"Where does Tokyo come into it?" Brognola asked him.
"Could be a wild card, a diversion — take your pick. Whatever hassles Frank Spinoza and the rest of them is good for business, right? Our guy's not sure on that point yet."
"He's not..."
"Our guy," the comic finished for him. "Sure. All right, already. You can't blame a guy for trying."
"No, I can't at that."
"So how about it?"
"What?" Brognola knew what Anders wanted from him, but he stubbornly refused to openly acknowledge it.
"You know what. When can we expect the cavalry?"
"No cavalry on this one, Joker. I had too much explaining to do the last time I helped him. Not to mention the cost in personal suffering." Brognola grimaced as the burning pain lanced his stomach. "You're observing, and that's all. If anybody tries some independent action...."
"Then we leave him hanging out there on his own. That it?"
"That's it," Brognola told him leadenly. "He knew the game plan when he bought his ticket."
Stony silence on the other end and Hal Brognola lasted all of ninety seconds with the frostbite gnawing at his ear.
"Okay, I'll make some calls, goddammit. See what I can do. Don't count on anything."
"I never do. But thanks."
The line went dead and Brognola hung it up at his end. He pulled a cigar from the inside pocket of his coat and fired the stogie up, drawing acrid smoke deep down into his lungs.
The doctors had been telling him to cut down on his smokes, or give them up entirely, but sometimes they were the only thing that helped him to relax, to think a problem through.
Like now.
Mack Bolan was in Vegas. Naturally.
There was trouble in Nevada, with a Mob war brewing. And where else would the hellfire warrior be but right there in the middle of it all. Nowhere else.
Brognola missed the guy and grieved for him as if the Executioner was dead already. He had slipped beyond the pale when he bailed out of the official Phoenix program. When it came down to offering assistance to an outlaw. Like the old days. When Bolan was the world's most wanted fugitive with a price on his head from both sides of the law.
Small world, for damned sure, and it just kept turning, bringing everything around full circle in the end. Sometimes it seemed to Brognola that the past few years had never happened, that he was right back where he started from the first time that he heard Mack Bolan's name. But that was wrong, and when the momentary anger passed he realized the error in his thinking.
They were long miles down the road from where they had started out together, and they had scored some touchdowns for the right side on the way. The world might not be different to the naked eye, but if you strained your vision, underneath the smog bank were some clean spots, which Brognola and the Executioner had scrubbed free of their slime.
The cleanser they had used was every bit as old as man himself. Fire and blood, in equal mixture, with a lot of elbow grease thrown in to make it bite down hard and deep.
They had made changes and scored some victories that no one could deny — albeit largely classified and buried in some filing cabinet somewhere.
They had been good together and the remnants of the Phoenix Project stood as a memorial to their achievement.
Not that Hal was patting himself on the back, hell no. He did not have the interest or, at almost midnight on a Friday, the energy. He was convincing himself, applying the fine art of interior persuasion. Psyching himself up to do what he knew must be done in spite of all the orders and regulations to the contrary.
He meant to help Mack Bolan if he could.
And that was far from certain given his surroundings, the hour... a whole host of variables beyond his control.
But he would try.
Because he had to.
The Executioner was out there. Still living large. Still fighting. Their fight.
And so what if he was not "our guy" anymore?
He would be Hal Brognola's guy as long as the big Fed could draw breath and stand up on his own size thirteen's.
Brognola settled down behind his desk with weary resignation, dragged the telephone across to him and started making calls.
Tommy Anders sat on the edge of his hotel bed, staring at the silent telephone. He tried to think of someone he could call, of something he could say — and every time it wound up in a ghastly gallows-humor parody.
Hello, Clark County Sheriff?
FBI? Whoever? This is Tommy Anders calling from the Sultan's Lounge. That's right.
Well, since you ask, I'm calling to report a gang war. Oh, you heard? Well, does the name Mack Bolan ring a bell?
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.