Leo Turrin waited while the officer on duty checked his ID card against the master list and finally returned it with a laminated clip-on pass marked Visitor. Although he was a paid employee of the org-crime branch at Justice, ranking just below Brognola in the bureaucratic scheme of things, his name and face were not well-known around the beehive office complex at Ninth and Constitution Avenue. No more than a half dozen people in the whole department knew his function, which was fine with Turrin. If his name became a household word in Wonderland, his usefulness would instantly evaporate. Security was everything, and so he was content to be a "visitor" among the staffers who, in actuality, were his subordinates.

The privileges of rank meant little to the stocky veteran lawman. He had seen enough of chiefs and Indians in Vietnam and later, as a "mole" for Justice in the upper echelons of the Cosa Nostra. Rank, which was bestowed by others, could as easily be swept away, and Turrin put no faith in others.

No, that wasn't strictly true. There were several individuals, a handful, really, whom he trusted with his life. His wife and family, of course. Brognola, who had signed him on at Justice in the first place, serving as his personal control and only contact while he burrowed from within the Mafia, ascending through the ranks to find a seat on La Commissione before the end. And Mack Bolan.

Always Bolan.

Turrin rarely passed a day without some thought of his clandestine comrade, once a lethal enemy and now his closest friend.