When James Orayo Fielding looked at people, he saw bugs. Except
bugs didn't cry or quiver or try to hide their terror when he fired
them or told them he might fire them. Bugs went squish when he
stepped on them. And then his manservant Oliver would clean up the
little blotches with his thumbnail and James Orayo Fielding would
ask:
"Don't you hate that, Oliver? Doesn't it make your stomach turn
to put your fingers in a bug's belly?"
And Oliver would say:
"No, Mr. Fielding. My job is to do whatever you wish."
"What if I told you to eat it, Oliver?"
"Then I would do as you wish, Mr. Fielding."
"Eat it, Oliver."
And James Orayo Fielding would watch very closely and inspect
Oliver's hands to make sure he hadn't pushed a remnant of the
insect up into his sleeve, or in some other manner deceived his
employer.
"People are bugs, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
"I'll wear grays today."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
And James Orayo Fielding waited by the immense picture window
that gave him the glorious view of the Rocky Mountains, stretching
in white peaks right to Canada and left to Mexico. The Fieldings
were one of the old Denver, Colorado, families, descended from
English nobility on the father's side and French on the mother's,
although it was rumored some Arapaho had made its way into the
bloodstream, culminating in James Orayo Fielding, owner of the
Fielding ranches, Fielding sugar beet plants, and Fielding
Enterprises Inc., which included manufacturing plants in New Mexico
and Texas which few Denverites knew anything about. James did not
discuss them.
Oliver knelt as he held out the soft gray flannel pants for Mr.
Fielding to step into. He fitted the Italian shoes over Mr.
Fielding's feet, then the broadcloth white shirt, tied the black
and orange stripes of Princeton around Mr. Fielding's neck, slipped
the Phi Beta Kappa key into Mr. Fielding's gray vest, and buttoned
the vest down to Mr. Fielding's belt. The gray jacket went on over
the vest and Oliver brought the mirror for inspection. It was full
length and silver-framed and rolled on wheels to the center of Mr.
Fielding's dressing room.
Fielding looked at himself, a man in his early forties, without
gray in his temples, full soft brown hair which Oliver now combed
to that casual neatness, a patrician countenance with delicate
straight nose, an honest man's mouth, and a gentle cool in his blue
eyes. He formed a sincere involved expression with his face, and
thought to himself that that expression would be just fine.
He used it that afternoon in El Paso when he told union
negotiators that he was closing down Fielding Conduit and Cable
Inc.
"The costs, gentlemen, just don't allow me to continue
operations."
"But you can't do that," said the union negotiator. "There are
456 families that depend on Fielding Conduit and Cable for their
existence."
"You don't think I'd close down a factory just to watch 456
families wriggle and squirm, do you?" asked Fielding, using the
expression he had practiced earlier in the day in his Denver home,
"If you wish, gentlemen, I will explain it to your membership in
person."
"You'd stand up in front of our membership and tell them they're
all out of jobs? In an economy like today?" asked the union
negotiator, trembling. He lit a cigarette while one burned
unfinished in the ashtray. Fielding watched it.
"Yes, yes, I would," said Fielding. "And I think you should
bring the families too."
"Sir," said the corporation counsel for Fielding Conduit and
Cable. "You don't have to do that. It's not your responsibility.
It's the union's job."
"I want to," said Fielding.
"What if we took a pay cut?" asked the union negotiator. "An
across-the-board pay cut?"
"Hmmm," said Fielding and had the company's profit-and-loss
statement brought to him. "Hmmm. Maybe," said Fielding after
examining the printed sheet.
"Yes? Yes?" said the union negotiator.
"Maybe. Just maybe," said Fielding.
"Yes!" said the union negotiator.
"We could use the factory itself to inform the families we're
closing. You can get them together in two hours, can't you? I know
almost the entire membership is down at the union hall."
"I guess we could do that," said the negotiator, crushed.
"Maybe in two hours, I can work out something. Okay?"
"What?" said the negotiator, suddenly revived.
"I'm not sure yet," said Fielding. "Tell them it looks as if
we're going to shut down but I may work out something by this
evening."
"I've got to know what, Mr. Fielding. I can't raise their hopes
without something concrete."
"Well, then, don't raise their hopes," said Fielding and left
with his corporation counsel for dinner in a small El Paso
restaurant he favored. They dined on clams oreganato,
lobster fra diavolo, and a warm runny custard called
zabaglione. Fielding showed his corporation counsel
pictures he had taken of the famine in India as part of his famine
study for the Denver chapter of Cause, a worldwide relief
agency.
His meal ruined, the corporation counsel asked Fielding what he
gave one of the children he saw, a child with protruding ribs,
hollow eyes and starvation thick belly.
"A fiftieth at f/4.5 on Plus-X film," said Fielding, dunking the
crisp golden crust of fresh-baked Italian bread into the spicy red
tomato sauce of his lobster fra diavolo. "Aren't you going
to eat your scungilli?"
"No. No. Not now," said the lawyer.
"Well, considering the starvation in the world, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself wasting food. Eat."
"I-I-"
"Eat," ordered Fielding. And he watched to make sure his
corporation counsel ate every last bit of his dinner for the sake
of the starving children in India whose pictures he left displayed
on the table.
"Look," he said. "I'm suffering too. I've had stomach pains for
weeks. Going to see my doctor tonight back in Denver. But I'm
eating."
"You're going home tonight?" said the lawyer. "Then you don't
have a plan for the workers?"
"I do have a plan. In a way," said Fielding.
When they arrived at the factory, the low whitewashed building
was lit and buzzing with families packed lathe to drill press.
Children stuck fingers in lathes and mothers yanked them back.
Union men talked among themselves in that low choppy talk of men
who know that all has been said and anything more is a waste of
time. Their lives were out of their hands.
When Fielding entered, the main factory building hushed as if
someone had turned simultaneous dials in nearly a thousand throats.
One child laughed and the laughter stopped with a loud motherly
smack.
Fielding led four white-coated men wheeling carts with round
tubs on them to a raised podium in front of the factory. Smiling,
he took the microphone from the nervous union negotiator.
"I've got good news for you all tonight," he said and nearly
five hundred families exploded in cheers and applause. Husbands
hugged wives. Some wept. One woman kept yelling, "God bless you,
Mr. Fielding," and she was heard when the cheering subsided and
that energized more cheering. Fielding waited with a big warm smile
on his face, his right hand tucked into his gray vest, safe from
the grubby reachings of union officials. The corporation counsel
waited by the door, looking at his feet.
Fielding raised both arms and was given quiet.
"As I said when I was interrupted, I have good news for you
tonight. You see the gentlemen with white coats. You see the tubs
on the carts. Ladies and gentlemen, children, union officials,
there's free ice cream tonight. For everyone."
A woman up front looked to her husband and asked if she had
heard correctly. In the back row families buzzed in confusion. At
the door, the corporation counsel blew air out of his mouth and
stared at the ceiling.
Fielding assumed the sincere concerned expression he had
perfected earlier in the day before the silverframed full-length
mirror in his dressing room.
"That's the good news. Now the bad news. There is no way we can
continue operations of Fielding Conduit and Cable."
At a main lathe fifty yards back, a middle-aged man in a red
checked jacket cleared his throat. Everyone heard him.
"Ow," said the union negotiator. And everyone heard him too.
Fielding nodded to a white-jacketed busboy that he might start
serving the ice cream. The boy looked at the crowd and shook his
head.
A man in the front row jumped up onto his seat. His wife tried
to tug him back down but he freed the arm she held.
"You ever own a plant in Taos, New Mexico?" yelled the man.
"Yes," said Fielding.
"And did you shut down that one too?"
"We had to," said Fielding.
"Yeah. I thought so. I heard about this ice cream trick you
pulled in Taos. Just like tonight."
"Gentlemen, my counsel will explain everything shortly," said
Fielding and leaped from the little platform at the front of the
factory and made his way quickly to the door before the rush of
workers could get at him.
"Tell them about our tax structure," yelled Fielding, pushing
his lawyer between himself and the surging workers and just making
it out the door. He ran to the car and made a leisurely mental note
that he should phone the El Paso police to rescue the lawyer. Yes,
he would call. From his doctor's office in Denver.
At the airport, Oliver was waiting in the Lear jet. It had been
checked out and readied by airport mechanics.
"Everything turn out satisfactorily, sir?" asked Oliver, holding
out the suede flying jacket.
"Perfectly," said James Orayo Fielding, not telling his
manservant about the stabbing pains in his stomach. Why give Oliver
any joy?
If he did not have the appointment that evening, he would have
taken the slower Cessna twin-engine prop job. With that one, he
could leave the fuselage door open and watch Oliver clutch his seat
as the wind whipped at his face. Once, during an Immelman turn,
Oliver had passed out in the Cessna. When Fielding saw this, he
leveled the plane and undid Oliver's safety strap. The manservant
recovered, saw the unbuckled strap, and passed out again. James
Orayo Fielding loved his old propeller plane.
Doctor Goldfarb's office on Holly Street shone like three white
squares against a dark checkerboard of black square windows. If any
other patient had asked for this evening appointment, Dr. Goldfarb
would have referred him to someone else. But it was James Orayo
Fielding who had asked for that specific appointment to get the
results of his every-six-months physical, and that meant that
Fielding had no other free time. And what else could be expected of
a man so fully occupied with the world's welfare? Wasn't Mr.
Fielding chairman of the Denver chapter of Cause? Hadn't he
personally visited India, Bangladesh, the Sahel to see famine
firsthand and come back to Denver to tell everyone about it?
Another man with Fielding's wealth might just have sat back and
become a playboy. But not James Orayo Fielding. Where there was
suffering, you would find James Orayo Fielding. So when Mr.
Fielding said he was only free this one night of the month, Dr.
Goldfarb told his daughter he would have to leave just after he
gave her away at the wedding ceremony.
"Darling, I'll try to be back before the reception is over," he
had told her. And that was the easy part. The hard part was what he
was going to tell Mr. Fielding about the checkup. Like most
doctors, he did not like telling a patient he was going to die. But
with Mr. Fielding, it was like being part of a sin.
Fielding noticed immediately that the runty Dr. Goldfarb had
trouble telling him something. So Fielding pressed him on it, and
got the answer.
"A year to fifteen months," said Dr. Goldfarb.
"There's no operation possible?"
"An operation is useless. It's a form of anemia, Mr. Fielding.
We don't know why it strikes when it strikes. It has nothing to do
with your diet."
"And there's no cure?" asked Fielding.
"None."
"You know, of course, I feel it's my duty to myself to check
other authorities."
"Yes, of course," said Dr. Goldfarb. "Of course."
"I think I'll find you correct however," said Fielding.
"I'm afraid you will," said Dr. Goldfarb and then he saw the
most shocking thing from a terminal patient. Dr. Goldfarb had
experienced hostility, denial, melancholy, and hysteria. But he had
never seen before what he encountered now.
James Orayo Fielding grinned, a small controlled play of life at
the corners of his mouth, a casual amusement.
"Dr. Goldfarb, bend over here," said Fielding, beckoning the
doctor's ear with a wag of his forefinger.
"You know something?" he whispered.
"What?" Goldfarb asked.
"I don't give a shit."
As Fielding had expected, Dr. Goldfarb was right. In New York
City he was proven right. In Zurich and Munich, in London and
Paris, he was proven right, give or take a few months.
But it didn't matter because Fielding had devised a great plan,
a plan worth a life.
His manservant Oliver watched him closely. Fielding had rented a
DC-10 for their travels and turned the tail section into two small
bedrooms. He took the seats out of the main section and installed
two large working desks, a bank of small computers, and five
teletype machines. Above the main working desk, Fielding had
installed an electronic calendar that worked in reverse. The first
day had read one year (inside) to fifteen months (outside). The
second day of flight on the short hop from Zurich to Munich, it
registered eleven months, twenty-nine days (inside) to fourteen
months, twenty-nine days (outside). It was the countdown, Oliver
realized, to what Mr. Fielding had called his termination.
As they left Munich, Oliver noticed two strange things. The
outside date had been changed to eighteen months, and Mr. Fielding
had Oliver shred a three-foot-high computer printout, which
Fielding had studied for hours before angrily writing across the
top: "Money is not enough."
"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver. "You mean on the new
outside date? Not really. I'm hardly even bothering myself with the
outside date. What I've got to do has to be done within the inside
date. The doctors in Munich said they had seen someone live
eighteen months with this, so maybe I'll live eighteen months.
You'd like that, wouldn't you, Oliver?"
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
"You're a liar, Oliver."
"As you say, Mr. Fielding."
On a flight from London to New York City, Oliver was ordered to
shred three days of teleprint from the teletypewriters that clacked
incessantly in the main section. On top of the thick pile of
papers, Fielding had written: "Chicago grain market not enough."
"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver. "Any other man would give
up at this point. But men are bugs, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
In New York City, the plane stayed parked three days at the La
Guardia Marine Air Terminal. On the first day, Oliver shredded
heavy reports topped by Fielding's note reading: "The weather is
not enough."
On the second day, Mr. Fielding hummed Zippety Doo Da.
On the third day, he danced little steps between the computer and
his desk, which had become a meticulously organized pile of charts
and reports. A very thin manila envelope on top of the pile was
labeled:
"ENOUGH."
Oliver opened it when Mr. Fielding bathed before dinner. He saw
a single handwritten note.
"Needed: One average public relations agency, radioactive waste,
construction crews, commodities analysts -and six months of
life."
Oliver did not see the single small gray hair that had been atop
the envelope. James Orayo Fielding did when he returned. The paper
hair was now on the desk. It had been moved from where he had
placed it on the envelope.
"Oliver," said Fielding, "we're flying home tonight."
"Should I inform the crew?"
"No," said Fielding. "I think I'd like to pilot myself."
"If I may suggest, sir, you're not checked out in a DC-10,
sir."
"You're so right, Oliver. Right again. So right. We will have
to rent a Cessna."
"A Cessna, sir?"
"A Cessna, Oliver."
"The jet is faster, sir. We don't have to make stops."
"But not as much fun, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
When the Cessna took off, a hot muggy summer morning broke red
over New York City, like a warm soot blanket. Oliver saw the sun
through the open door to his left. He saw the runway leave
underneath him and the houses become small. He smelled his own
breakfast coming back up his throat and into his mouth, and he
returned it to the world in a little paper bag he always brought
with him when Mr. Fielding flew the Cessna. At five thousand feet,
Oliver became faint and lay back limply as Mr. Fielding sang, "A
tisket, A tasket, I found a yellow basket."
Over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fielding spoke.
"I suppose you're wondering what I'm doing, Oliver," said Mr.
Fielding. "As you know, I have eleven months, two weeks to live,
inside date. Maybe even less. One can't trust the human body. To
some, this would be a tragedy. Would it be a tragedy to you,
Oliver?"
"What, Mr. Fielding?"
"Would death be a tragedy to you?"
"Yes sir."
"To me, Oliver, it's freedom. I am no longer bound to protect my
image in Denver. Do you know why I cultivated my image in Denver,
keeping my fun to El Paso and places like that?"
"No sir."
"Because the bugs crawl all over you if you're different, if you
frighten them. Bugs hate anything better than them."
"Yes sir."
"Well, in a year, they can't get to me. And I'm going to get
them first. More than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao
Tse-tung. I will get a million. A billion at least. Not millions. A
billion. A billion bugs, Oliver. Me. I will do it. And none of them
will be able to bother me again. Oliver, it will be beautiful."
"Yes sir."
"If you knew you were going to die, Oliver, would you stop
saying 'yes sir' and say 'fuck you, Mr. Fielding'?"
"Never, sir."
"Let's see, Oliver."
And James Orayo Fielding snapped on his oxygen mask and brought
the plane up to where he saw Oliver slump back, unconscious, and he
reached behind himself and unsnapped Oliver's safety strap and put
the twin-engine Cessna into a dive. Oliver flipped back out of his
seat and was pressed by the force of gravity into the rear of the
plane. When Fielding leveled the Cessna at three thousand feet,
Oliver curled into a ball on the floor.
"Ohhh," he said, regaining consciousness. He lifted himself on
his hands and as his head cleared and as he breathed more easily,
he felt himself being pulled forward. Mr. Fielding had put the
plane in a slight dive. And Oliver was going forward, toward the
door on the left. Suddenly the plane banked left and Oliver was
going out through the door. He grabbed the bottom bar of a seat and
clutched.
"Mr. Fielding, Mr. Fielding! Help! Help!" he yelled, the air
whipping at his midsection, the liquid of his bladder running out
through his trousers.
"You may now say 'fuck you'," said Fielding.
"No sir," said Oliver. .
"Well, then, don't say I didn't give you your chance. Goodbye,
Oliver."
And the plane rolled farther to its left until Oliver was
holding on to the seat, now above him, and as it cruised that way,
Oliver felt his hands grown numb. Perhaps Mr. Fielding was just
testing him, knew exactly how long it would take, and then would
turn the plane aright and help him back in. Mr. Fielding was a
peculiar sort, but not totally cruel. He wouldn't kill his
manservant, Oliver. The plane snapped back abruptly over to its
other side and Oliver found himself holding air, his body moving
forward at the same speed as the plane, then downward. Very
downward.
Oliver knew this because the plane appeared to be going up while
flying level. And as Oliver spun, he saw the broad Pennsylvania
country grow clearer and bigger beneath him! And it was coming
towards him. He went beyond panic into that peace of dying men,
where they understand that they are one with the universe, eternal
with all life, the coming and going of one part of all that life,
just a throb.
And Oliver saw the white and blue Cessna dive. And Mr. Fielding
had come down to see Oliver's face. Mr. Fielding in a dive looking
at Oliver, red-faced and yelling something. What was it? Oliver
couldn't hear. He waved goodbye and smiled and said softly, "God
bless you, Mr. Fielding."
Shortly thereafter, Oliver met a field of green summer corn.
James Orayo Fielding pulled up out of the dive still
screaming.
"Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'."
Fielding trembled at the controls. His hands were sweaty on the
instruments. He felt his stomach heave. Oliver hadn't been a bug;
he had shown incredible courage. What if Fielding were wrong about
bugs? What if he were wrong about everything? He was going to be
just as dead as Oliver. Nothing could save him.
By Ohio, Fielding wrested back control of himself. A momentary
panic happened to everyone. He had done the absolutely right thing.
Oliver had to die. He had seen the plan, just as sure as hairs
placed atop folders did not move by themselves.
Everything would work perfectly. Within eleven months, one week
and six days.
(Inside).
CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and the hot Newark night offended him, and the
smells from the alley where rats scratched inside open garbage cans
filled his senses with decay and the occasional street lights cast
more glare than illumination. It was summer and it was Newark, New
Jersey, and he was never to come back to this city alive because he
had left it dead.
This was where he was born. Down the street a large dark red
brick building with broken glass shards in empty black frames stood
surrounded by litter-heavy lots, waiting to become a lot itself.
That was where he was raised. He used to say it was where he was
educated until his real education began. That was where he was Remo
Williams and the nuns taught him washing, bedmaking, politeness,
and that rulers on knuckles hurt when you were caught in violation.
Later he would learn that punishment for sin was haphazard but the
effects of sin were immediate. They told in your body and your
breathing; they robbed you of proper-ness, which could mean death.
But the death was haphazard; the improperness itself was the real
punishment. In this new life, the sins were panic and laziness, and
the original sin was incompetence.
Remo thought of the ruler as he made out the old soot-covered
concrete lettering above the boarded-up door:
"St. Theresa's Orphanage."
He would have liked to have seen Sister Mary Elizabeth now. Open
up his hand for that ruler and let her flail away and laugh at her.
He had tried by sheer willpower more than twenty years before. But
Sister Mary Elizabeth knew her business better than Remo had known
his. Smiles were not too convincing when your hand trembled and
your eyes watered. But he didn't know then about pain. Now she
could have used a kitchen knife and it wouldn't cut his flesh.
"You there," came a voice from behind him. Remo had heard the
car move silently up the street. He glanced over his shoulder. A
uniformed police sergeant, his face shiny from the sweat of night
heat, leaned out the open squad car window. His hands were hidden.
Remo knew he held a weapon. He was not sure how he knew. Perhaps it
was the way the man held his body. Perhaps it was in the man's
face. There was much Remo knew today that he did not understand.
Having reasons for things was a Western idea. He just knew there
was a gun hidden by the car door.
"You there," said the police sergeant. "What're you doing in
this neighborhood?"
"Putting up a resort motel," said Remo.
"Hey, wise guy, you know where you are?"
"From time to time," said Remo cryptically.
"It's not safe here for white men."
Remo shrugged.
"Hey, I know you," the sergeant said. "No. It couldn't be."
He got out of the squad car, putting his revolver back in his
holster.
"You know, you look like someone I used to know," said the
sergeant. And Remo tried to remember the man. The sergeant's name
tag read Duffy, William P., and Remo remembered a far younger man
who, as a rookie, practiced quick draws with his gun. This one's
face was fleshy and his eyes were tired and he smelled richly of
his last meat meal. You could feel his senses were dead.
"You look almost exactly like this guy I used to know," said
Sergeant Duffy. "He was raised in that orphanage. Except you're
younger than he would be and you're skinnier."
"And better looking," said Remo.
"Naah, that guy was better looking. Straight as hell, that guy.
Poor guy. He was a cop."
"A good cop?" asked Remo.
"Naah. Dumb, kind of. Straight, you know. They framed the poor
bastard. Got the chair. Oh, more than ten years ago. Gee, you look
like him."
"What do you mean he was dumb?"
"Hey, any cop what goes to the chair for doing in a pusher and
then screaming that he never did it, I mean, that's stupid. There
are ways to get around that sort of thing. I mean, even now when
you got porkchops running the city. You just don't stand up,
screaming you're innocent. If you know what I mean. The whole thing
stunned the department."
"You missed him, huh?" said Remo.
"Naaah. Guy had no friends, no family, nothing. It was just the idea that a cop would get it. You know. They
wouldn't even let the poor bastard make a plea or nothing. You know."
"Nobody missed him," said Remo.
"Nobody. Guy was as straight as hell. A real pain in the
ass."
"You still practice fast draws in the John, Duff?"
"Naah," said Duffy, then backed away, his eyes wide in
horror.
"That guy's dead," he said. "Remo's dead more than ten years
now. Hey. Get outta here. Get outta here or I run you in."
"What's the charge, Duff? Still confused about the correct
charge?"
"No. No. This is a fucking dream," said Duffy.
"You want to see something funny, Duff? Draw," said Remo and he
snapped the whole holster off the belt leaving a light brown scar
on the thick black shiny leather. Sergeant Duffy's hand came down
on empty space.
"You get slower as you age, meat-eater," said Remo and returned
the holster-encased gun. Duffy did not see the hands move or hear
the small crack of metal. Stunned, he opened his holster and parts
of his revolver tinkled on the hot night sidewalk.
"Jeez. Friggin' freak," gasped Sgt. Duffy. "What'dya do with the
gun? That cost me money. I'm gonna have to pay."
"We all pay, Duff."
And Duffy's partner at the wheel, hearing the commotion, came
out gun drawn but found only Duffy, bewildered, staring at an empty
holster ripped from his belt.
"He's gone," said Duffy. "I didn't even see him go and he's
gone."
"Who?" said the partner.
"I didn't even see him move and now he's not here."
"Who?" said the partner.
"You remember that guy I told you about once. All the veterans
knew him. Sent to the chair, no appeal, nothing. Next to the last
man executed in the state. More than ten years ago, at least."
"Yeah?"
"I think I just seen him. Only he was younger and he talked
funny."
Sergeant Duffy was helped back to the car and examined by the
police surgeon who suggested a short rest away from a hostile urban
environment. He was relieved of duty temporarily and an inspector
had a long talk with his family and while he was in the Duffy
household, he asked where the drill press was.
"We're looking for the power tool he used to break his gun. The
police surgeon believes the gun is symbolic of his subconscious
desire to leave the force," said the inspector. "Human hands don't
snap a gun barrel in two."
"He didn't have no power tools," said Mrs. Duffy. "He'd just
come home and drink beer. Maybe if he had a workshop, maybe he
wouldn't have gone apples, huh, Inspector?"
The midday sun wilted the people on New York City's sidewalks
across the Hudson from Newark. Women's spike heels sank into the
soft asphalt made black gum by the heat. Remo strolled into the
Plaza Hotel on Fifty-ninth Street and asked for his room key. He
had been asking for his keys across the country for more than a
decade now. Squirrels had nests, moles had holes, and even worms,
he thought, had some piece of ground they must go to regularly.
Remo had room keys. And no home.
In the elevator, a young woman in a light print purple dress
that barely shielded delicate full mounds of wanting breasts
commented to Remo how nice it was to be in a hotel as fine as the
Plaza and wouldn't he just love to live his whole life here?
"You live in a hotel?" Remo asked.
"No. Just a split level in Jones, Georgia," said the woman,
making a swift pouting face.
"It's a home," said Remo.
"It's a drag," said the woman. "I'm so excited to be here in New
York City, you just don't know. Ah love it. I love it. George, he's
my husband, he's here to work. But me, I'm all alone. All alone all
day. I do whatever I want."
"That's nice," Remo said and watched the floor numbers blink
away on the elevator panel.
"Whatever and with whoever I like," said the woman.
"That's nice," said Remo. He should have walked.
"Do you know that ninety-nine point eight percent of the women
in America do not know how to make love properly?"
"That's nice."
"I'm in the point two percent that does."
"That's nice."
"Are you one of those gigolos that does it for money? You're
just a doll, you know."
"That's nice," said Remo.
"I don't see anything wrong with paying for it, do you?"
"Paying for what?" Remo asked.
"Sex, silly."
"That's nice," said Remo and the elevator opened to his
floor.
"Where you going?" said the woman. "Come back here. What's
wrong?"
Remo stopped mid-hall and smiled evilly. In fact, he could not
remember feeling so joyously thrilled with any idea he had
entertained in the last decade. The woman blinked her soft brown
eyes and said, "Wow."
"C'mere," said Remo and the woman ran to him, her breasts
bobbing brightly.
"You want a thrill?"
"With you? Yeah. All right. Come on. Right on," she said.
"There's going to be a man coming down this hallway in about
fifteen minutes. He's got a face like lemon juice. He'll be wearing
a dark suit and a vest even in this weather. He's on the low side
of sixty."
"Hey, I don't screw fossils, buddy."
"Trust me. The wildest time you've ever had. But you've got to
say something special."
"What?" asked the girl suspiciously.
"You've got to say, 'Hello, Dr. Smith. I've read about you. All
my friends have read about you.' "
"Who's Dr. Smith?"
"Never mind. Just tell him that and watch his face."
"Hello, Dr. Smith. Me and my friends have all read about you.
Right?"
"You'll never regret it," said Remo.
"I don't know," said the woman.
Remo cupped a breast with his left hand and with his right
thumbed a thigh and kissed her on the neck and lips until he felt
her body tremble.
"Oh, yes," she moaned. "Oh, yes. I'll say it. I'll say it."
"Good," said Remo and leaned her against the wallpapering of the
hallway and moved five doors down where he entered.
A wisp of an Oriental in golden flowing kimono sat lotus
position in front of a darkened television screen. The plush
furniture of the waiting room had been moved and stacked on one
side so a blue sleeping mat with its blossoms could dominate the
center of the rug.
The set had been working the day before when Remo had left to
look at Newark and if someone had wrecked it in between, there
would be a body to be disposed of. The Master of Sinanju did not
tolerate people interrupting his special television shows. Remo
checked out the bathroom and the bedroom. No bodies.
"Little Father, is everything all right?"
Chiun shook his head slowly, barely moving the strand of
beard.
"Nothing is right," said Chiun, the Master of Sinanju.
"Has someone broken the television?"
"Do you see the remnants of an intruder?"
"No, Chiun."
"Then how could anyone have broken my machine of dreams? No.
Worse. Far, far worse."
"I'm sorry. I have a problem myself."
"You? Do you know what they have done to the beauty of the
daytime dramas? Do you know the desecration that has been performed
upon the life art of your nation?"
Remo shook his head. He didn't know. But what he gathered in the
next few moments was this: As the Planet Revolves had been irreparably ruined.
Doctor Blayne Huntington had been performing a legal abortion on
Janet Wofford, daughter of the shipping magnate Archibald Wofford,
who was financing Dr. Huntington's experiments in nuclear
transmography, when nurse Adele Richards realized the baby was
probably her brother's who was serving life in Attica for leading
the prison revolt against anti-feminist literature.
"Yeah?" said Remo who always had a hard time following the soap
operas.
"There was physical violence," said Chiun. And as he explained
it, the nurse struck the doctor. Not only was there the intrusion
of violence, but she struck him wrong. It was not a blow at
all.
"But they're just actors, Little Father."
"I know that now," said Chiun. "Fraud. I will not watch another
show. I shall stay in America, barren of joy, without the little
breezes of pleasure in a stifled old life."
Remo, his voice heavy with sadness, said that they might not be
staying.
"This is a hard thing for me to tell you, Little Father," said
Remo and he lowered his eyes to the carpeting, which even in the
Plaza was becoming threadbare.
"The beginning of all wisdom is ignorance," said Chiun. "It is a
shame that you are always at the beginning." And this thought
struck the Master of Sinanju as so humorous, he repeated it and
laughed. But his pupil did not laugh with him and this Chiun
attributed to the famous American lack of humor.
"Perhaps you are right," said Remo. "For more than a decade, I
insisted I owed something to this country. For more then ten years,
I've been a man without home or wealth or even a full name that is
my own. I'm a man who doesn't exist. And everything I've done, I
see today was useless."
"Useless?" said Chiun.
"Yes, Little Father. Useless. This country is not one bit
different for my being here. It's even worse. The place where I was
born is a garbage dump. The politicians are more corrupt, crime is
having a full-banner field day, and-and the country is-it's coming
apart."
By this; Chiun was puzzled and he said:
"You are one man, are you not?"
Remo nodded.
"There is no one emperor in this country, no one judge or priest
who rules above all, is there?"
Remo nodded.
"Then, in this country with no ruler, how can you, an assassin,
granted one given the sun source of all perfection in training,
granted that even given the personal hand of a Master of Sinanju,
masterhood yourself, a white no less, how can you feel you have
failed? I do not understand this."
"You never quite understood what the organization was all about,
Chiun."
"I have heard you and Smith talk. He is emperor of your
organization that worships the document Constitution and you kill
for its glory. This I know."
"Maybe that's how it worked out but that's not how the whole
thing was planned." And Remo explained about the Constitution not
working, and that it was the basic document of the country and that
more than a decade before a president feared that his country would
become a police state if the drift into chaos continued.
This, he said, Chiun must know because as keeper of the records
of the House of Sinanju which had sold its services as assassins
for countless centuries, he knew of many governments and he must
know police states came from chaos.
"Ah," said Chiun. "You sought this chaos so that America could
become like the rest of the world and you would be chief assassin
of this police state. I did not understand it before."
"No," said Remo and he explained that the American Constitution
was a document, a contract between all Americans with one another.
And it guaranteed freedoms and rights to everyone. It was a good
document. But according to its rules many evil men could operate
freely. So, while keeping this contract, an American president had
set up an organization which no one knew about to make sure that
the country could still survive. The organization would make sure
that prosecutors got proper information, dishonest judges were
exposed, great organized crime families would lose their power, and
all the while, the rights of the people would be protected. Doctor
Harold Smith, whom Chiun called emperor, headed this organization
and Remo, whom Chiun himself had trained, was the enforcement
arm.
Chiun allowed that he followed Remo.
