. He has been employed by Don Frode for the past two years, to carry out, ah, special assignments."

After a long pause, Brinato's icy voice broke the silence. "Gentlemen?"

The man from Palermo, leaning back in his chair, said, "I'm ready."

"And I," said Ricercato, wiping his lips.

Brinato looked around the table. The men from Salerno and Genoa, Catania, Messina, Venice, and Reggio, and all the others either nodded emphatically or voiced assent.

Brinato looked down the table toward Frode. "Before we vote, do you have anything more to say?"

"Just this," Frode said, feeling slack and dry and old, and already dead. "Remember what I tell you here. Remember. Because you will have cause to remember." He looked up at Astio. "You will die within a week, the moment you are found out as the traitor you are."

Astio made an obscene gesture.

Frode found himself able to smile. "Cannibal," he responded to the gesture; then returned his attention to the table.

"Remember that Cafu of Agrigento was-not-here! Unlike you, he is home watching his business, fortifying against Bolan. He knows Bolan took down my city, and he knows why, as do I. Diversion."

In the sudden silence, the dons stirred restlessly in their chairs. "Of all you, only Don Cafu was not fooled and did not answer the summons for my table."

Frode knew he had not long to live, perhaps five minutes, possibly an hour. He enjoyed watching them become uncertain, sweat, look at one another.

Astio saw it too, and felt his victory slipping away. He spoke fast. "Then why haven't we any reports from elsewhere that Bolan's hit again?"

All the dons nodded and muttered, getting the assurance they needed.

Frode said, "You are so stupid, all of you. Cafu knows. That is why he is not here." He looked around the table. "Do you know why Bolan took Philly and our Angeletti Family down? Became Don Cafu has started a new business. Training soldiers. Mercenary assassins. He rents them to others in this thing of yours— not ours, because I know how the vote will go. He rents his soldiers for one thousand U.S. dollars a day, and Bolan took down seventy-five of them in Philly."

Frode paused, then shouted, "Now vote, you sons of bitches!" He abruptly dropped his voice to almost a whisper. "And cut your own motheriucking throats."

He got up and walked out.

An hour later he was dead and lying in a box while Frog poured wet cement over the body.

Only one man at the table knew Frode had told the truth, the man who'd framed him and then killed him, Astio Traditore. just confirmed as new Boss of Bosses in Napoli. Traditore had every resource at his disposal directed toward one single objective: find and kill Mack Bolan before he reached Agrigento. If he failed, Frode's prediction would become precisely true. The dons would discover Traditore had shucked them into killing one of their own, and what the German girl had undergone would seem like Paradise compared to the tortures Astio would suffer before he found relief in death.

The entire Neapolitan organization turned to with a will, each man knowing that dozens of high-echelon vacancies now existed, and the man who made the best impression on the new don would be at the boss' right hand, a favorite, handed the most lucrative action.

No one worked harder than The Frog, who idolized Astio. And it was Frog who turned up the first thin lead, traced it out from the airport and shortly after three o'clock in the morning stopped outside the "home" of a truck driver named Fretta. Frog stepped over the open-ditch stinking sewer and with a soldier at each side, he took down the front door of Fretta's hovel, kicking it in, gun in hand.

Fretta made no pretense whatever of resisting. He knew who these men were, and when they asked, he told them exactly what they wanted to know: the old truck was a faded blue, it had a crumpled right-front fender, there were noticeable rust spots on the hood. The man? The man was big, over six feet tall, weighing at least 95 kilos, perhaps a hundred. And, yes, my masters, he did indeed have eyes like blue-stained ice. Go? I only know he sent me to buy native clothing for him, a few extra cans of gasoline and a crate of oil. The engine on that old truck needed a complete overhaul, valves and rings most, pumped oil like a furnace, looked like an old-time locomotive coming, gushing blue smoke. I saw no arms, only a large crate of wood which the big man lashed down on the bed of the truck. Yes, he spoke some Italian, not such fine grammar, Sicilian dialect, looked Siciliano, to me. Of course, at your orders, always.