triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' It was as elemental as that. And Mack Bolan could no more do nothing than stop breathing.
He did not know how the long war would end, but of one thing he was certain: it would not end in surrender.
The only ultimate failure was the failure to act.
Sometimes a man had to be willing to die for what was right. And sometimes a man had to be willing to kill.
When Bolan had removed the dressing that Dr. Goldstein had applied to the bullet wound, it was spotted with fresh blood. Now the pain was a constant presence. He pushed it to the back of his mind and concentrated on the building across the Via del Gladiatori.
It was a modern nondescript cube, a six-story apartment building, not fancy but probably far from cheap, especially in this city where housing was perpetually at a premium.
Balconies hung from the front and the right side; their arrangement indicated there were four apartments to a floor.
It was around midnight, and traffic was light. The Via del Gladiatori was part of the belt highway that ringed Rome about six miles out from its center; this district was called the Esposizione Universale di Roma. A block north, the glass face of a slab like skyscraper rose to dominate the area; it was the headquarters of an international corporation.
Behind it flowed the Tiber River, and on the other side Bolan could make out the dome of the covered stadium that had been built for the 1960 Olympic Games.
Movement caught Bolan's eye.
The apartment he had been watching was on the fourth floor, toward the back. Light shone faintly beyond drawn curtains faced by a sliding glass door and opening on the balcony. Someone was moving through it.
Bolan set the zoom lens of the Litton Night Vision Pocket Scope to full 4It, and the upper half of a woman's figure swam into view. For a moment he felt a tightness across his chest that had nothing to do with the bullet wound, but then he saw that the woman looked nothing like Toby Ranger, even if the female Fed had taken on a disguise.
The woman framed in the NVD'S lens was short and very slim, almost scrawny; she looked like a good gust of wind would sweep her off the balcony. She had straight dark hair that fell over her shoulders, and a bored expression on her face. She wore a blousy khaki shirt and matching trousers. The woman took a last drag from a cigarette and flipped the butt over the balcony railing, leaning out to watch it wink down to the lawn below. Then she turned back to the sliding door. Before she went through it, Bolan got a good look at the little automatic pistol in the belt holster at the small of her back. It was a partial confirmation, and for now it would have to do.
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 innocent bystanders and the apartment building was full of them getting in the way of random lead. Anticipating the situation, he had rigged soft. He wore an open-collar shirt under a stylishly cut sports jacket, and aviator-style glasses with slightly tinted lenses. The play might depend on a bit of role camouflage, the role of an American Intelligence agent gone bad.
Except that what was really going to go bad was some Italian terrorists spring evening.
The inner door of the apartment building's entrance foyer was locked. On the wall to one side was a double-row of call buttons; the label on the one for apartment 4-D said 'G. Feltrinelli.' Bolan pushed four of the other buttons at random. After a few seconds, a man's voice said something angry in Italian. Bolan tried the buttons again. This time the door buzzer sounded, and Bolan pushed through. He took the elevator to the sixth floor and wedged a sand-filled ashtray in its door before taking the fire stairs back down two flights. The door to 4-D was at the end of the hall, offset maybe five feet from its neighbor opposite. That would provide slightly more privacy.
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 annoyance.
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