"So you see," Remo said, "there were problems. If it became
known that we existed, it would be like admitting the Constitution
didn't work. So secrecy was important. Well, they couldn't allow a
killer arm to go around leaving fingerprints, so what they did was
they got someone without a family and they removed his prints from
the files in Washington by pretending he was electrocuted. Like
when you first saw me, I was unconscious, right? Right?"
"When I first saw you?" said Chiun and he cackled. He did not
tell Remo but white man's silliness was enough to tickle the
universe. "If your fingerprints, a system of identification you
think was invented in the West but was known to us thousands of
years ago, if your fingerprints in these records you talk about
were so important, where are your fingerprints now?"
"The fingerprints of dead people go into a special file."
"Why then did they not just put the records in the other file
instead of bringing you close to death, by pretending to
electrocute you?"
"Because people knew me. And they had to create a man who didn't
exist for an organization that didn't exist."
"Ah," said Chiun and his long-nailed fingers formed the roofing
of a Western chapel. "I see now. Of course. It is all so clear. Let
us have sweet sauce for our rice. Would you like that?"
"I don't think you understand, Little Father."
"You are most clear, my son. They killed you to make you not
exist so that you could work for the organization that did not
exist to protect the document that does not work. All hail the
wisdom of the West."
"Well, things aren't working and that's what I wanted to tell
you. I've been wrong. Let us go work for the Shah of Iran or the
Russians or anyone else you wish to sell our services to. I'm
through with Smitty and this whole stupid thing."
"Now you confuse me," said Chiun and his voice rose to the
higher pitches of joy. "You have just made a wise decision after
ten years of wrong decisions and you are unhappy."
"Sure. I wasted ten years."
"Well, you have stopped wasting your life and you will never
regret it. In the East, they appreciate assassins. Ah, what joyous
news."
And Chiun told Remo he must allow the Master of Sinanju himself
to inform Emperor Smith of the termination, because it was just as
important to end services well as to begin them well, and Remo
should watch closely in order that he should know the proper way to
bid farewell to an emperor. For emperors did not lightly yield the
cutting edge of their empires which, since history first began, had
been their assassins.
When Smith knocked approximately five minutes later, the
parsimonious face was in a state of frothy hysteria. The thin lips
hung open like pink windsocks in a gale. The blue eyes blinked
wide. He dropped his briefcase on the sleeping mat.
"Hail, Emperor Smith," said Chiun, bowing courteously.
"My god," said Smith. "My god, Remo, there's a woman outside.
Our cover. It's been blown by a magazine. The whole thing's come
apart. The whole thing. She read about me in a magazine. A
brunette. In her twenties. Recognized me. A magazine. Our
cover."
"Guess we have to close shop then, Smitty," said Remo, pulling a
chair off the pile of furniture at the edge of the room and
slumping down into it. His joy unplugged Smith's excitement.
Smith's eyes narrowed suspiciously. He picked up his briefcase. He
regained his composure.
"Did you see the young woman in the hallway?"
"As a matter of fact, Smitty, I did," said Remo.
"I see," said Smith. His voice was flat. "And after so many
years and so much effort. After so many years of precise covers and
broken links just to protect our security, you, for a practical
joke and I assume it's that, just blabbed the whole thing to some
strange biddy out in the hallway. I assume it had some deep
motivation such as her breasts."
"Nope," said Remo.
"You misunderstand your loyal servant," said Chiun. "He was
espousing your glory to the populace, oh wondrous emperor of
CURE."
"And you explained us to Chiun also?" said Smith. "He knows what
we're about."
"He extolled the glory of your Constitution. The heads of its
enemies shall lie in the street. All proclaim the way of CURE,"
said Chiun.
"All right," said Smith. "Chiun doesn't know. What happened in
the hallway? Did you go insane?"
"No. She doesn't understand any more than Chiun. She heard a
name. So what? Really. Look at it. She heard a name and saw a man.
Who is she? No one. And if she could make heads or tails of the
whole thing, so what? So what?"
"I beg your pardon," said Smith and he looked for a place to
sit.
In one slow movement, Remo was off the chair and it was sliding
across the floor where it stopped just behind Smith's legs.
"I see we have tricksters. Our investment is in a juggler," said
Smith. "Would you mind telling me what's happening?"
"I went home last night. Not that I have a home. I went back to
that orphanage."
"You were supposed to avoid that area under any
circumstances."
"The orphanage was abandoned. The whole area was abandoned. It
was the center of a city and it looked like it had been bombed. And
I wondered what I had been doing for the last ten years.
And I wonder what you've been doing for the last ten years. The
whole organization."
"I don't follow."
"We're failures. We're a waste of time. We were supposed to be
this super setup to make the Constitution work. Everyone would have
their freedoms while the destructive elements were put in their
place. America was going through a trying time, we were supposed to
help it out and then disappear with no one the wiser. We'd be here
and gone. One country, one democracy saved."
"Yes?"
"What do you mean 'yes'?" said Remo. "We were a fucking waste of
time. We had a president who would have been convicted of breaking
and entering if he didn't get a pardon. Half the top government is
in jail, the other half ought to be. You can't walk in the city
streets unless you know how to kill. You read every day where this
cop and that is on the take. Care for the aged has turned into a
gigantic ripoff? And all this while I'm up to my armpits in bodies,
supposedly ending this sort of crap."
"That's just what we're doing," said Smith.
"Hey, I'm no congressman and you're no head of a legitimate
government agency. I can read newspapers, you know."
"And what you're reading, Remo, is the organization finally
working. This is the pus coming out of the lanced boil. Nixon
wasn't the first president to do such things, he was just the first
not to get away with it. His successors won't try it again. Didn't
it strike you as strange that half a dozen CIA men should bungle a
simple burglary? Didn't it strike you as strange that suddenly tape
recordings that the former president didn't know about suddenly
appear? And he can't destroy them? Remo, just how do you think we
work? What you're seeing is the organization working."
Remo cocked a quizzical eyebrow. Smith continued.
"You're not seeing new crimes, Remo. You're seeing people not
get away with the old ones. That nursing home scandal goes back more
than ten years. Cops on the take go back to the Revolutionary War.
Cops getting sent to jail for it is new. You're seeing this country
do what no other democracy has been able to do. We're cleaning
house."
"Then how about the streets?"
"A little adjustment. Give us five years. Five years and the
doomsayers will crawl back under their rocks. This country is
coming out stronger and better."
"Why didn't I know about this?"
"Because we only use you for emergencies. You're what I use when
things go wrong or can't go right any other way."
Now the Master of Sinanju had listened to this and had been
quiet, for when Westerners talked silliness, no light could
penetrate their shroud of ignorance. And seeing that they were now
satisfied with themselves, he spoke.
"Oh, gracious Smith, how wondrous has been your success, how
firm your guiding hand. Your kingdom is in order and gratefully,
the House of Sinanju must take its leave, singing always the praises of Emperor
Smith."
"If you wish, Chiun," said Smith. "You have trained Remo well
and we are grateful, but he knows enough now to operate without
you."
"There's a little problem here, Smitty," said Remo and Chiun
raised his long delicate fingers, silencing Remo.
"Gracious emperor," said Chiun. "The Remo who once belonged to
you now belongs to Sinanju." And seeing confusion on Smith's face,
he explained that when he began training Remo, Remo had just been
another American, but there was so much Sinanju training in him now
that he was Sinanju, and therefore no longer Smith's but
Sinanju's.
"What's he talking about?" asked Smith.
"Look," said Remo. "You give a guy a pot, right. A little dinky
metal pot."
"A pale pot," added Chiun. "A miserable worthless pale pot."
"And he adds a gold handle. And a gold top. And a full inch of
gold outside," said Remo.
"I like your choice of metals," said Chiun.
"Shut up," said Remo.
"Gratitude is dead," said Chiun.
"And now you've got this golden vessel with just the bare little
metal left of the original pot."
"The ingratitude is what is left," said Chiun.
"Well, it's not your pot anymore," Remo told Smith.
"What are you talking about?" asked Smith.
"The mountain is not the pebble," said Chiun. "And you cannot
violate this law of the universe. It is sacred."
"I'm not sure what you are getting at, Master of Sinanju, but we
are willing to double in gold the payments to your village for
your services. Since you regard Remo now as of Sinanju, a someday
Master of Siuanju, we will pay your village for you and
him. Double payment for double services."
"You don't understand, Smitty," said Remo.
"He most certainly does," said Chiun. "Listen to your emperor
and learn of him what is your next mission."
Smith opened his briefcase. There was a problem in the Chicago
grain markets that just might prove to be more disastrous for the
survival of the nation than anything Remo had handled before. It
had to do with the purchase of grain and famine spreading to the
Western world. Even with its vast network and computers, CURE had
been unable to ascertain just what was the matter. A lot of money
was making peculiar things happen.
And bodies were floating up around Lake Michigan.
CHAPTER THREE
The morning sun came up over Harborcreek, Pennsylvania, as winds
blew the chemical waste breezes across Lake Erie into Remo's car.
Remo explained the mission to Chiun. This Chiun had demanded, since
he was no longer just the trainer in the eyes of the organization.
He was a coequal partner. It always amazed Remo how Chiun managed
to grasp sophisticated Western concepts when it suited his purpose,
like coequal partner.
This, Chiun hastened to point out, did not mean that Remo was
his equal in the eyes of the universe, but only in the blurred and
narrow vision of the white organization for which they worked.
"I understand, Little Father," said Remo, turning off the
asphalt road into a dirty driveway. Remo could only use the
sideview mirror because Chiun's lacquered wooden chests jammed full
the back seat and made the rearview mirror useless unless Remo
wanted to look at a pink dragon on a bright blue background.
"We are looking for a man named Oswald Willoughby, who is a
commodities broker. He is going to testify about price-fixing on
the commodities exchange. Someone or some organization dumped
twenty-five million dollars worth of winter wheat on the exchange
just at planting time. This caused one of the smallest plantings on
record just when the world needed the most plantings. No one knows
why this dumping occurred, but of the dealers who handled the bulk
of the selling, two came up dead in Lake Michigan and the third is
Oswald Willoughby. We're supposed to keep him alive."
Chiun thought a moment. Then he spoke.
"However," he said, "coequal does mean equal payment to Sinanju.
It is good that we can get as much for quality as we can for
shoddy. The villagers will appreciate my business acumen."
"You didn't understand a word I said, did you?"
"We are to keep a man alive and then you mentioned some things
that could not be true."
"Like what?" snapped Remo.
"For instance, no one knows why these men were killed. This is
not true. Someone knows why."
"Well, I meant we don't know."
"I could have told you of your ignorance before we left."
"You don't understand how the market works, do you? Do you?"
Remo looked for a white frame cabin with a green fence. He could
see steam rise from the night-cool stream flowing through the hot
morning.
"You didn't understand a word about winter wheat and prices.
Well, I'll tell you. If prices are high at planting time, farmers
plant more grain. Most people don't buy the grain to keep. They buy
it to sell. They buy it now to sell at a future time, like harvest
time, when they expect the price will be more. Well, someone at
planting time bought up a lot of what they call futures and dumped
them on the market. Twenty-five million dollars worth. Now, while
that's not much considering the total, the sudden dumping all at
once sent the price skidding. Real low. It was perfect timing.
Farmers couldn't get credit for large plantings and they didn't
want them. So we've got a short crop this spring which explained
part of the price rise in food."
"So?" said Chiun.
"So we're afraid it might get worse. That's why we've got to
figure out what or who was willing to lose the bulk of twenty-five
million dollars. There's a food crisis in the world."
"Why are you so worried? Sinanju has known food crises. You are
telling me, you dare to tell me about food crises, you who were
raised on meat and never went hungry a day in your life."
"Oh, Jeez," moaned Remo for he knew he would now hear the story
of Sinanju, how because of starvation the village of Sinanju had to
put their newly born babies into the cold waters of the West Korea
Bay, how the village was food-poor, and how the Masters of Sinanju
were born in desperation, how each Master for centuries had rented
his services as an assassin to emperors and kings in far-off lands
so that never again would the villagers have to send the babies
"back to sleep" in the waters of the bay.
"Never again," said Chiun.
"It's more than fifteen hundred years since that happened," said
Remo.
"When we say never again, we mean never again," said Chiun. "This is your tradition now also. You should learn
it."
It sounded like a pot banging a pot down the road, through the
scrub pines, whipped short with almost greenless branches by the
Lake Erie winds. It sounded dull in the morning air that made the
car seat sticky. It sounded like a little pop that morning sleepers
shouldn't notice. It was a shot.
Remo saw a dark man run from the white house with the green
fence. He tucked something into his belt as he trotted to a waiting
pink Eldorado with its motor running. The car took off before the
door was shut, a fast but not screeching start, kicking up little
dust flurries. The driver intended to pass Remo on the left as all
oncoming cars should. Remo occupied the lane. Chiun, who thought
seat belts were bondage and was not about to wear one, caught the
car crash with a slight upward motion lifting his light frame so
that at the moment of impact, he was aloft. Two long fingernails of
the right hand caught the dashboard in such a way that it looked as
if he were doing a mild vertical one-handed pushup. The other hand
caught flying glass. Remo stopped his forward motion with an elbow
against the wheel and the same free flight uplift as the
Master.
The door popped open and he was out of the car, on the road
before the cars stopped their first spin. He caught the Eldorado,
snapping open a door, and reached in past a bloody body to put on
the brake.
He dragged the two still forms from the Eldorado and saw that
the dark man had a gun in his belt. It smelled of a fresh shot.
Remo felt for a heartbeat. It was the last strong flutter of a
muscle about to die. It stopped.
The driver's heart was better. Remo felt around the body. Only a
shoulder bone had that squishy loose feeling of a break. The face
flowed red from glass cuts but it was not serious. Remo maneuvered
his hand underneath the man's jaw, working on veins going up
through the neck. The man's eyelids opened.
"Ooooh," he groaned. "Ooooooh."
"Hi there," said Remo.
"Oooooh," groaned the man. He was in his late forties and his
face was a remnant of a teenage battle with acne. The acne had
won.
"You're going to die," said Remo.
"Oh, my God, no. No."
"Your partner made the hit on Willoughby, didn't he? Oswald
Willoughby."
"Was that the guy's name?"
"Yes. Who sent you?"
"Get me a doctor."
"It's too late. Don't go with this sin on your soul," said
Remo.
"I don't want to die."
"You want to go without a confession? Who sent you?"
"No one special. It was just a hit. A five-grand hit. It was
supposed to be easy."
"Where'd you get the money?"
"Joe got it. At Pete's."
"Where's Pete's?"
"East St. Louis. I was needing. I needed the dough. I was just
out of Joliet. Couldn't get work."
"Where's Pete's?"
"Off Ducal Street."
"That's a great help."
"Everybody knows Pete's."
"Who gave you the money for the hit?"
"Pete."
"You're a great help. Just Pete at Pete's in East St.
Louis."
"Yeah. Get me a priest. Please. Someone. Anyone."
"Just rest here," said Remo.
"I'm dying. Dying. My shoulder's killing me."
Remo checked out the small white house. The door was shut but
unlocked. The killer had had the presence of mind not to leave it
ajar so that the body would probably not have been found until it
made a stink.
Willoughby probably got it in bed, thought Remo, as he entered
the house. But then he saw the TV lit with the sound turned low,
and a silent interviewer asking a silent question to elicit a
silent response, and Remo knew Willoughby had spent the night here
in the living room. His last night.
The room smelled of stale whiskey. Willoughby lay on a couch
behind the door, an open bottle of Seagram's Seven and an
unfinished Milky Way on a tarnished end table. Willoughby's brains
were spread out on the high back of the couch, powder burns on the
close temple. A phone rang. It was under the couch. Remo answered
it.
"Yeah," he said, lifting the phone and resting the base on
Willoughby's stomach.
"Oh, hello, darling." It was a woman's voice. "I know I'm not
supposed to phone but the garbage disposal is stuck. It's been
stuck since dinner, Ozzie. I know I'm not supposed to call. Should
I get the repairman? I'll get the repairman. It's the cauliflower
that does it. And we don't even like cauliflower. You like it. I
don't know why cauliflower. I don't even know why they told you not
to give me the number. I mean, who have these few phone calls I've
made hurt? Right? Who have they hurt? Ozzie… are you
there?"
Remo tried to answer but the only suitable answers were lies and
he pressed down the receiver button terminating the conversation.
He left the phone off the cradle, buzzing a useless dial tone.
What was he going to tell her? That her phone calls had ruined
Willoughby's only protection, the secrecy of his whereabouts? She
had enough grief coming. By the time the dial tone turned into a
continuous out-of-order whine, Remo found a stack of notes in the
kitchen. They were in an old Eaton Corrasable Bond Box and there
was a title page: "Testimony of Oswald Willoughby."
Remo took the box. Outside, the driver of the hit car was
discovering that he only had a broken bone. He leaned against the
fender of the smashed-up car, pressing tight his injured shoulder
with his free hand.
"Hey, I'm not gonna die. You're a damned liar, fella, a damned
liar."
"No, I'm not," said Remo and with an ease of motion that made
his right hand seem hardly to move at all, he let his index and
forefinger out, penetrating the skull, which jerked the man's head
back as if it had met a crane-hoisted wrecking ball. The feet flew
over the head and the man slapped into the dust, silently and
finally, without even a twitch of the spine.
Chiun, noticing that even to the breathing the blow had been
without flaw, turned back to his trunks. They were undamaged. But
they might have been and he told his pupil that such carelessness
as his car driving could not be tolerated.
"We've got to get out of here and your trunks are slowing us
down, Little Father. Maybe I'd better do this assignment alone,"
Remo said.
"We are coequal. I am not only your superior in training but on
assignments now, by order of Emperor Smith I am on the same level.
My judgment is of equal weight to yours. My responsibility is equal
to yours. Therefore you cannot say anymore, go home, Master of
Sinanju, I will do this or do that alone. It is we. We do
this or we do not do that. It is we. Never
you anymore, but we. No more yous.
We."
"Willoughby, the man we're supposed to keep alive, is dead,"
said Remo.
"You failed," said Chiun.
"But there's some crucial evidence in this box," said Remo.
"We have saved the evidence. Good."
"It's not as good as Willoughby himself."
"You aren't perfect."
"But for the first time though, there's a lead on the source
which just might be the core of the whole thing."
"We have the solution."
"Possibly," said Remo.
"Fate takes strange patterns at times," said Chiun. "We may
succeed gloriously, as is the tradition of the House of Sinanju, or
you may fail, which would not be the first time in your life."
In the matter of the trunks, Chiun explained that they had to
take them along because their mission was to honor the Constitution
of the United States and to wear one kimono continuously would be
to dishonor the document by which Remo's nation lived. Chiun
understood these things now, being coequal.
The driver of a pickup truck understood the need to get the
trunks to the closest airport immediately and to forget about the
wrecked cars and the two dead bodies he saw when his country's
history was shown to him. Fifteen portraits of Ulysses S. Grant,
printed in green.
"You fellas want a lift, well, I'll show you, the spirit of
cooperation is not dead. That's fifteen of them little fellers.
Thirteen… fourteen… and fifteen."
The Piper they rented circled over the Mississippi River town of
East St. Louis because Chiun wanted to see it from the air.
"That is a fine river," said Chiun. "Who owns the water
rights?"
"No one exactly owns the water rights. It belongs to the
country."
"Then the country could give it to us in payment?"
"No," said Remo.
"Even if we glorify the Constitution?"
"Not even then."
"You were born in an ungrateful country," said Chiun, but Remo
did not answer him. He was thinking about Willoughby's testimony.
Willoughby did not give his life for it. He gave his life because
he let his wife know where he was. People died, not for causes, but
for stupidity or bad luck, which was another form of stupidity,
caused by incompetence. This was the essence of what he had been
taught for more than a decade. In the world there was competence
and incompetence and nothing else. Causes were frills and came and
went with each age. Luck was only the cloudy explanation for things
people did not perceive. In this, the Master of Sinanju, more than
fourscore in years, stood alone, atop the world.
A man like Willoughby had worked his entire life without knowing
what he did. He took orders and he executed orders and nowhere in
his testimony did it ever show that he understood more than a
minimum about how food was grown and gotten to market. He had laced
the testimony he had hoped to give with words like "hard futures"
and "soft futures" and the market strengthening. Remo knew in his
stomach that this was not how his country had become the greatest
food producer in the world.
There was talk today about his country being selfishly
food-rich, but all those talking like that made it seem as if the
food just grew by itself because the land was rich. This was not
so. Men planted seed, and sweated over seed, and tried to outsmart
the weather. Men invested their lives in the soil, from the
laboratories where Americans sought constantly improving grains and
fertilizers, to the iron shops of Detroit where men improved the
substitute for the ox, the tractor. America had invented the
automatic reapers. America had made the first real changes in
agriculture since man had left the caves and put seed in soil.
America's food wealth was the fruit of its character. Genius, hard
work, and persistence.
It deeply offended Remo when he heard it compared to coal or oil
or bauxite, generally by some man in a university who had never
broken sweat on his brow.
What made a country developed or underdeveloped was its people.
Yet these men who knew not of labor referred to the natural
resources of undeveloped countries as something belonging, by some
divine right, solely to the people who happened to live over them,
while at the same time they said the proceeds of those who worked
for food belonged to the whole world. If it were not for the real
workers of the world, the oil and bauxite and copper lying under
sand and jungle would be as useless to the underdeveloped nations
as they had been at the first tick of noticed time.
As Chiun had so well taught, there was only competence and
incompetence.
Willoughby happened to be one of the ones taking a free ride.
Nearly one hundred pages of written testimony and the man only
suspected that he was stumbling onto the greatest man-made disaster
in history.
"I don't know how," concluded Willoughby's written statement,
"but these peculiar investment patterns forebode, I believe, a
master plan of destruction. The depression of the winter wheat
market futures at planting appear computer-timed to highest impact
for maximum potential in minimizing food growth." Whatever the neon
wool that all meant. All the testimony lacked was advice to get
into this wonderful thing with your money while the getting was
good.
Willoughby had made eighty thousand dollars a year as a
commodities analyst, according to Smith's information.
In East St. Louis, you could see the heat rising from the
cracked sidewalks of Ducal Street, a row of two-story wooden
buildings and storefronts, most of them empty. Pete's Pool Parlour
had its windows painted green halfway up. It wasn't empty. A very
large redblotched face with shiny grease and rheumy black eyes
stared over the green paint line. The garbage pail of a face rested
dully under an immaculate bright red hat with pompon. Inside, Remo
and Chiun saw it had a body, large hairy arms like girders with fur
transplants hanging out of a worn leather vest. The hands ended at
the denim-covered groin where they occupied themselves with
scratching.
"Where's Pete?" asked Remo.
The face did not answer.
"I'm looking for Pete."
"Who are you and dinko?" said the garbage pail of a face.
"I'm the spirit of Christmas Past and this is Mother Goose,"
said Remo.
"You got a big mouth."
"It's a hot day. Tell me where Pete is, please," said Remo.
Chiun examined the strange room. There were green rectangular
tables with colored balls. The white ball did not have a number.
There were sticks with which young men pushed the white ball into
other balls. When certain of these other balls went into holes at
the sides of the table, the man hitting the white ball into the
colored balls was allowed to continue or, in some cases, collected
paper money, which, while not gold, could be used to purchase
things. Chiun went over to the table where the most money was
changing hands.
Meanwhile, Remo finished his business.
"Just tell me where Pete is."
The hairy hand left the groin to rub thumb against forefinger,
indicating money.
"Give me something," said the garbage pail of a face. So Remo
gave him a shattered collarbone and, true to his word, the garbage
pail of a face told him that Pete was behind the cash register and
then he passed out from the pain. Remo nudged the man's face with
his shoe. There was a grease spot on the floor.
Pete was holding a weapon behind the cash register when Remo got
there.
"Hi, I'd like to speak to you privately," said Remo.
"I saw what you did there. Just stay where you are."
Remo's right hand fluttered with his fingers almost braiding
themselves. Pete's eyes followed the hand for a fraction of an
instant. Which they were supposed to do. In that moment, just as
the eyes moved, Remo's left hand was behind the counter in
simultaneous flow, thumb into metacarpals, pressuring the nerves
into a gel of compressed bone. The gun dropped on a box of pool
chalk. Pete's eyes teared. A crazy pain-racked smile came across
his otherwise bland face.
"Wow, that smarts," Pete said.
A lounger whiling away his twenties and thirties would have seen
only the thin man with the thick wrists go over to Pete and walk
with him to a back room, holding Pete's arm in some sort of
friendly embrace. A lounger, however, would have been more
interested in the strange elderly Oriental with the funny
robes.
Waco Boy Childers was playing Charlie Dusset for a hundred
dollars a game and no one was talking, excepting that funny
Oriental fella. He wanted to know the rules of the game.
Waco Boy lowered his stick and sighed.
"Pops, I was shooting," said Waco Boy down to the old squint of
a gook. "People do not talk while I am shooting."
"Do you perform so well that it robs others of breath?" asked
Chiun.
"Sometimes. If they got enough money on it."
This brought laughs.
"Like, watch Charlie Dusset," said Waco Boy. Chiun cackled and
both Waco Boy and Charlie asked what he was laughing about.
"Funny names. Your names are so funny. 'Dusset.' 'Waco Boy.' You
have such funny names," and Chiun's laughter was infectious for
those crowding around the table laughed also, except Waco Boy and
Charlie Dusset.
"Yeah? What's your name, feller?" said Waco Boy.
And Chiun told them his name, but in Korean. They did not
understand.
"I think that's funny," said Waco Boy.
"Fools usually do," said Chiun and this time even Charlie Dusset
laughed.
"You want to put your money where your mouth is?" said Waco Boy.
He set his hand bridge on the green felt top and with a
smooth-honed stroke put away the seven ball in the side pocket, the
eight ball on a bank the length of the table, which left the cue
ball right behind the nine at a corner pocket. He put the yellow
nine away with a short stroke that left the cue ball dead where it
hit. Charlie Dusset paid out with bis last bill.
"I presume you wish me to gamble?" said Chiun.
"You presumes correctly."
"On the outcome of this game?"
"Correct," said Waco Boy.
"I do not gamble," said Chiun. "Gambling makes a person weak. It
robs him of his self-worth, for a man who places his fate in luck
instead of in his own skills surrenders his well-being to the whims
of fortune."
"You're just a talker then?"
"I did not say that."
Waco Boy grabbed a roll of bills out of his pockets and threw
them on the green felt table. "Put up or shut up."
"Do you have gold?" said Chiun.
"I thought you didn't gamble," said Waco Boy.
"Defeating you in any contest of skill is not gambling," said
Chiun and this remark almost leveled Charlie Dusset with
laughter.
"I got a gold watch," said Waco Boy and before he could get it
off his wrist, the long fingernails of the Oriental had it off and
then back on while Waco Boy's stubby fingers seemed to grub
hopelessly.
"It is not gold," said Chiun. "But since I have nothing else to
do at this moment, I shall play you for that paper. This is
gold."
From his kimono, Chiun took out a large thick coin, shiny and
yellow. And he put it on the edge of the table. But the people
around allowed they didn't know if it were real gold.
"It is an English Victoria, accepted the whole world over."
And the folks around the table allowed it sure was a
fine-looking coin and someone said he had read about British
Victorias and they were sure worth a lot of money. But Waco Boy
said as he didn't quite know if he wanted to risk $758 against a
single coin, no matter how much it was worth.
Chiun added another coin.
"Or even two," said Waco Boy. "Maybe a hundred against one of
them."
"I will offer two against your paper of what you think is a
hundred valuation."
"Better watch out, Mister," said Charlie Dusset. "Waco Boy's the
best in the whole state. All Missouri."
"All of Missouri?" said Chiun, clasping a long delicate hand to
his chest. "Next you will tell me he is the best in all America and
then the continent."
"He's pretty good, Mister," said Charlie Dusset. "He cleaned me
out."
"Ah, what formidableness. Nevertheless, I will take my poor
chances."
"You want to break?" asked Waco Boy.
"What is break?"
"Taking the first shot."
"I see. And how is this game won? What are the rules?"
"You take this cue stick and you hit the white ball into first
the one ball and you knock that in. Then the two and so on until
the nine. When you get the nine you win."
"I see," said Chiun. "And what if the nine should go in on the
first stroke?"
"You win."
"I see," said Chiun as Waco Boy placed the nine balls in a
diamond formation at the other end of the table. And Chiun asked to
hold the balls to see what they felt like and Waco Boy rolled him
one and he lifted it and asked to see another, but Waco Boy said
they were all identical. To this, Chiun answered no, they were not
all identical. The blue one was not as perfectly round as the
orange one and the green one was heavier than all the rest and
although those around him laughed, Chiun persisted in feeling every
one of the balls, and had they noticed that when he rolled them
back they stopped on the table exactly where they had been in the
rack, they might have expected what would happen next.
Chiun had but one question before he took a short cue stick.
"Yeah, what is it?" said Waco Boy.
"Which is the nine ball?"
"The yellow one."
"There are two yellow ones."
"The striped one with the nine on it."
"Oh, yes," said Chiun, for the nine had been on the underside of
the ball.
Those around would later say the old Oriental man had held the
cue stick in a peculiar way. Sort of one hand in the middle, kind
of. No bridge. Like a nail file almost. Alls he did was like flick
it. Just flick and that cue ball'd got wham-bam spinnin' like you
never seen. Drove right into the center of the rack and like zap.
Clipped that nine and smacked it dead into the left corner
pocket.
"Jeeezus," said Waco Boy.
"No. Not him," said Chiun. "Arrange the balls again."
And this time, because the rack was pressed with more tightness
than the first, Chiun sent the white ball first into the rack to
release the nine, so that the white ball coming off the left
cushion caught it properly and propelled it into the right corner
pocket.
In such a manner, he won seven games with seven strokes and all
around wished to know who he was.
"You have heard in your lifetimes that no matter how good you
are, there is always someone better?" said Chiun.
Everyone allowed as how they had heard that.
"I am that person. The someone better."
Remo, meanwhile, attended to business. In a forthright manner,
he asked Pete simply why he had promised five thousand dollars to
two men to kill Oswald Willughby. Pete answered forthrightly. He
had gotten ten thousand for it and paid out five. The money had
come from Johnny "Deuce" Deussio who had proprietary interests in
numbers, gambling, and narcotics in East St. Louis. Deussio, it was
said, worked for Guglielmo Balunta, who had a proprietary interest in all St.
Louis. Pete noted he would be killed for saying this about Johnny
Deuce. Of course, Deussio might be too late. Pete also noted that
it would be nice if Remo could possibly return his intestines to
his body cavity.
"They're not gone. It only feels like that. Nerves."
"That's nice," said Pete. "It's good to know it only feels like
my stomach's been ripped out."
Remo worked the muscles near Pete's ribs taking pressure off the
intestinal tract.
"Oh, my god, that feels good," said Pete. "Thank you. It feels
like my stomach is back in."
"You won't tell anyone I've been here, will you?" asked
Remo.
"Are you kidding? Mess with you?"
John Vincent Deussio, president of Deussio Realty and Deussio
Enterprises Inc., had a steel-link fence around his estate just
outside St. Louis. He had electronic eyes near the fence and what
might charitably be described as a herd of Doberman Pinschers. He
had twenty-eight bodyguards under command of his capo
regime who was his cousin, Salvatore Mangano, one of the most
feared men west of the Mississippi.
So what was he doing in his alabaster-tiled bathroom about three
A.M. with his face in the flushing toilet? He knew it was about
three a.m. because on an uplift which felt like his hair was coming
out of his head, he saw his watch and one of the hands, which was
probably the hour hand, was pointing toward his fingers. What was
he doing? He was waking up. That was first. Secondly, he was
answering questions which came rapidly now. He liked to answer
those questions. When he did so, he could breathe and John Vincent
Deussio had liked to breathe ever since he was a little baby.
