The tall man, lean and rangy in a dark suit and coordinated pastel shirt and tie, strode into the deserted flightline waiting room and dropped a small overnight bag and a briefcase carelessly to the floor. A shock of black hair spilled across the forehead, large tinted lenses in gold wire frames concealed the eyes, a heavy moustache trailed out to almost meet sideburns at the jawline. Just outside, the ramp dispatcher was standing in front of a big jet and passing hand signals to the cockpit crew; the engines of the huge airliner were whining into the warm-up run.

The uniformed man at the ticket desk widened his eyes noticeably when the hundred dollar bill came into view. The tall man with the eyeshades told him, "I'll bet a hundred you can't get me on that Paris flight."

The ticket man grinned at Bolan and replied, "I'll take that bet, sir." He nudged the man beside him and commanded, "Run out there and tell Andy to hold the gangway, we have a late boarding VIP."

Moments later Bolan was ticketed and moving along the boarding ramp. A man in airline uniform stood impatiently at the aircraft door. He waved the tardy boarder inside and closed the door behind him. Bolan found his seat and was buckling himself in when the door again opened and another last-minute fare stepped inside and took the final remaining open seat, just across the aisle from Bolan. Immediately thereafter the aircraft began moving away from the loading zone.

Bolan was discreetly studying the man across the aisle; what he saw gave him neither comfort nor qualms. He was just a guy, about Bolan's age and size, modishly dressed, still breathing hard from his dash to the plane. A stewardess detached herself from the group at the crew station and came down to add their names to the passenger list. Bolan gave the name on his passport, Stefan Ruggi, and heard the other man identify himself as Gil Martin. This produced a sharp reaction from the stewardess, prompting the man to hastily add, "Look, don't make a fuss, eh? I'll keep the secret if you will."

The girl nodded mute acquiesence and moved forward toward the flight deck. Bolan wondered who the hell was Gil Martin, but his attention was immediately diverted to the window. The plane was moving slowly along a taxiway, running parallel to the terminal building. Considerable activity beyond the fence had commanded Bolan's attention as he noted cars with flashing beacons on their roofs and uniformed men moving energetically about the terminal area. He sighed inwardly and tried to relax into the seat, but the rather plain young woman seated next to him softly exclaimed, "Oh God!"

"Is something wrong?" Bolan inquired, turning to inspect her for the first time.

"Did you see all that out there?"

Bolan smiled. "The police? Are you on the lam?"

The question both amused and embarassed her. "No," she replied, "but doesn't it give you a little tingle to wonder what they're doing? Maybe there's a bomb aboard this plane... or a hijacker."

Bolan tried to reassure her. "More than likely it's only super security for a visiting dignitary."

The woman said, "Oh," but was obviously not wholly satisfied with such an un-tingling explanation.

Bolan dismissed her from his mind and tried to force the tensions out also. They would not go. He would not be breathing easy, he knew, until he was off and clear of that aircraft. If the police were as thorough as he knew they could be, a surprise party might be awaiting his arrival in Paris — or, as bad, a Mafia reception — those guys could be thorough, too.

A domestic flight would have been greatly preferable. But this had been the only flight immediately leaving Dulles and it had seemed his best move. Now he was having doubts. He would have to clear through the French customs and perhaps go through other formalities. The only problem with that, in Bolan's view, was his passport. How good was it? He had barely glanced at it, as part of the portfolio urged upon him by Harold Brognola in Miami; he had never seriously entertained any ideas of leaving the country. Could that passport be gimmicked as some weird sort of trap to identify the Executioner the moment he stepped onto foreign soil? No — that would not make sense. Bolan did not wish to go off the deep end of groundless fears — he had enough of the flesh-and-blood variety to occupy his attention.

He glanced at the woman seated next to him and tried to draw a mental equivalent of her fears and his. Wasn't he being just as silly? Was this Mafia war finally getting to his inner chambers, rattling them, raising phantasms of fear much more terrible than the physical reality? Was Bolan the Bold going to cop out to combat fatigue?

He was thusly talking himself out of an impulse to drag the briefcase into his lap and inspect that passport.

They were standing just off the runway now, and the engines were revving up. The door to the flight cabin opened and the stewardess for Bolan's section reappeared. A man in uniform showed himself momentarily in the open doorway, glanced at the passenger identified as Gil Martin and smiled, then closed the door. The stewardess was buckling herself into a seat. She, too, turned and sent a smile toward Martin. If the subject of the curious interest took notice, he did not respond.

Bolan again fell to wondering about the man, then he subconsciously resolved the passport conflict by suddenly opening his briefcase and transferring the passport to the breast pocket of his coat, where it belonged anyway.

Then they were on the takeoff run. Dulles was becoming a blur beyond the window, the nose lifted, and Bolan was being gently pressed into the seat cushions.

For a few hours, okay, he could relax now. The police had allowed the plane to depart. Bolan wondered how much he owed that to the last-minute arrival of Gil Martin, an obvious celebrity who would fit rather well the general Bolan description. He could visualize the exchange between tower and pilot: the police were looking for a tall man, about thirty, dark, clean-shaven, a hard looking bastard with cold brown eyes. He might have boarded the Paris flight at the last moment. Yes, we got a guy like that but, ha ha, it's just old Gil Martin, you know, the celebrity.

The tensions were leaving. Bolan was grateful for the false facial hair which so altered his appearance; doubly grateful that young men's fashions had gone to hair — there was nothing unusual or even notable about face hair these days. The muttonchop sideburns and sweeping moustache gave Bolan an almost soft anonymity. So okay, relax now and conserve the energy, replenish the brain, cool down the vital juices, take it easy. In Paris, he would very likely need everything he could get going, false hair notwithstanding.

Out of his fog of introspection he became aware again of the girl beside him. She was talking compulsively to the passenger in the window seat, apparently fighting takeoff anxieties. "... and they say the Right Bank has become so commercial, so brassy, I'd love to find a little hotel on the Left Bank, perhaps in the Sorbonne district. Don't you think that would be charming? And inexpensive, too. They say it's so colorful and interesting, the artists and students and all live there, on the Left Bank I mean, but then on second thought I don't know, I mean it might not be safe for..."

Bolan grinned, closed his eyes, and let it all go. He would take care of Paris when Paris presented itself. But only for a little while. A war at home awaited him, commanded him. Maybe he could work in a brief R&R in gay Paris before returning to the front.

The Executioner would soon discover, however, that the entire world was his front. There was to be no R&R for Mack Bolan in gay Paris.