Sooner or later the later the better F rank Edwards was going to miss his five hardboys.
"Nothing." She took the hand he offered, let him pull her to her feet. "I'm okay, Captain Quick, honest Indian." In the Jaguar he dug a first-aid kit from a pack. He swabbed the forehead wound with an antiseptic towelette; once the dried blood was gone it didn't look too bad, as if someone had hit her a glancing blow with a gun barrel or a hand on which a ring was worn. Bolan squeezed antibiotic ointment from a tube, smeared it over the cut, covered it with a small adhesive compress.
When he was finished, Toby twisted the rearview mirror to where she could get a look at herself. She made a half-hearted attempt to push tangled blond hair into some kind of order, then gave it up and slumped back into the seat.
"I'm beat, Captain Hard," she said, her usual sardonic tone thin and forced now. "The last thirty-six hours have been something of a drain to say the least."
"Toby," Bolan said, gently but firmly. "I need to have everything you can give me, and I need it now."
Immediately she sat up straighter. "I'm down, but I didn't say I was out. From here on it's a two-pronged blitz, Captain Courageous."
Bolan let that pass. Sure, Toby had proven herself on the field of battle more than once, and he had no theoretical objection to her fighting at his side. He had put the days of purely solo warfare behind him for good when he had accepted the support and sanction of the man in the Oval Office. Still, though he could push it to the back of his mind, what he'd once had with Toby would always be there, and a part of his concentration, no matter how minor, would be concerned with her safety. A situational decision could be made when they reached the situation.
"Are you blown, Toby?" Bolan asked.
"I think so. With Edwards it's not always easy to tell where you're at. He's sharp, Mack," she said seriously. "My cover was bound to unravel sooner or later. First of all, I know he checked my record out all the way back to Adam. Believe it or not, the guy still has an ear to the CIA ground. Sure, he didn't learn anything that proved I hadn't gone renegade like him, but up until then I was too damn clean. For a guy with his sensitive nose, it would have smelled fishy." Toby brushed absently at a grass stain.
She was wearing a jump suit of white parachute cloth, cut to accentuate the swelling curve of her hips, the front zipper pulled low enough to expose the valley of her full breasts. "Second, he caught me yesterday ( God, it seems like a week ago ( in Valais, making contact with Stony Man base. Making the call was a risk, but I thought it likely I was already blown, and what Edwards had planned needed to be stopped pronto. He didn't really hear anything ( but it was sort of suspicious, from his point of view. For sure he thought I was calling the States."
"Do all of his people know you're on the outs?"
"Probably not. It was..." she glanced at her watch "...only about an hour ago. Hansen and his boys busted into my room, told me to dress, and hustled me out. They claimed the boss wanted me on ice for a while, but I was afraid Edwards had given them orders to interrogate as well." Suddenly she shuddered involuntarily. "Edwards told me a story once, soon after I hooked up with him ( I don't know if he was trying to impress me or intimidate me. He said that one of the African tinhorn dictators had a special way of questioning prisoners to get them to give him the names of opposition sympathizers. The prisoner was strapped down on his back so he could only lift his head, and a rat was placed on his stomach, and over the rat a glass bowl. Then the bowl was heated. The rat only had one way out. Edwards said if the prisoner didn't pass out, he could watch the rat eat its way through his guts."
"Easy," Bolan said gently. "That's enough."
Toby squared her shoulders, as if shaking off the image. "Anyway, thinking about that, being awakened in the dark and so on, I didn't go quietly at first." She touched at the dressing on her forehead. "That's how I got the souvenir."
"So as far as most of Edwards's cadre know, you're still one of the gang?"
"Possibly. Even probably. Today is another big day for Edwards. I don't think he'd want the word to get out about any kind of trouble."
"What's going down, Toby?"
"Exactly what I thought when I made contact yesterday. Edwards is organizing an international intelligence agency with loyalties only to the highest bidders. It's incredible, but I'm afraid the guy can make it work ( and on a far greater scale than we ever suspected. For example, even though the word has gone out to every friendly intelligence agency in the world that Edwards is believed guilty of treasonous activities and no longer has any official CIA status, the guy can still tap into nearly all of his old sources."
"Through other traitors still in place?"
"No, Mack. That's the hell of it. Through loyal, committed operatives. You see, that whole shadow land they call espionage is built on a foundation of suspicion and intrigue. Edwards has let it be leaked to a select few on the inside that he was never fired from the agency at all; it was all a scam to get an operative into Libya and buddy-buddy with Khaddafi. And in a crazy kind of way it could make sense."
Sure, Bolan thought, in a topsy-turvy world where a government agent could become a turncoat representing himself as an agent, anything made sense, if you spent enough time trying to figure it out, trying to pigeonhole it into one of the cubicles of rational experience. But there was nothing rational about international terrorism, and those like Edwards who shored it up. Edwards was a traitor, and by proxy a mass murderer. And all the rationalization in the world was not going to neutralize him.
Direct action was the only response to the Frank Edwardses of the world, the kind of direct action that the Executioner held a patent on.
"Edwards has a broad base of direct support as well," Toby went on. "He already has commitments with agents from around the world. Men like himself, willing to give up any idea of allegiance, except to profit. He's been in contact with people in the British MI5, the French SDECE, the Israeli Shin Bet, the German BND. And he's not limiting himself to the Western allies, either. He's also hooked up with agents of the KGB, the Social Affairs Department of Red China, and Castro's DGI."
Incredible, for sure. Once his network was set up, he would be in a position to subvert the intelligence activities of every major power in the world. The precarious balance of the rock of world peace would go straight to hell, and when it toppled it would start an avalanche that could only end in total destruction.
"Mack!" The alarm in her tone cut into his reflections. Instinctively his fist tightened on the Beretta.
But Toby was looking at the chest of the nightsuit.
The black material was stained with something darker.
"You're hit," Toby said.
Bolan unzipped the front flap. "Just grazed. It happened yesterday." But the compress over the exit wound was soaked with fresh blood.
"Grazed?" Toby echoed skeptically.
Bolan got out a fresh field bandage and slapped it over the old one. But again the pain in the torn muscle had become sharper; no doubt the firefight just past had not done it any good.
"I'm all right," Bolan said. He rezipped the outfit, but Toby was still staring at the bloodspot. "How is Edwards financing this scheme?"
Toby turned her frown on Bolan again.
"Several sources. His first scheme, after he split with the CIA, involved brokering illegally exported arms, mostly American-made, to terrorists and various other sorts of criminals. The weapons ( everything from automatic pistols to heat-seeking missiles ( were smuggled to London.