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suit and a light topcoat, and he wouldn't have drawn a second look from the average tourist.
    Those who looked twice, though, would discover a man of quiet but tough dignity, and they would look into the eyes that had seen everything to see and learned to accept nothing at face value.
    He was an old man — quite old — but he seemed to be in excellent command of mind and body. And there was no doubt that he was also in command of the other two men, the young warriors. They were little more than bodyguards, Bolan decided.
    He removed the clip from the automatic weapon and thrust it into his belt, then he dropped the gun to the floor with the others. It was a peace gesture, even though his other weapon was very much in evidence and ready to leap.
    "I am Daniel Wo Fan," the old man told him.
    Bolan nodded and said, "I am Mack Bolan."
    The old boy didn't waste time on preliminaries. He eased onto a chair and told Bolan, "Your enemy is my enemy."
    The Executioner said, "Then you have a lot of enemies."
    Wo Fan smiled a fragile smile. "You are rapidly reducing their numbers, I am told. We will help you all we can."
    "You'll help me best by standing clear," Bolan told him. "Allies get in my way, and I don't like to walk on their backs."
    The statement was not given as an insult, nor was it received as one.
    "There is more evil in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan, than one man alone can possibly hope to overcome. It goes beyond your Cosa Nostra. It embraces not only you and me, but your children and mine and their children after them. It rides the breast of the global seas and glides upon the atmospheres of all the continents, both east and west, north and south."
    The old man gave his head that slow mandarin shake of authority. "A warrior without allies will not survive the day in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan. We do not need you. You need us."
    And suddenly Bolan knew who Wo Fan was. He was the Chinese equivalent of a Capo — the big daddy, probably, of the San Francisco tongs. There was a difference, though, and Bolan was trying to pull the thing together in his mind.
    The early tongs, or Chinese secret societies, had been as influential in their spheres as the Mafia had become in the Occidental world of today. In San Francisco, especially, they'd been the boys with the lotteries, the opium, the prostitution and even actual slavery, the murder shops, and all the other varieties of underground activity in the Chinese community.
    Now — if Bolan's intel was on the right track — now Chinatown's vice lords were aligned with the larger mob, the Mafia, and the leadership of the tongs had passed into more respectable hands. The secret societies of the Chinese had turned their energies into the constructive side of commerce and politics, and a fresh new wind had been blowing across the Chinese-American landscapes.
    A little flag sprang up in the Executioner's mind, a flag buried there in Las Vegas by his friend Carl Lyons, the undercover cop from L.A.
    "Red China," Lyons had said.
    "What?"
    "Yeah. How's that for a mob combination? And the trade, we hear, is lively?"
    "In what?"
    "In everything. It's developing into the largest invisible market in the world."
    And now Wo Fan was sitting here talking about the evil that rides the seas and hovers above all the continents.
    A chill trickled along Bolan's spine, and he told the old one, "I live by the hour, one of them at a time. Every new day I see is an unexpected victory. Whether I live another day or drown in my own blood an hour from now is not the greatest worry of my life. Thanks for your offer, but I have to fight my war my way."
    It was a long speech, for Bolan.
    Wo Fan seemed to understand that the young soldier was simply trying to get the cards out cold for all to see. He smiled and said, "As you wish."
    He went out then, and the bodyguards scooped up their weapons and followed without a glance at Bolan.
    Mary Ching hurried out behind them, remained briefly in the hallway, then came back