Strakhov.

For The Executioner, that was enough.

A low-watt bulb barely illuminated the second-floor corridor.

Bolan made his way to the apartment specified by Chaim Herzi and tapped lightly on the door with the barrel of the AutoMag. Then he stepped well back from the line of possible fire, pressing himself against the wall of the corridor, AutoMag up, ready to kill.

He glanced at the boy still slumbering away in his arms. Keep it up, kid, he thought. He had to be ready to move.

The door creaked inward a few inches.

An Arab woman stood there, a dusky, dark-tressed beauty dressed in a traditional floor-length caftan that did nothing to conceal a well-shaped figure.

She saw Bolan and started to speak in Arabic.

Bolan stopped her with a motion.

She stepped aside. He carried the boy into the apartment. She closed the door and turned to lean against it, studying the man and child with expressive, inquisitive eyes.

"Do you speak English?" Bolan asked.

"You are from Chaim?"

"Are you Zoraya?"

"Yes. Who are you, please?"

"I'd like to see some identification." The beauty flared.

"You dare to demand identification from me in my own home?" Then her eyes softened with concern as she seemed to set aside business for the moment. She stepped forward, instinctively it seemed to Bolan, and plucked the child from Bolan's grasp. "And who is this?" she asked Bolan.

The child and the woman considered each other for a few moments, and some of the distrust ebbed from the little guy's big eyes.

"He needs shelter," Bolan growled. "I don't know what happened to his parents. We've been through a lot getting here.

"He is hungry. He must be fed." The woman turned with the boy and walked into a kitchenette. The apartment contrasted sharply to the rest of the rubble-strewn building complex. The lady kept her home neat and clean, with Spartan furnishings.