Sunscream Read Online Free Page B

cliffs separating the city from the famous little fishing port. There were a couple of acres of undulating ground above the limestone wall surrounding the islet, and here, sheltered by tall hedges and set in a cypress grove, an extraordinary building had been erected.
    It was a huge house, built on several different levels, combining gothic turrets with Oriental domes above a fantasy of Moorish arches and windows.
    “Who owns it?” Bolan inquired.
    “It was built by Deborah Delamour, the silent screen star of the twenties,” the cabbie said. “After her death, the property remained empty until the mid-sixties. It was bought recently and restored by an industrialist named Sanguinetti.”
    “Are visitors allowed?” Bolan asked conversationally.
    “Are you kidding?” the cab driver replied. “Sanguinetti’s got guard dogs, closed-circuit TV, electrified fences, you name it.” He gestured across the stretch of calm blue water. “In Delamour’s time, there used to be a suspension bridge, but that’s the only way you can get there now.”
    He was indicating a small concrete jetty projecting from the base of the cliff on the landward side of the islet. Steps cut from the rock zigzagged to the top of the limestone face, and there was what looked like a cable car rail, with an open car, rising directly from the jetty.
    A white power launch was tied next to the steps, with two burly men wearing blue sailors’ jerseys lounging nearby. Another guard stood by a tall wrought-iron gateway at the top of the stairway. “No beaches on the other side of the island?” Bolan asked.
    The taxi driver shook his head. “Sheer cliffs all the way around,” he said.
    Bolan glanced right and left. The heat had gone from the sun, but there were still vacationers bronzing themselves on the sandy strip below the road. Kids swam in the shallows, and there were half a dozen windsurfers offshore, waiting for a breeze.
    Beyond a line of automobiles parked on a low bluff, he could see striped umbrellas and a beach restaurant at the inner end of a pleasure pier. A thicket of sailboat masts clustered around the wooden piles. “They use that pier?” Bolan asked.
    “Uh-uh. They got a regular service of those floating bars...” he nodded toward the launch “...bringing them out, sometimes from the city, mostly from Cassis.”
    Bolan nodded, as if dismissing the subject but the whole area intrigued him. Boatloads of people were ferried from Cassis to a heavily guarded property owned by an industrialist, and there was to be an important secret meeting... more than ever Bolan determined to smuggle himself onto that islet. “Okay, let’s go to Cassis now,” he told the driver.
    The village was five miles away, around a bend in the cliffs, but to get there the road circled behind some wild rocky slopes. Sanguinetti sure had picked himself an isolated retreat, Bolan reflected.
    Bolan paid the cabbie, rented a Volkswagen and drove down to the dockside. From a ship’s chandler store he rented scuba equipment, a waterproof neoprene satchel and a spear gun. Then he drove back toward Marseilles and down to the coastal road, which petered out a few hundred yards beyond the bluff where he had stopped the taxi.
    At the end of the road, he concealed the VW behind an immense boulder and returned to the bluff on foot. He changed into the diving suit, strapped on the oxygen tank, drew on helmet and facemask and stowed the Beretta in the satchel. Picking up the flippers and his spear gun, he moved toward the water’s edge.
    The night was very warm. The three-quarter moon was not due to silver the cloudless sky for another hour. The sea was calm. Bolan stepped into the flippers and waded in.
    Several boats had already chugged out from Cassis to Sanguinetti’s jetty. He could see the riding lights bobbing at the base of the cliff. Voices and laughter drifted across the water, and there was a hint of music from the house above.
    Bolan submerged and swam