"I got fifty grand from a friend of mine in a coast public
relations agency. Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan. They're big. I was
doing a favor. They wanted this guy Willoughby. I've done a lot of
work for them lately."
"Commodities people?" came the next question. It was a man's
voice. He had thick wrists. He was flushing the toilet again.
"Yes. Yes. Yes. Commodities."
"Who gave you the contracts?"
"Giordano. Giordano. That's Jordan's real name. It's a big
agency. They got some kind of wonder grain. Gonna save the world.
Make a fucking fortune."
"And what about Balunta?"
"He's gonna get his cut. I wasn't gonna hold out on him. For a
crummy fifty grand. He didn't have to ask like this."
"So Balunta didn't have anything to do with this?"
"He's gonna get his cut. He's gonna get it. What is this shit?"
And John Vincent Deussio saw the toilet flush again and everything
became dark and when he awoke it was four a.m. and he was retching.
He yelled for his cousin, Sally. Sally hadn't seen anyone, maybe
Johnny Deuce had dreamed it, sort of sleepwalking like. No one had
gotten in during the night. They checked the fences and checked the
men who handled the dogs and checked the bodyguards and even called
in this Japanese guy they had hired once as a consultant. He
smelled the ground.
"Impossible," he said. "I gave you my word that even the greats
of Ninja, the night-fighters of the Orient, could not penetrate
your castle and I stand by my word. Impossible."
"Maybe somebody better than Ninja?" asked Johnny
Deuce, who was now getting quizzical looks from his cousin
Sally.
"Ninja is the best," said the Japanese.
"Maybe you dreamed it, like I said," said Sally.
"Shut up, Sally. I didn't dream my head into a fucking toilet
bowl." And turning to the consultant, he asked again if he was sure
that there was nothing better than Ninja.
"In the world today, no," said the muscular Japanese. "In the
martial arts, one art breeds another art and thus today there are
many. But it is said, and I believe, that they all came from one,
the sun source of the arts it is called. And the farther from the
source, the less potent. The closer, the more potent. We are almost
direct from this source. We are Ninja."
"What's the source?"
"Some claim but I do not believe that they have even met
him."
"Who?"
"The Master. The Master of Sinanju."
"A yellow guy?"
"Yes."
"I saw a wrist. It was white."
"Impossible then. No one outside this small Korean town has ever
possessed Sinanju." He smiled. "Let alone a white person. But it is
only legend."
"I told you you was dreaming," said Sally, who didn't quite know
why he got a slap in the face just then.
"I know I wasn't dreaming," said Deussio, as he phoned his
contact on the coast and, in veiled words because you always had to
assume someone was tapping your line, told Mr. Jordan that
something had gone wrong with the recent account operations.
CHAPTER FOUR
"What went wrong?" asked James Orayo Fielding from his Denver
offices. He glanced at his two-faced digital calendar clock. The
inside figure read three months, eighteen days. He had stopped
looking at the outside figure when the fainting spells had started
two weeks and five days before.
"I don't have time for anything to go wrong," he said into the
telephone receiver. The office was airconditioned yet he was
sweating.
"Are the fields all right? Someone's gotten to the fields. I
know it."
"I don't think that's it," came the voice of William Jordan,
vice president of Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan. "In the overview,
you're still in a highly positive launch position."
"I know what that means. You haven't done anything yet. Is the
Mojave Field all right? That's the most important one."
"Yes. As far as I know," said Mr. Jordan.
"Is the field in Bangor, Maine, all right?"
"Bangor is top-notch."
"The Sierra field? There can be mountain floods, you know."
"Sierra is high."
"And Piqua, Ohio?"
"Buckeye beautiful."
"So what could have gone wrong?" Fielding demanded.
"I can't talk about it on the phone, Mr. Fielding. It's in that
sensitive area,"
"Well, get over here and tell me."
"You couldn't come here, sir? I'm rather chockablock with
work."
"Do you want to keep this account?" said Fielding.
"I can wedge in time this afternoon."
"You bet you can," said Fielding. "If you want to make
millions."
He hung up the receiver and felt better. He had Feldman,
O'Connor and Jordan just where he wanted them, just under his heel.
If he had paid them a fancy retainer, they would have given him
fancy footwork. But he had hung a piece of sweet bait just out of
reach of their quivering tentacles, and that kept them scurrying
where he wanted them to scurry. They smelled a monumental fortune
and they had already killed for it.
Fielding swiveled his chair to face the large picture window
filled by the Rockies, the new playground of the mindless. The
Rockies had killed men since the Indians came down across the
Bering Strait. Froze them like flies in the winter, let them thaw
out and stink in the summer. White men came, built their little
protected nests, briefly stuck their fur-wrapped faces into the
air, and said how beautiful nature was. Beautiful? Nature
killed.
Fielding looked at the Rockies and remembered the first meeting
with Feldman, O'Connor, and Jordan nearly eight months before.
Everything had been so Christmassy in December. The commodities
market had taken that dip and there was less whiter wheat growing
under the snows of America's plains than at any time since the
Thirties.
Feldman and O'Connor and Jordan had greeted him personally for
their presentation. Lights of red and green and blue hung from palm
trees. A ceramic Santa Claus which dispensed scotch from its groin
leaned against a bookcase. Feldman nervously explained it was left
over from the office Christmas party. He had a smooth tan with
manicured gray hair and a pinky ring with a diamond big enough to
send sun signals half way across the country. O'Connor was pale
with freckles and large bony hands that worked themselves together.
His blue striped tie was knotted tight enough for a penance. And
then there was Jordan, even-capped white teeth, black hair so
neatly billowing it looked as if it had come from a cheap plastic
mold. Eyes like black immies. He wore a dark striped suit with
too-wide shoulders and too-flaring lapels and, of all things, a
buckle in the back. The buckle was silver.
Fielding entered the room like a modest lord among gaudy
servants.
"It is truly an honor to have you here, sir," said Feldman. "And
I might add, a pleasure."
"A real pleasure," said O'Connor.
"A deep pleasure," said Jordan.
"There is no pleasure for me, gentlemen," said Fielding as
Feldman took his coat and O'Connor his brief-case. "I am in
mourning for a beautiful person. You may never have heard of him.
No history books will carry his name to future generations, no
songs will praise his deeds. Yet truly this person was a man among
men."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Feldman had said.
"The good die young," said O'Connor.
"Most distressing," said Jordan.
"His name was Oliver. He was my manservant," said Fielding.
"A good manservant is better than a rotten scientist," Feldman
had allowed. O'Connor thought so too.
"A good manservant is the closest thing to Christ on earth,"
said Jordan. Feldman had to agree with that. O'Connor noted that in
his faith it was the highest honor to be called handmaiden of the
Lord.
"I am determined that his name will be remembered. I am
determined that men will say Oliver with respect, reverence, and
yes, even joy. That is why I am here."
"We can set it to music," said Feldman and he began to hum a
Negro spiritual and then created the words to the music. "Anybody
here see my old friend, Oliver?"
Fielding shook his head. "No," he said.
"You're not focusing for prime thrust," said Jordan to
Feldman.
"Not at all," said O'Connor.
"I have a better idea," said Fielding.
"I like it," said Feldman.
"I have set up a foundation with an original endowment of my
entire fortune, fifty million dollars."
"Beautiful," said Feldman.
"Solid," said O'Connor.
"Beautifully solid base," said Jordan.
"It's more than a base, gentlemen," said Fielding and he
signaled for his briefcase. "As you gentlemen know, I have been
involved in industry, successfully involved, except for a few minor
tax losses in the southwest."
"And a leader of the Denver community," said Feldman.
"A solid leader," said O'Connor. "As were your parents and
grandparents."
"The sort of client we would be proud to represent," said
Jordan.
Fielding opened the briefcase. Carefully he took from it four
plastic boxes with metal latches. The boxes were clear plastic and
contained grain of white and brown and golden colors. One was
labeled "soybean," another "wheat," another "rice," and another
"barley."
"These are the basic grains of man's sustenance," said
Fielding.
"They have a natural beauty," said Jordan,
"I feel better since I've started eating granola," said
Feldman.
"The staff of life," said O'Connor.
"First I have a small request. Please refrain from comments
until I ask for them," said Fielding. "You are looking at four
miracles. You are looking at the answer, the final answer to man's
problems with famine. These grains were grown in a single month's
time."
There was silence in the room. Fielding paused. When he saw the
three partners' eyes start to wander uncomfortably, he went on.
"I don't think you are aware of what a month-grown grain is. It
is more than a faster process. It's twelve crops a year where a
farmer had only one or two before. Through my process, we can
increase the food yield a minimum of six times on earth. In all
weather and in all conditions. I need only one thing now. A demonstration, well-publicized, to commit the world-especially
the underdeveloped world-to this process. It is important, vitally
important now, because I hear the winter wheat crop this year will
be a small one."
"Who owns the patent?" asked O'Connor.
"It is not patented. It is a secret process I intend to give to
all mankind," said Fielding.
"But for your protection, don't you think it would be wise to
have some sort of patent? We could arrange it."
Fielding shook his head. "No. But what I will do for your
services is give your firm 20 percent of the profit on every
soybean, every grain of rice, grain of wheat, or barley grown in
the world."
O'Connor's tie knot bobbed, Feldman salivated, and Jordan, his
eyes glowing, breathed heavily.
"The entire world is going to use what I call the Oliver method,
in tribute to my noble servant."
The three men bowed their heads and Fielding passed out pictures
of Oliver, taken by a sheriff's office after the air accident. He
said he would appreciate it if they would keep those pictures in
their offices. They agreed. But it was when they saw the
demonstration that they vowed ultimate fidelity to the memory of
Oliver.
In Rocky Mountain winter, they saw a twenty-yard patch of snowy
mountainside planted with wheat treated by the Oliver method, as
Fielding had called it. Saw workmen pickax into the soil and cover
the seed with rock-hard pieces of ground and returned thirty days
later to see stalks of wheat growing in the sub-zero wind.
"The weather is only a slight hindrance to the Oliver method,"
Fielding yelled above the wind. O'Connor pocketed a stalk with his
gloved hand. Back in Los Angeles, they got the verdict from a
biologist.
"Yep. This is wheat all right."
Could it have been grown on a mountainside in winter?"
"No way."
If it could be, grown full in just one month, what would you
say?
"Whoever knew how to do it would be the richest man in the
world."
That report from the biologist had come seven months before.
Fielding had waited two days for them to get the biologist's
report, as he knew they would, and then he had brought his little
problem to Jordan. In an effort to make the market more receptive
to fast-grown grains, Fielding had sold winter wheat futures
massively with funds from the Oliver Foundation. He was troubled by
this. A couple of commodities brokers suspected something. Some
were trying to blackmail him. A third might be considering telling
the government. There was nothing else to do but confess all and
give the formula for Wondergrains-Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan had
changed what they called the packaging concept from the Oliver
method to Wondergrains-to the public. Just announce it and give it
away. Free.
"Don't worry. I'll take care of everything, Mr. Fielding. Just
you protect our little project, eh?" said Jordan, which was what
Fielding knew he would say, which was why he had selected Feldman,
O'Connor and Jordan, whom he knew to be Giordano with many cousins
who could make people disappear.
And there were a few more people who had threatened to get in
the way, people who had intruded upon the orderly plan to bring
Wondergrains to the world.
And Fielding had presented their names to Jordan in a kind of
laundry list for mass murder, and Jordan had said he would take
care of everything.
It had worked so well, thought Fielding. He had combined his
public relations element with his killerarm element and with luck,
he would live to see the fruits of his project-the vast and utter
destruction of entire civilizations. Without luck, it would happen
anyway. It was too late to stop it.
His digital desk calendar predicted he had three months,
eighteen days to live. The project itself should be finalized in a
little more than a month.
The intercom intruded upon his reverie. It was his new
secretary. He always had new secretaries. They didn't stay more
than a week.
"I have the list for tomorrow's demonstration," came her wriggly
voice.
''Bring it in."
"Could I slip it under the door?"
"Of course not."
"Those pictures in your office. They're sort of… sort of
stomach-turning."
"Those pictures," said Fielding looking at the sheriff's impact
shots of Oliver, "are what this whole foundation is about. When I
hired you, I asked if you were committed to decency and you said
yes. Well, I'm not going to put up lying pictures around the
office. He died horribly and I want the world to know that. I want
them to know the truth about Oliver. The truth will set you
free."
She brought in the lists with her eyes fixed on the mauve
carpeting. She did not even look up when she handed Fielding the
lists. Pakistan had officials at the Sierra and Mojave for the
first planting. Chad, Senegal, and Mali were listed for the Mojave
as those countries afflicted by drought opted mainly for the desert
demonstrations. Russia and China were scheduled for desert,
mountain, midwest, and north. England was scheduled for Bangor,
Maine, and France for Ohio.
But nowhere on the lists was India.
"Did you phone the Indian Embassy?" asked Fielding.
"Yes sir."
"Why aren't they coming? We've spent close to $700,000 on
pamphlets, brochures, charts, photos. Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan
had a postage bill of over $20,000. I know India was informed."
"Well, they said they didn't have anyone available."
"They have four agricultural experts in the United States. I
know that for a fact. I know their names. India is the most
important country on that list."
"Yes sir, I know that. Please don't yell. I have it written down
outside."
Fielding watched her scurry from the office. The intercom buzzed
on.
"Sir, the four agricultural experts assigned to the Indian
embassy are occupied tomorrow as follows: one is lecturing at Yale
on America's responsibility to share its food; another is a panel
member on… I have the title right here… 'America the
Monster'… he said he would have liked to come to the
demonstration but the ambassador made him go to the panel
discussion on the threat of being sent back to India if he didn't.
The third is speaking on American hypocrisy at Berkeley… he
never goes to any agricultural exhibits anyhow… and the
fourth is sick with stomach cramps. Too much rich American food or
something."
"But they must know this is the miracle grain."
"Their only answer, sir, was that they're too busy fighting
hypocrisy. Perhaps if we told them the process was part of a
nuclear weapon. When I mentioned nuclear, they were very interested
until they found out it only had to do with the seeds."
"No," said Fielding.
When Jordan arrived that afternoon to discuss his little
problem, Fielding demanded that an Indian representative be at one
demonstration at least.
"It's critical. India is the most important market of all," said
Fielding.
"India doesn't buy foodstuffs. I've checked this out
thoroughly," said Jordan. "If you give them grains on credit, they
take them, because if they wait long enough the credit will be
forgotten. But their policy, and it has generally worked,
Mr. Fielding, is that if there's a surplus of grain anywhere,
they're going to get it free anyhow. They'd rather put their money
in nuclear devices."
"But they have an incredible famine problem. I've seen it
myself."
"Mr. Fielding, do you remember what India did last year? First
they announced that they were not going to accept any more grain
from the United States which had given them something like $16
billion-that's billion-in free food. Then, to punish the imperialist
American monsters, they supported the Arab oil squeeze. When oil
prices went up, so did the price of fertilizer. It tripled. India
couldn't buy any, because all their money was going into nuclear
bombs. So they asked America for more free food. And we gave it to
them."
"That's insane."
"So's India," said Jordan. "If we paid them to take the
Wondergrain, they'd take it. But they're not going to buy it."
"Then we'll have to arrange some kind of credit for them," said
Fielding, "or else India will become…" And he did not finish
his sentence for it would have disclosed that if India did not buy
the Wondergrain, it would become the food-richest nation on earth.
What was left of earth.
"All right. What's the problem you mentioned?" said
Fielding.
Fortunately, it turned out to be minor. It had taken months for
Jordan's people to locate that talky commodities man, that
Willoughby. One of the men who had arranged Willoughby's "accident"
had had his house invaded. Mr. Fielding should be careful for the
next few weeks. Check his door locks and things like that.
"This was the only slipup," Jordan said. "The other commodities
people, those other names you gave me, all of them were handled.
Just this little problem and I think you should be careful."
"I've been careful all my life. It's too late to be careful
now," said Fielding. And he warned Jordan that if India were not
part of the Wondergrain plan, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan might
find itself without its percentage.
Of course, thought Fielding without mentioning it, if India
became the most workable nation on earth, that would be almost as
good as eliminating all the bugs all together.
CHAPTER FIVE
Remo and Chiun saw the demonstration site down the flat highway.
A herd of limousines, television trucks, and police vehicles
surrounded a high fence on a rise three miles off, baking in the
summer desert.
"I do not believe food could grow here," said Chiun and once
again told the story of how poor soil had forced Sinanju to send
its best sons to foreign lands to earn food for the village. The
way Chiun told it, a callow youth had ventured forth into a hostile
world with nothing but his hands, his mind, and his character.
"You were forty when you became Master of Sinanju," said
Remo.
"Fifty or a hundred, a new experience makes children of us all,"
said Chiun.
In his search for Jordan who had paid Johnny Deussio who had
paid Pete who paid the two who died in Harborcreek after killing
Willoughby, Remo had been told by an all-too-bubbly secretary that
Mr. Jordan "will be at the most major agricultural advancement since the
plow."
"Where?" Remo had asked.
"The stunning great step of mankind by the one small
agricultural step of one man, James Orayo Fielding."
"Where?"
"The salvation of the world which is what you might call this
Wondergrain. For…"
"Just tell me where it's happening," and hearing "the Mojave
Desert," Remo asked where in the Mojave and endured another three
minutes of windy wonder until he got the exact location. That was
yesterday. They rented a car and drove and there were Chiun's
trunks right in the back seat and in the car trunk.
"I feel like a porter," Remo had said, loading the large
colorful trunks into the car. "Could you make it on one less trunk,
maybe?"
To this question, Chiun had had a sudden attack of only being
able to speak Korean, and since Remo had picked up some Korean over
the years, Chiun could speak only a Pyongyang dialect which Remo
did not know.
As they neared the demonstration site, Chiun's English naturally
unproved, especially when he found an excuse to repeat the legend
of Sinanju. He also had a question. Where could he change paper
money for real money, gold?
"Where'd you get paper money?" asked Remo.
"It's mine," said Chiun.
"Where? You picked it up in that poolroom in East St. Louis,
didn't you?"
"It belongs to me," said Chiun.
"You played pool for it, didn't you? Didn't you? You
gambled."
"I did not gamble. I educated."
"I remember this big harangue you gave me once. The wasting of
my talents on games. How when you put your skills to something
frivolous, you lose your skills. I mean, you made it sound like I
was betraying Sinanju itself. You even told me about your teacher
and the balls that could go in all directions. I remember that. I
was never to use my skills in gambling."
"There is nothing worse," said Chiun solemnly, "than a talky
white man." And he would say no more on the subject.
It was not hard to find Jordan. Remo told one of the girls
handing out Wondergrain brochures that he was a magazine writer and
he wanted to see Jordan.
Jordan came trotting, fuschia Palm Beach suit, a tie of woven
mud and silver, capped teeth, and plastic black hair, wondering in
basso profundo how best he could be of service. Remo wanted an
interview.
"Mr. Fielding, the great agricultural genius of our times, is
busy now but you can see him after NBC News tonight. As of
today, you will be speaking to a world figure. That's the whole
world."
"The round one?" said Chiun, folding his long hands before
himself.
"I want to talk to you, not Mr. Fielding," said Remo.
"Anything to be of help. Mr. Fielding will be ready at 8:30
tonight after his worldwide exposure on NBC. I must run now."
But Jordan did not run far. In fact, he did not run at all.
Something was holding the padded shoulder of his fuschia
jacket.
"Oh, me. You want to interview me. Fine," said Jordan.
A loudspeaker crackled with a Western voice explaining the
limitations of available land as Remo went with Jordan into the
smaller of two tents, used as a press shed. Chiun stayed to hear
the lecture because, as he explained, he was an expert on starving
peoples. Just fifteen hundred years ago…
Two reporters hung, passed out drunk, over a small couch near
the press bar. The bartender washed glasses. Remo refused an
offered drink and sat down with Jordan across from a
typewriter.
"Ask away. I'm at your disposal," said Jordan.
"You most certainly are, Giordano," said Remo. "Why did you have
those commodities men killed?"
"I beg your pardon," said Jordan, his black eyes blinking under
indoor fluorescent.
"Why did you have Willoughby killed?"
"Willoughby who?" said Jordan evenly.
Remo pressured a knee cap.
"Eeeeow," Jordan wheezed.
The reporters woke up and seeing it was just a simple assault
went back to sleep. The bartender, a giant of a man with shoulders
like doorways, leaped over the bar with a thick three-foot wooden
stick. With a massive swing from his heels he brought the club down
on Mr. Jordan's assailant. There was a resounding crack. The crack
was the stick; the head was still untouched. The bartender brought
a fist smashing toward the assailant's face. The fist felt like it
was deflected by a small gust of air and then there was a very
funny sting under the bartender's nose and he felt very much like
going to sleep. He did, underneath a desk.
"You didn't answer me," said Remo.
"Right," said Jordan. "Answer you. Answer you. Willoughby. I
seem to remember the man. Commodities man. Willoughby."
"Why did you have him killed?"
"Is he dead?" said Jordan, massaging his knee.
"Very," said Remo.
"The good die young," said Jordan.
Remo put a thumb on Jordan's throat. It brought the truth out of
the man. Gagging, but the truth. Willoughby was killed because he
was threatening the greatest agricultural advance in the history of
mankind. In the history of mankind.
"What other history is there?" asked Remo.
Willoughby had evidence that the grain market was artificially
depressed. Willoughby did not know why but he suspected something
big. It was hard to breathe. Would the stranger release his throat
grip?
"Whew," said Jordan getting all the oxygen he needed. "Thank
you," he said and straightened his tie and brushed flat his fuschia
suit. "Vito, Al," he yelled. "Will you come here a minute?" And to
Remo he confided they could help explain some things. Willoughby
wasn't the only one, nor were there just commodities brokers. There
were some construction men too. And oh, yes, said Jordan when two
large men in silk suits with heavy bulges at the shoulders entered,
there would soon be a reporter who couldn't keep his hands to
himself.
Hearing "hands to himself" one of the reporters in a boozy
slumber said, "I'm sorry, Mabel. You've got to realize I respect
you as a person."
"Vito, Al. Kill this sonuvabitch," said Jordan.
"Right here, Mr. Jordan?" said Al, drawing a large square .45
with pearl insets on the handle.
"Yes."
"In front of the reporters?"
"They've passed out," said Jordan.
"You said it, boss," said Vito. "Maybe we should use a
silencer?"
"Good idea," said Jordan, hobbling to his men. "I have important
things to do. Don't worry about police. It's self-defense. Defend
yourselves."
Remo idly listened to this, drumming on a typewriter roll with
his fingertips, legs crossed, leaning back in a chair. When Al
aimed the bolstered barrel of a small automatic at him, Remo
centered his weight and just in case Chiun might be looking into
the press tent, he kept his left wrist very straight behind the
typewriter carriage. He had one worry. The chair. But as his spine
pressed down suddenly into the chair, it held. That was good. And
his left hand was perfectly straight from palm to forearm.
Al was squeezing the trigger when he saw and felt simultaneously
the silenced automatic come back into his chest along with
something else. It was heavy. He felt himself jammed into a desk. A
Royal Standard was in his chest along with, he guessed, the
automatic. At least that was where his arm ended and the last time
he had seen the gun a fraction of a second before. The return arm
of the carriage was jammed into his right ear. The black roller was
into where his nose bone had been. He found breathing impossible,
largely because his right lung was flat. Which was all right too
because the heart didn't need oxygen anymore since his left aorta
supplied only a space bar and the right ventricle ended at "D,"
"F," and "G."
"Keep down the frigging noise, will you?" said one of the
reporters. "I'm trying to work." The reporter rolled over on a
desk, fluffing a raincoat for a softer rest for his head.
"Jeez," said Vito.
He said it again. "Oh, Jeez," and without silencer he squeezed
the trigger of his .45 and kept on squeezing. Unfortunately his
target had moved. So had the .45. It was in his mouth and before
everything went black forever, which was very quickly, he was
amazed at how little it hurt. Sort of one loud sting in the back of
his head.
Jordan watched the back of Vito's head splatter against the new
fuchsia suit and onto the imported tie with the silver and mud
weave.
"We should talk," said Jordan. "Let us reason together."
"Am I correct in assuming you had those commodities people
killed because they knew about efforts to depress the market in
wheat, winter wheat to be exact?"
"Correct. Absolutely. Totally correct. Totally."
"And that was so that people would invest in this new
Wondergrain, because of the larger need now?"
"Make people more responsive. Correct. Totally correct. Greater
need. Greater buying. It's going to be a boon to mankind. A boon. A
helpful boon. Totally a boon. I can cut you in. You'll be rich
beyond your wildest dreams."
"And Fielding?"
"He's an idiot," said Jordan. "We can control the whole thing.
That dummy wanted to give away the profits. Name the grain after
his dingy butler. It was I who saw the whole thing as Wondergrain,
the miracle answer to today's food problems. I took over the
packaging and marketing. I control the shares. We can be rich.
Rich. Rich." Jordan screamed the "rich."
Most men scream when their spinal column snaps into their
navel.
If Remo had thought only about what Jordan was saying and let
his body flow the stroke, there would would have been no problem.
If he had thought about just the stroke, there would have been no
problem. But thinking about both, Remo noticed something wrong. Not
that the final effect was different. Jordan lay on the press tent
floor, ears at heel like a folded card.
It was the performance that was wrong, the angle of penetration
that lacked the perfect perpendicular to his upper arm, which now
felt a small meaningless twinge. The difference between Sinanju and
other methods, other methods of anything for that matter, was that
the form must be precisely correct, no matter what the result.
As Chiun had said: "When the results are different, it is too
late." So Remo did the stroke twice more around an imaginary
Jordan, the flat hand tip coming back towards itself in the snap
that became perpendicular on final impact. It was right. Good.
"Disgrace," came the squeaky Oriental voice from the flap of the
tent. "Now you learn to do it right. Now you bother to learn
correctness. You have shamed me." It was Chiun.
"In front of whom? Who the hell else would know?" said Remo.
"Imperfection is its own disgrace," said Chiun. And then in
Korean bewailing the years of pearls cast before ungrateful pale
pieces of pig's ear and how not even the Master of Sinanju could
transform mud into diamonds.
"No," said Chiun to someone behind him. "Do not come in. You
should not look upon shame."
A telephone rang behind Remo. A reporter stirred, woke up, and
answered it groggily.
"Yeah. Right. It's me. I'm right on top of everything. Yeah.
They planted the grain this morning under sparkling hot skies, the
new Wondergrain that can save the world from starvation, according
to James O. Fielding, 42, of Denver. Yeah. Let the lead stand.
Nothing happening. I'll stay right on it. Right. Harvest will be in
four weeks… the Wondergrain. It's rough out here in the
Mojave. Let me tell you. Change that lead to planted the grain in
the dry unyielding sand of the Mojave Desert.' Etcetera. Etcetera.
Right." The reporter hung up and crawled over his raincoat to the
bar, where he poured a full glass of Hennessey cognac, drank two
gulps, and went slowly to the floor head first so that he was
sleeping upside down.
"It is CIA plot," came a woman's voice behind Chiun.
She was beautiful standing there in the desert sunlight, rich
black hair flowing to her shoulders, full womanly breasts and a
face of jeweled perfection, eyes dark like an unlit universe, and
skin smooth with youth. She also had a mouth. Loud.
"Is CIA plot. I know. CIA plot. CIA ruining goodwill of American
peoples, attempting to destroy the revolution. Hello, my name is
Maria Gonzales. Long live the revolution."
"Who is this?" Remo asked Chiun.
"A brave young girl helping revolution against white imperialist
oppressors," said Chiun sweetly.
"You tell her who you work for?"
"He is a revolutionary. All third-world peoples are
revolutionary," said Maria.
"Could you put aside that revolutionary jazz while you're with
me?" said Remo.
"As a matter of fact, yes. I am a farmer first. I talk
revolution like you talk apple pie. If you are a friend of this
sweet old gentleman, I'm really glad to meet you." She extended a
hand. Remo took it. The palm was soft and warm. She smiled. Remo
smiled. Chiun slapped the hands apart. Such touching was improper
in public.
"I'm an agricultural representative of the democratic government
of Free Cuba. I think you people really have something good here,"
said Maria. She smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun got between
them.
Fielding was pressing the final soybean into the crusty dry soil
when Remo got to the inner edge of the crowd. The field itself was
on top of a small hill. While the planting area was no more than
twenty yards square, it sat inside an open area four times that
size, surrounded by high, barbed-wire-crowned hurricane fencing.
The field had a strange smell to Remo, a slight odor that was more
a memory than a sense.
"Tomorrow," Fielding was saying, "I will plant a similar crop in
Bangor, Maine, and the next day in the Sierras, and the following
day, the final planting in Ohio. You are welcome to attend those
also."
After he covered the last seed with his foot, he straightened up
and rubbed his back. "Now, the sun filter," said Fielding and the
workmen covered the plot with an opaque plastic tarpaulin, shaped
like a tent.
"What you have just seen," said Fielding, catching his breath,
"is the most significant advance in agriculture since the plow. I
will tell you this. It is chemical. It eliminates the need for
expensive land preparation, it expands the parameters of
temperature and water needs which has kept tillable land at only a
small percentage of the earth's surface. It requires no fertilizer
or pesticides. It will grow in thirty days and I hope you will all
be back here that day to witness this revolution. Gentlemen, you
are seeing an end to world hunger."
There was a scattering of applause from foreign newsmen, some
mumbling about whether this would be ten or fifteen seconds on
national television, and then from the press shed came a
shriek.
"Dead men. There are dead men all over the place. A
massacre."
"Wow," said a reporter near Remo and Maria. "A real story now.
I'm always lucky. Send me to a nothing story and I always luck
out."
Like seepage from a ruptured water tank, the mob flowed toward
the press shed trailing television cables. A turbaned man, with a
nameplate that said "Agriculture India" tugged at Remo's arm.
"Kind sir, does this mean I do not collect my money for
attending?"
"I dunno," said Remo. "I don't work here."
"I took a trip for nothing, then. For nothing. Promised two
thousand dollars and will receive nothing. Western lies and
hypocrisy," he said in his Indian singsong, the language of a
people Chiun had once said had only two consistent traits:
hypocrisy and starvation.
Sweat beaded on the patrician face of James Orayo Fielding as he
watched the press disappear from the Mojave compound, heading for
the twin tents outside the perimeter fence. Suddenly, it appeared
as if his entire life descended on him with fatigue and he reached
out for a steady arm. He grabbed for support a thin young man with
high cheekbones and thick wrists. It was Remo.
"Your friends are gone," said Remo.
"The news mentality," said Maria. "In Cuba we do not allow
journalists to cater to such morbid curiosity."
"Sure," said Remo. "That's because murder is an everyday
thing."
"You're being unfair," said Maria.
"It is hard to make an American fair," said Chiun. "It is a
thing I have been trying to teach him, lo these many years."
"Korean fairness, Little Father?" said Remo, laughing.
Chiun did not think that was funny, nor did Maria. Fielding
steadied himself. Weakly he took a pill from his shirt pocket and
swallowed it dry.
Remo's eyes signaled ever so briefly for Chiun to get Maria out
of hearing range. Chiun suddenly noticed a vision of hibiscus, lo,
across the desert, like rising zephyrs above the Katmandu Gardens,
Had Maria ever seen the Katmandu gardens when the sun was mellow
and the river cool like a gentle breath of a friendly north wind?
In an instant, Chiun had her walking out into the desert
aimlessly.
"You have very unnice friends," said Remo to Fielding.
"What do you mean?"
"Your friends kill people."
"Those deaths in the shed that everyone's yelling about?"
"Others," said Remo. "Commodities men. Construction men."
