He shook his head disgustedly. Brognola would do everything he could, the comic knew that, but it might not be enough. And he was rankled by the Fed's reluctance to assist a man who had done so much for the cause.

If there was only something... Of course there was.

Bolan had entrusted him with Lucy Bernstein and he could keep her safe and sound until the storm blew over. He could take that load off Bolan's shoulders, right — and in the process, he could try to get some information out of her.

Anders was not sure he followed Bolan's logic on that business with the old-boy network. Anything was possible, of course, but it was hard to visualize a bunch of grizzled old-timers taking on the new breed of the Mafia. At first glance it was like the plot of some peculiar cops-and-robbers sitcom — "The Revenge of the Over-the-Hill Gang," dammit.

Except that Bolan was not laughing when he spelled it out for Tommy Anders.

He was deadly serious and that was good enough to wipe the smile off Tommy's face for starters. Whether anybody else was buying it or not the comic was convinced that Bolan's theory merited a closer scrutiny.

And if his hunch was anywhere near being on the money.

Then what?

What if old Abe Bernstein and his cronies were committed to a course of putting heat on Frank Spinoza and the rest of them through media exposure?

Anders frowned. There would be more, much more to it than that, he knew.

The geriatric crowd had never hatched a single altruistic thought among themselves — and likely never would.

If they were going up against the Mafia now — in headlines, in the streets, whatever — they would have a motive more or less commensurate with risk. And he was back at the initial question once again. What motive?

Good old everyday revenge would do for openers. The Mafia had looted Bernstein's castle, relegated him to puppet status, and the same had happened to a number of his close confederates.

Revenge, if he read it right. Still, it was not enough.

The Mafia had made its move on Bernstein and the others nearly thirty years ago.

If they were going to make a move... He gave it up. The sterile exercise was getting him nowhere... and he was wasting time.

The woman with the answers — some of them at any rate — was waiting for him just beyond the bedroom door.

He had required some privacy for his communication with Brognola, but the time had come to see exactly what she knew.

If anything.

And Tommy Anders knew exactly how to go about it. He was an expert. Wit and charm would do the trick.

"Well, now..." He froze in the open bedroom doorway, instantly forgetting everything he planned to say. He would not need it now.

There was nobody left to say it to.

The woman had slipped out on him while he was on the line to Wonderland.

"Goddammit!"

He had kissed off his one and only chance to tend a hand in Bolan's desert war. His chance was gone, the woman was gone... and only open-ended questions lingered on.

Where had she gone?

And why?

If it was lack of trust in Anders, Lucy's urge to find a haven of her own, they had no problem. But if she had run to grandpa, say, or to Jack Goldblume, telling tales...

She knew who Bolan was; the comic felt it in his gut although no words had passed between them in his presence that would make it firm. He got it from the way she looked at Bolan, listened to him as if she was trying to remember every word for future reference.

She could be trouble, no doubt about it. Even if she went directly to the law or to her Wang terminal with the story, rather than to Grandpa Abe, she could be signing Bolan's death certificate."

"Dammit!" And again, with feeling. "Damn it!"

Tommy Anders did not like the helpless feeling, but he knew that he had played his only ace already.

If Hal Brognola and his troops could not help Bolan, there was nothing that a stand-up comic could accomplish on his own.

The greatest solitary player of them all was out there on the streets already, carrying the fire for all of those who had to stand by watching helplessly. With any luck at all, his martial skills and sheer audacity would be enough.

America's ethnician reached the bar in three long strides and found himself a fifth of rye. He had already called in "sick" for the remainder of the evening and his replacement would be well into the second show by now. As for Tommy Anders, he was settling down to have a drink or two — or ten — and keeping watch along the home front.

He only hoped it would not be a death watch for the Executioner.

"Come on, we haven't got much time," Abe Bernstein said agitatedly. "Let's wrap it up."

The three of them were meeting in his office at the Gold Rush. It was risky, but his two companions were familiar faces in the hotel and casino. They could pass unnoticed in the mounting chaos going on outside his door, and it was safer now to have them visit him in person than to talk their business on the phones, which Frank Spinoza would no doubt be monitoring.

They were relatively safe for the moment, but Abe Bernstein still felt a sense of urgency. He had delegated much of his responsibility in clearing out the Gold Rush to his underlings, but he would have to let himself be seen around the premises or run the risk of bringing down suspicion on himself.

And that, at this precarious stage, could be disastrous.

Across the desk from Bernstein, his companions had the air of generals on the eve of an invasion — confident, but with a sort of tension, an expectancy about them that was thinly veiled. Jack Goldblume, patriarch of the Las Vegas Daily Beacon and a friend for over forty years, was slender, seventy, and looking fit from daily workouts in his private gym. And, Bernstein knew, from private workouts with a sleek succession of young would-be show girls in his bedroom. Decades after they were separated in a widely celebrated falling-out, old Jack was still his good right hand, still handling the press whenever Bernstein needed a kind word-or a gaff delivered to his enemies.

The media would play a crucial role across the next few hours and days as all the pieces fell into their designated slots. Abe Bernstein meant his version of the story to be first out on the wire; whatever followed would be running second best.

On Goldblume's right sat Harry Thorson, bearing strong resemblance to a troll decked out in Western gear, with patterned sequins on his jacket and a snakeskin band encircling his roll-brim Stetson. His face was deeply tanned, like ancient saddle leather, with a paler knife scar staggering from the corner of his right eye to the jowl, now flabby and gone soft with time.

A Texas native, Thorson came to Vegas close behind Abe Bernstein in the forties. Texan lawmen sought his extradition on a range of charges that included homicide, extortion and a host of others. But strategic contributions to the reelection efforts of an understanding governor had kept him safe and sound inside Nevada while the statutes ran and legal deadlines passed unnoticed. The Alamo Casino, down the gulch from Bernstein's Gold Rush, was a living monument to Thorson's gratitude; the understanding governor, retired now, and a host of relatives were permanently on the payroll.

The aging cowboy still had muscle in Las Vegas and up north, around the capital at Carson City.

They would have need of those political connections soon, before the battlesmoke had settled in Las Vegas.

"The PR'S covered, Abe," Jack Goldblume said. "Whichever way it goes..."

"It better only — go one way, Jack," Harry Thorson interjected.

"It'll go," Abe Bernstein told them both. "I've got our people on the job already. When New York checks in, we'll help them feel at home."