"Sure, Mr. Castiglione."

"Chi and Atlanta will be a snap. I'll put out the word myself from here. You get your boy here set up with a passport and..." He eyed the big Negro in a disapproving inspection and continued. "Get him to a fast tailor, make 'im look like a traveling buyer... uh, pick out something he knows a little about, something that would make sense him going to Europe in case it turns that way. Get him credentials and all th' crap, but don't use any of my connections, you know what I mean. And tell Paris to cool it. If they spot Bolan, just stick with 'im and let us know right away. Tell 'em anything you have'ta, tell 'em the contract isn't payable outside the country, just don't let 'em louse this up. I want a sure thing this time. I'll tell Chi and Atlanta the same thing. You just get this boy of yours ready to travel. You still with me, Tony?"

"Yessir, I'm still with you, Mr. Castiglione," Lavagni assured him.

The Farmer dismissed them.

They let themselves out of the house and went directly to their car. As they were moving along the graveled drive, Brown chuckled and observed, "I never seen you so courteous and polite, man."

Lavagni growled something inarticulate, then replied, "Maybe you better try some of the same, Wils. Arnie Farmer is nobody to cross. He likes to be treated with respect, and you better watch the way you talk to him. Especially until he's well and back on his feet again. You put him over a barrel, you know that, Wils — and he don't like that a little bit."

Brown heaved a contented sigh. "He don't scare me none. I'll say this, though. I'm glad I'm not Mack Bolan. Man, I never saw so much hate, and I'm an expert on hate."

"You ever been to Atlanta, Wils? Or Paris?"

"Sure man, I been everywhere there is to go. And it's the same stinkin' world every place, huh."

Lavagni nodded his head. "I guess so. This Bolan's going to find that out too, Wils. There ain't no place he can go where we can't get at him. It might be Atlanta, it might be Chi, it might be Paris. But it won't matter, it's all the same. He's going to find that out."

"I bet he already knows it," Brown said, sighing. "He's been everywhere too, man. Everywhere but dead. Wonder what it's like there."

"Where?" Lavagni asked, throwing the black man a quick glance.

"Th' land of the dead, man. I wonder what it's like."

Lavagni chuckled and said, "When you're kissing Bolan, ask 'im. He's dead already and just won't admit it?"

Brown slumped into the seat and gazed out the window at the fields blurring by. "Well, we'll just have to make it official, won't we," he said softly.

"Just kiss 'im, Wils," Lavagni said in a solemn voice. "That's the closest thing to a last rite he'll ever get."

"I'll kiss him with an amen then," the huge Negro muttered.

Bolan was at the self-serve coffee bar helping himself to an early morning refresher when the stewardess came in and told him, "Orly Airport in about twenty minutes, Mr. Ruggi."

He said, "Thanks," and wondered what else she had on her mind. She had not walked all the way back there simply to tell him that.

"Are you traveling with Mr. Martin?" she asked casually, confirming Bolan's assessment of her motives.

"No," he replied. "I'd never heard of the guy. Who is he?"

"Come on, you're kidding," the girl said. "You're his double, aren't you."

"Double for what?"

"Come on now, Mr. Ruggi."

Bolan relented and grinned. The girl was standard overseas-airline sleek, chic, leggy, with jet black hair, smooth skin — pretty, interesting enough for any man, the Gil Martins included. "How do you know he's not my double?" he asked, using a teasing tone.

She was not to be teased. Eyeing him thoughtfully, she raised a hand and fingered his sideburns. Bolan caught the hand and held it — this was getting out of control. "We don't really look that much alike," he said gruffly.

"Side by side, no," she replied, laughing softly to gloss the moment of tension. "But..."

Bolan said, "Drop it, please. It's not what you think."

"No, it's not," she replied, still speculatively eyeing him. "I had it all wrong. He's the ringer. I should have known, he's too blah. You bring him along to run interference for you, don't you."

The ex-GI from Pittsfield had not been trained for jet-set maneuverings; the man of him, however, knew that he was being rushed. The whole thing seemed entirely out of character for an airlines stewardess, in Bolan's view at any rate, and he was having trouble reading the signs. He gave her back her hand, forced a laugh, and said, "You're wrong all the way. Seriously. Would you like to see my passport?"

She shook her head, apparently deciding to ignore his protestations, and said, "Are yon staying in Paris long?"

"Couple days, maybe."

Her eyes gleamed with sudden mischief. "Your double is going on to Rome, or so his ticket says."

Bolan said, "Frankly, I don't give a damn where he's going. How can I convince you"

"Orly is my turnaround port," she said quickly. "I'll be there until Friday."

Okay, he thought, so the signs were becoming infinitely more readable. "That's nice," Bolan replied.

"I usually stay at the Pension de St. Germain when I'm laying over."

"Why?"

The girl seemed flustered by the direct question. "Well it's cheap and it's clean. And I like the St. Germain area, I guess you're a Right Banker, though — Champs Elysees or bust." She showed him a rueful smile. "On airline pay, it's the pensions or bust for darned sure."

"What's a pension?" Bolan asked, though he already knew.

"It's a boarding house."

Bolan said, "Oh."

"Not exactly," she quickly added. "They're family type hotels. You get room and three meals for about 30 francs a day, and that's where all the action is, you know, Left Bank."

Yes, Bolan knew. "Thirty francs a day is cheap?"

She wrinkled her nose. "That's only about five dollars."

The game could go on indefinitely. Bolan decided to end it. "Yeah, that's cheap," he agreed. "Okay, maybe I'll try your Left Bank."

"Pension de St. Germain," she reminded him.

"Okay."

"I'm Nancy Walker."

Bolan smiled. "Sounds like a brand of whiskey."

"No, wine," she flashed back, vamping him with an ultra-feminine smile, "Heady, romantic, nice to the taste and absolutely no hangover."

She left him standing there, open-mouthed and re-fleeting that the Gil Martins of the world certainly had it made. He finished his coffee and returned to his seat, arriving there as the seat belt announcement was being delivered.

Bolan buckled in and watched the man across the aisle. Yes, he decided, there were certain superficial similarities — he could see how the stewardess could have been misled into her erroneous conclusion. Martin was a surly type. He had spent the entire trip absorbed in a paperback book, sporadically dozing, awakening, and grimly returning to the reading, then dozing again — totally anti-social and ignoring repeated approaches by the stewardess and the passenger alongside him.

Bolan suddenly grinned to himself, a vision forming in his mind. Maybe, for a short while, Gil Martin, who the hell ever he was, would know how it felt to not have it made. If Bolan could be mistaken for Martin, then why couldn't Martin be mistaken for Bolan? If the French gendarmes were waiting down there at Orly, with copies of those composite photos of Bolan's new face to guide them, there could be a real comic opera down at the customs gate.

Things could be swiftly set straight, of course, with no more damage than the ruffling of a celebrity's tail-feathers, but the diversion could be enough to get the Executioner into Paris. It was something worth hoping for.

Bolan's fingers toyed with his false plumage and his mind toyed with this new hope. It would be nice, he reflected, for a while to simply have it made, to play and laugh and luxuriate in relaxed human companionship. Not that much hope, buddy, he chided himself. That's Paris down there, not Oz or Wonderland. Your hands are alive to kill, not to lovingly stroke a pulsing female form. You're the Executioner, damn you, not the playboy of the western world. Yeah, but it would be nice. For a while. The Executioner in Paris, gay Paris.