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  Her eyes were lingering on the gun harness at his chest. “Yes, of course,” she replied in a near whisper. She pointed out the closet. “Over there.”

  The closet was totally bare except for a half-dozen wire hangers. Bolan put his jacket and his spare suit in there and said, “Ann’s Retreat, eh?”

  “Yes,” she replied from the doorway. “I told you that I don’t live here. I live with Major Stone.”

  “I see.”

  She came on into the room then and stood tensely by as Bolan continued unpacking. “I suppose I’ve given you a false impression,” she told him. “Earlier, I mean. When I told you that we would … get to know each other. I did not mean … in bed.”

  Bolan showed her a tired smile. “Of course not,” he said.

  “But it’s nothing personally against you,” she hastened to add. “Actually I … well it’s simply … that … I-I’m terrified of men, you see. All men, not just you.”

  Bolan stared at her through a moment of silence, then he nodded his head and said, “Okay.”

  He opened the false bottom of the suitcase and took out what remained of his “war chest.” It had shrunk to a few thousand dollars, in bills of large denomination, and made a rather thin stack. He placed the money on a bedside table and lay the Beretta atop it, then came out of the harness and began removing his shirt.

  Ann Franklin was fingering a nylon nightsuit he’d placed on the bed. “You wear black underwear?” she asked solemnly.

  Bolan chuckled. “That’s my combat uniform,” he told her. “Some soldados I met in Miami told me that it strikes fear into the hearts of my enemy. But that’s not why I wear it. The color gives me a nighttime invisibility, and the skintight fit helps me in and out of tight places.”

  “Like the commandos,” she commented.

  “I guess so. That was before my time, though.”

  She nodded. “Mine also.” Their conversation was becoming less strained, more comradely. The girl had unfolded the suit and was holding it to her body. “Does it keep you warm?”

  “Pretty well,” Bolan replied. He was seated on the edge of the bed, removing shoes and socks. “It’s a thermal suit.”

  “I see.”

  “Did, uh, you really mean that … about men?”

  She colored visibly and dropped the suit to the bed. “Yes I—it’s silly, I know. I suppose it’s … the men I’ve known.”

  “Like Major Stone, eh,” Bolan said quietly.

  “Don’t misunderstand that,” she quickly replied. “Major Stone is the only father I’ve known. He’s raised me from the age of 12.”

  “Uh-huh.” Bolan pawed through the bag for his electric shaver.

  She seemed to have a need to explain. “Major Stone has never mistreated me, never. He’s protected me from … all that. And he’s always given me the best of everything.”

  “Good for him,” Bolan murmured. He was suddenly very tired. “I don’t suppose you’d have any coffee around here.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, moving toward the doorway. “You get your bath, and I’ll be doing things in the kitchen.”

  Bolan watched her out of sight, troubling thoughts nagging at him. None of this, he was thinking, made any sense at all. He was becoming too fatigued to care, however. He finished undressing and removed his watch, noting the time at close to seven o’clock. It had been a long night. It was cold in the bedroom, but Bolan was too tired to shiver. He picked up the Beretta and the shaving case and went into the bathroom.

  Ten minutes later, Ann Franklin rapped lightly on the bathroom door and walked in. She carried a tray and was humming softly under her breath. Bolan was lying back in a tub of steaming water, seemingly utterly relaxed and half asleep in a sea of suds, but half-closed eyes were watching the girl’s every movement.

  She maneuvered a low stool alongside the tub and set the tray on it. Her eyes found the Beretta, jammed into a towel rack within Bolan’s easy reach. Whimsically, she said, “I’ve heard of sleeping with one’s pistol, Mr. Bolan, but isn’t this a bit ridiculous?” The comradely tone was gone, Bolan noted, replaced by the earlier tense nervousness.

  “Survival,” he replied, his speech slurring a bit, “is never ridiculous.”

  Her eyes fell and she said, “Of course you would know more about that than I. Well,” she added, with a forced perkiness, “I have here coffee and muffins, which are also a matter of survival. Shall we break bread over the tub?”