"What?" said Fielding. He was feeling weak, he said.
"Feel stronger or you'll go the way of your soybean. Planted." But Fielding collapsed and Remo could tell it was not
an act.
Remo carried Fielding to a small shack built inside the fenced
compound for security guards and there, Fielding recovered and told
Remo how he had discovered a grain process that could end
starvation, could literally end hunger and want. All his troubles
had started when he discovered this. Yes, he knew about the
commodities men. He knew about the depressed grain market.
"I told them, I told Jordan, we didn't need that sort of help.
The Oliver method, as I called it-now it's Wondergrain-it didn't
need artificial help. It would replace other grains naturally
because it's better. But they wouldn't listen to me. I don't even
own the company anymore. I'll show you the papers. Greed has ruined
us. Millions will starve because of greed. I'm going to have to go
to court, won't I?"
"I guess," said Remo.
"All I need is four months. Then I'm willing to go to jail for
life or whatever. Just four months and I can make the most
significant contribution to mankind, ever."
"Four months?" asked Remo.
"But that won't do any good," said Fielding.
"Why not?"
"Because people have been trying to stop me since I started. Did
I say four months? Well, really I don't need that. Just a month.
Just thirty days until the miracle grain comes up. Then the whole
world will plant it. They will throw out their old crops and put in
the new feed for mankind. I know it."
"I'm not in the food business," said Remo. But what the man said
haunted him and he sneaked some seeds from the briefcase of James
Orayo Fielding and told him he might be able to help.
"How?" asked Fielding.
"We'll see," said Remo who that afternoon checked out two
things. One, according to a botanist, was that the seeds were real.
The second, according to a city clerk in the Denver municipal
building, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan now owned the controlling
shares of the corporation which had rights to Wondergrain, as of a
date three months and sixteen days in the future.
As Remo explained to Chiun that night:
"Little Father, I have a chance to do something really good for
the world. This man is honest."
"For one to do what he knows, is good," said Chiun. "That is all
the good any man can do. All else is ignorance."
"No," said Remo. "I can save the world."
And to this the Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly.
"In our records, my son, we know that those who would make
heaven tomorrow make hell today. All the robbers who ever stole and
all the conquerers who ever conquered and all the petty evil men
who preyed on the helpless have not, in their counted history,
caused as much massive grief as one man who attempts to save
mankind and gets others to follow him."
"But I don't need others," said Remo.
"So much the worse," said the Master of Sinanju.
CHAPTER SIX
Johnny "Deuce" Deussio saw it on television while waiting for
the Johnny Carson show. It was the latenight action news. Johnny
Deuce always watched it between his feet. Beth Marie did her nails.
She had so many curlers and pins and rods in her starkly blonde
hair that Johnny Deuce long ago stopped making advances to her. It
was too much like loving an erector set with cream.
Beth Marie did not complain. She thought it was nice, in fact,
and that Johnny was becoming more gentlemanly. The bed came around
their feet in a circle. To his left was the light panel indicating
the electronic security systems were working. It also had an open
phone to his cousin, Sally. Because of the dream that night, he now
had a small-caliber pistol tucked near the control panel.
Beth Marie lathered cream on her face to his right. He fingered
the panel a lot while watching late night action news, starring Gil
Braddigan, anchorman. Un-like many other newsmen of St. Louis,
Braddigan did not require little gifts to do favors. He didn't know
enough to be bought off. Beth Marie thought Braddigan was sexy.
Johnny Deuce did not tell her that Braddigan was a flaming fag. You
didn't use that kind of language to your wife in bed.
"I think he's sexy," said Beth Marie, as Braddigan rode the
television into their bedroom with manicured face, hair, smile, and
voice. Johnny Deuce fingered the rising edge of the plastic call
buttons on the panel. He hoped Johnny Carson wouldn't unload
another rerun or have that squeaky-voiced writer as moderator.
Johnny Deuce did not like to fall asleep without the sounds of
friendly voices.
"Terrible," said Beth Marie.
"Huh?" said Johnny Deuce.
"Three men were mauled to death in some vegetable laboratory.
Out in the desert."
"Too bad," said Deussio. He was thinking about business. His
secretary had nice legs. She had nice breasts and a nice duff. She
had a sweet face. She wanted Deussio to get a divorce. Even though
she worked in only the legitimate fronts of Deussio enterprises,
she knew too much already. She had threatened that either she got
Deussio in marriage or she would leave. This was not a major
business decision. It was a simple one. If she left, her next
residence would be the bottom of the Missouri with concrete panty
hose over that lovely duff. Such was life. Deussio was startled to
feel Beth Marie touch him. In bed no less.
"They found one guy in this press room with a typewriter mashed
into his chest," she said.
"Awful," said Deussio. Willie "Pans" Panzini was another matter.
He was spending too much money on what Deussio was paying him. This
meant that Willie Pans was either stealing from Deussio, which was
bad and could be corrected by a firm lecture or some moderate
grief, or he was collecting money on his own from other sources,
which would be nonnegotiably terminal. Sally would have to find out
which. Perhaps stick a blowtorch in Willie Pans's face. Blowtorches
brought the truth out of people.
"Another man had his back broken. A whole piece of his spine
went right through his stomach. That's what the coroner out there
said," Beth Marie said.
"Awful," said Deussio.
"I think we knew him. We knew the man. We saw him last year when
we went to the coast. That lovely public relations person."
"What?" said Deussio sitting up in bed.
"All those killings. Your friend James Jordan was killed today
at some vegetable experiment."
"Wondergrain?"
"That's right."
"Jeeez," said Deussio, grabbing Beth Marie's shoulders and
demanding she repeat everything Gil Braddigan had said about the
desert killings. This was much like getting a stock market report
told to a social worker and filtered through a retard. All he got
was intimations of something horrible happening to their friend
Jordan whose wife had set such a nice spread in their Carmel home.
As Deussio listened and questioned he began to wonder.
"Thanks," he said, leaving the bed and ringing for Sally.
"John," said Beth Marie.
"What?"
"You want to?"
"Want to what?"
"You know what," said Beth Marie. "That."
"That's some way for a wife of eighteen years to talk," said
Deussio and met Sally running up the hallway with a drawn
snub-nosed .38.
He slapped Sally in the face.
"Dummy," said Johnny Deuce.
"What I do? What I do?"
And for that Johnny Deuce hit harder. The smack echoed down the
hallway.
"Will you shut up out there, I'm trying to watch TV," came Beth
Marie's voice.
"Why didn't you tell me about Giordano, out-on-the-coast
Giordano?"
"What Giordano?"
"Giordano who was killed today. Dreaming, huh? I was dreaming
that last time, huh? Dreaming. Those guys was frigging crushed to
death."
"I didn't hear nothing."
"Don't we get word no more? What is this? I could be killed in
my sleep. Dreaming, huh? I ain't sleeping in this house. We're
going to the mattresses," said Deussio, meaning his crime family
was preparing for war.
"Against who?" said Sally.
"Against what, you mean," said Johnny Deuce. "Against what."
"Yeah. What?"
"We don't know what, dummy," said Johnny Deuce and he slapped
Sally hard in the face and when Beth Marie complained again about
the noise in the hall, he told her to go finger herself. Sally did
not protest the slapping assaults against his pride. The closer one
got to John Deussio, the less one became affronted by his famous
temper and the more one appreciated an artist.
Deussiq had raised the level of mob war in the midwest to
exquisite craftsmanship. Neat surgical strikes that took out
precise portions of organizations and left profits undisturbed.
A group of bookmakers on Front Street in Marietta, Ohio, who
thought profits did not have to be shared totally with St. Louis
connections, learned one night the folly of independence. Each one
found himself in a warehouse, tied but not gagged. In this way, he
was able to hear the shock sounds of friends he knew. In the center
of the warehouse was a man stripped nude. When a spotlight flashed
on his face, they saw it had been the man who had promised them
protection from St. Louis for a far smaller cut than they had been
paying St. Louis. The man was swinging from a rope. The searchlight
lowered and they saw a reddish wet cavity where his stomach had
been. They heard their own groans and sobs and then the lights went
off and they were all in darkness.
One by one, each felt a cold edge of a knife press against his
solar plexus, felt his shirt buttons be unbuttoned, and waited. And
nothing happened. They were escorted out of the warehouses, untied,
and taken, shaking, to a hotel suite where food was laid out in
abundance. No one was hungry. A fat man with stains on his shirt
and great difficulty in speaking English introducted himself as
Guglielmo Balunta; he worked for people in St. Louis who provided
these gentlemen services and he wished, what was the word for it,
to toast their health and prosperity. Excuse his poor English.
He was worried, he said, because animals were about. They did
awful things. They were not businessmen like him and his guests.
All they knew was kill.
Cut stomachs and things. This did not help business, did it?
Everyone in the room assured Balunta it sure as hell didn't.
No.
But Balunta had a problem. If he couldn't return to St. Louis
and assure his people that they would get their cut, they would not
listen to him. These animals always have their ears for violence.
He needed to bring something home, he said, some pledge of good
faith, that business would continue as usual. Maybe a little better
than usual.
Men who just minutes before could not control bowel or bladder
assured their host he spoke very good English even if all the words
were not in English. The increased cut, well, yes, it seemed
reasonable. Fear made many previously unacceptable things
reasonable.
The success of this was only a small part of Johnny Deuce's
genius. For not only had he arranged it that not one bookmaker was
hurt and thus no profits were lost for the day but he saw great
possibilities and he shared his reasoning with Guglielmo Balunta.
They spoke in a Sicilian dialect, although Johnny's was not good,
having only learned it from his parents.
There were times, said Johnny Deuce, that offered incredible
opportunities, just because no one else had thought of them.
Balunta waved his hands, indicating he did not understand. Johnny,
driving their car back to St. Louis-he had asked to take Balunta
alone personally-had difficulty talking with both hands on the
wheel, but he continued.
Balunta was in for a very nice cut of the increase from the
gambling in Marietta. Not much. But enough of a causa bono
for contentment.
Balunta assured Johnny Deuce that he too would be rewarded for
his brilliant work. Johnny Deuce said this was not the point. Who
was the one man in the organization most trusted now by the top man
in St. Louis? It was Balunta, of course. He had just done a good
job.
But some day, Johnny reasoned, Balunta would be offended by what
was given him. Some day he would be cut out of something that
belonged to him. Some day he would have grievance against his
boss.
Balunta said this would never happen. He was close with the don.
And he held up two stubby fingers. Especially now that he had
brought this small southern Ohio town into line so neatly.
Especially now.
"No," said Johnny Deuce. "I am young and you are old but I know
as surely as the sun rises that disagreements occur in business."
And he named incidents and he named names and even pointed out that
Balunta had gotten his own position because his predecessor had had
to be eliminated.
This was true, admitted Balunta. And it was here that Deussio's
strategic brilliance began to show. When you have this disagreement
or trouble, or even when they are on the horizon, how hard will it
be to get to the top people? And when he said "get to" he took one
hand off the wheel and pointed it as if it were a gun.
Very hard, agreed Balunta. He conceded that they might even get
to him first. In fact, probably. Which was what kept most people in
line.
"Now tell me," said Deussio, "what does the horizon look like
now. You said it yourself. Clear."
"You're the guy coming home with the bacon," he said, lapsing
into English. "You're the guy who's due a bigger cut. You're the
fucking hero."
"So what you saying, Johnny Deuce?" asked Balunta.
"We hit the top now."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta. "This is a big thing. Too
big."
"It's either you hit them now while you got the advantage or
they get you when they have it. I admit, it's a hard choice. But
you do the hard thing today when it's easy or you take the hard
thing in the face tomorrow. When it's tough. Frigging tough. You
know I'm right."
Balunta was quiet as the car went through the countryside. And
Johnny Deuce further showed his genius, a genius that would give
most of the midwest mob quiet for more than a decade.
He began by telling Balunta he knew what Balunta was thinking.
If this young man is willing to have me go against my boss now,
wouldn't he, at the moment of success, do the same thing to me?
Balunta said he was thinking no such thing.
"But I would be foolish," continued Johnny Deuce. "If I go
against you, then my number two would see this and go against me.
Now if I do not go against you, my number two will worry what you
will do if he succeeds with me. I am the only one who can stop what
I have started and I have a vested interest in doing so. You are
going to give me a very big piece of the action from the outset. A
very big piece. Together we have no worries. We will work things
out for both our safeties."
But everyone, Balunta pointed out, wants it all.
"Everyone who doesn't know that all of it is a oneway ticket to
the marble orchard," said Johnny Deuce. "You'll see. It'll work if
we share. If we share, we're strong." "Mi Dio," said Balunta and Deussio knew that this was a
"yes." For ten days, bodies turned up downstream in the Missouri,
shotguns bloomed from the front windows of cars, brains were blown
into dinner linguine. Deussio struck so fast and so
quickly it was only when the St. Louis wars, as they were later
called, were over that those who mattered knew where the killing
had come from. And by that time, it was Don Guglielmo Balunta.
Johnny Deuce's talents and his proven loyalty created a new
order from St. Louis to Omaha. Such was Don Guglielmo's trust in
his young genius that when others would come to him with stories of
the crazy things that Johnny Deuce did, Don Guglielmo would
say:
"My Johnny does crazy things today that come out smart
tomorrow." When he hired the electronics experts, people hinted he
was crazy. When he hired the funny Orientals, people whispered he
was crazy. When he hired computer programmers, people said he was
crazy. And each time, Don Guglielmo Balunta would answer that his
Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow. Even when the word got
around about his strange dream and how he had young athletes try to
climb up to an impossible-to-reach window in his home, even then
Don Guglielmo told everyone his Johnny would be proven smart
tomorrow.
But when Johnny started ordering everyone to go to the
mattresses when there was no enemy in sight, Don Guglielmo was
instantly worried. He did not even have to send for Johnny Deuce.
Johnny came himself, with no bodyguard and a very fat
briefcase.
Johnny was paunchier now than in those early years when first
the two had assumed control. His hair surrendered to shiny scalp
along a thinning line of resistance. His face had lost the hard
lines to a smothering layer of flesh but the dark eyes still shone
with sharp fury.
Don Guglielmo, in a ruby smoking jacket, lounged on the edge of
a plush green couch set on what appeared to be acres of marble
flooring. Johnny Deuce sat on the edge of his chair, his feet
planted forward, his knees together, refusing a glass of Strega, a
piece of fruit, talk of weather and family. He told his don he was
worried.
Over the years Don Guglielmo would listen very carefully but
this time his hands raised and he said he would hear none of
it.
"This time," said Balunta, "you listen to me. I am more worried
than you. You listen. I talk. You go to the Miami Beach. You get
the sun. You get the rest. You get yourself a girl with those nice
titties that go up. You have wine. You eat the good food. You get
sun. Then we talk."
"Patron, we face the most deadly enemy. Deadliest
ever."
"Where?" said Balunta, his hands rising to the heavens. "Show me
this enemy. Where is he?"
"He is on the horizon. I've done a lot of thinking. There's
something going on in this country that eventually means the end of
us all. All of us. The organization. Everything. Not just here but
all over. It's not just that bad night I had. That was just the tip
of an iceberg that's going to destroy us all."
Don Guglilmo leaped from the sofa and grabbed Johnny Deuce's
head in his hands. Palms to ears, he raised Deussio's head so their
eyes must meet.
"You get the rest. You get the rest now. No more talk. You
listen to your don. You get the rest. No more talk. After you rest,
we talk. Okay? Okay?"
"As you say," said Johnny Deuce.
"Atsa good. I worry for you," said Balunta.
And Johnny Deuce told his don he could use a drink but not the
bought stuff. Good red wine made especially for the don. And wine
was brought in in a large green gallon jug and placed on the
slate-gray table top. Deussio placed a hand over his glass and did
not raise it.
"You won't take the drink with your don?"
Johnny Deuce removed his hand from the cut crystal glass.
"The worries are in your head. You think your don would poison
his right arm?" said Balunta. "Would I poison my heart? My brains?
You are the legs of my throne. Never. Never." And to show his good
faith, Balunta took the glass sitting before his Johnny and drank
it all. Then he threw the glass toward the wall but it fell short,
cracking on the marble floor.
"I knew you wouldn't poison me, Don Guglielmo," said
Deussio.
"Then why you no drink the wine with your don?"
Guglielmo Balunta wanted to express himself with his hands.
Wanted to throw them out wide to express his confusion. But they
did not move very well. They felt icy and they stung gently as if
immersed in fresh Vichy water. He felt giddy and light. When he
stepped back to the couch the legs did not step with him. So he
went back anyway and almost reached the couch. The fall seemed far
away, not hurting as a collapse on marble usually did but rather a
gentle laying down so that he was looking up at his beautiful
ceiling. His Johnny was saying something. He kept talking about
inevitabilities and rolled from his briefcase that funny long paper
with the holes in it. Guglielmo Balunta did not care. He thought of
a very white little rock he once had near Messina where he was born. He had thrown it down into the narrow
straits that separated Sicily from Italy and told his friends: "I
will live until the sea gives up that rock." He thought about his
youth and then saw a vision of the straits of Messina. Something
white was coming up through the waves. A speck. No. His rock.
Johnny Deuce did not know for sure if Don Guglielmo could hear
him. Sally and the other men were already coming through the
outside gate of the Balunta estate. Balunta's household men would
be sent to a small regime in Detroit. They would not fight if the
don were dead because there was no one left to fight for. However,
if Johnny were alone and standing over the corpse, they might take
out their rage of their own failure on him. So it would be quick.
And in case his don could still hear him, he wanted him to know why
he had to kill him.
"This sheet is the figuring of several years. Things are
happening in this country that have no reason to happen. I saw it
several years ago when Scubisci had his troubles in the east. We
called this 'no reason' the X-factor. And we said this "no reason"
is a reason. So all of a sudden a tight city becomes untight and
politicians and police are going to jail all of a sudden with
prosecutors having evidence they shouldn't have. Judges we've owned
for years suddenly terrorized by some other force. That force is
the X-factor, and if you look at it, you'll realize we're through.
In ten or fifteen years, we're not going to be able to do
business."
Sally was past the front doors with his own men and their
weapons came out. There was murmuring in the hallway outside the
vast marble-flooring living room and Johnny Deuce called everyone
inside.
"Heart attack," he said, keeping the computer printouts
concealed against his side, even though he knew the bodyguards
would no more understand them than Balunta did.
"Yeah. Heart attack," said one of the house bodyguards and
Johnny Deuce nodded for Sally to take them out of the room. On the
way out, one of the guards whispered to Sally: "What is he, talking
to a stiff?" And Sally cuffed him in the back of the head and the
bodyguard understood that.
Deussio continued in the empty room. He told his dead don that
the X-factor was a force that was making government work, not for
those who tried to buy it but for those who voted for it. And this
X-factor was growing stronger. Therefore every day an attack was
delayed, the chances of overcoming X-factor grew smaller. By the
time someone with Balunta's mentality had been ready to move, it
would be too late.
The enforcer unit of this X-factor had brushed through St. Louis
a few days before, just an edge of the iceberg. It was after
something else at the time.
"We have one small advantage and I'm going to use it," said
Deussio. "The X-factor does not know we understand it. See here.
Look."
And he unfolded the long computer printout listing
probabilities. Even if Don Guglielmo had been breathing, he would
have understood it no better. Which was why he had to die. The
strategist, John Vincent Deussio, knew he had to move now, even if
others didn't. Which made him what he was. Which made him very
dangerous. Unlike the others, he knew he was in a war for survival.
So he felt very free to kill anyone who would not aid the
cause.
He drank the unpoisoned wine Balunta had poured for himself, the
wine into which Johnny had not dropped the poison pellet, and sat
back on the sofa to prepare his attack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first Remo saw the rough sketch of himself was at the Ohio
demonstration. The surrounding fields were green with corn and
Fielding had explained that he also had to show the process worked
in good, moderate climate soil as well as bad. The field was raised
on a little hill surrounded by a chain-link fence.
Maria Gonzales, carrying a Russian passport because her country
did not have relations with the United States, spoke with a French
agronomist who noted his country had large farming sections with
climate and soil like Ohio.
Chiun engaged several cameramen from television networks, asking
why there was so much violence and filth in daytime dramas
nowadays. Obviously one had replied with a sharp answer because
Remo saw ambulance attendants lifting the portable TV camera from a
man's shoulder and placing him on a stretcher.
Newsmen worked in shirt sleeves. The Miami County Sheriff's
office wore open-necked short-sleeved shirts and carried heavy
sidearms, the sheriff having vowed that there would be no
Mojave-type incident here in Piqua, Ohio.
"We're not like those people out there," said the sheriff.
"Out where?" asked a reporter.
"Out anywhere," said the sheriff. Sweat ran down his face like
glycerin beads over packaged lard. Remo scanned the crowd looking
for any possible attack on Fielding. He caught Maria's eye. She
smiled. He smiled back. Chiun walked between them.
A soft breeze caught the corn in a neighboring field and made
the lazy summer day smell like life itself. Remo caught an exchange
of glances between a man in a Palm Beach hat and another in a gray
light summer suit. They were across the field from each other. And
both looked at a paunchy man with large shoulders who glanced at
something in his hands, then looked at Remo. When Remo looked back,
the man tucked the object into his trousers pocket and became very
interested in what was happening in the field. The three men had
the field triangulated. Remo sidled to the paunchy man in the white
suit.
"Hi," said Remo. "I'm a pickpocket."
The man stared straight ahead.
"I said hello," said Remo. The man's alligator shoes pressed
into the newly turned Ohio soil under the weight of 280 pounds of
muscles and flesh and a twoday growth. He had a face that had been
banged here and there by fist and club and a whitish lumpy line
which was the completed healing process of a long-ago blade. He was
slightly taller than Remo and had shoulders and wide fists that had
obviously done some banging themselves. His body oozed the odor of
yesterday's scotch and today's sirloin.
"I said hello," said Remo again.
"Uh, hello," said the man.
"I'm a pickpocket," Remo repeated. The man's hairy heavy hand
moved down to his right trouser pocket.
"Thank you for showing me which pocket I should pick," said
Remo.
"What?" said the man and Remo cut two fingers down between fatty
palm and hefty hip, making a neat tearing slice down the right side
of the man's trousers.
"What?" grunted the man who suddenly felt his undershorts under
his right palm. He grabbed for the skinny guy but when his huge
hands closed on the shoulders, the shoulders were not there and the
skinny guy kept on walking and looking through the trouser pocket
as if strolling through a garden reading a book.
"Hey, you. Gimme back my pocket," said the man. "That's my
pocket." He swung at the back of the head but the skinny guy's head
was just not there. It didn't jerk or duck, it was just not there
as the swing went through where it was. The two other men in the
triangle moved toward the commotion. The Miami County sheriff's
office moved toward the commotion.
"Anything wrong?" said the sheriff, surrounded by deputies with
their hands on their sidearms.
"No," said the big man with the tear in his trouser. "Nothing
wrong. Nothing." He said this by instinct. He could not remember
ever telling a policeman the truth.
"Anything wrong?" the sheriff asked Remo.
"No," said Remo, examining the pocket he had picked.
"All right, then," said the sheriff. "Break it up." Seeing that
all his deputies were clustered around him, he yelled for them to
get back to their positions. There wasn't, he said, going to be
another Mojave Desert incident in this county.
Remo threw away car keys and some bills from the pocket. He held
onto a small square paper that looked printed. It was a sketch of
two men, the stiff expressionless lines of what might have been a
police composite. An old Oriental with wispy hair and a younger
Caucasian with sharp features and high cheekbones. The Caucasion
had hair similar to Remo's. The Oriental's eyes were deeper than
Chiun's and then Remo realized it was a composite sketch of himself
and Chiun. The deeper eyes told him and told him who had stood over
the artist telling him 'yes' and 'no' as eyes and mouths appeared
on paper. All eyes looked deeper when there was direct above light,
as over a pool table in a pool hall.
Pete's Pool Parlour in East St. Louis. The Caucasian's eyes
weren't so deep set because Remo had not stood at the table. He
waved to Chiun.
Chiun came in behind the two other men of the triangle.
"Look," said Remo, showing the card to Chiun. "Now I know you
won that money playing pool. You were at the pool table. Look at
the eyes."
The man in the Palm Beach hat whispered something about having
somebody. The big man trotted to a white Eldorado at the edge of
the crowd.
"The shading of the eyes. Yes, I see," said Chiun. "The light
from above."
"Right," said Remo.
The big man without the trouser pocket eased the Eldorado over
the soft ground to Chiun and Remo. He threw open the driver's door,
disclosing a shotgun in his lap. The door hid the gun from the
sheriff's men. It pointed at Remo and Chiun.
"That could not be me," said Chiun. "It is a very close likeness
of you considering it was obviously painted from memory. It lacks
the character I put into your face. The other person is a stranger
to me."
"Looks just like the gook," said the man in the Palm Beach hat,
coming up behind them. "We got 'em. You two, get in that car and
move quietly."
"This could not be my face," said Chiun. "This is the face of an
old man. It could not be me. It lacks warmth and joy and beauty. It
lacks the grace of character. It lacks the countenance of majesty.
This is just the face of an old man." He looked up to the man in
the Palm Beach hat. "However, if you could give me a large size of
the white man, I would like to have it framed."
"Sure, old man," said the man in the Palm Beach hat. "How big?
Eight by ten?"
"No. Not that big. My picture of Rad Rex is an eight-by-ten.
Something smaller. To stand near my picture of Rad Rex, but
slightly behind it. Do you know that Rad Rex, the famous television
actor, called me gracious and humble?"
His face sparkled with pride.
"All right," said the man with a tight-lipped smile. "You got an
eight-by-ten of a fag, I'll print you one of these but
smaller."
"What is it, this fag?" Chiun asked Remo.
Remo sighed. "It is a boy who likes boys."
"A pervert?" asked Chiun.
"He thinks so," said Remo.
"A dirty disgusting thing?" asked Chiun.
"Depends on how you look at it."
"The way this creature-"Chiun jerked his head toward the man in
the Palm Beach hat-"looks at it."
"The way he looks at it," Remo said. "Right, dirty and
disgusting."
"I thought as much," said Chiun. He turned to the man in the hat
who had begun to wonder why Johnny Deussio was sending all the way
to Ohio to collect a couple of half-decks where there was no
shortage of the mentally ill back home in St. Louis.
"You. Come here," said Chiun.
"Get in the car," said the man with the hat. Enough was
enough.
"After you," said Chiun and the man with the Palm Beach hat did
not notice anything and did not really feel anything and then he
was being propelled over the old man's head, toward the open
waiting door of the car. He slammed into its front seat. His head
hit the head of the driver and his body slammed down atop the
barrel of the shotgun. The driver's head snapped back and his
finger jerked the trigger involuntarily. The shotgun went off with
a muffled roar.
A red whoosh of flame darted out of the car. Pellets kicked up
dirt around Remo and Chiun's feet.
"Hey, fella, careful," said Remo. "Somebody could get hurt." He
turned around to see if anyone had paid attention to the shotgun
blast. The third man was now standing behind him, a .45 in his
hand.
"In the car."
"In the car?" said Remo. "Right, in the car."
The third man went over Remo's head and landed atop the other
two hulks in the front seat. But Remo did not notice that because
he saw two sheriff's deputies approaching him.
"Oh, oh," said Remo. "Let's get out of here. Get in the car,
Chiun."
"You too?" said Chiun.
"Please, Chiun, get in the car."
"As long as you say please. Remembering that we are coequal
partners."
"Right, right," said Remo.
Chiun was in the back seat of the Eldorado and Remo behind the
wheel. The sheriff's deputies, he could see through the window,
were closer now, starting to walk faster in the manner of police
who aren't sure anything wrong has been done but by God they don't
want anybody to go leaving the scene of the crime.
Remo chucked one of the groggy squirming bodies into the
backseat.
"No," said Chiun firmly. "I will not have them back here."
"Why me, God?" said Remo. He shoved the remaining quarter-ton of
flesh against the passenger's door, put the car in gear, and drove
off. For a moment, in his rearview mirror, he could see the
sheriff's men looking at him driving away, only slightly
interested. Then his view was blocked as the body from the backseat
was reinserted by Chiun into the front.
He drove out along a dirty road that crisscrossed through
cornfields, feeling pretty good. The last Mojave demonstration by
Fielding had lost much of its frontpage space to the violence at
the demonstration site; this time he had prevented that. It was the
least one could do for a man who was going to save the world from
hunger and starvation.
The man in the Palm Beach hat was the first to regain control of
himself. Surprisingly, he found his gun still in his hand and he
fought his way out of the mass of arms and legs and pointed the
automatic at Remo. "Okay, bright eyes, now pull over to the side
and stop."
"Chiun," said Remo.
"No," said Chiun. "I will not soil my hands with anyone who
defames the good name of Rad Rex, brilliant star of As the
Planet Revolves."
"C'mon, Chiun, act right," Remo said.
"No."
"This isn't the one who said anything about Rad Rex," lied
Remo.
"Well, you can't blame me for making such a mistake. Everybody
knows all you whites look alike. But…"
The man with the .45, past whom the bickering had drifted, never
had an opportunity to witness its outcome. Before he could move,
before he could speak again to warn this skinny punk at the wheel
to pull over, there was a slight pain in his head. It never felt
like more than the irritation of a mosquito's sting and he never
felt anything again as Chiun's iron index finger went through his
temple into his brain.
The man dropped back onto the pile of bodies.
"You lied, Remo," said Chiun. "I could tell he was the one of
the evil mouth, because his head is empty."
"Never trust a white man. Particularly a coequal partner."
"Yes," said Chiun. "But as long as I am at it-" He leaned over
the back of the front seat and while Remo drove, sent the other two
men to join their companion, then sat back in his seat
contentedly.
Remo waited until he had gotten out of sight of the
demonstration area, then parked the car under a tree. He left the
motor running.
"C'mon, Chiun, we'd better get back. There just might be more
back there, with Fielding as their target."
"There are no more," said Chiun.
"You can't be sure. Somehow, they made us as Fielding's
bodyguards or something. Probably they think if they got rid of us,
they get a clear shot at Fielding."
"There are no more," Chiun insisted. "And why would anyone
attempt to harm Fielding?"
"Chiun, I don't know," said Remo. "Maybe they're trying to get
the secret of Fielding's miracle grains. Steal the formulas and
sell them. There are evil people in the world, you know."
"Remember you said that… partner," said Chiun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The last time Johnny Deuce had looked forward with anticipation
to the six o'clock news had been when the United States Senate was
investigating organized crime and he'd had a chance to laugh at his
old friends.
They had come on in a parade. People he had given advice to,
people he had tried to straighten out, but for all the new clothes
and even though they didn't carry weapons anymore and even though
they had all wrapped themselves up in corporate blankets, they
still had the old Mustache Pete mentality. So they wound up
providing six o'clock news fodder for America while Johnny Deuce
was home in his living room, trying to keep his wife's hand away
from him and laughing aloud.
But this time the news was no laughing matter, not because of
what was on it but because of what wasn't on it. There was a long
glowing story of the Fielding demonstration in Ohio. A made-up
newcaster came on in a shot taken next to the freshly planted field
and talked glowingly about the great benefits to mankind from the
miracle grains. He was an Ohio-based newsman and in a burst of
parochial pride, he pointed out that today's planting had been a
marked change from the one in the Mojave that had been sullied by
still-unexplained violence.
Johnny Deuce stopped listening when the newscaster began to
blather about America living up to its responsibilities to provide
sustenance for the world.
He heard the weather forecast call for bad weather and then he
sat in his small room thinking and it was only when the eleven
o'clock news came on that he rose himself from his reverie and
focused his attention again on the screen.
