Hell, Bolan thought, a nudist holy roller. Aloud, he replied, "Sorry, I didn't realize you took it so seriously."

"I take it very seriously," she assured him.

"Why don't you just call him God?"

"The word is too fraught with superstitious ignorance. Words are very important, don't you think? They are symbols of our mental content."

He told her, "I guess you're right. So what sort of symbol pops out when I'm thinking about sex?"

She watched himwarily for a moment, then replied, "I don't know about you. For me, the word is purity."

"Purity," he echoed, sliding the word through his mind for size. "Sorry, the ideas seem to clash."

"In your mind, yes, because you think in vulgar terms. You kill, and you terrorize, and you thump your chest like a jungle ape, and of course you take your sex in the same frame of mind."

She was striking back, and Bolan was finding it uncomfortable. He told her, "My killing and my sexing have no connection at all. I don't want a fight with you, RacheL But I'm curious. In what frame of mind do you take your sex?"

"I do not take sex," she replied coolly.

"All right," he said, thoroughly subdued.

"It takes me," she explained.

"Oh."

"This is the only purity, you see. A man and a woman meet, something sparks between them, and sex immediately takes them if they are wise."

Chuckling, he asked, "You mean they just flop down immediately and let sex take it, wherever they may be when the sparks fly, on the sidewalk at Times Square or on the floor of the Brooklyn subway."

She smiled and told him, "You're thumping your chest again. It's not necessary to 'flop down' anywhere. For the wise, it is enough to merely let sex take you, and lead you to the proper time and place."

He did not even wish to mull that one over. "And if you're not wise?" he prompted her.

"Then you fall into impurity, into vulgarity, seductive maneuvers, thinly covered repressions, with nothing left of the pure impulse but lecherous thoughts and dishonest actions. It is the birth of pornography. We sparked, Mack Bolan, you and I, yesterday. And you flung my spark back into my face."

That was not, Bolan was thinking, where he had flung it — and indeed he had not known even what he had been flinging. So now he knew.

He solemnly told her, "I wasn't even half here yesterday, Rachel."

"I know. Even so, you flung me into impurity."

The girl swayed away and left him sitting there staring out the window onto a crisp December day. It was a conversation he would not forget, but now he tucked it away for future reference. There were more pressing puzzles to think about. For openers, how long could he expect to sponge on the generosity and good nature of his hostesses? To how much danger was he exposing them by his mere presence there? And what sort of city-shaking gyrations was the mob putting itself through for Bolan's head? And how about the cops? Were they all just sitting back and waiting for him to show? He doubted it.

The answers to those questions were, of course, approaching critical mass. He realized in a flash, then, that the talk with Rachel Silver did have a bearing on his own mode of living. She had been speaking of sex and purity, but the application for Bolan was warfareand purity. There waspurity in warfare. A hellish kind of purity. An army gets soft and undisciplined when it's off the line; the same truth applied equally to a lone warrior. Each moment that he remained in this R and R camp, he knew, he was falling that much farther into gross impurity.

He had to get back on the line. The sooner the better. He got up, carefully made his way to the bathroom, unbandaged his wound, and stood in front of the mirror to inspect it. Paula's stitches were a bit uneven and raggedy-ended, but the flesh surrounding them seemed healthy and alive. He guessed she'd known what she was doing. Then he glanced at his face. A two-day accumulation of whiskers was akeady radically altering his appearance. He would let them grow, he decided, and try to hang on with the girls for a couple more days, at least until the wobbles left his legs. Then he for damn sure had to get back on the line. A war awaited him.

On Tuesday morning, Bolan rolled off the couch to which he had been unceremoniously deported the previous evening and was delighted to find that he could walk swiftly across the room without becoming dizzy. A bit of bounce had returned to his step and he could lift the left arm to shoulder level with only a moderate degree of agony. He consumed a twenty-ounce steak from Paula's grill and confessed to her that he felt "ready to rassle a grizzly."

Perhaps because of that remark, Paula decided that Bolan should be left alone thenceforth, at least during the working day, and all three girls were packed off to the salon. Evie darted back into the apartment to hang a moist kiss on Bolan's lips and whisper, "Don't go way, huh?"

Bolan grinned and shooed her back out. Alone for the first time in days, he took a lingering shower and then gingerly tested his shoulder with a series of limbering-up exercises.

Later that morning, Paula took time from her busy schedule to go to the East Side Air Terminal and claim Bolan's luggage. She delivered it to him and found him performing push-ups on the living room floor and gritting his teeth against the pain in the shoulder.

"I guess you know what you're doing," she told him, and hurried back out.

Bolan knew precisely what he was doing. He had to get that shoulder functioning, and quickly. Some deeply welling instinct had been working at him all morning; he knew that his time had come.

He took the bag into the large bedroom and opened it, then immediately checked the false bottom. It was intact, and so were the contents — the hot little 9mm Beretta automatic he'd picked up in France, plus the sideleather and a stack of spare clips. He double-checked the Beretta's action, then slid in a clip and chambered in a round at the ready, hesitated momentarily, then added the silencer to the muzzle and carefully installed the piece in the sideleather. Then he got into fresh clothing and buckled on the shoulder rig, wincing and readjusting the strap to clear his wound.

He left the bag lying open on the bed and carried his jacket into the living room, seeking pencil and paper to leave a note for the girls.

A small wall secretary occupied a spot just off the L-shaped foyer. It was here that Bolan was headed when the front door swung open and a guy in a brown suit stepped into the apartment. He was holding one of those clever little sliding-blade door-jimmies and softly chuckling to himself with some secret joke, and he was more upset than Bolan by the surprise encounter. The chuckle died in his throat and his eyes were bugging at the display of gunleather crossing Bolan's chest. The jimmy slipped through his fingers and he made a fumbling move toward the inside of his jacket.

Bolan's Beretta cleared leather much quicker and he commanded, "Freeze!"

Brownsuit froze and gawked and stuttered, "Wh-what the h-hell is this?"

Bolan said, "You tell me."

"Police," the guy squawked. "I'm a policeman."

"Prove it."

The intruder showed Bolan a sick smile and nothing else. "So I'm not," he admitted. The look in Bolan's eyes turned the smile somewhat sicker and he added, "I didn't expect to find you here, Bolan. Not standin' on both feet, anyhow."

"I guess not," Bolan said coldly. They stood there silently staring at each other for a moment, then Bolan told him, "When you stop talking, soldier, you stop living."

Brownsuit's mouth opened and closed a couple of times before the words started, then they fell in a torrent. "Sammie had us staking out th' baggage room down at East Side. We had a man in back. You know. Watching the bap from Kennedy, the ones that came in Saturday. We been checkin' all of 'em, and this was the last one left. This broad come in and got it and we tailed her here. That's all, Bolan. Christ, I ain't no triggerman."