  Bolan grinned and reached for the coffee. She placed the cup in his hand and asked him, “How long since you’ve slept?”

  He carefully sipped the coffee, then replied, “I forget.”

  “Then it’s been much too long.” She knelt on the floor beside the tub, broke a muffin, and held it to his lips. He ate, realizing that it had also been some time since that event. She told him, “You are an unusual person, Mr. Bolan.”

  “Not really,” he murmured. “I’m an ordinary person in unusual circumstances. Are you still afraid of me?”

  She hesitated, then whispered, “As a person, no, I suppose not.”

  “I’m afraid of you,” he told her.

  Another pause, then: “I don’t find that particularly flattering.”

  Bolan sighed. “It’s the survival instinct,” he explained, grinning tiredly. “I have to suspect the very worst in everybody.”

  “Then why survive?” she asked dully. “I mean …”

  After a brief and almost embarrassed silence, Bolan said, “I know what you mean.” He had asked himself the same question, many times. Though Ann Franklin apparently could not, some thinker had long ago expressed her idea rather well: when love and trust are dead, then the man himself is dead and awaiting only official notification of the fact. Yeah, Bolan had considered the idea. And rejected it. He told the girl, “I have a job to do. I live to do that job. That’s what survival means to me.”

  Small-voiced, she replied, “You’re speaking of your job as executioner.”

  He sighed. “Yes. That’s the job.”

  “You live only to kill.”

  “That’s about it.” He finished the coffee and returned the cup to her hand.

  “I simply cannot believe that,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “Then don’t.”

  “If you came to believe that I were your enemy, you would kill me?”

  He smiled faintly. “Are you my enemy?”

  “No.”

  He said, “I’ve never killed a friend.”

  She gazed at him with sad eyes, then got to her feet with a loud sigh. “You have no true friends in England, Mr. Bolan. I suggest that you simply slaughter the entire population straightaway, and leave as quickly as possible.”

  She went out, lightly closing the door behind her.

  Well hell, Bolan told himself. She’d been trying to get him to open himself up, to give her something to admire, perhaps something to pity. For what? Games of conscience. She was mixed up in something she did not like, and she wanted someone to tell her it was all worthwhile.

  Well, she would not get it from Bolan. He had a hard enough time keeping himself convinced. Right now, for example, it would be so easy to simply slip beneath the warm water and give it all up. No more fear, no more pain, no more blood, just blissful euphoria and quiet oblivion in the soothing warmth of Ann Franklin’s bath. Why not? After all, who the hell was Mack Bolan to appoint himself physician to a sick society? So what if the Mafia cancer was spreading into vital tissues?—weren’t there other surgeons around who were better equipped than Bolan for the job?

  Wasn’t it sheer ego that kept him on the job? They’d called him a Quixote in the press. They should have called him a cockalorum—yeah, that would be more like it—Sergeant Self-Importance, self-appointed Saviour of the Western World.

  Bolan had gone for more than sixty hours without sleep. During that period he had been under constant stress, harassed by lawmen and the underworld alike while effecting a “tactical retreat” covering hundre
ds of miles and many different modes of transport. He had fought his way out of four death traps and eluded the police of three nations, yet he had failed to make his way back to “safe” territory. And now he was at the point of complete physical and mental exhaustion, his last bit of reserve strength fully gone, occupying a narrow ledge of questionable refuge in a world trying its best to swallow him.

  Lesser men would have succumbed to the pull of defeat far sooner than this. For Bolan, the moment of defeat had come as a reaction to a young woman’s visible disgust, and the wave that inundated him was the cresting of his own mind and soul in a deep pool of self-doubt.

  For one infinite and timeless moment he hung there in suspension between the instinct for life and the comfort of death as he let go and slid beneath the actual waters of the warm bath—and then he came threshing out of it, coughing and spluttering and lunging for the Beretta.