But there was just the same newscast. No reports of violence, no
reports of Fielding's bodyguards being killed, and as he listened
Johnny Deuce wasted no time coming to a truthful conclusion. The
three men who had been sent to do in the hard-faced white man and
the old Oriental were dead.
If they had succeeded, their work would have been on the news.
That was the deductive evidence; the inductive evidence was that
they had not called and Johnny Deuce had told them they had better
call by seven p.m., no later, or they would have their balls filled
with sand.
He let the sound of the rest of the newscast drone on as he
lapsed immediately back into the rest state of the last five hours,
sitting languidly while his brain whirred along, formulating his
plans, setting up his attack, and this time in his mind making sure
it would work.
He was satisfied and convinced and he snapped out of it just
long enough to catch the end of the newscast. The weatherman was
on. He was a thin man with a mustache and a half-a-bag on. The
forecast was still for rain.
CHAPTER NINE
At the same time Johnny Deussio was thinking, Remo was bringing
his mighty intellect to bear upon much the same problem:
killing.
Who could want Fielding's formula so badly that they would try
to get it by first disposing of Remo and Chiun? Since the magic
Wondergrains were virtually going to be given away, who would gain
by stealing their secret?
Despite the accumulated mass of scar tissue and raw knuckles
that he and Chiun had been running into, Remo's instincts told him
that it was not a mob venture. The mob had other things to worry
about besides farming. Loan-sharking was quite profitable enough;
so was prostitution, drugs, gambling, and politics, the usual kinds
of crime in America.
No. Not the mob. Remo decided that some foreign power was behind
the violence that seemed to dog Fielding's steps.
His first suspicion was India, but Chiun scoffed at that
suggestion when Remo made it.
"India would never hire killers, even fat ones, to try to do a
job. They would not want to waste a few thousand of your dollars
when it could be used to help build more nuclear weapons."
"You sure?" asked Remo.
"Of course. India would try to get the formula exclusively for
itself by praying for it."
Remo nodded and lay back down on the sofa in their Dayton hotel
room. Who else, if not India? Who else had been at the
demonstration?
Of course.
Cuba. Maria Gonzales.
"Chiun," said Remo again.
Chiun was sitting in the center of the hotel living room rug,
staring at his fingertips which were steepled together.
"That is my name," he said, not taking his eyes from his
fingers.
"Do you know where that Cuban woman is staying? Did she tell
you?"
"I am not in the habit of finding out the hotel rooms of strange
women," said Chiun.
"I don't know. You kept getting between the two of us, and I was
beginning to think that maybe you were ditching Barbra Streisand
for her."
"Be cautious," said Chiun, resenting any levity about the great
unrequited love of his life. "Even coequal partners must speak with
discretion."
"You don't know where she is?"
"She is a Cuban. If she is still in town, she will be in the
cheapest hotel."
"Thank you."
The desk clerk downstairs told Remo that the Hotel Needham was
the cheapest hotel in town. In fact, not only the cheapest but the
dirtiest.
When Remo called the Hotel Needham, he found that indeed a Maria
Gonzales was registered there. In fact there were three Maria
Gonzaleses registered there.
"This one's kind of good-looking."
"Most of the girls registered here are kind of goodlooking,"
said a man's oily voice over the phone. "Course it all depends on
your taste. Now if you want my advice…"
"No, I don't think I do. This chick would have checked in just
today."
"I'm not in the habit of giving out such information," the voice
said as the verbal oil congealed.
"I'm in the habit of giving out fifty-dollar bills to people who
tell me what I want to know," said Remo.
"Maria Gonzales checked in today into Room 363. She's different
from our other two Marias. She's a Cuban; the other two are spicks.
We don't get many Cuban broads around here but I guess she hasn't
had a chance to establish herself yet because there haven't been
any phone calls or visits or…"
"I'll be right over," said Remo. "I've got fifty for you."
"I'll wait. How will I recognize you?"
"My fly will be zipped."
The desk clerk at the Hotel Needham had looks to match his
voice. He was fifty struggling to look only forty-nine; 195 dressed
to look 150; short dressed to look tall, balding but coiffed to
look hairy. If Brillo strands coated with spar varnish could be
called hair.
"Yeah?" he said to Remo.
"I'm Pete Smith, looking for my brother John. You got a John
Smith registered here?"
"Twelve of them."
"Yeah, but he'd have his wife with him," said Remo.
"All twelve," said the clerk.
"Yeah, but she's a blond in a miniskirt, good legs, big boobs,
and wears too much makeup."
"Ten of them."
"She's got the clap."
"Not here," said the clerk. "This is a clean place."
"Good," said Remo. "That's really what I wanted to find out. My
brother's not registered here. I just wanted to look the place
over. IBM might want the grand ballroom for its next annual
stockholders' meeting."
"Listen, buddy, do you want something?"
"I want to give you fifty dollars."
"I'm listening, I'm listening."
Remo peeled a fifty from a cluster of bills in his pocket and
dropped it on the desk. "Maria Gonzales still in room 363?"
The clerk put the money away before answering. "Yes. Want me to
announce you?"
"No, don't bother. Surprises are always such fun, aren't
they?"
From inside room 363, martial music was playing. Remo knocked
loudly to be heard over it.
He knocked again. The music dropped suddenly in volume. From
behind the door, a voice asked: "Who is it?"
"Cuba Libre," said Remo.
The door opened cautiously, still fastened with a chain. Maria
peered through the crack. Remo smiled.
"Hi. Remember me?"
"If you have come to apologize for the behavior of your
countrymen, you are too late," she sputtered.
"Aaaah, what happened?" asked Remo solicitously.
She glanced downward toward Remo's groin. "At least you know how
to behave yourself. You have learned manners from the grand
Oriental. You may come in. But behave yourself."
"What's happened to make you mad at us?" asked Remo, stepping
inside the room.
Maria was wearing the same clothes she had worn that afternoon,
a khaki miniskirt and khaki blouse, both of them filled just right.
She looked like a security guard at the local Playboy Club.
She turned toward Remo and put her hands on her hips in a
gesture of pout. "I have been here but four hours. Already five men
have been pounding on my door, demanding that I let them in. They
say unspeakable things. One displayed himself."
"Exposed," corrected Remo.
"That is correct. What kind of country is this where men do
that?"
"They think you're a different Maria Gonzales. A hooker."
"What is this hooker?"
"A prostitute."
"Ah, yes. The prostitutes. We had them before Fidel."
"You had sugar harvests back then too."
"Ah, but now we have the dignity."
"And the empty belly."
Maria started to answer, stopped, then nodded abruptly. "Right.
And that is why I am here. And you can help me because you are a
most important Yankee."
"How do you know that?"
"The Oriental. He told me, as a Third World comrade, that you
were very important. You were in charge of keeping the Constitution
safe. He said he was your coequal partner but no one believed he
was as important as you because his skin was yellow. Are you in
charge of keeping the Constitution safe?"
"Absolutely," said Remo. "I keep it in a footlocker under my
bed."
"Then you must tell me how Mister Fielding does his miracle
growing." Maria's face was an open appeal.
"You really want to know, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Why? Wondergrain's almost going to be given away."
"Almost is not good enough. My country is a very poor country,
Remo… it is Remo, isn't it? Any cost is too high a cost. All
our funds are committed. We owe our souls to the Russians. Can we
now give our bodies to the American Yankees? That is why I was
sent, to try to find out how Fielding does this thing he is going
to do."
"Would you be willing to kill for it?" asked Remo.
"I would be willing to do anything for it. It is for
Cuba… for Fidel… for the memory of Che… for
the socialist revolution."
She raised her hands and began to unbutton her khaki blouse.
When it was open she pulled it back exposing her breasts. She
smiled at Remo. "I would do anything for the secret. Even be your
hooper."
"Hooker."
"Right. Hooker." Maria sat back onto the bed, removed her
blouse, then arranged herself in a prone position as if she were
setting a vase with flowers. "I will be your hooker and then you will tell me your secrets. Is
it a deal?"
Remo hesitated a moment. If she had killed people already to
find out Fielding's secrets, why would she be trying to screw it
out of Remo? On the other hand, if she had nothing to do with the
killings, then Remo would be taking advantage of her by pretending
to know something about the formula that he did not know.
Remo wrestled with his conscience, which maintained its
unblemished scoreless record.
"You'll go to any lengths, won't you?"
"If the lengths, it is depraved, I will do it," said Maria,
licking her lips as she had seen done in American films before they
stopped being shown in Cuba. "I will do anything for the formula.
Even go to the lengths."
Remo sighed. No wonder she and Chiun seemed to get along so
well. When they chose, neither could understand English.
"All right," said Remo. "To the lengths!"
Remo figured himself a winner by at least twenty-six lengths.
This was preordained by some of the first training he had received
when he entered the world of CURE and Chiun.
Women, Chiun had warned Remo on that long-ago occasion, were
warm-bodied animals, like cows, and as cows would give more milk if
they were kept contented, women would give less aggravation if kept
in the same state. However, he explained, a woman did not get
contentment as a man did, through the pleasures of his intellect or
his work. Women must be kept contented through heart and
emotions.
"That means they're less worthy than men?" said Remo.
"That means you are stupid. No. Women are not less than men.
They are different from men. In many ways, they are more than men.
For instance. One can frighten an angry man. But no one has ever
been able to frighten an angry woman. See. That is called an
example. Now. Stop interrupting. Women must be made content through
heart, through emotion. In this country of yours, that means by sex
because women are not allowed to have any other emotions in this
country, lest they put her name in the newspapers and everyone will
point her out as a freak."
"Yeah, yeah, right, I've got it," said Remo who did not have any
of it.
Then followed Chiun's thirty-seven steps toward bringing a woman
sexual bliss. He cautioned Remo that these lessons were just as
important as learning the correct method of the flutter stroke with
the back of the knuckles.
Remo promised that he would practice Chiun's thirty-seven steps
with great diligence and regularity, even as he did not practice
the flutter stroke. But he found that when he had learned them, all
thirty-seven, and was able to jellify women, he had lost almost all
capacity for sexual pleasure. When he should be thinking about his
own body, he was instead trying to remember if the next step was
the woman's right knee or her left knee.
His training was also hindered by the fact that he had never
gone past step eleven with any woman before jumping right ahead to
step thirty-seven. He doubted that there was a woman in the world
who could cope with steps twelve through thirty-six and keep her
sanity, and when he asked Chiun about this, Chiun said that all
thirty-seven steps were practiced regularly upon Korean women, and
Remo did not feel inclined to make such a sacrifice just to perfect
his technique.
Maria Gonzales had taken off her short skirt and panties and was
lying back on the bed. The skin of her body was. as smooth and
creamy as the skin of her face and Remo decided that whatever Maria
Gonzales might be-spy, killer, revolutionary, agronomist, or
left-wing twit-she looked like something more than just another
assignment.
Remo moved alongside her in bed and quickly went through steps
one, two, and three, which were merely to put her in the mood. Step
four was the small of the back.
"Who's behind all these killings?" asked Remo.
"I do not know. What is the secret of Wondergrain?"
Step five was the inside of the left knee, followed by the right
knee, and steps six and seven the perimeter of Maria's armpits.
"Why all this violence at Fielding's demonstration? Who hired
the people to do it?"
"I do not know," said Maria. "How long have you known Fielding
and what do you know about him?"
Step eight was the inside of the upper right thigh and step
nine, the upper left thigh, closer to the heart.
"What can you tell me about what is going on?" asked Remo.
"Nothing," said Maria through tightly pressed lips. The word
came out as a gasp. This time she did not ask a question.
Step ten was the mountain climbing of the fingers over the right
breast. Maria's breath turned into sips of air. Her eyes which had
watched Remo cagily now closed as her discipline weakened and she
surrendered.
Good, Remo thought. She had held out a long time.
This time for sure. He'd get to step thirteen at least. The
eleventh step was the slow trailing of fingers over the left breast
to a peak which was hard and vibrant. Remo smiled. The twelfth step
was next. He removed his hand from Maria's left breast. He began to
move it down her body and Maria jumped into the air and clambered
atop Remo, enveloping him, swallowing him up. Above him, her eyes
flashed brilliant black and her lips bared her teeth in an
involuntary rictus.
"To the lengths!" she screamed. "For Fidel!"
"To the lengths," Remo agreed dully. As she lowered her face to
his neck to nip at it with her teeth, he shook his head slightly.
That damn step eleven again. Someday he would. Someday, step
twelve.
Maybe he was doing it wrong. He would have to ask Chiun. But
there was no time to think about that now because he was deep, deep
into step thirty-seven and he stayed in step thirty-seven a long
time, much longer than Maria had ever been in step thirty-seven
before and when that step was done, Maria collapsed off
him and lay on her back staring at the ceiling, her eyes
unfocused, almost glazed over.
"You didn't have anything to do with the killings?" Remo
asked.
"No," she hissed. "I am a failure."
"Why?"
"Because I went to the lengths and you have not told me what I
wanted to know."
"That's because I don't know anything," said Remo.
"Do not make sport of Maria, American. You are the keeper of the
Constitution."
"Really, I don't know anything. If I knew anything, I would tell
you."
"Several people who are the breakers of commodities…
''
"Brokers," Remo said.
"Yes. Brokers and contractors have been killed with Fielding.
You know nothing of this?"
"Nothing. I thought you did." Something nagged at Remo. He
remembered. Dead contractors. Jordan had mentioned that too before
Remo had killed him but Jordan had not explained the contractors.
Why contractors?
"Contractors?" he asked Maria. "What contractors?"
"Our intelligence people do not know. They think it may have
something to do with Fielding's warehouse in Denver. I
must see. I cannot fail my country."
"Don't be upset. There's always room for another Maria Gonzales
in this hotel."
"I do not belong in this hotel. I am here to get the secrets of
Wondergrain for my government."
"And if you fail, so what? I know Fielding. He's going to sell
it so cheap it'll be like giving it away. Why pay for what's going
to be a gift?"
"You do not understand socialist dedication," said Maria. She
looked at him carefully. "Or capitalist greed."
"Maybe not." Remo was interrupted by a knock on the door. He
rose lightly and went to the door, opened it and peered through the
crack.
A man said, "I want to see Maria."
"You know Maria?" asked Remo.
"Yes. I was here last week."
"Wrong Maria," Remo said.
"I want to see Maria. I came up here to see Maria.
I want to see Maria. I won't wait to see Maria. I have to see
Maria now."
"Go away," said Remo.
The man stamped his foot. "I won't go away. I want to see Maria.
You've got no right to make me stop seeing Maria. Who are you
anyway? Let me see Maria and when we're done, we'll have bacon,
lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. On toast. I want a sandwich. With
mayonnaise. On light toast. Whole wheat toast. They have good whole
wheat toast across the street at Wimple's. I want to go to
Wimple's. I have to have a sandwich. Why won't you let me go and
have a sandwich? I'm going to Wimple's now and if they're all out
of whole wheat toast, it'll be your fault for keeping me here
talking. I'm hungry."
"What about Maria?" Remo asked. "Maria? Who's Maria?" asked the
man and walked away down the hall, a walk that wasn't quite a walk
but more of a cross between it and a bunny hop, the walk of a child
who just knows there has to be a bathroom somewhere around and is
determined not to wet his pants, because he'll find it. Remo waited
a while before closing the door, lest Peter Rabbit change his mind
and come skipping back. But when he heard the elevator door close
at the end of the hall, he went back into the room.
"Who was it?" Maria asked.
"I don't know. It was either Chicken Little or Henny Penny."
"I do not know these people," said Maria. As Remo turned, he saw
Maria was up out of bed and full dressed.
"Where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked.
"To Denver. To see what I can find. You have pumped me…
is that the word?"
"Almost," Remo said.
"Anyway, you have pumped me and I have pumped you, and we have
found out that neither of us knows anything and so I will go to the
Fielding warehouse in Denver to find out what I can find out." She
smiled. "You were very good. I enjoyed myself."
"I won't tell Fidel," Remo said.
But Maria did not hear him. She was out of the room and gone,
and Remo watched the closed door for a moment before sighing
heavily and dressing himself.
CHAPTER TEN
Seven secretaries did not know where James Orayo Fielding was.
The eighth and ninth knew but would not tell. The tenth knew and
told, particularly after Remo had said that if she did not tell him
where Fielding was, he would not come back to her apartment that
night and explain to her, at very close range, why his facial bones
were so hard and why his eyes were so dark.
Fielding had a penthouse suite atop the Hotel Waiden, which
differed from the Hotel Needham in the presence of hot water and
cleanliness and the absence of hot-and-cold-running occupants all
named John Smith.
"Of course I remember you," said Fielding. "We had that talk out
in the Mojave, after that unpleasant violence. You're a government
man, aren't you?"
"I didn't say that," said Remo.
"You didn't have to. You've got that look of someone who has a
mission. I've found in life that the only people who have that look
are people who work for a tight structure like a government…
or people who are dying."
"Maybe they're the same people," said Remo.
"Could be," said Fielding, walking back away from Remo and
sitting himself again behind his desk. "But on the other
hand…"
Remo, who had no tolerance for philosophy, jumped in with "I
think people are trying to kill you, Mr. Fielding."
Fielding looked at Remo with large open eyes, bland and blank.
"It wouldn't surprise me. There's money to be made in food.
Anywhere money is to be made, there's potential for trouble."
"That's my question," said Remo. "Why don't you just give away
the formula for Wondergrain? Just publish it and let it go at
that?"
"Sit down… Remo, you said?… sit down. There's one
simple reason, Remo. The same greed that may have people trying to
kill me. That's the same greed that stops me from giving away my
secrets. Human nature, son. Give away something and people think
it's valueless. Put a price tag on it-any price tag, no matter how
small-and it becomes like gold. People just won't accept what's
free. Another thing. I had to make a deal with Feldman, O'Connor
and Jordan to publicize Wondergrain. Well, they took over the
ownership of it from me. And they want a profit. I thought I
explained all this to you. Didn't I?"
Remo ignored the question. "I understand you've got a Denver
warehouse?"
Fielding looked up quickly and his eyes hooded over. "Yes," he
said slowly. He seemed about to say more, then stopped.
Remo waited, then said, "Don't you think you should have
security guards there?"
"That's a good thought. But guards cost money. And frankly, all
I had, my personal fortune, it's all gone into Wondergrain. I
wouldn't worry too much about it though." He smiled, the satisfied
smile of a cat licking its face after an uncooperative meal.
"Why not?"
"It kind of guards itself," said Fielding. "Anyway, anybody in
there wouldn't know what it was all about anyway."
Remo shrugged. "I think you ought to be protected too. There's
been just too much violence at your plantings."
"Are you volunteering, lad?" asked Fielding.
"If I have to."
"We have an old saying, at least in the Army I was in: never
volunteer." Fielding essayed a small smile. It was the smile of a
man who didn't care, Remo thought. Was it possible that Fielding's
only purpose in life was to get his Wondergrains to the world and
to hell with everything else?
"You aren't afraid?" asked Remo.
Fielding picked up the digital calendar from his desk. It read
three months, eleven days. "I have no more than that to live. You
think I've got something to worry about? Just let me get my work
done."
Later, talking to Chiun in their room, Remo said, "He's an
incredible man, Little Father. All he wants to do is some good for
mankind."
Chiun merely nodded. He had taken to becoming morose in the
daytime hours lately since he had begun boycotting the television
soap operas. Instead, he spent his time with pen and inkwell and
large sheets of paper, writing letters to television stations,
demanding that they stop introducing false violence into their
daytime dramas or he would not be responsible for the consequences.
He gave each of them three days in which to acknowledge the
acceptance of his demand. The three days was up today.
Remo noticed Chiun's nod was unenthusiastic.
"All right, Little Father, something's wrong. What is it?"
"Since when have you become so interested in mankind?"
"I'm not."
"Then why are you so interested in this Fielding person?"
"Because even if I'm not interested in mankind, it's nice to
meet someone who is. Little Father, he's a good man."
"And As the Planet Revolves was a good story. Good and
true. But it isn't anymore."
"Meaning?"
"One spells out small words only for children." And Chiun folded
his arms and stubbornly refused to explain his remark.
"Do you know why organizations should never promote people?"
asked Remo.
"No. But I am sure you will tell me."
"Now that you're a coequal partner, you've stopped working. It
happens all the time."
Chiun snorted.
"All right," Remo said. "You sit there, but I'm going to make
sure that no one rips off Fielding's formula. If he wants to give
it away on his own terms, well, then I'm going to make those terms
work."
"Waste your time anyway you wish. Since you picked this
assignment, I will sit here thinking of something important to do
on our next assignment. Since I am a coequal partner now, I have
the right to choose."
"Do what you want." Remo went into the next room and flopped
onto the bed. First things first. He was dealing now with two
threats: some force that was using violence and might have Fielding
as its target, and Maria Gonzales who was trying to steal
Fielding's formula.
He dialed the Hotel Needham and recognized the oily desk
clerk.
"Remember me?" Remo said. "I came by to see Maria Gonzales, the
Cuban one, the other day."
"Yes sir, I certainly do," said the clerk.
"Is Maria back?"
"No."
"There's another fifty in it for you if you let me know when she
comes back to her room."
"As soon as," the clerk said.
"Good. Don't forget," said Remo, and gave the clerk his number,
then closed his eyes and slept.
But when the phone rang, it was not the clerk. It was the lemony
whine of Dr. Harold Smith.
"I wouldn't like to hang by my thumbs waiting for you to
report."
"That's funny. That's just what I'd like you to do," said
Remo.
"There were three persons… er, found at that planting
site in Ohio. Any of that yours?"
"All three of them." Quickly Remo filled in Smith on what had
happened and what he had learned. "I don't know why," he said, "but
it seems someone's gunning for Fielding."
"It could be. I'll leave that with you. It's not why I
called."
"Why did you call? Am I overdrawn on expenses again this
month?"
"We have some early indications that someone-we can't say who
yet-is trying to get close to us. Questions are being asked around.
Anyone close to us might be getting close to you."
"That'd be their tough luck."
"Maybe yours too," said Smith. "Be careful."
"Your concern is deeply appreciated."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maria did not return until the next day, but she would not have
had time to take off her hat before the room clerk at the Hotel
Needham called Remo.
"Hey, pal, this is your old friend at the Hotel Needham."
"She's back?"
"Just got in." He paused. "Your turn now," he added with a
dirty-minded chuckle.
"Thanks," said Remo who did not feel thanks and determined then
to beat the clerk out of the fifty he had promised him.
Maria was a long time answering Remo's knocking at the door and
when she did her face was drawn and pallid.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "Well, as long as you are here, come
in. But don't ask me to go the lengths."
"What's wrong? You look awful."
"I feel awful," said Maria. She wore an identical outfit to the
one she had worn two days before. She locked the door behind Remo
and then sat down heavily on the chair at the small Formica-topped
desk the Hotel Needham provided, apparently for that .0001 percent
of people who paid by check. She tried a thin smile. "Must be
Montezuma's revenge. I have the upthrows."
Rerno sat on the edge of the bed facing her.
"So what did you find out?"
"And why should I tell you? We are on different sides."
"No, we're not. We both want Fielding's formulas to get to the
world. If you can steal them for your country, fine," Remo lied.
"I'm only worried about keeping him alive so that everyone isn't
cheated out of them."
Maria did not speak as she thought about this for a while. "All
right," she said finally. "Anyway, it is not like I am giving away
anything. You are the keeper of the Constitution. If I do not
cooperate, you may have me deported from your country. Or worse. Is
that not right?"
"That's it exactly," said Remo. If justification was what she
wanted, justification was what she'd get. "I'd go to any lengths to
find out what you learned."
Maria raised a right index finger in warning. "I told you. No
'to the lengths'." Remo noticed the tip of her finger was
discolored and blistered.
"So what did you find?"
"I found Mr. Fielding's warehouse. It is not in Denver however.
It is outside Denver. It is in a big building that is carved into
the side of a rocky hill outside the city."
"And what was there?"
"Nothing. Barrels of grain. And barrels of a liquid I could not identify." She held up her finger again. "Whatever it was, it was powerful. It did this to me." She looked ruefully at
the blister, seemed about to speak, then jumped to her feet and ran
for the bathroom. Remo could hear her retching, and then the toilet
being flushed. Maria returned, her face even whiter than
before.
"Forgive me."
"No workers there? No guards. Nobody?"
"There was no one to be seen. Just barrels and that was all."
Her voice trailed off as she spoke and she seemed ready to pass
out. Remo got up and went to her side.
"Listen, Maria. You've got probably a touch of flu or virus or
something."
"A virus," she said. "Americans always have the virus."
"Right," Remo said. "A virus. Anyway, you shouldn't stay here
alone until you're well. I want you to come with me."
"Aha. A Yankee plot. Get Maria away from her room and then throw
her in a dungeon."
"We don't have dungeons. Except in New York, and there they call
them apartments."
"All right. A jail cell."
"No. Just a clean hotel room where you can get some rest."
"Alone? With you? That is not moral."
Remo thought this strange for a girl who forty-eight hours
before had gone to the lengths, but he shook his head. "No. We'll
have a chaperone. Chiun."
"The gracious Oriental?"
"I think so."
"Good. Then I will go. He is a man of much wisdom and kindness
and he will protect me from you."
In the lobby, Remo sat Maria in the only chair that might have
won even conditional approval from the city's building department
and approached the oily clerk.
"I owe you something," said Remo.
"Well, don't look on it as owing. I did a favor. You're going to
do me a favor."
Remo nodded. "Fifty favors if I remember right."
"You remember right."
Remo leaned on the desk casually. On a table behind it he saw a
small cashbox.
"Want to play double or nothing?" Remo asked.
The clerk's eyes narrowed warily. "Actually, no."
Remo reached into his pocket and pulled out a fifty. He held it
away from his body in his right hand. "It'd be easy," he said. He
manipulated his fingers, almost as if playing an imaginary piano
with a vertical keyboard, and the bill vanished. "Just tell me what
hand it's in," he said nodding toward his right fist.
"That's all?" said the clerk, glancing quickly at Remo's left
hand, resting on the counter, four feet away from the fifty.
"That's all?" he repeated.
"That's all."
"Double or nothing?" said the clerk.
"Double or nothing. What hand's it in?"
"That one," said the clerk with a sheepish smile, pointing to
Remo's right hand.
"Look and see," said Remo. He extended his right hand toward the
clerk. As he did, his left hand was over the counter, opening the
cashbox and flipping through the bills there. With his fingertips,
he felt for the twenties and peeled off eight, curled them into a
tube, closed the box, and put the $160 into his left pants pocket.
Meanwhile, the clerk was trying to pry open Remo's right hand.
"How can I tell if I won?" he asked plaintively.
Remo relaxed his fingers and opened his hand. Curled up in the
palm was the fifty-dollar bill.
The clerk grinned and snatched up the bill. "Terrific," he said.
"Now you owe me another fifty."
"You're right," said Remo. He dug into his righthand pocket but
brought his hand out empty. From his left pocket, he pulled out the
tube of twenties.
He unrolled them and counted off three. "I'm out of fifties.
Here. You've been such a good guy. Take sixty." He handed the bills
to the clerk who set them on top of the fifty and quickly jammed
them all into his pocket.
"Thanks, old buddy."
"Anytime," said Remo. He walked away, the hotel's other five
twenties in his pocket, offsetting the two fifties of his own he
had given away. He whistled as he escorted Maria from the
building.
She felt worse when Remo reached his hotel and he quickly put
her into bed. Chiun was sitting in the middle of the living room
floor when they entered but he did not speak, not even to
acknowledge their greetings. When Maria was sleeping, Remo came
back outside.
"You're a real charmer when you want to be, Chiun."
"I am not paid to be charming."
"Good thing."
"Remo, how could they do it? How could they do violence to the
beautiful daytime dramas? I have sat here this night and asked
myself that and I do not know the answer."
"It was probably a mistake, Little Father. Start watching
again. You'll see. It was probably just a thing they did once and
won't do again."
"You really think so?"
"Sure," said Remo, feeling very unsure.
"We will see," said Chiun. "I will hold you personally
responsisble for this."
"Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm not in charge of the television
shows. Blame somebody else."
"Yes. But you are an American. You should know what goes on in
the minds of the other meat-eaters. If not you, who?"
Remo sighed. He looked in on Maria who was sleeping deeply then
went into the living room to sleep on the couch. Chiun meanwhile
had unrolled his sleeping mat in the middle of the floor and,
reassured by what he would forever regard as Remo's personal word
that the daytime dramas would not again be sullied by violence, had
fallen instantly asleep. For five seconds of sleep, he seemed like
a normal man, breathing normally; for the next ten seconds he was
the Master of Sinanju, breathing deeply and almost silently; and
then he turned into a flock of geese.
"Honnnnk," he snored on the intake. "Hnnnnnnk," he snored on the
exhaust.
Remo sat up on the couch. He was about to make the decision, one
he had made often before, that sleep this night would be
impossible, when the telephone rang.
Chiun's snoring stopped abruptly but he slept on. Remo was at
the phone halfway during the first ring. He picked it up.
"Hello."
He was answered with the click of someone hanging up.
Remo shrugged, and went back to the couch. Wrong number
probably. If a man answers, hang up. At least the phone had stopped
the snoring.
He lay back down on the couch.
"Hooonnnnnnk." Intake.
"Hooonnnnnnk." Exhaust.
"Shit." Remo.
He left the suite, went downstairs out into the early morning
air of Dayton, filled his lungs deeply, and immediately wished he
hadn't. There were trace elements of arsenic, carbon monoxide,
sulphur dioxide, cyannic gas, hydrochloric acid, swamp gas, and
methane.
And then he forgot the air as he sensed something else, an
unconscious pressure on him as if he were living inside a dark,
opaque balloon and a giant was squeezing the sides. He stopped for
a moment, not breathing, not moving, just sensing and knew he felt
it.
He turned toward the left, began to step in that direction, then
wheeled and came back toward the right. Behind him, he heard a soft
spat, a click, and a thud.
He did not turn to see what it was. It was a bullet. The
pressure had been a marksman zeroing in on him. From the way the
bullet had hit behind him, smacking the hotel wall then a water
outlet pipe and then the sidewalk, Remo judged it came from the
roof of a building across the street.
That was the phone call. To try to get him outside.
Remo moved along the sidewalk, apparently walking casually. To a
passerby, he would seem to be another insomniac out for an aimless
early morning stroll. But to Anthony Polski, atop the roof of an
old apartment building across the street, Remo seemed to be moving
like a squirrel. A burst forward, a pause, a burst, a pause. It was
as if Remo were in darkness and was illuminated only by the
flashing of a strobe light at random intervals.
Polski sighted down the barrel of his silencer equipped rifle,
peering carefully through the light-gathering scope. There he was.
Moving ahead slowly. He led Remo just a hair with the rifle, then
softly squeezed the trigger. But even as he squeezed and the rifle
softly fired, he knew he had missed. In the scope he saw Remo stop,
pause, then start again at a slightly different angle.
The bullet splatted almost quietly against a wall ahead of Remo.
Angry now, Polski fired again, allowing for Remo's pause, allowing
for his stopping, leading him, but then stopping the lead and
shooting right at where Remo stood. When he fired, he knew he had
missed again. The bullet hit into the wall behind Remo.
On the street, Remo had learned enough. Only one marksman up
there. If there had been more, shots would have bracketed him by
now. He moved into a doorway. Across the street, Polski saw him
move into the doorway. He circled the edges of the doorway with a
slight movement of the tip of his rifle barrel. Sooner or later,
the bastard'd have to come out of that doorway and it wouldn't be
any stop-and-go movement then. He would have to come straight out
and when he did, Polski would let him have it right in the chest.
He lay there, arms propped up on the slight roof overhang, the tip
of the rifle moving back and forth gently, and waited.
