Renegade Agent

Still, he would have to go in soft, for a couple of reasons. First, he was not about to bust into the apartment with guns blazing on nothing but Corey James's information. Second, there was a possibility that Toby Ranger actually was inside, and Bolan would want to know her position before opening any fire.

Third, this was civilian territory. If James's tip was good, Bolan could not risk the possibility of any i

Except that what was really going to go bad was some Italian terrorists spring evening.

The i

The bell was set into the middle of the door, and above it was the glass bead of a security peephole.

Bolan pressed the bell, then put his thumb over the viewer.

He heard the noise of someone approaching the door, then silence. He pressed the bell again, heard it chime inside.

"Who is that?" It was the woman, speaking in elegant Italian.

Bolan rang the bell a third time.

Inside, a man's voice said something in Italian. The woman answered, and the man's voice rose in a

Bolan rang the bell once more, and this time the door opened a crack. It was held by a security chain.

The woman was shorter than Bolan had first thought, no more than five feet. She turned her dark face up to him, and scowled.

"I don't know you," she muttered.

"You know my boss."

"This boss, he has a name?"

"You know his name, too," he said in English.

The woman looked Bolan over, seemed uncertain. Behind her the man snapped out something. The woman tried to shut the door, but Bolan's foot was already wedged in it.

"What you want?" the woman said.

"Information."

"Go away."

Bolan laughed politely. "We can play this nice and quiet, like pros," he said pleasantly, "or we can wake tip the neighbors. It's all the same to me. I don't have to live here."

The man said something else.

"Okay," the woman said quickly.

Bolan moved his foot, and the door shut, then reopened a second later.

The apartment's furnishings were as impersonal as the building's design. There was a convertible sofa, all metal and vinyl, a couple of matching chairs, a few severe-looking coffee tables. On the other side of a counter top there was a pantry, and down a short hallway, off of which Bolan figured bedrooms opened, was the open door of a bathroom. The guy was sitting in one of the chairs. He wore a sleeveless undershirt, and over it a shoulder holster containing a large pistol. On the table next to him was an ashtray full of butts and a water tumbler half full of red wine. In front of him some old movie was showing on a black-and-white television, the sound barely audible.

"Who else is here?" If Bolan could keep the initiative, he might be able to make his play without guns coming into it. His jacket hid a silenced 9mm Beretta Brigadier in shoulder leather, but he hoped to keep it there. The weaponry that neither of these two were making much effort to conceal was a pretty clear signal as to who they were, but that did not give Bolan license to punish them for their crimes, real or imagined. He was here for information, not blood.

"Just us." The woman held up two fingers, unsure of her English.

The guy said something, and followed it with a healthy slug of the wine. His hand was unsteady.

"He wants to know who you are," the woman said.

"I work for Frank Edwards. That's all you have to know."

The woman translated. The guy frowned.

"Listen, there was a woman here yesterday, with Edwards. Taller than you, well built. Right?"

The woman nodded.

"Did she leave with him?"

The woman nodded again.

"Where did they go?"

The guy in the chair interrupted with a rapid burst of Italian. The woman started to answer, but he cut her off. Bolan tried to look uninterested.

There was a magazine on one of the coffee tables, printed on cheap newsprint. It was in Italian, but on one side of the masthead was a hammer and sickle, and on the other a clenched fist raised in defiance. A photograph on the front page showed a fire-gutted automobile on a city street. Bolan leafed through it, feigning interest.

"He says you are not from Edwards," the woman said suddenly. She took a step back from Bolan. He says if you are from Edwards, you not have to ask where he is."

"We had a meet set up," Bolan said patiently. "Who do you think gave me this address? I got held up, and now I have to know where he's moved on to."

The guy snapped out something, then drained the rest of the wine.

"He wants to know why you come the way you come, why you do not use the... what do you call it, the recognition code."

"Look." Bolan let anger color his voice. "I don't have time to play your little revolutionary games. I want to know where the hell Edwards is, and I want to know now."

The guy might not have understood, but he heard the tone. He slammed down his empty glass, hard enough to shatter it. Blood oozed from his palm, but he didn't seem to notice.

The guy was drunk, and that made him unpredictably dangerous. Bolan had to put him down, or the play would go right to hell. He took a step toward the guy.

The guy snarled something at Bolan, shifted his weight in the chair, and went for his gun.

Bolan threw the magazine in the guy's face.

The guy clawed at it, but by the time he'd gotten clear Bolan's own pistol was in his hand and leveled.

Bolan did not want to shoot, nor did he want to get shot.

"Tell him to take it out with two fingers," Bolan said, not looking at the woman. "Tell him to drop it, and nobody gets hurt."

She never got it out.

The guy rolled out of the chair and came up on hands and knees, the pistol in his hand. He barked something, wine-red saliva spraying from his mouth, and drew a bead on Bolan.

The Beretta whispered, and a 9mm tumbler tore into the guy's right shoulder and tumbled him over on his side, the gun dropping from his nerveless fingers. He moaned once and lay still.

The woman's mouth formed a silent O, her eyes wild as a frightened doe's. Sure, she had just seen the difference between revolutionary theory and reality.

Reality was the red fluid leaking over the unconscious guy's dirty T-shirt.

The woman sunk into a chair, her eyes fixed on her partner's inert form. Bolan leaned over, grabbed her shoulders and shook her insistently.

He could not afford to lose her now.

"Where did they go? Where did Edwards and the woman go?"

The girl stared at him through her wide eyes and shook her head.

"Do you know where they went?"

She nodded like a child.

"Tell me," Bolan said, his voice as even as he could make it.

"Yes." But she did not go on.

Bolan shook her again, gently.

"Water," the woman said. "Please."

He had just turned on the tap in the pantry when the gunshot exploded behind him.