  Though his present danger was totally within himself, the depths of his exhaustion projected phantom enemies somewhere out there, and Bolan’s response came from the very core of himself. When Ann Franklin stepped back through the doorway, in response to the commotion, Bolan was sitting upright in the tub. His fist was full of Beretta, suds were clustered about his face, his eyes were straining for focus, and he was muttering, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  The girl immediately understood the situation. She dropped to her knees at the tub, one arm going out to encircle his shoulders, the other hand gently and carefully working at the deathgrip on the pistol.

  “Give me the gun, Mack,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay,” he told her.

  Bolan was technically unconscious, and Ann Franklin knew it. “Give me the gun,” she urged, “before you get it all wet.” The struggle ended then. She took control of the Beretta and carefully placed it on the floor, then pulled the plug from the drain and put a towel about Bolan’s shoulders. “Let’s go to bed,” she whispered.

  He struggled out of the tub and steadied himself with a hand against the wall while Ann towelled him dry, then she moved inside the arm and helped him into the bedroom.

  “It’s okay,” he told her again as she fought the covers back and guided his head to the pillow.

  “Yes yes, I know,” she assured him.

  “Where’s my gun?”

  She returned to the bathroom for the pistol, showed it to him, and shoved it under the pillow. “How’s that?” she whispered.

  “Great.” Bolan’s eyes focussed on the girl then, awareness flashed there, and he muttered, “Hell, I’m naked.”

  “Utterly,” she replied, smiling solemnly. “Body and soul.” She flipped the covers over him and said, “Get some sleep now.”

  He was laboring to hold the focus. “You asked … why I bother to live. Okay. I live to win. When I die, they’ve won. Can’t let them win, see. Show them … they’re not God. Throw death … back in their teeth, see.”

  “Yes, yes, I see.”

  “That’s all it means. Not ego … not cockalorum … it’s tactics. That’s the game. Beat them … at their own game, see.”

  “Yes. I understand that now.” She began removing her clothing, her eyes steady on his.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked thickly.

  She removed her bra, waved it delicately over the bed, then dropped it to the floor. “Getting ready for bed,” she replied. “Girls sleep too, you know.”

  Bolan lifted himself groggily to one elbow as she stepped out of the panties. “Better not,” he growled. “I’m not all that beat.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she replied solemnly. She slid in beneath the covers and snuggled over to him. “I have a survival problem also, you know,” she confided in a quivery whisper.

  He clasped her in both arms, pulling her in tight, and murmured, “This is great.”

  “Uh huh.” A moment later Ann felt his embrace slacken. Borderline consciousness had surrendered to complete exhaustion. She pushed him onto his back and adjusted the pillow to his head, studied the strong face for a moment, then impulsively kissed his lips.

  “Big bad Bolan,” she whispered, then nestled her face in his throat and very contentedly joined him in sleep.

  For both of them, man and woman, a survival crisis had been reached and passed, each in their own way. It was not to be the final one for either of them.

  Chapter Seven

  COUNTERPOINT

  The Executioner’s long night had ended, but across the Atlantic, in an eastern U.S. city, that same night was just beginning, with an informal meeting of Mafia bosses. The site of the conference was the suburban home of Augie Marinello, head of a powerful New York family: the subject was Mack Bolan, and what to do about him.

  Contrary to popular myth, there was no “boss of all the bosses,” or Chief Capo. There had been none since the violent demise in 1931 of the first and final Capo di tutti Capi, Salvatore Maranzano. Instead, each Cosa Nostra “family” now had representation on La Commissione, or Council of Bosses, which ruled the sprawling crime syndicate.

  The present meeting was not a full council, but considerable power was represented there. In attendance were Marinello and the bosses of two other New York families, plus the overlords of several neighboring territories. Only once since the embarrassingly aborted 1957 summit meeting at Appalachia had a new full conference been attempted. And that one, at Miami a short few weeks earlier, had become a fiasco to wipe Appalachia out of the mind forever, thanks to Mack The Bastard Bolan.

  Now the eastern power clique sat in sullen thoughtfulness. Each of the men present had been present also at Miami; some bore visible wounds to remind them of the traumatic event; all bore wounds of the soul which would never heal, haunting their dreams and irritating their waking moments. Miami would never be foregotten. Nor would the man who had caused it all.