"Pardon me, boy, is this the Pennsylvania Station? I'm the
Minister of Silly Walks."
The voice came from behind Polski. He rolled onto his back,
wheeling the gun around, pointing it at the other end of the roof.
There he was. The bastard was standing there, thirty feet away,
smiling.
"No. This is the morgue," said Polski grimly and he jerked down
on the trigger of the rifle.
The shot missed. The bastard wasn't there. There he was, six
feet off to the side and closing.
"Son of a bitch," Polski yelled and fired again. But he missed
and Remo kept moving, sideways, frontwards, skittering crablike
across the roof and Polski had but one more chance and even before
he fired that shot, he knew, with a sickening thump deep into
inside his stomach, that it would miss too.
Polski felt the rifle come loose from his hands and then
he was standing there, smiling down at Polski, the rifle
held loosely across his two hands. He had thick wrists, Polski
saw.
Polski kicked up at the man standing above him, aiming a hard
leather-clad toe toward the groin, but that missed too and Polski
gave up and just lay there.
"Who sent you here, fella?" asked Remo.
"Nobody."
"Let's try again. Who sent you here?"
"Shoot and get it over with," said Polski.
"No such luck, junior," said Remo. Then Polski felt a pain in
his shoulder, as if a shark had just bitten out a large chunk of
it.
He wanted his shoulder back. "A contract. I got it by phone," he
hissed, through pain-distorted lips.
"From who?"
"I don't know. It came on the phone and the money came by mail.
I never saw nobody."
"Money? Tell me. What am I worth these days?"
"I got five thousand for you and they told me how to do it. From
up here on the roof."
Remo squeezed, Polski pleaded, and Remo knew he was not lying.
He released the shoulder. Polski cringed against the small brick
wall atop the roof.
"What are you gonna do to me?"
"What would you do if you were me?"
"Yeah," said Polski. "But that was a contract. I didn't mean
anything against you."
"Well, don't you go thinking that this means I don't like you,"
said Remo and then Polski saw a flash and then, not stars but one
single bright star and then he felt nothing more, not himself being
lifted up, not himself being dropped off the edge of the building,
not himself getting tangled in the rope of the building's ancient
metal flagpole. He came there to an abrupt stop, hanging off the
flagpole like a pennant for a long-ago World Series.
Remo looked down on Polski. "That's the biz, sweetheart."
He put the rifle back onto the roof and trotted lightly toward
the back of the building and the drainpipe he had clambered up.
Even though he had learned nothing, he felt good. A little
exercise was good for both the body and spirit. And then he did not
feel quite so good anymore. His senses told him Polski had not been
alone. There was someone else.
Remo went over the edge of the roof and started down the
drainpipe. The pipe was warm in places under his hands. The
rough-painted cast iron did not draw the heat from his hands the
way it should. As he went down, he felt the warmer spots on the
pipe. The spread between them was sixteen inches. That meant a
small man had climbed the pipe after Remo.
As he neared the ground, Remo glanced back up.
Against the dark shadow of the roof overhang was an area of
slightly darker shadow and Remo forced the pupils of his eyes to
open even wider, absorbing light from darkness, giving up the
precise and narrow but light-robbing focus, and he was able to make
out a head peering over the roof. It was wearing a black hood.
A black hood?
Ninja. The ancient Oriental art of deception, invisibility,
hiding, and then attacking out of darkness.
At the end of the alley, the dark walls on both sides ended in a
bright rectangle of light, illuminated by the street beyond.
Remo sensed movement to the left of him, in the shadows. He
breathed deeply, then paused, saturating all his tissues with
oxygen. He did it again. And then stopped breathing, so the sound
of his breathing did not interfere with his senses. Behind him he
heard the faint rustle of linen-the black linen night-fighting suit
of the Ninja-and he knew it was the man coming down the drainpipe.
It would probably be an attack from the rear. He took a step toward
the front of the alley, slowly. There was a faint rustling to the
right also. They had him boxed, left, right, and back. The exit
from the alley, brightly lighted, might be a trap also. They could
have men waiting there for him.
He kept strolling casually toward the light at the end of the
alley, and then, casually still, without seeming to change stride
or direction, he melted into the shadows along the right side of
the wall. There, in pitch blackness, he paused. He heard breathing
near him. He worked his eyes again, and saw an Oriental man in a
full black costume. He had not yet seen Remo, although they were
close enough to kiss. Remo reached out his right hand and grabbed
the man's thin neck through the linen.
He touched the exact spot with the exact amount of pressure
required. The man neither moved nor made a sound. Remo held on and
waited. He heard the rustle of footsteps moving down the alley,
following the path he had taken. Then all sounds stopped. Their
quarry had disappeared. Where had he gone?
And then the small man at the end of Remo's right hand went
flying out into the alley and hit the man who had come down from
the roof, in the midsection. The second man crumbled with a noisy
"ooooof."
Remo was out of the darkness and into the parallelogram of
light, silhouetted against the brightness of the street beyond.
The first Ninja man was finished; he would never again skulk
down an alley. The second scrambled to his feet, unaccustomed to
the bright flash of light that shone in his eyes over Remo's
shoulder as Remo moved out of the light.
Remo took him out with an index finger to the right temple, and
then decided he should have used a back elbow thrust. He did and
was rewarded with a satisfying bone-crushing crunch.
Chiun should have been there to see that, he thought, but then
he thought no more as he moved into the shadows on the left where
one more was hiding, and he stopped, and cut off his breathing, and
he heard the tiny sip of air characteristic of Ninja, as if the man
were breathing through a straw, and Remo followed the sound and was
on him.
But the man darted away, slipping into the darkness, and across
the silence and the blackness the two men faced each other as if it
were high noon in Dodge City.
The Ninja waited, as was traditional, for Remo to make a move, a
mistake that would open him to the Ninja's counterthrust, but Remo
made a move that was no mistake and the back of his left foot was
deep into the muscle and gut of the man's stomach.
As the man fell, he gasped: "Who are you?"
"Sinanju, buddy. The real thing," Remo said.
Remo left the bodies behind and walked out onto the sidewalk. He
looked upward over his right shoulder, toward the roof, where
Anthony Polski dangled by his neck from the flagpole and Remo threw
him a snappy military salute.
He paused again and behind him he heard a faint sound… a
tiny repetitive clicking… but he sensed it as machinery and
not a weapon and he decided to ignore it and go back to his room.
Perhaps now, having exercised, he could sleep.
Above the alley, on the roof of another nearby building, Emit
Growling quickly packed away his camera loaded with infrared motion
picture film and headed home for a long night's work in his
darkroom.
Not that he minded. He was being paid a great deal of money to
have those films processed by morning. And later when he saw the
films, he would realize he might have been witness to something
special. Even though he had barely been able to see what was
happening while it was happening because of the darkness, the films
were sharp, almost seeming brightly lighted, and as he watched the
thin white man with the thick wrists move, he was glad that the
infinitestimal clicking of his motion picture camera had not given
him away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Refreshed and invigorated by the night's exercise he had given
his adenoids, Chiun was awake before Remo.
Remo found him sitting in the middle of the floor, right hand
pressed up against the right side of his nose, breathing in through
one nostril and exhaling through the other.
"You look in?" said Remo. "How's the girl?"
"Dead," said Chiun without interrupting his exercise.
Remo sat up on the couch. "Dead? How?"
"She died in the night. After you went out and left me here all
alone, I lay here listening to her breathe and one moment she was
there and there was the breath of life and the next moment there
was no breath and she was dead."
"Didn't you try to help her?"
"That is unkind," said Chiun, lowering his right hand from his
nose. "She was a very nice lady and I tried to help her. But she
was beyond help. This is a very bad thing."
"When did you start worrying about bodies?" asked Remo.
He got up and walked past Chiun into the bedroom. Maria Gonzales
lay peaceful in death, covers pulled up tightly to her neck.
Remo stood alongside the girl, looking down at her body. Her
right hand rested on the pillow next to her head and the blister on
the tip of her index finger seemed larger than it had the day
before. Remo pulled down the sheet. Maria's body made him shake his
head. Yesterday so white and creamy it had seemed like freshly
stirred wall paint, it was now covered with red and yellow oozing
blisters that seemed to weep like rheumy tired old eyes.
Remo grimaced, then pulled the sheet back up. When he turned
away, Chiun stood in the door.
"I've never seen anything like that, Little Father," said
Remo.
"It is not chemicals or poison," said Chiun. "It is something
else."
"Yeah. But what?"
"I have seen it before," said Chiun. "Many years ago, in Japan.
After the big bomb."
Radiation blisters.
In the living room, Remo's first phone call was to Dr. Smith. He
told him about Maria's body and told him to make arrangements to
have the body collected and an autopsy run upon it.
"Why?" asked Smith. "Isn't it just another of your usual bodies?
Necks broken, skulls crushed, dismemberment. I've been reading the
paper. People hanging from flagpoles."
"No," said Remo. "I think it's radiation poisoning and I think
you better tell the people who collect it to be careful."
He started to hang up, then added, "And unless you want another
missile crisis, you'd better find some neat way of disposing of the
body and just let Cuba think their spy was lost."
"Thank you for your advice, Remo. Have you ever
considered…"
Before Smith could finish the sentence, Remo had depressed the
receiver button and was dialing his second call.
No, Mr. Fielding was not in his office. He was out inspecting
the four Wondergrain sites around America. Of course, the secretary
remembered Remo. She was angry with him for not coming to her
apartment as he had promised, but not so angry that she would
withdraw the invitation forever. Yes, she understood about
business. Some time soon. Yes. And oh yes, Mr. Fielding went to the
Mojave site first. He had left only this morning. Now about Remo's
brown eyes...
Remo hung up, satisfaction jousting with dissatisfaction. He was
satisfied that Fielding was still alive. Whoever had been behind
last night's attacks on Remo had not reached Fielding yet. But Remo
was dissatisfied with Fielding's security. That dizzo secretary had
been quick enough to tell Remo where Fielding was. She might tell
anybody just as quickly.
Because they were now coequal partners, Rerno asked Chiun if he
wanted to accompany Remo to the Mojave.
"No," said Chiun. "You go."
"Why?"
"If you have seen one desert, you have seen them all. I have
seen the Sahara. What do I need with your Mojave? Besides, I am
going to take your advice and watch my beautiful stories today. I
believe your promise that there will be no more violence to mar
them."
"Hold on, Little Father, it's not my promise."
"Do not try to go back on your word now. I remember what you
said, as if it were just a moment ago. You personally guaranteed
that there would be no more violence. I am holding you to that
promise."
Remo sighed softly. What it meant was that Chiun had weakened
and was going back to his television shows and nothing Remo could
say or do would stop him. But if the shows went badly, Chiun wanted
someone to blame.
After arranging for Chiun, his trunks, and his television set to
be quietly shipped to a new hotel, Remo went to the Vandalia
Airport. A quick jet flight and a helicopter ride brought him to
the edge of the Mojave and a rented Yamaha motorcycle brought him
out into the desert.
Mile after mile, following the narrow road, as straight as a
weighted string hanging inside a well, Remo rode on into the heat
and sand. Far ahead, on the rise off to the left, he saw the
hurricane fencing surrounding Fielding's experimental farm, and he
saw tire tracks through the sand.
He ran ahead another mile, then made a sharp left off the road
and dug his bike twistingly through the sand, sputtering and
spitting, following the other tire tracks, until he reached the
fence.
A uniformed guard surveyed him from inside the fence.
"I'm Remo Barker. I work for Mr. Fielding. Where is he?" Remo
could see a small pickup truck with rental plates parked inside the
compound.
"He's over inspecting the field," the guard said lazily. He
unlocked the wke gate by pressing a button built into a panel on an
inside post.
Remo propped up the motorcycle and walked inside. "Must be kind
of lonely duty out here," he said.
"Yeah," said the guard. "Sometimes." He nodded toward the small
wooden shack inside the compound. "Me and two other fellows around
the clock." He leaned over to Remo and said softly, "Strange. Who'd
want to steal wheat?"
"That's what I keep asking myself," Remo said walking toward the
area in the back, covered by the almost black plastic sun shield.
The compound itself was almost a hundred yards square. The planting
field took up one-quarter of the space. The only other thing inside
the hurricane fencing was the guard's small wooden shack.
There was no sign of Fielding. Remo went to the edge of the
planting area, then lifted up a corner of the plastic sun shield
and stepped inside.
It was a miracle.
Thrusting up from the arid, barren sand of the Mojave was a
field of young wheat. To the left was rice. In the back, barley and
soybeans. And there was that strange smell Remo remembered from the
first time he had been there. He recognized it now. It was oil.
He looked around, but could not see Fielding. He walked through
the field, through a miracle of growth, expecting to find Fielding
crouched down, inspecting some stalk of grain, but there was no
sign of the man.
At the back of the planting area, Remo lifted an edge of the
sunscreen to find that it had been erected right against the
hurricane fencing. There was no place for Fielding to be. He looked
between the sunscreen and the fencing, left and right, toward the
angled corners of the hurricane fencing but saw nothing, not even a
lizard.
Where could Fielding have vanished to? Then he heard a truck's
motor start and tires begin to drive off through the heavy
sand.
Remo went back through the planting area, stuffing samples of
the grains in his pockets. At the gate, he saw the truck speeding
off in the distance. "That Fielding?"
"Yeah," said the guard.
"Where'd he come from?"
The guard shrugged. "I told him you was here but he said he was
in a hurry and had a plane to catch."
Remo walked out through the gate, hopped on his Yamaha, and took
off through the sand after Fielding.
Fielding was driving along the narrow road at seventy miles an
hour and it took Remo almost two miles to catch up to him. He
pulled up alongside Fielding's open window and then thought himself
stupid for startling the man, because Fielding jerked the wheel and
the truck spun left and sideswiped Remo's motorcycle.
The cycle started to lean to its side and Remo threw his weight
heavily in the other direction and pulled back on the bike, but the
front wheel lifted as Remo regained its balance, and the motorcycle
did a fast wheelie, standing up on its end, while Remo guided it
through the deep sand to a safe stop off the road.
Fielding had stopped on the road and looked out the window, back
at Remo.
"Hey, you startled me. You could've been hurt," he said.
"No sweat," said Remo. He looked at the dented bike and said
"I'll ride in with you if you don't mind."
"No. Come on. You drive."
Driving back toward the airport, Remo said, "Some disappearing
act back there. Where were you?"
"Back at the farm? In the field."
"I didn't see you."
"I must have come out just as you were going in. It's coming
like a charm, isn't it? Is that what you came for, to see how my
crops are doing?"
"No. I came to tell you I think your life is in danger."
"Why? Who would care about me?"
"I don't know," said Remo. "But there's just too much violence
about this whole thing."
Fielding shook his head slowly. "It's too late now for anybody
to do anything. The crops are coming so good that I'm moving up the
schedule. Three more days and I'm going to show them to the world.
The miracle grains. Humanity's salvation. I thought they'd take a
month to grow, but they didn't even take two weeks."
He looked at Remo and smiled. "And then I'll be done."
Fielding would not hear of Remo accompanying him to the other
planting fields.
"Look," he said. "You're talking about violence but all the
violence seems aimed at you. None at me. Maybe you're a target, not
me."
"I doubt it," said Remo. "There's another thing too. A girl went
to your Denver warehouse." He felt Fielding stiffen on the seat.
"She died. Radiation poisoning."
"Who was she?" Fielding asked.
"A Cuban, trying to steal your formulas."
"That's a shame. It's dangerous in Denver." He looked at Remo
hard. "Can I trust you? I'll tell you something no one else knows.
It's a special kind of radiation that prepared the grain so it can
give such miracle growth. It's dangerous if you don't know what
you're doing. I feel sorry for the poor girl." He shook his head.
"I haven't felt this bad since my manservant, Oliver, was killed in
a tragic accident. Would you like to see his picture?"
In the mirror, Remo saw Fielding's lips pull back in a grimace.
Or was it a grin? Never mind. Many people smiled when under
tension.
"No, I'll skip the pictures," Remo said. As he parked the truck
at the airport later, Fielding put a hand on his arm. "Look. Maybe
you're right. Maybe these attacks are eventually aimed at me. But
if they think the way to me is through you, then it's best we're
separated. You see my point?"
Reluctantly Remo nodded. It was logical, but it made him uneasy.
For once, he had found a job he wanted to do. Maybe in decades or
generations, if Remo's life ever became known, maybe he would not
be rated by the people he had killed but for this one life he had
saved-the life of James Orayo Fielding, the man who had conquered
hunger and starvation and famine in the world for all time.
He thought this while he watched Fielding's plane take off. He
thought of it on his own plane back to Dayton and he thought of it
when, just on a whim, he remembered his pockets filled with grain
and stopped at an agricultural lab at the University of Ohio.
"Perfectly good grain," the botanist told Remo. "Normal, healthy
specimens, of wheat, barley, soy, and rice."
"And what would you say if I told you they were grown in the
Mojave Desert?"
The botanist smiled, showing a set of teeth that were discolored
by tobacco stains.
"I'd say you'd been spending too much time in the sun without a
hat."
"They were," said Remo.
"No way."
"You've heard of it," Remo said. "Fielding's Wondergrains. This
is it."
"I've heard of it, sure. But that doesn't mean I have to believe
it. Look, friend, there's one miracle nobody can do. Rice cannot be
grown in anything but mud. Mud. That's dirt and water. Mud,
pal."
"In this process, the plants draw their moisture from the air,"
Remo said patiently.
The botanist laughed, too loud and too long.
"In the Mojave? There is no moisture in the air in the Mojave.
Humidity zero. Try drawing moisture out of that air." And he was
off laughing again.
Remo stuffed his samples back into his pockets. "Remember," he
said. "They laughed at Luther Burbank when he invented the peanut.
They laughed at all the great men."
The botanist was obviously one of those who would have laughed
at Luther Burbank because he was giggling when Remo left. "Rice. In
the desert. Peanuts. Luther Burbank. Hahahahahaha."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With the ratchety click of a child's toy, the small 16mm movie
projector whirred into fan movement, flashed light, and fired a
string of pictures on the beaded glass screen in front of Johnny
"Deuce" Deussio.
"Hey, Johnny, how many times you gonna look at this guy? I tell
you, you just give me three good guys. No fancy stuff. We just go
and pop him."
"Shut up, Sally," said Deussio. "In the first place, you
couldn't find three good guys. And if you did, you wouldn't know
what to do with them."
Sally grunted, his feelings hurt, his hatred for this skinny,
bone-faced motion picture subject growing by the second.
"Anyway," he grumbled, "if I had a chance at him, he wouldn't be
throwing no people off no roof."
"You had your chance at him, Sally," said Deussio. "The night he
sneaked in here. Right past you. Right past all your guards. And he
stuffed my head in a toilet"
"That was him?"
Sally looked at the screen again with greater interest. He
watched as Remo seemed to stroll casually down a street, while
bullets pinged around him. "He don't look like much."
"You dumb shit," Deussio yelled. "What do you think you
would do if somebody was on a roof across the street, popping away
at you with a rifle and a night scope?"
"I'd run, Johnny. I'd run."
"That's right. You'd run. And the shooter would give you a lead
and then put a bullet right in your brain. If he could find one.
And this guy that you don't think is much made that goddamn shooter
miss just by walking away. Now you get your stupid ass out of here
and let me figure out how."
After Sally left, Johnny Duece settled back in his chair and
watched the film again. He watched as Remo climbed a drainpipe as
effortlessly as if it were a ladder. He watched as he made the
marksman miss up close and then threw him off the roof into the
flagpole rope.
He watched Remo come back down the drainpipe and watched Remo
pause on the pipe, feeling it with his fingertips, and he knew that
at that moment Remo had sensed that someone else had followed him
up the pipe.
But Remo had continued down and Johnny Deuce watched the movie
and watched his own man come back down and he watched three of them
stake out Remo in the alley and the three of them wind up dead.
The last shot was of Remo standing in the light at the opening
of the alley, looking upward at the marksman's body twisting
slowly, slowly in the wind, and tossed a salute.
Deussio hit the rewind button and the film started clicking back
to the load reel. As he sat in the darkness, Deussio knew there was
something in the film, something he should be able to figure
out.
He had sent a modern attack-an armed rifle man against this Remo
and he had sent an Eastern-style attack, three Ninja warriors. Remo
had wiped them all out. How?
Johnny Deuce pressed the forward button again. The projector
lamp lit and the screen filled with the black and white images.
Deussio watched Remo, seeming to walk casually, dodging sniper's
bullets. Deussio had seen a walk like that before.
He watched the film as Remo climbed the drainpipe easily.
Deussio had seen climbing like that before.
He saw Remo dodge bullets on the rooftop. He had been told
before of people who could do that.
He stopped the projector to think.
Where before?
Where?
Right. Ninja. The Ninja techniques of the Oriental
night-fighters involved things like that-the walk, the climbing,
the bullet dodging.
OK. So Remo was a Ninja. But then why didn't the three Ninja men
get to him? Three should have been better than one.
Johnny Deuce pressed the button again. The projector whirred and
the pictures flashed. He sat up straighter as he saw his three
Ninja men surround Remo, in perfect positions, and then all wind up
lumps of deadness.
Why?
He stopped the projector again. He sat and thought.
He ran the film to the end. He rewound it. He showed it again.
And again. And again. And he thought.
And finally, just before midnight, Johnny Deuce jumped out of
his chair, clapping his hands together, whooping in joy.
Sally came into the room on the dead run, automatic in hand. He
saw Deussio alone in the middle of the floor smiling.
"What's wrong, boss? What happened?
"Nothing. I figured it out. I figured it out."
"Figured what out, boss?"
Johnny Deuce looked at Sally for a moment. He didn't want to
tell him, but he had to tell somebody and even though the
brilliance of it would all be lost on Sally, it was better than
keeping it inside himself.
"He mixes his techniques. Against a Western-style attack, he
uses an Eastern defense. Against an Eastern attack, he uses a
Western defense. When our Ninja guys went after him, he didn't do
any fancy moves. He just dove into them like a goddamn machine and
piled up the bodies. Rip. Slash. He had them. That's the secret. He
defends in the way opposite to the attack."
"Dat's terrific, boss," said Sally who had no idea of what
Johnny Deuce was talking about.
"I knew you'd appreciate it," said Deussio. "Well, I know you
can appreciate this. He gave us the key for going after him. The
way to get him."
"Yeah?" said Sally, paying more attention now. These were things
he understood. "How?"
"Simultaneous attacks. Eastern and Western style at once. He
can't use just one style to defense them. If he goes East defense,
the East attack'll get him. If he goes West defense, the West
attack'll get him." Johnny Deuce clapped his hands again.
"Beautiful. Just goddamn beautiful."
"Sure is, boss," said Sally who had again gotten lost.
"You don't know, Sally. Because, we get this guy out of the way
and we move in on Force X."
"Force X?" Sally was getting more and more out of it.
"Yes."
"Well, okay, boss, but listen. You want me to get some guys from
the east and the west to go after this lug? Back east, there's a
terrific pair of brothers. They say they're great with chains. And
for the western attack, I got these two friends of mine in LA
and…"
Sally had been smiling. He stopped when he saw the cloud come
over Deussio's face.
"Get out of here, you stupid shit," said Deussio and dismissed
Sally with a wave of his hand.
It wasn't worth it. How could he explain Force X to Sally who
thought a Western attack meant one from Los Angeles and an Eastern
attack meant New York City?
How tell him about the computer printouts, gathering all the
information on arrests and convictions and crooked politicians
bagged, and how the computers had confirmed the existence of a
counterforce to crime and had high-probability located it in the
northeast in Rye, New York. High probability, Folcroft
Sanitarium.
It all waited for him now, wiping out Force X. But first this
Remo would have to go. First him.
Deussio went to his desk, took out paper and pencil and from the
bottom right-hand drawer a pocket calculator, and he set to work.
There was no margin for error.
Well, that was all right. Johnny Deuce didn't make errors.
He told himself that more than once. But it didn't help. There
was something in the back of his mind and it was telling him he had
forgotten something or someone. But, for the life of him, he
couldn't think of what it was.
Not for the life of him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I don't understand it, Little Father."
"It belongs then in a vast category of human knowledge," said
Chiun. "Which of the many things you do not understand are you
talking about?"
"I don't understand this about Fielding. If someone wants to
attack him, why have they been coming at us first? Why not go right
after him? That's Mystery Number One."
Chiun waved his left hand as if it were beneath him even to
think of Mystery Number One.
Remo waited for an answer but got none. Chiun sat instead in his
saffron robe on a tufted pillow in the middle of the floor and gave
Remo his fullest attention. It was Sunday and Chiun's soap operas
had not been on the television that or the previous day, although
he had watched them for the preceding two days and satisfied
himself that Remo had fulfilled his promise to keep violence off
the TV screen.
"And then there's Mystery Number Two. Maria died from
radioactive poisoning. Smith's autopsy showed that. Fielding has a
radioactive warehouse. But the grain samples I brought back show no
signs of radioactivity. How can that be? That's Mystery Number
Two."
With a wave of his right hand, Chiun consigned Mystery Number
Two to the same scrap heap as Mystery Number One.
"How did Fielding disappear in the desert when I was looking for
him?" started Remo.
"Wait," said Chiun. "Is this Mystery Number Three?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"All right. You may proceed. I just want to be sure to keep them
all straight."
"Mystery Number Three," said Remo. "Fielding disappears in the
desert. Where was he? Was he lying when he said he must have just
come out from under the sunfilter just as I was going in? I think
he was lying. Why would he lie when he knows I'm trying to protect
him?"
Pfffit with both hands. So much for Mystery Number Three.
"Why so many deaths surrounding this project, for God's sake?
Commodities men. Construction men. Who's behind all that? Who's
trying to louse things up? That's Mystery Number Four?"
Remo paused waiting for Chiun's wave to dismiss Mystery Number
Four but no wave came.
"Well?"
"Are you quite done?" asked Chiun.
"Quite."
"All right. Then here is Mystery Number Five. If a man sets out
on a journey and travels thousands of miles to reach a place that
is but a few miles away, he is doing what?"
"Going in the wrong direction," said Remo.
Chhin raised a finger. "Aaah, yes, but that is not the mystery.
That is just a question. The mystery is why would a man who has
done this and come to know it… why would that man go in the
wrong direction again and again? That is the mystery."
"I assume all this blather has a point," Remo said.
"Yes. The point on your head between your ears. You are that man
of Mystery Number Five. You travel and travel in the same direction
always, searching for answers, and when you do not find them you
keep traveling in the same direction."
"And?"
"And to unravel your mysteries-how many was it, four?-you must
take another direction."
"Name one."
"Suppose your judgment of Mr. Fielding is wrong. Perhaps he is
not victim but victimizer; perhaps not good but evil; perhaps he
has seen what so many see about you-that you are a fool." Chiun
chuckled. "After all, that is not one of the world's great
mysteries."
"Okay. Say you're right. Why would he do this? If he is evil,
what is he gaining by doing good?"
"And again I say do not jump from false opinions to empty
conclusions without stopping to breathe. And sometimes to
think."
"Are you saying that maybe Fielding has a scheme to do
evil?"
"Aha. Sunrise comes at last, even after the darkest night."
"Why would he do that?"
"Of all the mysteries, the human heart is the most unfathomable.
It is many billions of mysteries for which there are never
solutions."
Remo plopped back on the couch and closed his eyes as if to
puzzle that one through.
"How American. There is never a solution so now you will weary
yourself trying to find a solution. Better you take up one of those
things your people call sports, as when two fools try to hit each
other with a ball that they hit with paddles. I watched it earlier
today."
"They're not trying to hit each other. They're trying to hit the
ball somewhere so that the other player can't hit it back."
"Why not just hit it over the fence?"
"That's not in the rules."
"The rules are stupid then," said Chiun. "And what does that
pudgy boy with the long hair and the face of a blowfish mean by
strutting around like a rooster after hitting a ball?"
"It's complicated," said Remo. He started to sit up to explain,
then thought better of it. "It's tennis. I'll tell you about it
next time."
"And another thing. Why do they love each other if they are
competitors? It might be one thing for the men to love the pretty
woman with the sturdy childbearing legs and the ears despoiled by
rings. But to play love games with each other, that is sick."
"They're not in love with each other," said Remo. "That's how
they keep score."
"That's right. Lie to me because I am Korean. I just heard on
television that the one with the blowfish face had a love game.
Would Howard Cosell lie to me?"
"Not if he knew what was good for him." Remo sank back onto the
couch and began to ponder the Fielding mysteries. Let Chiun try to unravel the mysteries of
tennis and its scoring. Each man has his own mysteries and
sufficient unto the man… That was from the bible. He
remembered the bible. It had been frequently referred to at the old
orphanage although the nuns discouraged the children from reading
it, under the assumption that a god who peeked into bathrooms, thus
requiring them to bathe with undergarments on, would not be capable
of defending himself against the mind of an inquisitive
eight-year-old. Such was the nature of faith, and the stronger the
faith the stronger the mistrust and misapprehension that it
appeared to be based upon.
Was his faith in Fielding just that? Or was it just a suspicion
of Chiun's?
Never mind. He would soon know. Fielding's Mojave unveiling was
tomorrow and Remo and Chiun would be there. That might provide the
answer to all mysteries.
There was another thing Remo remembered Chiun once saying about
mysteries. Some cannot be solved. But all can be outlived.
Remo would see.
There were others making plans to go to the Mojave too.
In all of America, there were but eight Ninja experts who were
willing to put their training into practice and kill. This, Johnny
"Deuce" Deussio found out, after surveying the biggest martial arts
schools in the country, weeding his way through overweight
truckdrivers hoping to be discovered by television, executives
trying to work out their aggressions, purse-snatchers looking for a
new tool to aid them in their advancement to full-fledged
muggers.
He found eight, all instructors, all Orientals. Their average
age was forty-two but this did not bother Deussio because he had
read all he could about Ninja and found that it differed from the
other martial arts by its emphasis on stealth and deception.
Karate, kungfu, judo, the rest, they took a man's strength and
intensified it. Ninja was eclectic; it took pieces from all the
disciplines, and just those pieces that did not require strength to
be efficient.
Johnny Deuce looked at the eight men gathered in the study of
his fortress mansion. They wore business suits and if they had had
briefcases, they might have resembled a Japanese executive team out
scouring the world to squander its nation's newfound wealth on
racehorses and bad paintings.
Deussio knew the eight included Japanese and Chinese and at
least one Korean, but as he looked at them sitting around him in
the study, he felt ashamed to admit to himself that they did all
look alike. Except for the one who had hazel eyes. His face was
harder than the others; his eyes colder. It was the Korean and
Deussio decided, this man has killed. The others? Maybe. At any
rate, they were willing. But this one… he has blood on his
hands and he likes it.
"You know what I want," said Deussio to them. "One man. I want
him dead."
"Just one?" It was the Korean, speaking in a neat, flavored
English.
"That's all. But an exceptional man."
"Still. Eight exceptional men to bring him down seems
excessive," the Korean said.
Deussio nodded. "Maybe after you see this, you won't think
so."
He nodded to Sally who flipped out the room lights and turned on
the movie projector. Deussio had cut the film and this part
included only Remo dodging the bullets, climbing the drainpipe, and
disposing of the marksman.
The lights came back on. Some of the men, Deussio noticed,
licked their lips nervously. The Korean, the one with the hazel
eyes, smiled.
"Very interesting technique," he allowed. "But a direct Ninja
attack. Very easy to handle. Eight men for this job is precisely
seven too many."
Deussio smiled. "Just call it my way of insuring success. Now
that you've seen the film, are you all still in?" He looked around
the room. Eight heads nodded in agreement. By God, they did all
look alike, he decided.
