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pronounced the word "Phoenix" into the mike. A few moments later he was with her in the War Room. The Bear was at his computer terminal. On the end of the conference table next to him was an ashtray containing his pipe and a scattered pile of computer printouts, most of them dusted with the ash from Virginia's best cut.
    "I think we've got something, Mack," Kurtzman said in his deep voice, not turning. He inputted something and watched as characters raced across his video display, then leaned back and grunted with satisfaction. "Gadgets and I were able to figure out the format of Charon's signature." Kurtzman turned to Bolan for the first time. "That is, the number of letters and characters and so forth of his user code and access protocol."
    "Aaron," April prompted gently.
    "Beg your pardon? Oh, right, sorry." Kurtzman stuffed dark tobacco into his pipe. "I tend to forget that computer detective work might not be as interesting to you as it is to me." He touched a match to the pipe, puffed out great clouds of blue smoke. "Okay, the bottom line," Kurtzman said.
    "Two bottom lines. One — we're not ready to address the DonCo mainframe yet, but we do know that Frederick Charon has juggled the computer books to disguise the fact that a prototype of the new missile guidance system that his company was developing is now missing, along with the specifications manual that he himself developed."
    "How big a prototype?" Bolan asked.
    "Physically? It would be fairly substantial it would have to include a control board and a display of some sort. I'm guessing to a degree, but I'd say two standard twenty-two inch bays, each about as tall as a refrigerator. The manual would be no size at all. Reduced to microfiche which it probably already is it would fit in a small envelope."
    "Okay," Bolan nodded. "What else?"
    "Two — something that looks very much like that missing prototype was shipped to Transworld Import/export, an outfit that has a warehouse in the International Zone at Heathrow Airport in London."
    "That way," April explained, "any cargo held for transshipment only does not have to pass British customs."
    "Third," Kurtzman growled on, "Transworld Ist is a front run by our friends in MI5 — BRITISH Intelligence. And fourth, there is here Kurtzman shuffled through the printouts '4-a 99.3 percent chance that this "Sir Philip" whose name you saw, Mack, in Charon's datebook is Sir Philip Drummond, a high ranking MI5 official."
    "Wait a minute," Bolan objected. "That doesn't make sense."
    Kurtzman smiled with satisfaction. "It does if you add in point number five." He held up his hand, palm out, all digits splayed. "Sir Philip Drummond is a puppet," he announced. "And the Kremlin is pulling his strings."
    Bolan's coffee cup was still half-full when he left the War Room. Within an hour, he was in a military jet, clearing the Atlantic coast, racing to meet the incoming twilight.

3
    The man sitting alone at the corner table was in his mid-fifties, and wore the years well. He was dressed in an impeccably cut Savile Row three-piece suit, gray with muted gray pin striping, and his full head of silvery hair looked as if it had been styled that morning, every strand in place. He was slim and tall, carried himself with an offhand grace, visible now as he came into the vip lounge on the first floor of the departures section of Terminal Three at Heathrow Airport, London, England.
    From his position four tables away, Mack Bolan had a clear line of sight to the elegant man. Two walls of the lounge were glass, looking out on the airport's terminal aprons. Planes with a variety of international markings taxied to or from the building every minute or so; Terminal Three handled intercontinental traffic. A third wall of the lounge was faced by a long table on which a luxurious buffet brunch had been laid out, a complimentary courtesy for the international passengers that the various airlines were most anxious to woo: business people, statesmen,