  Two burly men in tailored suits moved silently about the conference table, pouring wine from napkined magnums. With this chore completed, they quietly withdrew and closed the doors on the convention of royalty.

  Augie Marinello, host of the occasion, broke the silence with a deep-throated growl. “So the bastard turns up in England,” he said.

  Arnesto “Arnie Farmer” Castiglione, chief of the lower Atlantic seaboard, shifted uncomfortably in his chair and explained, “So I guess we didn’t get him in France. I got to apologize for the bum dope. But I would’ve sworn … I mean, I just don’t see how the bastard could have got out alive.”

  “It looks like he did,” spoke up a Pennsylvania boss.

  “Bet your ass he did,” said the man from Jersey. “I got a bunch of dead soldiers over in England to prove it.”

  Arnie Farmer grimaced. “Don’t tell me about dead soldiers. We’re still counting the dead in France, and tryin’ to get the rest out of jail.”

  Marinello sighed loudly and sibilantly. “I got word from Nick Trigger.” His glance flicked to the Jersey boss. “He wants to take over the Bolan hunt.”

  “I got a full crew over there right now, Augie,” the Jersey man advised.

  “Sure, but how’re they doing?” Marinello asked thoughtfully.

  “Well … like I told you, they’ve made contact twice.”

  “We made contacts all over the place down in Miami,” an upstate boss pointed out. “So what’s that make anything?”

  “They’re good boys,” Jersey argued. “I think they’re on top of it pretty good.”

  “Bullshit,” said Arnie Farmer.

  “Whattaya mean, bullshit?” Jersey flared back.

  “I mean I sent a whole damn army to France, a regular AEF f’Christ’s sake, and not even half of ’em got back. That’s what I mean bullshit. I mean boys like Sammy Shiv and Fat Angelo and Quick Tony went to France and never came back, that’s what I mean bullshit.” He tasted his wine, returning the angry glare from New Jersey over the rim of the glass. “So who’ve you got in England that’s on top of it pretty good?”

  “I got Danno Giliamo and his boys,”
Jersey replied through flattened lips.

  Arnie Farmer raised his eyebrows in respectful receipt of this news and replied, “Okay so I’m surprised you sent Danno. I take it back the bullshit remark.”

  “Danno’s a regular bulldog,” Marinello put in. “Nobody’ll say different to that—and listen—it’s no dig at Danno that I’d like to see Nick Trigger take over the hit. Nick tells me that he talked this over with Danno—and Danno says it’s okay with him. Listen, this is no time for hurt feelings. We’ve got to stop this boy, hard and fast. And the cost is getting out of hand, it’s getting awful.”

  “Not even mentioning the contract purse,” Pennsylvania added.

  “I’d gladly pay it twice,” Arnie Farmer Castiglione declared passionately “In fact …” He raised the wine glass to his lips and sipped delicately, then continued in a milder tone. “I’m for upping the ante to a cool million. That’d make the scramble for real, and we already lost more than that on account of this boy. Besides that he’s making us look foolish. How long are we going to stay in business if …”

  The speech ended on the uncompleted question. Silence descended and reigned for a long moment, then the New Jersey boss grunted and suggested, “Contract money is not the answer.”

  “Then just what the hell is?” Arnie Farmer demanded, his voice rising with emotion. “You can’t cop a plea with this boy, you know.”

  The latter statement had reference to an older and more painful period in the life of the boss from Jersey, who had served three successive prison sentences on “copped pleas”—pleading guilty to a lesser crime to avoid prosecution of graver ones. He resented being reminded of these past indignities, and his angry face plainly showed it.

  Marinello hurried into the breech. “We already got the answer,” he declared softly. “We are doing the right things, make no mistake about that. It’s just a matter of—”

  “No, wait a minute. Who says we can’t cop a plea with this Bolan?”

  All eyes turned to Joe Staccio, the upstate New Yorker. Someone growled, “You nuts or something, Joe?”