"All right then. Five thousand dollars will be deposited in each
of your accounts tomorrow morning. Another five thousand dollars
each will be deposited upon successful completion of the…
er, mission."
They nodded again, simultaneously, like little plaster dolls
with heads that bobbed on springs.
The Korean said, "Where will we find this man? Who is he?"
"I don't know much about him. His name is Remo. He will be at
this place tomorrow." He gave them Xerox copies of news clippings
about Fielding's Wondergrain and its unveiling in the Mojave.
He gave them a moment to look at the clippings.
"When do we attack? Is that left to our discretion?" asked the
Korean.
"The demonstration is set for seven p.m. The attack must begin
precisely at eight P.M. Precisely," said Deussio. "Not one minute
early, not one minute late."
The Korean stood up. "He is as good as dead."
"Since you are so sure of that," said Deussio, "I want you to
head this team. That is not making judgments on any of you others;
it's just that everything works more smoothly if one man is in
charge."
The Korean nodded and looked around the room. There were no
dissenters. Just seven inscrutable masks.
Deussio gave them airline tickets and watched them leave his
study. He was satisfied.
Just as he had been satisfied the night before when he had met
with six snipers who had been recruited from the ranks of mobdom
and had showed them the film of Remo wiping out the three Ninja in
the alley.
He had promised them each ten thousand dollars, appointed a
leader, and stressed the necessity that the attack begin at eight
p.m.
"Exactly eight o'clock. Exactly. You got that?"
Nods. Agreement. At least he could tell the men apart.
He did not tell the snipers that the Ninja would also be
attacking Remo, just as he had not told the Ninja about the
marksmen. Their minds should be on only one thing. Remo, their
target, and that target was as good as dead.
If he went straight-line attack against the Ninja, the rifles
would take him out. And if he went Eastern-style against the
rifles, Deussio's eight Ninja men would get him.
And if some of the snipers or Ninja got wasted… well that
was part of the risk in a high-risk business.
The important thing was this Remo dead. And after him the rest
of Force X. High probability, Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New
York.
But as the next day dawned, Deussio remembered his head in the
toilet and decided that it would not do just to stay home and wait
for the good news. He wanted to be in at the kill.
"Sally," he ordered, "we're going on a trip."
"Where we going?"
"The Mojave Desert. I hear it's swinging this time of year."
"Huh?"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Mojave.
The sun and heat, like hammers to the head, numbed the senses.
People stood around, eyes baked dry, seeing everything through
shimmering waves of heat. At night, the same people would still see
everything through wavering lines, but they would not even notice
it, so quickly did the human body and brain adjust to its
environment.
The two large tents had again been erected outside the
chain-link fencing that surrounded the experimental planting area,
and both tents were crowded now in early evening with press men,
with agricultural representatives of foreign countries, and with
just the merely curious.
No one paid particular attention to six men who seemed to lurk
about the scene in a group, each carrying a cardboard tube that
looked as if it might hold a chart or a map. When a reporter with
too much to drink tried to engage one of the men in conversation,
he was brushed off with: "Get out of here before I shove my foot up
your ass."
People peered through the fence of the still-locked compound,
hoping for a glimpse of what Fielding might have produced. But the
sunscreen filter still stood over the planting area and nothing
inside was visible except seating benches.
A string of limousines, Cadillacs and Lincolns, were parked in a
long line leading to the tents, along with one Rolls-Royce which
belonged to the delegate from India, who was complaining that parts
of America were so beastly hot, what, that it was no wonder the
national character was so defective.
"We understand, sir," said a reporter, "that your country is the
only one which has made no effort to sign up for Mr. Fielding's
miracle grain, if it is successful."
"That is correct," said the delegate smoothly. "We will first
examine the results and then we will plan our future policy
accordingly."
"It would have seemed," said the reporter, "that with your
chronic food problem, your nation would have been first in
line."
"We will not have policy dictated to us by imperialists. If we
have a food problem, it is our own."
"It seems strange then," said the reporter who was very young,
"that America is continually asked to supply your nation with
food."
The Indian delegate turned and walked away haughtily. He did not
have to be insulted.
The reporter looked after him, then saw standing next to him an
aged Oriental, resplendent in a blue robe.
"Do not be confused, young man," said Chiun. "Indians are that
way. Greedy and unappreciative."
"And your nation, sir?" asked the reporter, gently prying.
"His nation," said Remo quickly, "is America. Come, Little
Father."
Out of hearing of the reporter, Chiun spat upon the sand floor
of the tent. "Why did you tell that awful lie?"
"Because North Korea, where Sinanju is, is a Communist country.
We don't have diplomatic relations with them. Tell that reporter
you're from North Korea and your picture'll be on every front page
tomorrow. Every reporter will want to know what you're doing
here."
"And I will tell them. I am interested in the onward march of
science."
"Fine," said Remo.
"And I am employed in a secret capacity by the United State
government…"
"Great," said Remo.
"To train assassins and to kill the enemies of the Great Emperor
Smith, thus preserving the Constitution."
"Do that and Smith'll cut off the funds for Sinanju."
"Against my better judgment," said Chiun, "I will remain
silent."
Chiun seemed to stop in mid-sentence. He was looking through the
opening of the tent at a group of men,
"Those men have been watching you," said Chiun.
"What men?"
"The men you are going to alert by turning around like a
weathervane, shouting 'what men?' The Korean and the other
nondescripts inside the tent."
Remo moved casually around Chiun and took in the men at a
glance. Eight of them, Orientals, in their thirties and forties.
They seemed ill at ease as if the business suits they wore did not
really belong to them.
"I don't know them," Remo said.
"It is enough that they know you."
"Maybe it's you they're after," said Remo. "Maybe they came
looking for a pool game."
Chiun's answer was interrupted by a roar from the crowd, which
surged forward toward the locked guarded gates, Remo saw that
Fielding had just driven up in a pickup truck.
Reporters pressed toward him as he stepped down from the
driver's seat.
"Well, Mr. Fielding, what about it? We going to see anything
today?"
"Just a few minutes. Then you can see to your heart's
content."
Fielding signaled for the uniformed guards to open the gates and
as they did, he turned toward the crowd.
"I'd appreciate it if you would move inside and take seats on
the benches," he said. "That way everyone will be able to see."
Escorted by the three guards, Fielding walked to the black
pastic sunscreen and turned to face the rows of benches which were
filling rapidly. The last arrivals were Remo and Chiun and the
delegate from India who had found a tray of delicious canapes and
had tarried for just a few more. He finally entered through the
open gates, walked to the front bench, and forced his way onto it
between two men, while mumbling about American
inconsiderateness.
Remo and Chiun stood behind the last bench. Chiun's eyes ignored
Fielding to rove the compound.
"It was in here," he whispered softly, "that Fielding
disappeared?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"Very strange," said Chiun. Almost as strange, he thought, as
the six men holding cardboard tubes who had taken up positions
outside the chain-link fence and were looking in. And almost as
strange as the Korean and the seven other Orientals who now stood
together in a corner of the compound, their eyes fixed on Remo. For
a moment, the eyes of the younger Korean met Chiun's but the
younger man looked quickly away.
Fielding cleared his throat, looked over the crowd, and intoned:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this may be one of the greatest
days in the history of civilized man."
The Indian delegate snickered, while sucking a small lump of
caviar from between his front teeth.
Fielding turned and with a wave of his hand signaled to the
guards. They lifted the front edge of the plastic sunscreen, pulled
it up, and then began hauling it toward the back of the planting
area.
As the dying afternoon sun hit and glinted gold on the high
healthy field of wheat, the crowd released one large collective
breath. "Ooooooooh."
And there in the back was rice and barley and next to the wheat
were soybeans.
"The fruits of my miracle process," Fielding shouted, waving a
hand dramatically toward the field of food.
The audience applauded. There were cheers. The Indian delegate
used the edge of his right thumbnail to pick a piece of cracker
from between two back teeth.
The applause continued and swelled and it took
Fielding repeated shouts of "gentlemen" to quiet down the
audience.
"It is my intention that this process will be used-virtually at
cost-in any country which desires it. Wondergrain will be provided
on a first-come, first-served basis. I have warehouses now filled
with seed and it will be available for the nations of the world."
He glanced at his watch. "It is now twenty after seven. I would
suggest that you gentlemen inspect this crop. Take samples if you
wish, but, please, only small samples since there are many of you
and this is, after all, only a small field. In thirty minutes, let
us reassemble inside the tents. I have representatives there who
will meet with those delegates of any nations wishing to sign up
for the Wondergrain process, and I will also be able to answer any
press questions too. Please keep to the walkways through the field
so the crop is not trampled underfoot. Thank you."
Fielding nodded and the reporters sprinted for the wooden
walkways that divided the field into four sections. They grabbed up
small handfuls of samples. Behind them, the other delegates began
lining up to walk through the fields. The Indian delegate walked
straight ahead, ignoring the wooden walkway, through the waist-high
wheat, trampling it underfoot, grabbing samples to stuff into his
briefcase. He turned and smiled. Back in the rear of the line he
saw the French ambassador. How pleasant. The French ambassador was
a Parisian, someone with whom he could honestly discuss the
crassness and crudity of Americans.
Remo and Chiun watched and were watched.
"What do you think, Chiun?" asked Remo.
"I think there is a strange smell in this place. It smells like
a factory."
Remo sniffed the air. The faint smell from before was there
again. He was able to pin it down closer now; it was the scent of
machine oil.
"I think you're right," said Remo.
"I know I am right," said Chiun. "I also know something
else."
"What's that?"
"You are going to be attacked."
Remo looked down at Chiun, then his eye caught a motion off to
the side. He saw a lone Cadillac limousine, tooling its way down
through the sand toward the front of the line. Behind the wheel was
a face Remo recognized, even though the man now wore dark glasses
and a hat, and the last time Remo had seen him he was wearing a
toilet bowl. Johnny Deuce. Now what was he doing here?
Remo looked back on Chiun.
"An attack? On us?" said Remo.
"On you," corrected Chiun. "The Korean and the others. Those men
outside the fence with their little cardboard tubes. Their eyes
have all been on you and they are moving leadenly, like men on
their way to deal with death."
"Hmmm," said Remo. "What should we do?"
Chiun shrugged. "Do what you like. It is no concern of
mine."
"I thought we were coequal partners."
"Ah, yes. But that is in official assignments. If you go getting
yourself into trouble on your own, you can't keep expecting me to
help you."
"How many are there?" asked Remo.
"Fourteen. The eight Orientals. The six with the tubes."
"For fourteen, I don't need you."
"I certainly hope not."
Fielding was now leading the way to the twin tents outside the
gates and the crowd was falling in line behind him, slowing down,
unable to fit all at once through the gates.
As the Indian ambassador passed Chum, he nodded curtly to the
old man. "Gross, these Americans, what? How like them to try to
sell this process which should rightly belong to all mankind."
"They pay their bills on time. They manage to feed themselves,"
said Chiun. "But don't worry. Wait long enough and they will give
you this seed for free as they always do. They have a large stake
in keeping you people alive."
"Oh," sniffed the Indian. "And what might that be?"
"You make
them look good," said Chiun. The Indian snorted and moved away from
Chiun. Remo was thinking about the smell of oil, fainter now with
the powdered sand kicked up by so many feet, drifting through the
air. The compound was almost empty. The fields of grain had been
denuded by the sample pickers and had returned to the bare sand it
had been only weeks before. The sunscreen was rolled up against the
back fence and looking in over it, at Remo, was a hard-faced man
carrying his cardboard tube. The man glanced at his watch.
"What do you think they've got in those tubes?" asked Remo.
"I do not think they are carrying flutes to play the music for
the party."
Remo and Chiun turned toward the tents. The last of the crowd
was disappearing through the door openings in the canvas, and now
standing before them, blocking their way through the gates, were
the eight Orientals.
They stood in a line across the gate and at a signal from the
one with hazel eyes, they began to peel off their suits to reveal
Ninja black combat suits.
"They are going to attack you with Ninja and the men with guns
are going to attack you Western," said Chiun.
"Don't tell me your problems," said Remo. "You already said you
were out of it."
"You are not good enough to stand against such an attack," said
Chiun.
"It's all right," said Remo. "I've got to do everything around
here anyway. It's not like I had a coequal partner or anything. But
it's just me and my employee. And you know how hired help is these
days."
"That is vileness unequaled by anything you have said
before."
The Korean in the Ninja uniform spoke to Chiun. "Away, old man.
We have no quarrel with you."
"I quarrel with your continued existence," said Chiun.
"It's your funeral, old man," the Korean said, glancing at his
watch. Behind him, Remo heard a cardboard tube being ripped open
and he turned to watch the six men around the outside of the fence
pull out rifles.
"Eight o'clock," the Korean yelled. "Attack."
"Work the inside, Little Father," said Remo.
"Of course. I get all the dirty work," said Chiun.
The man at the far end of the compound was just raising his
rifle to his shoulder as Remo and Chiun moved toward the eight
Ninja men. The Orientals ignored Chiun and moved toward Remo but
Chiun passed before Remo, moving from the left to the right,
pulling in upon himself the force of the eight men, collapsing with
it, and opening a gap that Remo darted through. The Ninja noticed
Remo was gone only when they looked for him, but when they tried to
follow him through the gates, they found them blocked by Chiun, his
arms spread wide, his voice intoning in Korean:
"The Master of Sinanju bids you die."
The six men outside the fence saw nothing but a pile of bodies.
Where the hell was the white man? Fred Felice of Chicago was
nearest the mass pileup, but the wire of the fence was in his way
and he moved his head to see more clearly. Then the wire of the
fence was no longer in his way as his head went through the fence
like a hard-boiled egg being slammed through a wire slicer. He
didn't last long enough to scream.
The next man screamed.
Remo reached him by moving crablike, skittering, remembering the
lessons-the hour after hour of running at top speed along wet
toilet tissue and being lectured by Chiun if he should so much as
wrinkle the paper-and by the time he reached Anthony Abominale of
Detroit, Abominale was just turning toward him. He shouted, then
the shout turned into a scream that drowned in his throat on the
blood that leaked into it from his shattered skull.
The shout brought the eyes of the other marksmen toward
Remo.
"There he is. There he is." Bullets started pinging as the
riflemen fired shot after shot from automatic clips. Remo kept
moving, seeming to travel back and forth, seeming to take only one
step forward and two steps back, but still moving like a slow wave
of water toward the corner of the compound where another man
waited, firing point blank. He was lucky. He was able to squeeze
the trigger one last time. He was unlucky in that the rifle barrel
was in his mouth when the gun went off.
As he moved, Remo glanced over his shoulder. The Ninja battle
had moved into the center of the compound and all he could see of
Chiun was an occasional flash of blue robe. Well. Nothing to worry
about. There were only eight of them.
Remo went over the fence of the compound to come up upon the
fourth man, then took him by vaulting back over the fence and with
his feet driving the man's skull and spine deep down into his
shoulders.
The fifth man got off two shots more before his intestines were
ruptured with his own gun butt and the sixth dropped his weapon and
ran but got only two steps before his face was buried deep in sand
and he inhaled deep, sucked in the deadly grains, twitched once,
and was still.
Then Remo was back at the front of the compound and running away
from the tents through the dusk. A crowd had come out of the tents,
attracted by the gunshots, and Remo moved silently past them, so
quickly most did not even notice anyone passing. Then Remo was at
the Cadillac which sat, motor idling, with Johnny Deussio behind
the wheel.
Remo jerked open the door without bothering to depress the
door-handle button.
Deussio looked at him in surprise that turned to fright, then to
horror.
"Hiya," said Remo. "I almost didn't recognize you. You're not
wearing your toilet."
"What are you going to do?"
"How many guesses you need?"
"Okay. Okay. But tell me. You really are a force fighting crime
in this country, aren't you? Just tell me if I'm right."
"You're right. But don't look on us as a force. Look on us as a
CURE."
And then Remo cured Johnny Deuce of life.
He did not wait for the autopsy. Instead he was back, moving
through the crowds of people into the compound. Ahead he saw only
motionlessness and as he grew nearer a mound of bodies. But no
Chiun. He raced forward faster and as he neared the bodies, he
caught a glimpse of the blue robes and he heard Chiun say, "Is it
all right to come out?"
"Well, of course it's all right to come out."
Like a dolphin rising from water, Chiun moved up, seemingly
unwrinkled, out of the mass of the dead, and Remo took his arm and
walked him away, ignoring the crowds beginning to cluster around
them.
"Why of course?" asked Chiun. "You play your games and those
silly men are firing bullets all over and you think that one might
not hit me? Do you think coequal partners are that easy to find?
Particularly one who takes care of eight enemies while you are
fooling around with only six?"
"Seven," said Remo. "I found another one over there in the
car."
"Still. It is not eight."
A reporter clapped Chiun on the shoulder. "What happened? What
happened? What's going on here?"
"Those men tried to overthrow the United States Constitution,
but they did not reckon with the wiles and skill of the Master of
Sinanju and his assistant," said Chiun. "They did not-"
"Some kind of gang war," interrupted Remo. "These guys in here;
those guys out there. The guy behind it is over in that Cadillac."
He pointed to Johnny Deuce's car. "Talk to him."
Remo moved backwards with Chiun toward the far corner of the
compound, out of the reach of the tent lights in the suddenly
accumulated night darkness, and then he felt the sand under his
feet and for a moment, it did not seem sandy enough.
"Chiun, what about this sand?"
"The feel is wrong," said Chiun. "Why do you think I worried
about being hit by a bullet? I could not move right."
Remo sniffed. "Is that oil?"
Chiun nodded. "I have taken many breaths. Even your deserts
smell in this country."
Remo rubbed his toe in the sand. The consistency underfoot did
not feel right. He spun on his right foot, pushing off with his
left, corkscrewing his right foot into the sand, and then
stopped.
"Chiun, it's metal." He moved his leg around. His foot rested on
a large metal plate. Through the thin leather soles of his Italian
loafers, he felt small holes in the plate.
Remo pulled his right leg from the sand like a person yanking a
toe from a too-hot bath.
"Chiun. I've got it."
"Is it contagious?"
"Don't be funny. The Wondergrain. It's a fake. Fielding's got an
underground compartment here. The grain doesn't grow here. It's
pushed up from underneath the sand. That's why those construction
men were killed. They knew. They knew."
"And you have solved the riddle."
"This time, yes. The radioactive warehouse. This bastard's going
to peddle radioactive grain and make farmland all over the world
worthless. It'll make every famine the world ever had look like a
picnic." He looked down at the sand, more in sorrow than in
surprise. "I think it's time to talk to Fielding."
They moved through the crowd and then heard it --the whoop,
whoop, whoop of an ambulance.
"Little late for an ambulance, Little Father," said Remo.
The ambulance rushed up toward the tent, kicking up sand sprays
from its wheels and two men jumped from the back carrying a
stretcher.
"What's going on?" Remo asked a reporter.
"Fielding. He collapsed."
Remo and Chiun passed through the crowd as if it were not there.
As Fielding was being put on the stretcher, Remo leaned over to him
and said:
"Fielding, I know. I know the whole scheme."
Fielding's face was chalky white, his lips almost violet under
the harsh overhead light. The lips split into a thin smile as his
unfocused eyes searched out Remo. "They're all bugs. Bugs. And now
the bugs are all going to die. And I did it." His eyes closed again
and the ambulance attendants carried him away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"It couldn't be worse." Smith's voice sounded as forlorn and
sour as his words.
"I don't know why. Just get rid of the radioactive seeds."
"They're gone," said Smith. "They've been moved from the Denver
storage depot and we haven't yet been able to trace them. But we
think they're probably someplace overseas."
"All right," said Remo. "Then just let the government brand the
Fielding process as a hoax."
"That's the problem. That lunatic public relations company that
Fielding's got, they're already out spreading the word that
powerful government forces are trying to stop Fielding from feeding
the world. If the government acts now, America'll wind up being
labeled antihuman."
"Well, I've got a solution," said Remo.
"What's that?"
"Just let the seed get out and get planted around the world. And
then there won't be anybody left to label us anti-human."
"I knew I could count on you for clear thinking," said Smith,
his voice dripping ice. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," said Remo.
"Call anytime."
After he hung up the phone, Chiun said, "You do not feel as good
as you try to sound."
"It'll pass."
"No, it won't. You feel you have been made a fool of by Fielding
and now people may suffer because of it."
"Maybe," Remo conceded.
"And you do not know what to do about it. Fielding is dying; you
cannot threaten to kill him unless he tells the truth, because he
just will not care."
"Something like that," Remo said. He looked out the window over
the city of Denver. "I guess it's because Smitty feels so bad. You
know, I could never tell him but I kind of respect him. He's got a
tough job and he does it well. I'd like to help him out."
"Bah," said Chiun. "Emperors come and emperors go. You and I
should go to Persia. There assassins are appreciated."
Remo shook his head, still looking at the skyline. "I'm an
American, Chiun. I belong here."
"You are the heir to the title of Sinanju. You belong where your
profession takes you."
"That's easy for you to say," said Remo. "I just don't want to
leave Smith and CURE."
"And what of your coequal partner? Does my opinion count for
nothing?"
"No, you're on the team too."
"All right. It is agreed."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What is agreed?"
"It is agreed that I will solve this little problem for you. And
in the future, you and Emperor Smith alone will not determine the
assignments. I will have something to say about what you and I
do."
"Chiun, did you ever do anything for anybody without extracting
a price for it?" asked Remo.
"I am not the Salvation Army."
"What makes you think you can solve this problem?"
"Why not?" asked Chiun. "I am the Master of Sinanju."
James Orayo Fielding had only brief periods of consciousness
now. The leukemia that was eating him up would win. It might be
hours. It might be days. But the fight was over. Fielding was
doomed.
Because of this, the doctors did not make any plans to operate
or to minister to Fielding around the clock. Despite the fact that
he was dying, he seemed to be happy, lying in his hospital bed, his
face wreathed in smiles.
Until that afternoon when the aged Oriental appeared before him
and offered to kiss his feet.
"Who are you?" asked Fielding softly of the ancient man in the
light blue robe who stood at the foot of his bed.
"Just a humble man who has come to bring you the thanks of all
mankind," said Chiun. "Already my poor village has been saved
through your wonderful genius."
Fielding's eyes narrowed and for the first time in twenty-four
hours, the smile passed from his face.
"But how?"
"Oh, you did not have all the process. You were very close,"
Chiun said, "but you missed one thing. The chemicals you put into
the grain, they could be very dangerous, but we found the thing to
render them harmless."
As Fielding's face lengthened, Chiun went on. "Salt," he said.
"Common salt. Found everywhere. Seeded into the soil with your
grain, it makes plants grow, not in weeks, but in only days. And it
has no bad effects. Like that bomb long ago in Japan. Look!"
Chiun opened his hand and lowered it to show Fielding his palm.
In it rested a solitary seed. From his other hand, Chiun sprinkled
some white grains on the seed. "Salt," he explained.
He closed the hand and then opened it again. The seed had
already begun to sprout. A tiny shoot rose from the top of it.
"It takes now only moments," said Chiun. He closed his hand
again. When he reopened it, a few seconds later, the shoot had
grown. It was now an inch tall, sprouting above the seed.
"All the world will sing your praises," said Chiun. "You will
feed the world instantly. Never again will there be hunger because
of you."
He bowed deeply at the foot of Fielding's bed and then backed
from the room, as if leaving the presence of a king.
Fielding's mouth tried to move. Salt. Just common salt could
make his process work. Because of him, the buggy humans would eat
happily ever after. He had failed. His monument that was to be
carved from the deaths of billions had failed…
unless…
The public relations firm of Feldman, O'Connor and the late Mr.
Jordan had no trouble getting the press to meet in Fielding's
hospital room for a major press conference at six o'clock that
night. After all, Fielding was a world-famous figure. His every
move was news.
Chiun and Remo sat in their hotel room watching on television,
as James Orayo Fielding told the reporters that his Wondergrain
process was a hoax.
"Just a prank," he said, "but now I find that it can be very
dangerous. The radioactivity in the seeds could hurt the
bugs… er, that is the people who come in contact with it. I
am ordering the ships that were carrying this seed overseas for
distribution to dump their cargo instantly to protect the people of
the world from harm."
Remo watched on the television, then turned to Chiun.
"All right. How'd you do it?"
"Shhhh," said Chiun. "I am listening to the news."
After the press conference, the newscaster reported that the
first comment on Fielding's announcement had just been received
from the government of India. While India had not bid on the food
process, it might be interested in taking the radioactive waste off
Fielding's hands-at no charge, of course-for further research into
potential military uses of it. Booby traps, the newscaster
said.
When the news show had turned safely to weather and sports, Remo
asked again: "How'd you do it?"
"I reasoned with him."
Remo stood up. "That's no answer." He walked around the room,
stalking, awaiting another word from Chiun. None came. Remo went to
the window and looked out again. His hand came to rest on the
windowsill and brushed against something.
He picked it up.
"And what is this plastic plant doing here?" he asked.
"It is a gift for you. To remind you of the everlasting goodness
of your Mr. Fielding. May the bugs feast forever on his body."
REVISION HISTORY
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When James Orayo Fielding looked at people, he saw bugs. Except
bugs didn't cry or quiver or try to hide their terror when he fired
them or told them he might fire them. Bugs went squish when he
stepped on them. And then his manservant Oliver would clean up the
little blotches with his thumbnail and James Orayo Fielding would
ask:
"Don't you hate that, Oliver? Doesn't it make your stomach turn
to put your fingers in a bug's belly?"
And Oliver would say:
"No, Mr. Fielding. My job is to do whatever you wish."
"What if I told you to eat it, Oliver?"
"Then I would do as you wish, Mr. Fielding."
"Eat it, Oliver."
And James Orayo Fielding would watch very closely and inspect
Oliver's hands to make sure he hadn't pushed a remnant of the
insect up into his sleeve, or in some other manner deceived his
employer.
"People are bugs, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
"I'll wear grays today."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
And James Orayo Fielding waited by the immense picture window
that gave him the glorious view of the Rocky Mountains, stretching
in white peaks right to Canada and left to Mexico. The Fieldings
were one of the old Denver, Colorado, families, descended from
English nobility on the father's side and French on the mother's,
although it was rumored some Arapaho had made its way into the
bloodstream, culminating in James Orayo Fielding, owner of the
Fielding ranches, Fielding sugar beet plants, and Fielding
Enterprises Inc., which included manufacturing plants in New Mexico
and Texas which few Denverites knew anything about. James did not
discuss them.
Oliver knelt as he held out the soft gray flannel pants for Mr.
Fielding to step into. He fitted the Italian shoes over Mr.
Fielding's feet, then the broadcloth white shirt, tied the black
and orange stripes of Princeton around Mr. Fielding's neck, slipped
the Phi Beta Kappa key into Mr. Fielding's gray vest, and buttoned
the vest down to Mr. Fielding's belt. The gray jacket went on over
the vest and Oliver brought the mirror for inspection. It was full
length and silver-framed and rolled on wheels to the center of Mr.
Fielding's dressing room.
Fielding looked at himself, a man in his early forties, without
gray in his temples, full soft brown hair which Oliver now combed
to that casual neatness, a patrician countenance with delicate
straight nose, an honest man's mouth, and a gentle cool in his blue
eyes. He formed a sincere involved expression with his face, and
thought to himself that that expression would be just fine.
He used it that afternoon in El Paso when he told union
negotiators that he was closing down Fielding Conduit and Cable
Inc.
"The costs, gentlemen, just don't allow me to continue
operations."
"But you can't do that," said the union negotiator. "There are
456 families that depend on Fielding Conduit and Cable for their
existence."
"You don't think I'd close down a factory just to watch 456
families wriggle and squirm, do you?" asked Fielding, using the
expression he had practiced earlier in the day in his Denver home,
"If you wish, gentlemen, I will explain it to your membership in
person."
"You'd stand up in front of our membership and tell them they're
all out of jobs? In an economy like today?" asked the union
negotiator, trembling. He lit a cigarette while one burned
unfinished in the ashtray. Fielding watched it.
"Yes, yes, I would," said Fielding. "And I think you should
bring the families too."
"Sir," said the corporation counsel for Fielding Conduit and
Cable. "You don't have to do that. It's not your responsibility.
It's the union's job."
"I want to," said Fielding.
"What if we took a pay cut?" asked the union negotiator. "An
across-the-board pay cut?"
"Hmmm," said Fielding and had the company's profit-and-loss
statement brought to him. "Hmmm. Maybe," said Fielding after
examining the printed sheet.
"Yes? Yes?" said the union negotiator.
"Maybe. Just maybe," said Fielding.
"Yes!" said the union negotiator.
"We could use the factory itself to inform the families we're
closing. You can get them together in two hours, can't you? I know
almost the entire membership is down at the union hall."
"I guess we could do that," said the negotiator, crushed.
"Maybe in two hours, I can work out something. Okay?"
"What?" said the negotiator, suddenly revived.
"I'm not sure yet," said Fielding. "Tell them it looks as if
we're going to shut down but I may work out something by this
evening."
"I've got to know what, Mr. Fielding. I can't raise their hopes
without something concrete."
"Well, then, don't raise their hopes," said Fielding and left
with his corporation counsel for dinner in a small El Paso
restaurant he favored. They dined on clams oreganato,
lobster fra diavolo, and a warm runny custard called
zabaglione. Fielding showed his corporation counsel
pictures he had taken of the famine in India as part of his famine
study for the Denver chapter of Cause, a worldwide relief
agency.
His meal ruined, the corporation counsel asked Fielding what he
gave one of the children he saw, a child with protruding ribs,
hollow eyes and starvation thick belly.
"A fiftieth at f/4.5 on Plus-X film," said Fielding, dunking the
crisp golden crust of fresh-baked Italian bread into the spicy red
tomato sauce of his lobster fra diavolo. "Aren't you going
to eat your scungilli?"
"No. No. Not now," said the lawyer.
"Well, considering the starvation in the world, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself wasting food. Eat."
"I-I-"
"Eat," ordered Fielding. And he watched to make sure his
corporation counsel ate every last bit of his dinner for the sake
of the starving children in India whose pictures he left displayed
on the table.
"Look," he said. "I'm suffering too. I've had stomach pains for
weeks. Going to see my doctor tonight back in Denver. But I'm
eating."
"You're going home tonight?" said the lawyer. "Then you don't
have a plan for the workers?"
"I do have a plan. In a way," said Fielding.
When they arrived at the factory, the low whitewashed building
was lit and buzzing with families packed lathe to drill press.
Children stuck fingers in lathes and mothers yanked them back.
Union men talked among themselves in that low choppy talk of men
who know that all has been said and anything more is a waste of
time. Their lives were out of their hands.
When Fielding entered, the main factory building hushed as if
someone had turned simultaneous dials in nearly a thousand throats.
One child laughed and the laughter stopped with a loud motherly
smack.
Fielding led four white-coated men wheeling carts with round
tubs on them to a raised podium in front of the factory. Smiling,
he took the microphone from the nervous union negotiator.
"I've got good news for you all tonight," he said and nearly
five hundred families exploded in cheers and applause. Husbands
hugged wives. Some wept. One woman kept yelling, "God bless you,
Mr. Fielding," and she was heard when the cheering subsided and
that energized more cheering. Fielding waited with a big warm smile
on his face, his right hand tucked into his gray vest, safe from
the grubby reachings of union officials. The corporation counsel
waited by the door, looking at his feet.
Fielding raised both arms and was given quiet.
"As I said when I was interrupted, I have good news for you
tonight. You see the gentlemen with white coats. You see the tubs
on the carts. Ladies and gentlemen, children, union officials,
there's free ice cream tonight. For everyone."
