Cynthey was giving Bolen a dewey-eyed look.

He sighed and said, "Both of you keep clear. And if you like Mary Ching, then don't breathe a word linking me to her. It could mean her life. Right?"

He got up and went out, slinging the machine-pistol over his shoulder and blending into the darkness of the hallway to await a meeting with "allies."

The two girls came out a few minutes later and hurried down the stairs. They did not see Bolan and they were arguing about something in angry whispers.

Panda Bare and Cynthia.

Bolan grinned sadly and shook his head.

Yeah. San Francisco was some kind of town.

As he waited in the darkness, he decided that maybe the old city was over-infested with too many diverging ideas of "honesty."

Maybe the golden city could use a bit of romantic deceit, some good, old, common jungle courtship.

He waited there in the dark, took the matter under advisement, and promised himself that he would get to the heart of San Francisco... or die trying.

Yeah, he could sure die trying.

There were three of them plus the girl, and Bolan waited until all were framed in the light from the open doorway before he made his move.

He came up from the rear with the stuttergun at the ready, and commanded, "Freeze! Hands on the head while I get a look at you!"

There was no argument.

He patted them clean, removing hardware and sending them inside one by one. The girl turned over her tiny weapon without a murmur and went in with a half-smile on her face.

The look of these men, two of them anyway, recalled in Bolan's mind the buried memories of Korea — and those memories were not so pleasant.

There was something about the Chinese that stood them apart from other Asians, especially as fighting men. There was a hardness of the mind there which was reflected in the face, in the way the head rode atop those shoulders — and there was an inherent ferocity of the spirit which Bolan had found in no other Asian nationals.

Yeah, these were fighting men.

The incessant wars of a thousand centuries were burned into their genes.

Bolan had learned to respect them in Korea... and he respected them now.

The third man had moved on beyond that — from warrior to wise man. He dressed as most San Franciscans do — in an all-seasons suit and a light topcoat, and he wouldn't have drawn a second look from the average tourist.

Those who looked twice, though, would discover a man of quiet but tough dignity, and they would look into the eyes that had seen everything to see and learned to accept nothing at face value.

He was an old man — quite old — but he seemed to be in excellent command of mind and body. And there was no doubt that he was also in command of the other two men, the young warriors. They were little more than bodyguards, Bolan decided.

He removed the clip from the automatic weapon and thrust it into his belt, then he dropped the gun to the floor with the others. It was a peace gesture, even though his other weapon was very much in evidence and ready to leap.

"I am Daniel Wo Fan," the old man told him.

Bolan nodded and said, "I am Mack Bolan."

The old boy didn't waste time on preliminaries. He eased onto a chair and told Bolan, "Your enemy is my enemy."

The Executioner said, "Then you have a lot of enemies."

Wo Fan smiled a fragile smile. "You are rapidly reducing their numbers, I am told. We will help you all we can."

"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.

Bolan told her, "No disrespect intended. Tell him that, when you see him again."

He had retrieved the machine-pistol. He snapped in the clip and moved toward the door.

She cried, "You just hold it right there!"

Bolan turned to her with a tight grin. A bland product of the inscrutable East she was definitely not. She was a good old American girl, as educated and sassy and assertive as any. Bolan liked her. He said, "I've held too long already. Uh, your girl friends crashed out when I crashed in."

"What girl friends?"

"San Francisco's gift to the sexually underprivileged. Panda Bare and Cynthia."

Her face reflected a sudden worry. "Oh! I didn't know they were here."

"Yeah, well, take a word from a guy who knows. Move out of this place for a few days. Little girls like to tell big secrets, and you're liable to have a lot of angry visitors before the day is done. I mean it, these guys play very rough games, and I don't think you'd like to be it."

She bit her lip and said, "I know."

He had his hand on the doorknob.

Breathlessly, she said, "Please don't go."

"Thanks for all," he told her, and opened the door.

The guy out there was as surprised as Bolan. He'd been tiptoeing along the hall toward Mary Ching's door, and he froze there in the sudden light, balancing on one foot, the eyes flaring in quick consternation.