If it slid freely the whole way to the basement, there would at first be no way of telling which floor it came from; if it became jammed someplace... well, with luck the chambermaids would not change the bed linen in vacated rooms much before ten-thirty.

And Bolan would be long gone before they discovered the chute was blocked.

He returned to his room, wiped the attackers' fingerprints from door handles and anything else the attackers might have touched, and then washed out the syringe and threw it down toward the body in the area.

By eight o'clock he had checked out. Ten minutes later he was on the far side of the square, mending an enforced cognac hangover with strong black coffee in the breakfast room of the Hotel Thor. At nine-fifteen he arranged to rent a car with the help of the clerk behind the information desk at the Hotel Loftleider, half a dozen blocks away.

Bolan rented a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Colt Shogun. He chose the tough Japanese off-roader for two reasons: first, because he intended to drive a fair distance and he had heard that only the main Icelandic coastal route was paved most of the inland roads being at best surfaced with packed gravel and secondly because he wanted his planned showdown to be in an area so remote that even the dirt roads might not reach it.

Only then, Bolan felt, would he have the opportunity to bring them clear out into the open, confront them, and... yeah, make the bastards sing!

Maybe then, depending on their answers, he could convince them that he wasn't in the country on their account.

Unless he discovered they were into some nefarious activity that his conscience wouldn't let him leave be.

But that was something he could worry about after they talked. Right now the priority was to move.

He slung his luggage in back of the tall, compact Colt utility, filled up with gasoline and took the road north from Reykjavik.

He intended he told the young woman at the rental agency, just in case anyone was checking on him to take in the huge aluminum plant that was Iceland's only heavy industry and then follow the coast road as far as the port of Bogarnes. After that he would drive inland along the fertile Nodura Valley.

On the pretense of asking her advice, he contrived also to let her know that afterward he wanted to cross the bare central plateau, detour as far as the picturesque fringe of the Langjokull glacier and then head for Akureyri on the north coast. This was the country's second largest port, a few miles only from the Arctic Circle, and apart from the variety of Norwegian, Danish, Russian and Swedish shipping docked there, he could also visit the great Laxa hydroelectric complex.

This ultramodern super-power-station, thirty-five percent owned by Iceland's National Energy Authority, would be a natural draw for any engineer, as Bolan had told her he was.

The coast road was impressive, following the rugged cliff contours above a steel-gray sea. The sky was a pale cloudless blue, and it was quite warm. At any other time, Bolan would have relaxed, enjoying the unfamiliar scenery. But today it was the Shogun's wide-angle rearview mirror that claimed all the attention he could spare from the winding road ahead.

By American or European mainland standards, traffic was light. But there was a fairly continuous procession of cars, fruit and vegetable delivery trucks, and occasional buses traveling in each direction. Most of the vehicles were sturdy, Northern European makes Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, Swedish Volvos and Saabs which made it tough singling out any potential tail everything looked much the same.

It was not until noon, after he had suffered a conducted tour over the aluminum works and strolled the many-masted, herring-scented quays of Bogarnes, that Bolan was able to even suspect a possible tail.

A scarlet, diesel-powered Mercedes 300-GD a highbuilt, 4x4 utility not unlike the machine he was piloting had tucked in behind him some way south of the port. He had lost it in the narrow streets of the Old Town.

But when, after his walk half an hour later, he took the right-hand turn for Desey and the headwaters of the Nodura, the red offroader was there again. So was an Audi Quattro he had first noticed on the outskirts of Bogarnes and a Volkswagen Passat station wagon.

He lost the VW at Hvammur, but the other two kept position behind him, first one and then the other surfacing in the decreasing stream of traffic that lined up behind the Shogun and then passed.

Bolan was practically certain now... and then, when he made another right turn somewhere beyond a small town called Fornilvammer, hoping to find a trail that would take him near the glacier, he discovered that he was on his own.

For as far as he could see in the curved mirror, the narrow track unrolled emptily behind him across the bleak, treeless land.

The pursuers if pursuers they had been had given up.

Ten miles farther on he discovered why.

The trail petered out, while the ice cap was still no more than a shimmering line in the distance, in a rocky wilderness that had once been a lava flow a deserted plateau that was bare of vegetation and littered with shallow lakes. There was no turnout, no intersection, no alternative route; there was nothing to do but turn around and go back.

If either of those cars was following him, all they would have had to do would be to park near the original turnout and wait for him to come back.

And that was what they did.

After that they made no pretense that they just happened to be following the same route; they fell in behind the Colt, first the Audi, then the Mere G-Wagen, with a precision that was almost military, maintaining their exact distance at whatever speed the Executioner chose.

Bolan had a sudden disturbing thought. Could they in fact be military? Or at any rate the equivalent?

Iceland had no army, no navy, no air force, and only a small coast-guard service. Even the police numbered less than six hundred country-wide. But there could be some kind of security organization. Had his outlaw status somehow been flashed ahead of his arrival? Were they keeping tabs on him to see what the hell he was up to in their country? Had they connected him with the bodies at the hotel?

Unlikely. In that case surely they would simply have taken him in.

But there was also the possibility that one of the attempts on his life had been reported; maybe the authorities were checking him out, curious to know why he had not complained.

More likely still was the simplest explanation the goons on his tail were from the same outfit that had fouled up the earlier attempts on his life.

If that was the case, it suited the Executioner fine; that was just the way he wanted it.

Once they had been maneuvered into a position where he could gain the upper hand, he figured he would at least have a chance to find out what the hell went on.

Bolan made few mistakes in his tactical appreciations. This was one of them.

He led the procession toward Porosstadir and the long, narrow sea arm known as Hruta Fjord. Then near the village of Stathur, when the steely headwaters of the craggy twenty-five-mile inlet were already visible below the left-hand margin of the road, he veered away to the east, bumping over a stony track that spiraled up into the Vistur Hunavatus highlands.

The G-Wagen and the Audi followed, closing now.

Bolan accelerated, wheels spinning clouds of dust into the mountain air as he hurled the Colt around each curve.

Breasting the final rise, he jammed momentarily on the brake pedal. Ahead, the trail looped crazily down the face of an escarpment and then lost itself in a confusion of giant boulders far below. Beyond these scattered segments of rock a bare landscape stretched away in gentle undulations toward a line of ancient volcanic cones.