Still no sign of Nark.

A group of women, small sacks in hand, left the village and headed in Bolan's direction. He watched them disappear from view as they began climbing his slope, then he heard them pass on the trail, chatting gaily. Bolan picked up his haversack and went to follow them.

The women turned off the trail, took a couple of footpaths and emerged into a field of opium poppies. From their sacks they brought knives and jars, and proceeded to scrape the white ooze that had coagulated on the pods.

It was the second stage of a harvest. The ooze was opium juice that had seeped out overnight, the pods having been slit the previous day.

For a while Bolan watched the women work. They moved gracefully amid the flowers, the colored accessories of their black outfits closely matching the reds, blues, pinks and yellows of the poppies.

Finally he coughed and emerged from his hiding place.

Cries of fear escaped the women's lips as they ran to one another for protection. Bolan could understand their reaction. In his tattered suit and with his bloody cuts he looked the epitome of the long-nosed "white devil."

To assure the women he meant no harm, Bolan stopped at a respectable distance, brought the palms of his hands together in a wai and bowed. He knew the ways of these people from his time as a sniper specialist during the Vietnam War, and from his return to Vietnam in search of MIAs at the beginning of the Stony Man operation. He addressed them in the most formal manner in their own language, Meo.

"O sisters of great beauty and worth, a lost traveler seeks assistance. I am searching for a brother, another white man. Does a white man live in your village?"

The women exchanged looks to determine who would answer the traveler. Finally the eldest replied, "Your brother is no more in the village. He left."

Bolan grunted in disappointment. "Where did he go?"