The traitor was trapped behind the wheel, screaming as the vehicle plummeted all the way down until it hit an outcrop. The car exploded in a fireball of white-hot flame, oil-black smoke, splintered glass and myriad fragments of tom and twisted metal. Bolan watched impassively as the burning wreckage bounced off the rock face once more and rattled across the scree below. Jago Gershen was now one more careless tourist who had become a statistical fatality.

Jamil Hussein paused to light a cigarette. He fumbled the first two matches and only lit it on the third attempt. This seemingly clumsy pantomime bought time to check both sides of the boulevard behind him and across the broad square ahead.

He was being very cautious. Exactly the way he had been trained. And Hussein had proved an apt pupil in the Yemen and at Moscow. Hussein first tasted the high-voltage charge of radical power when he whipped up the fervor of the crowds outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Then, together with his fellow university students, he had stormed the gates on that fateful Sunday morning in November 1979. He would never forget the thrill of seizing control and jeering at the impotent Americans.

The streets were relatively clear at this time of night. Faint traces of steam wafted up from the air exhausts of the metro system beneath his feet. And the wet midnight pavements of Paris were smeared with the pastel reflections of the city lights.

Confident that no one was following him, Hussein strode purposefully toward the art nouveau entrance of the metro station. This was to be his biggest assignment yet, and he could not afford to get careless. Hussein had quickly attracted the interest of Soviet recruiters when he proved to be one of the most callous of the student captors who strutted around the embassy compound.

After several months of intensive training in terrorist techniques they had unleashed him with sufficient funds to form the Brigade Jihad.