democracy, but that was a lie. The entire nation was owned, body and soul, by the Fifteen Families, the largest and most powerful crime family in existence. They made the old Mafia look like a sewing circle. Albania was ruled by a secret dictatorship that used the military to control the police. The reason Bolan rarely tangled with them was because their main concerns were inside Albania. He felt sorry for the enslaved Albanian people, but never fooled himself into thinking that he could save the entire world. That was madness.
Traffic become thicker near the capital city, but the roads didn’t improve much. The majority were made with cobblestone, dating back to the Middle Ages. Very picturesque for the tourists, but not practical. Occasionally there was a smooth stretch of pavement, a remnant of the days when the Soviet Union ruled the tiny nation. But most of the streets were in very poor condition, dotted with deep potholes. More than one car was abandoned alongside the road, with a wheel bent sideways, the axle broken in an unexpected encounter with a particularly deep depression.
Standing on a small raised platform, a young policewoman in a crisp uniform and bright orange gloves was expertly directing vehicles around a traffic circle. She instantly noted that Bolan was a tourist and smiled as he passed. He grinned in return, but noticed that her smile quickly faded as she returned to work.
Just then, a limousine raced past the police officer, clearly going way over the posted speed limit, veering in and out of lanes without regard for the other cars, and generally ignoring every rule of safe driving. She bridled at the sight for a moment, then turned her back on the vehicle with a sigh.
Watching in his rearview mirror, Bolan guessed the limousine was owned by a member of the Fifteen Families, and noted that the vehicle rode low on military-grade, bulletproof tires. The limo was armored. He almost smiled at that. In the trunk of the Range Rover was something he had brought along from Brooklyn for just a target.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to use it. On the plane ride from the States, Bolan had placed a few phone calls and managed to set up a meeting with Rezart Kastrioti, a high-level member of the Fifteen Families. Bolan was posing as a representative for a cartel of American manufacturers to negotiate safe passage for cargo ships carrying Detroit-made cars to Europe. As always, the Fifteen Families were happy to talk business with rich Americans—if the price was right. Bolan should get what he wanted in only a few hours, and then slip quietly away. However, he knew from experience that it was wise to plan for what the enemy could do, not just for what they might do. Hence the XM-25 in the trunk.
The city limits of Tirana were marked by a sharp improvement in the road surface. It was a beautiful municipality, with its tan brick buildings and red tile roofs, and carried a sense of age. Everything in the country felt old, even if it was brand-new. He had encountered such a feeling before many times, mostly in third world nations where poverty was rampart, but also in Detroit, the so-called Rust Belt of the Midwest.
Circling the crumbling remains of an old Roman fortress, Bolan easily spotted his destination in the distance, the glass-and-steel structure rising from the older stone buildings as if a starship had landed in a junkyard. The King Zog Hotel had been built into the side of a small mountain. The slanted glass facade sparkled brightly, and even from a distance he could see a heliport on the rooftop.
The hotel was named after a legendary president of Albania, a gentle and wise man so deeply beloved by the people that they had given him the nickname King Zog. He had tried to stop the invasion by the Soviets, and failed, but his heroic battle still gave heart to the people.
Parking a short distance from the hotel, Bolan walked around the block a few times, casually dropping small packages into trash bins and down storm gratings. After checking the signal on the remote control, he returned to the Range Rover and drove to the front of the futuristic hotel.
For the meeting he was wearing business chic: a Hugo Boss three-piece suit, with a raw silk tie and gold Citation wristwatch. He had a miniphone clipped to his ear, and a fake prison tattoo of a spiderweb stenciled on his neck to indicate a rough-and-tumble past. His shoes were Italian, his sunglasses French and his briefcase burnished steel. His usual weapons were riding their accustomed positions, but he also was carrying a brace of knives in case some silent kills were necessary.
Underneath everything else, Bolan was wearing a ballistic T-shirt. It would stop only small-caliber rounds from penetrating, and his bones would still break, but under the circumstances he couldn’t wear any type of proper body armor. That would be an insult. And he needed to gain the trust of these killers.
Stepping out of the vehicle, he left the door open and flipped the keys over a shoulder. From a nearby kiosk, a teenage valet rushed forward to snag them in the air, muttering apologies for not being more prompt.
“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Bolan chuckled, pulling out a wad of cash. Peeling off a hundred euro note, he let it drop. “Just park it close.”
“Absolutely, sir!” the valet gushed, beaming over the colossal tip. “I wash, too! Good job!” One hundred euros was a month’s wages.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said, dismissing the matter with a wave. “Just don’t scratch the paint or I’ll break your legs.”
“Yes, sir! No, sir! Thank you, sir!”
Heading for the front door, Bolan noticed the armored limousine from the traffic circle parked in a handicap zone. Standing around the vehicle were four large men openly carrying Uzi submachine guns, with spare clips jutting from their belts like samurai swords. One of them had a dead white eye, and a military-style hand mike dangled over the shoulder of his white linen suit. Bolan instantly marked him as the crew chief.
The men watched him closely, shifting to a more aggressive stance, but Bolan ignored the street soldiers as if such a sight was an everyday occurrence. He would wager five-to-ten that the limo belonged to Rezart Kastrioti, the man he was supposed to meet in a few minutes for lunch.
Stepping through a revolving door, Bolan felt as if he was entering another world. The structure was hollow and rose impossibly high, the rooms arranged along the outer rim. By craning his neck, the big American could see straight to the vaulted roof some fifty stories above.
The air was cool and clean, smelling faintly of jasmine. Lush plants grew in orderly abundance, and carpeted steps led to a spacious lobby that stretched nearly the length of a football field. Glass elevators rose and descended at several locations, liveried staff rushed about carrying trays, and soft instrumental music played from hidden speakers. Bolan identified it as something by Debussy. Signs pointed the way to the indoor golf course, water park, brothel, restaurant, casino and skeet shooting range.
A score of elegant people moved through the lobby, the men in tailored business suits, the women in skimpy dresses that showed a wealth of cleavage and displayed long legs. Everybody was deeply tanned, and accompanied by secretaries, assistants, armed bodyguards, aides, butlers and maids, while nannies herded small children or pushed babies in strollers.
Bolan pretended to check his watch, barely able to believe the ebb and flow of people. It was more like opening night at the Metropolitan Opera than a simple Tuesday morning. Was this some national holiday he didn’t know about? That could be a major problem.
That was when he noticed the carefully disguised video cameras. They were everywhere, overlapping one another’s ranges. There was absolutely no way anybody could go anywhere unnoticed. This was prison level security. Bolan realized that this wasn’t merely some random hotel; it had to be owned and operated by the Fifteen Families. The King Zog was most likely the nerve center of Albania, a safe haven of luxury and comfort for the criminal elite, far from the misery and strife they caused.
