"Is something wrong?" Bolan inquired, turning to inspect her for the first time.

"Did you see all that out there?"

Bolan smiled. "The police? Are you on the lam?"

The question both amused and embarassed her. "No," she replied, "but doesn't it give you a little tingle to wonder what they're doing? Maybe there's a bomb aboard this plane... or a hijacker."

Bolan tried to reassure her. "More than likely it's only super security for a visiting dignitary."

The woman said, "Oh," but was obviously not wholly satisfied with such an un-tingling explanation.

Bolan dismissed her from his mind and tried to force the tensions out also. They would not go. He would not be breathing easy, he knew, until he was off and clear of that aircraft. If the police were as thorough as he knew they could be, a surprise party might be awaiting his arrival in Paris — or, as bad, a Mafia reception — those guys could be thorough, too.

A domestic flight would have been greatly preferable. But this had been the only flight immediately leaving Dulles and it had seemed his best move. Now he was having doubts. He would have to clear through the French customs and perhaps go through other formalities. The only problem with that, in Bolan's view, was his passport. How good was it? He had barely glanced at it, as part of the portfolio urged upon him by Harold Brognola in Miami; he had never seriously entertained any ideas of leaving the country. Could that passport be gimmicked as some weird sort of trap to identify the Executioner the moment he stepped onto foreign soil? No — that would not make sense. Bolan did not wish to go off the deep end of groundless fears — he had enough of the flesh-and-blood variety to occupy his attention.

He glanced at the woman seated next to him and tried to draw a mental equivalent of her fears and his. Wasn't he being just as silly? Was this Mafia war finally getting to his inner chambers, rattling them, raising phantasms of fear much more terrible than the physical reality? Was Bolan the Bold going to cop out to combat fatigue?