A woman up front looked to her husband and asked if she had
heard correctly. In the back row families buzzed in confusion. At
the door, the corporation counsel blew air out of his mouth and
stared at the ceiling.
Fielding assumed the sincere concerned expression he had
perfected earlier in the day before the silverframed full-length
mirror in his dressing room.
"That's the good news. Now the bad news. There is no way we can
continue operations of Fielding Conduit and Cable."
At a main lathe fifty yards back, a middle-aged man in a red
checked jacket cleared his throat. Everyone heard him.
"Ow," said the union negotiator. And everyone heard him too.
Fielding nodded to a white-jacketed busboy that he might start
serving the ice cream. The boy looked at the crowd and shook his
head.
A man in the front row jumped up onto his seat. His wife tried
to tug him back down but he freed the arm she held.
"You ever own a plant in Taos, New Mexico?" yelled the man.
"Yes," said Fielding.
"And did you shut down that one too?"
"We had to," said Fielding.
"Yeah. I thought so. I heard about this ice cream trick you
pulled in Taos. Just like tonight."
"Gentlemen, my counsel will explain everything shortly," said
Fielding and leaped from the little platform at the front of the
factory and made his way quickly to the door before the rush of
workers could get at him.
"Tell them about our tax structure," yelled Fielding, pushing
his lawyer between himself and the surging workers and just making
it out the door. He ran to the car and made a leisurely mental note
that he should phone the El Paso police to rescue the lawyer. Yes,
he would call. From his doctor's office in Denver.
At the airport, Oliver was waiting in the Lear jet. It had been
checked out and readied by airport mechanics.
"Everything turn out satisfactorily, sir?" asked Oliver, holding
out the suede flying jacket.
"Perfectly," said James Orayo Fielding, not telling his
manservant about the stabbing pains in his stomach. Why give Oliver
any joy?
If he did not have the appointment that evening, he would have
taken the slower Cessna twin-engine prop job. With that one, he
could leave the fuselage door open and watch Oliver clutch his seat
as the wind whipped at his face. Once, during an Immelman turn,
Oliver had passed out in the Cessna. When Fielding saw this, he
leveled the plane and undid Oliver's safety strap. The manservant
recovered, saw the unbuckled strap, and passed out again. James
Orayo Fielding loved his old propeller plane.
Doctor Goldfarb's office on Holly Street shone like three white
squares against a dark checkerboard of black square windows. If any
other patient had asked for this evening appointment, Dr. Goldfarb
would have referred him to someone else. But it was James Orayo
Fielding who had asked for that specific appointment to get the
results of his every-six-months physical, and that meant that
Fielding had no other free time. And what else could be expected of
a man so fully occupied with the world's welfare? Wasn't Mr.
Fielding chairman of the Denver chapter of Cause? Hadn't he
personally visited India, Bangladesh, the Sahel to see famine
firsthand and come back to Denver to tell everyone about it?
Another man with Fielding's wealth might just have sat back and
become a playboy. But not James Orayo Fielding. Where there was
suffering, you would find James Orayo Fielding. So when Mr.
Fielding said he was only free this one night of the month, Dr.
Goldfarb told his daughter he would have to leave just after he
gave her away at the wedding ceremony.
"Darling, I'll try to be back before the reception is over," he
had told her. And that was the easy part. The hard part was what he
was going to tell Mr. Fielding about the checkup. Like most
doctors, he did not like telling a patient he was going to die. But
with Mr. Fielding, it was like being part of a sin.
Fielding noticed immediately that the runty Dr. Goldfarb had
trouble telling him something. So Fielding pressed him on it, and
got the answer.
"A year to fifteen months," said Dr. Goldfarb.
"There's no operation possible?"
"An operation is useless. It's a form of anemia, Mr. Fielding.
We don't know why it strikes when it strikes. It has nothing to do
with your diet."
"And there's no cure?" asked Fielding.
"None."
"You know, of course, I feel it's my duty to myself to check
other authorities."
"Yes, of course," said Dr. Goldfarb. "Of course."
"I think I'll find you correct however," said Fielding.
"I'm afraid you will," said Dr. Goldfarb and then he saw the
most shocking thing from a terminal patient. Dr. Goldfarb had
experienced hostility, denial, melancholy, and hysteria. But he had
never seen before what he encountered now.
James Orayo Fielding grinned, a small controlled play of life at
the corners of his mouth, a casual amusement.
"Dr. Goldfarb, bend over here," said Fielding, beckoning the
doctor's ear with a wag of his forefinger.
"You know something?" he whispered.
"What?" Goldfarb asked.
"I don't give a shit."
As Fielding had expected, Dr. Goldfarb was right. In New York
City he was proven right. In Zurich and Munich, in London and
Paris, he was proven right, give or take a few months.
But it didn't matter because Fielding had devised a great plan,
a plan worth a life.
His manservant Oliver watched him closely. Fielding had rented a
DC-10 for their travels and turned the tail section into two small
bedrooms. He took the seats out of the main section and installed
two large working desks, a bank of small computers, and five
teletype machines. Above the main working desk, Fielding had
installed an electronic calendar that worked in reverse. The first
day had read one year (inside) to fifteen months (outside). The
second day of flight on the short hop from Zurich to Munich, it
registered eleven months, twenty-nine days (inside) to fourteen
months, twenty-nine days (outside). It was the countdown, Oliver
realized, to what Mr. Fielding had called his termination.
As they left Munich, Oliver noticed two strange things. The
outside date had been changed to eighteen months, and Mr. Fielding
had Oliver shred a three-foot-high computer printout, which
Fielding had studied for hours before angrily writing across the
top: "Money is not enough."
"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver. "You mean on the new
outside date? Not really. I'm hardly even bothering myself with the
outside date. What I've got to do has to be done within the inside
date. The doctors in Munich said they had seen someone live
eighteen months with this, so maybe I'll live eighteen months.
You'd like that, wouldn't you, Oliver?"
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
"You're a liar, Oliver."
"As you say, Mr. Fielding."
On a flight from London to New York City, Oliver was ordered to
shred three days of teleprint from the teletypewriters that clacked
incessantly in the main section. On top of the thick pile of
papers, Fielding had written: "Chicago grain market not enough."
"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver. "Any other man would give
up at this point. But men are bugs, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
In New York City, the plane stayed parked three days at the La
Guardia Marine Air Terminal. On the first day, Oliver shredded
heavy reports topped by Fielding's note reading: "The weather is
not enough."
On the second day, Mr. Fielding hummed Zippety Doo Da.
On the third day, he danced little steps between the computer and
his desk, which had become a meticulously organized pile of charts
and reports. A very thin manila envelope on top of the pile was
labeled:
"ENOUGH."
Oliver opened it when Mr. Fielding bathed before dinner. He saw
a single handwritten note.
"Needed: One average public relations agency, radioactive waste,
construction crews, commodities analysts -and six months of
life."
Oliver did not see the single small gray hair that had been atop
the envelope. James Orayo Fielding did when he returned. The paper
hair was now on the desk. It had been moved from where he had
placed it on the envelope.
"Oliver," said Fielding, "we're flying home tonight."
"Should I inform the crew?"
"No," said Fielding. "I think I'd like to pilot myself."
"If I may suggest, sir, you're not checked out in a DC-10,
sir."
"You're so right, Oliver. Right again. So right. We will have
to rent a Cessna."
"A Cessna, sir?"
"A Cessna, Oliver."
"The jet is faster, sir. We don't have to make stops."
"But not as much fun, Oliver."
"Yes, Mr. Fielding."
When the Cessna took off, a hot muggy summer morning broke red
over New York City, like a warm soot blanket. Oliver saw the sun
through the open door to his left. He saw the runway leave
underneath him and the houses become small. He smelled his own
breakfast coming back up his throat and into his mouth, and he
returned it to the world in a little paper bag he always brought
with him when Mr. Fielding flew the Cessna. At five thousand feet,
Oliver became faint and lay back limply as Mr. Fielding sang, "A
tisket, A tasket, I found a yellow basket."
Over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fielding spoke.
"I suppose you're wondering what I'm doing, Oliver," said Mr.
Fielding. "As you know, I have eleven months, two weeks to live,
inside date. Maybe even less. One can't trust the human body. To
some, this would be a tragedy. Would it be a tragedy to you,
Oliver?"
"What, Mr. Fielding?"
"Would death be a tragedy to you?"
"Yes sir."
"To me, Oliver, it's freedom. I am no longer bound to protect my
image in Denver. Do you know why I cultivated my image in Denver,
keeping my fun to El Paso and places like that?"
"No sir."
"Because the bugs crawl all over you if you're different, if you
frighten them. Bugs hate anything better than them."
"Yes sir."
"Well, in a year, they can't get to me. And I'm going to get
them first. More than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao
Tse-tung. I will get a million. A billion at least. Not millions. A
billion. A billion bugs, Oliver. Me. I will do it. And none of them
will be able to bother me again. Oliver, it will be beautiful."
"Yes sir."
"If you knew you were going to die, Oliver, would you stop
saying 'yes sir' and say 'fuck you, Mr. Fielding'?"
"Never, sir."
"Let's see, Oliver."
And James Orayo Fielding snapped on his oxygen mask and brought
the plane up to where he saw Oliver slump back, unconscious, and he
reached behind himself and unsnapped Oliver's safety strap and put
the twin-engine Cessna into a dive. Oliver flipped back out of his
seat and was pressed by the force of gravity into the rear of the
plane. When Fielding leveled the Cessna at three thousand feet,
Oliver curled into a ball on the floor.
"Ohhh," he said, regaining consciousness. He lifted himself on
his hands and as his head cleared and as he breathed more easily,
he felt himself being pulled forward. Mr. Fielding had put the
plane in a slight dive. And Oliver was going forward, toward the
door on the left. Suddenly the plane banked left and Oliver was
going out through the door. He grabbed the bottom bar of a seat and
clutched.
"Mr. Fielding, Mr. Fielding! Help! Help!" he yelled, the air
whipping at his midsection, the liquid of his bladder running out
through his trousers.
"You may now say 'fuck you'," said Fielding.
"No sir," said Oliver. .
"Well, then, don't say I didn't give you your chance. Goodbye,
Oliver."
And the plane rolled farther to its left until Oliver was
holding on to the seat, now above him, and as it cruised that way,
Oliver felt his hands grown numb. Perhaps Mr. Fielding was just
testing him, knew exactly how long it would take, and then would
turn the plane aright and help him back in. Mr. Fielding was a
peculiar sort, but not totally cruel. He wouldn't kill his
manservant, Oliver. The plane snapped back abruptly over to its
other side and Oliver found himself holding air, his body moving
forward at the same speed as the plane, then downward. Very
downward.
Oliver knew this because the plane appeared to be going up while
flying level. And as Oliver spun, he saw the broad Pennsylvania
country grow clearer and bigger beneath him! And it was coming
towards him. He went beyond panic into that peace of dying men,
where they understand that they are one with the universe, eternal
with all life, the coming and going of one part of all that life,
just a throb.
And Oliver saw the white and blue Cessna dive. And Mr. Fielding
had come down to see Oliver's face. Mr. Fielding in a dive looking
at Oliver, red-faced and yelling something. What was it? Oliver
couldn't hear. He waved goodbye and smiled and said softly, "God
bless you, Mr. Fielding."
Shortly thereafter, Oliver met a field of green summer corn.
James Orayo Fielding pulled up out of the dive still
screaming.
"Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'. Yell 'fuck you'."
Fielding trembled at the controls. His hands were sweaty on the
instruments. He felt his stomach heave. Oliver hadn't been a bug;
he had shown incredible courage. What if Fielding were wrong about
bugs? What if he were wrong about everything? He was going to be
just as dead as Oliver. Nothing could save him.
By Ohio, Fielding wrested back control of himself. A momentary
panic happened to everyone. He had done the absolutely right thing.
Oliver had to die. He had seen the plan, just as sure as hairs
placed atop folders did not move by themselves.
Everything would work perfectly. Within eleven months, one week
and six days.
(Inside).
CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and the hot Newark night offended him, and the
smells from the alley where rats scratched inside open garbage cans
filled his senses with decay and the occasional street lights cast
more glare than illumination. It was summer and it was Newark, New
Jersey, and he was never to come back to this city alive because he
had left it dead.
This was where he was born. Down the street a large dark red
brick building with broken glass shards in empty black frames stood
surrounded by litter-heavy lots, waiting to become a lot itself.
That was where he was raised. He used to say it was where he was
educated until his real education began. That was where he was Remo
Williams and the nuns taught him washing, bedmaking, politeness,
and that rulers on knuckles hurt when you were caught in violation.
Later he would learn that punishment for sin was haphazard but the
effects of sin were immediate. They told in your body and your
breathing; they robbed you of proper-ness, which could mean death.
But the death was haphazard; the improperness itself was the real
punishment. In this new life, the sins were panic and laziness, and
the original sin was incompetence.
Remo thought of the ruler as he made out the old soot-covered
concrete lettering above the boarded-up door:
"St. Theresa's Orphanage."
He would have liked to have seen Sister Mary Elizabeth now. Open
up his hand for that ruler and let her flail away and laugh at her.
He had tried by sheer willpower more than twenty years before. But
Sister Mary Elizabeth knew her business better than Remo had known
his. Smiles were not too convincing when your hand trembled and
your eyes watered. But he didn't know then about pain. Now she
could have used a kitchen knife and it wouldn't cut his flesh.
"You there," came a voice from behind him. Remo had heard the
car move silently up the street. He glanced over his shoulder. A
uniformed police sergeant, his face shiny from the sweat of night
heat, leaned out the open squad car window. His hands were hidden.
Remo knew he held a weapon. He was not sure how he knew. Perhaps it
was the way the man held his body. Perhaps it was in the man's
face. There was much Remo knew today that he did not understand.
Having reasons for things was a Western idea. He just knew there
was a gun hidden by the car door.
"You there," said the police sergeant. "What're you doing in
this neighborhood?"
"Putting up a resort motel," said Remo.
"Hey, wise guy, you know where you are?"
"From time to time," said Remo cryptically.
"It's not safe here for white men."
Remo shrugged.
"Hey, I know you," the sergeant said. "No. It couldn't be."
He got out of the squad car, putting his revolver back in his
holster.
"You know, you look like someone I used to know," said the
sergeant. And Remo tried to remember the man. The sergeant's name
tag read Duffy, William P., and Remo remembered a far younger man
who, as a rookie, practiced quick draws with his gun. This one's
face was fleshy and his eyes were tired and he smelled richly of
his last meat meal. You could feel his senses were dead.
"You look almost exactly like this guy I used to know," said
Sergeant Duffy. "He was raised in that orphanage. Except you're
younger than he would be and you're skinnier."
"And better looking," said Remo.
"Naah, that guy was better looking. Straight as hell, that guy.
Poor guy. He was a cop."
"A good cop?" asked Remo.
"Naah. Dumb, kind of. Straight, you know. They framed the poor
bastard. Got the chair. Oh, more than ten years ago. Gee, you look
like him."
"What do you mean he was dumb?"
"Hey, any cop what goes to the chair for doing in a pusher and
then screaming that he never did it, I mean, that's stupid. There
are ways to get around that sort of thing. I mean, even now when
you got porkchops running the city. You just don't stand up,
screaming you're innocent. If you know what I mean. The whole thing
stunned the department."
"You missed him, huh?" said Remo.
"Naaah. Guy had no friends, no family, nothing. It was just the idea that a cop would get it. You know. They
wouldn't even let the poor bastard make a plea or nothing. You know."
"Nobody missed him," said Remo.
"Nobody. Guy was as straight as hell. A real pain in the
ass."
"You still practice fast draws in the John, Duff?"
"Naah," said Duffy, then backed away, his eyes wide in
horror.
"That guy's dead," he said. "Remo's dead more than ten years
now. Hey. Get outta here. Get outta here or I run you in."
"What's the charge, Duff? Still confused about the correct
charge?"
"No. No. This is a fucking dream," said Duffy.
"You want to see something funny, Duff? Draw," said Remo and he
snapped the whole holster off the belt leaving a light brown scar
on the thick black shiny leather. Sergeant Duffy's hand came down
on empty space.
"You get slower as you age, meat-eater," said Remo and returned
the holster-encased gun. Duffy did not see the hands move or hear
the small crack of metal. Stunned, he opened his holster and parts
of his revolver tinkled on the hot night sidewalk.
"Jeez. Friggin' freak," gasped Sgt. Duffy. "What'dya do with the
gun? That cost me money. I'm gonna have to pay."
"We all pay, Duff."
And Duffy's partner at the wheel, hearing the commotion, came
out gun drawn but found only Duffy, bewildered, staring at an empty
holster ripped from his belt.
"He's gone," said Duffy. "I didn't even see him go and he's
gone."
"Who?" said the partner.
"I didn't even see him move and now he's not here."
"Who?" said the partner.
"You remember that guy I told you about once. All the veterans
knew him. Sent to the chair, no appeal, nothing. Next to the last
man executed in the state. More than ten years ago, at least."
"Yeah?"
"I think I just seen him. Only he was younger and he talked
funny."
Sergeant Duffy was helped back to the car and examined by the
police surgeon who suggested a short rest away from a hostile urban
environment. He was relieved of duty temporarily and an inspector
had a long talk with his family and while he was in the Duffy
household, he asked where the drill press was.
"We're looking for the power tool he used to break his gun. The
police surgeon believes the gun is symbolic of his subconscious
desire to leave the force," said the inspector. "Human hands don't
snap a gun barrel in two."
"He didn't have no power tools," said Mrs. Duffy. "He'd just
come home and drink beer. Maybe if he had a workshop, maybe he
wouldn't have gone apples, huh, Inspector?"
The midday sun wilted the people on New York City's sidewalks
across the Hudson from Newark. Women's spike heels sank into the
soft asphalt made black gum by the heat. Remo strolled into the
Plaza Hotel on Fifty-ninth Street and asked for his room key. He
had been asking for his keys across the country for more than a
decade now. Squirrels had nests, moles had holes, and even worms,
he thought, had some piece of ground they must go to regularly.
Remo had room keys. And no home.
In the elevator, a young woman in a light print purple dress
that barely shielded delicate full mounds of wanting breasts
commented to Remo how nice it was to be in a hotel as fine as the
Plaza and wouldn't he just love to live his whole life here?
"You live in a hotel?" Remo asked.
"No. Just a split level in Jones, Georgia," said the woman,
making a swift pouting face.
"It's a home," said Remo.
"It's a drag," said the woman. "I'm so excited to be here in New
York City, you just don't know. Ah love it. I love it. George, he's
my husband, he's here to work. But me, I'm all alone. All alone all
day. I do whatever I want."
"That's nice," Remo said and watched the floor numbers blink
away on the elevator panel.
"Whatever and with whoever I like," said the woman.
"That's nice," said Remo. He should have walked.
"Do you know that ninety-nine point eight percent of the women
in America do not know how to make love properly?"
"That's nice."
"I'm in the point two percent that does."
"That's nice."
"Are you one of those gigolos that does it for money? You're
just a doll, you know."
"That's nice," said Remo.
"I don't see anything wrong with paying for it, do you?"
"Paying for what?" Remo asked.
"Sex, silly."
"That's nice," said Remo and the elevator opened to his
floor.
"Where you going?" said the woman. "Come back here. What's
wrong?"
Remo stopped mid-hall and smiled evilly. In fact, he could not
remember feeling so joyously thrilled with any idea he had
entertained in the last decade. The woman blinked her soft brown
eyes and said, "Wow."
"C'mere," said Remo and the woman ran to him, her breasts
bobbing brightly.
"You want a thrill?"
"With you? Yeah. All right. Come on. Right on," she said.
"There's going to be a man coming down this hallway in about
fifteen minutes. He's got a face like lemon juice. He'll be wearing
a dark suit and a vest even in this weather. He's on the low side
of sixty."
"Hey, I don't screw fossils, buddy."
"Trust me. The wildest time you've ever had. But you've got to
say something special."
"What?" asked the girl suspiciously.
"You've got to say, 'Hello, Dr. Smith. I've read about you. All
my friends have read about you.' "
"Who's Dr. Smith?"
"Never mind. Just tell him that and watch his face."
"Hello, Dr. Smith. Me and my friends have all read about you.
Right?"
"You'll never regret it," said Remo.
"I don't know," said the woman.
Remo cupped a breast with his left hand and with his right
thumbed a thigh and kissed her on the neck and lips until he felt
her body tremble.
"Oh, yes," she moaned. "Oh, yes. I'll say it. I'll say it."
"Good," said Remo and leaned her against the wallpapering of the
hallway and moved five doors down where he entered.
A wisp of an Oriental in golden flowing kimono sat lotus
position in front of a darkened television screen. The plush
furniture of the waiting room had been moved and stacked on one
side so a blue sleeping mat with its blossoms could dominate the
center of the rug.
The set had been working the day before when Remo had left to
look at Newark and if someone had wrecked it in between, there
would be a body to be disposed of. The Master of Sinanju did not
tolerate people interrupting his special television shows. Remo
checked out the bathroom and the bedroom. No bodies.
"Little Father, is everything all right?"
Chiun shook his head slowly, barely moving the strand of
beard.
"Nothing is right," said Chiun, the Master of Sinanju.
"Has someone broken the television?"
"Do you see the remnants of an intruder?"
"No, Chiun."
"Then how could anyone have broken my machine of dreams? No.
Worse. Far, far worse."
"I'm sorry. I have a problem myself."
"You? Do you know what they have done to the beauty of the
daytime dramas? Do you know the desecration that has been performed
upon the life art of your nation?"
Remo shook his head. He didn't know. But what he gathered in the
next few moments was this: As the Planet Revolves had been irreparably ruined.
Doctor Blayne Huntington had been performing a legal abortion on
Janet Wofford, daughter of the shipping magnate Archibald Wofford,
who was financing Dr. Huntington's experiments in nuclear
transmography, when nurse Adele Richards realized the baby was
probably her brother's who was serving life in Attica for leading
the prison revolt against anti-feminist literature.
"Yeah?" said Remo who always had a hard time following the soap
operas.
"There was physical violence," said Chiun. And as he explained
it, the nurse struck the doctor. Not only was there the intrusion
of violence, but she struck him wrong. It was not a blow at
all.
"But they're just actors, Little Father."
"I know that now," said Chiun. "Fraud. I will not watch another
show. I shall stay in America, barren of joy, without the little
breezes of pleasure in a stifled old life."
Remo, his voice heavy with sadness, said that they might not be
staying.
"This is a hard thing for me to tell you, Little Father," said
Remo and he lowered his eyes to the carpeting, which even in the
Plaza was becoming threadbare.
"The beginning of all wisdom is ignorance," said Chiun. "It is a
shame that you are always at the beginning." And this thought
struck the Master of Sinanju as so humorous, he repeated it and
laughed. But his pupil did not laugh with him and this Chiun
attributed to the famous American lack of humor.
"Perhaps you are right," said Remo. "For more than a decade, I
insisted I owed something to this country. For more then ten years,
I've been a man without home or wealth or even a full name that is
my own. I'm a man who doesn't exist. And everything I've done, I
see today was useless."
"Useless?" said Chiun.
"Yes, Little Father. Useless. This country is not one bit
different for my being here. It's even worse. The place where I was
born is a garbage dump. The politicians are more corrupt, crime is
having a full-banner field day, and-and the country is-it's coming
apart."
By this; Chiun was puzzled and he said:
"You are one man, are you not?"
Remo nodded.
"There is no one emperor in this country, no one judge or priest
who rules above all, is there?"
Remo nodded.
"Then, in this country with no ruler, how can you, an assassin,
granted one given the sun source of all perfection in training,
granted that even given the personal hand of a Master of Sinanju,
masterhood yourself, a white no less, how can you feel you have
failed? I do not understand this."
"You never quite understood what the organization was all about,
Chiun."
"I have heard you and Smith talk. He is emperor of your
organization that worships the document Constitution and you kill
for its glory. This I know."
"Maybe that's how it worked out but that's not how the whole
thing was planned." And Remo explained about the Constitution not
working, and that it was the basic document of the country and that
more than a decade before a president feared that his country would
become a police state if the drift into chaos continued.
This, he said, Chiun must know because as keeper of the records
of the House of Sinanju which had sold its services as assassins
for countless centuries, he knew of many governments and he must
know police states came from chaos.
"Ah," said Chiun. "You sought this chaos so that America could
become like the rest of the world and you would be chief assassin
of this police state. I did not understand it before."
"No," said Remo and he explained that the American Constitution
was a document, a contract between all Americans with one another.
And it guaranteed freedoms and rights to everyone. It was a good
document. But according to its rules many evil men could operate
freely. So, while keeping this contract, an American president had
set up an organization which no one knew about to make sure that
the country could still survive. The organization would make sure
that prosecutors got proper information, dishonest judges were
exposed, great organized crime families would lose their power, and
all the while, the rights of the people would be protected. Doctor
Harold Smith, whom Chiun called emperor, headed this organization
and Remo, whom Chiun himself had trained, was the enforcement
arm.
Chiun allowed that he followed Remo.
"So you see," Remo said, "there were problems. If it became
known that we existed, it would be like admitting the Constitution
didn't work. So secrecy was important. Well, they couldn't allow a
killer arm to go around leaving fingerprints, so what they did was
they got someone without a family and they removed his prints from
the files in Washington by pretending he was electrocuted. Like
when you first saw me, I was unconscious, right? Right?"
"When I first saw you?" said Chiun and he cackled. He did not
tell Remo but white man's silliness was enough to tickle the
universe. "If your fingerprints, a system of identification you
think was invented in the West but was known to us thousands of
years ago, if your fingerprints in these records you talk about
were so important, where are your fingerprints now?"
"The fingerprints of dead people go into a special file."
"Why then did they not just put the records in the other file
instead of bringing you close to death, by pretending to
electrocute you?"
"Because people knew me. And they had to create a man who didn't
exist for an organization that didn't exist."
"Ah," said Chiun and his long-nailed fingers formed the roofing
of a Western chapel. "I see now. Of course. It is all so clear. Let
us have sweet sauce for our rice. Would you like that?"
"I don't think you understand, Little Father."
"You are most clear, my son. They killed you to make you not
exist so that you could work for the organization that did not
exist to protect the document that does not work. All hail the
wisdom of the West."
"Well, things aren't working and that's what I wanted to tell
you. I've been wrong. Let us go work for the Shah of Iran or the
Russians or anyone else you wish to sell our services to. I'm
through with Smitty and this whole stupid thing."
"Now you confuse me," said Chiun and his voice rose to the
higher pitches of joy. "You have just made a wise decision after
ten years of wrong decisions and you are unhappy."
"Sure. I wasted ten years."
"Well, you have stopped wasting your life and you will never
regret it. In the East, they appreciate assassins. Ah, what joyous
news."
And Chiun told Remo he must allow the Master of Sinanju himself
to inform Emperor Smith of the termination, because it was just as
important to end services well as to begin them well, and Remo
should watch closely in order that he should know the proper way to
bid farewell to an emperor. For emperors did not lightly yield the
cutting edge of their empires which, since history first began, had
been their assassins.
When Smith knocked approximately five minutes later, the
parsimonious face was in a state of frothy hysteria. The thin lips
hung open like pink windsocks in a gale. The blue eyes blinked
wide. He dropped his briefcase on the sleeping mat.
"Hail, Emperor Smith," said Chiun, bowing courteously.
"My god," said Smith. "My god, Remo, there's a woman outside.
Our cover. It's been blown by a magazine. The whole thing's come
apart. The whole thing. She read about me in a magazine. A
brunette. In her twenties. Recognized me. A magazine. Our
cover."
"Guess we have to close shop then, Smitty," said Remo, pulling a
chair off the pile of furniture at the edge of the room and
slumping down into it. His joy unplugged Smith's excitement.
Smith's eyes narrowed suspiciously. He picked up his briefcase. He
regained his composure.
"Did you see the young woman in the hallway?"
"As a matter of fact, Smitty, I did," said Remo.
"I see," said Smith. His voice was flat. "And after so many
years and so much effort. After so many years of precise covers and
broken links just to protect our security, you, for a practical
joke and I assume it's that, just blabbed the whole thing to some
strange biddy out in the hallway. I assume it had some deep
motivation such as her breasts."
"Nope," said Remo.
"You misunderstand your loyal servant," said Chiun. "He was
espousing your glory to the populace, oh wondrous emperor of
CURE."
"And you explained us to Chiun also?" said Smith. "He knows what
we're about."
"He extolled the glory of your Constitution. The heads of its
enemies shall lie in the street. All proclaim the way of CURE,"
said Chiun.
"All right," said Smith. "Chiun doesn't know. What happened in
the hallway? Did you go insane?"
"No. She doesn't understand any more than Chiun. She heard a
name. So what? Really. Look at it. She heard a name and saw a man.
Who is she? No one. And if she could make heads or tails of the
whole thing, so what? So what?"
"I beg your pardon," said Smith and he looked for a place to
sit.
In one slow movement, Remo was off the chair and it was sliding
across the floor where it stopped just behind Smith's legs.
"I see we have tricksters. Our investment is in a juggler," said
Smith. "Would you mind telling me what's happening?"
"I went home last night. Not that I have a home. I went back to
that orphanage."
"You were supposed to avoid that area under any
circumstances."
"The orphanage was abandoned. The whole area was abandoned. It
was the center of a city and it looked like it had been bombed. And
I wondered what I had been doing for the last ten years.
And I wonder what you've been doing for the last ten years. The
whole organization."
"I don't follow."
"We're failures. We're a waste of time. We were supposed to be
this super setup to make the Constitution work. Everyone would have
their freedoms while the destructive elements were put in their
place. America was going through a trying time, we were supposed to
help it out and then disappear with no one the wiser. We'd be here
and gone. One country, one democracy saved."
"Yes?"
"What do you mean 'yes'?" said Remo. "We were a fucking waste of
time. We had a president who would have been convicted of breaking
and entering if he didn't get a pardon. Half the top government is
in jail, the other half ought to be. You can't walk in the city
streets unless you know how to kill. You read every day where this
cop and that is on the take. Care for the aged has turned into a
gigantic ripoff? And all this while I'm up to my armpits in bodies,
supposedly ending this sort of crap."
"That's just what we're doing," said Smith.
"Hey, I'm no congressman and you're no head of a legitimate
government agency. I can read newspapers, you know."
"And what you're reading, Remo, is the organization finally
working. This is the pus coming out of the lanced boil. Nixon
wasn't the first president to do such things, he was just the first
not to get away with it. His successors won't try it again. Didn't
it strike you as strange that half a dozen CIA men should bungle a
simple burglary? Didn't it strike you as strange that suddenly tape
recordings that the former president didn't know about suddenly
appear? And he can't destroy them? Remo, just how do you think we
work? What you're seeing is the organization working."
Remo cocked a quizzical eyebrow. Smith continued.
"You're not seeing new crimes, Remo. You're seeing people not
get away with the old ones. That nursing home scandal goes back more
than ten years. Cops on the take go back to the Revolutionary War.
Cops getting sent to jail for it is new. You're seeing this country
do what no other democracy has been able to do. We're cleaning
house."
"Then how about the streets?"
"A little adjustment. Give us five years. Five years and the
doomsayers will crawl back under their rocks. This country is
coming out stronger and better."
"Why didn't I know about this?"
"Because we only use you for emergencies. You're what I use when
things go wrong or can't go right any other way."
Now the Master of Sinanju had listened to this and had been
quiet, for when Westerners talked silliness, no light could
penetrate their shroud of ignorance. And seeing that they were now
satisfied with themselves, he spoke.
"Oh, gracious Smith, how wondrous has been your success, how
firm your guiding hand. Your kingdom is in order and gratefully,
the House of Sinanju must take its leave, singing always the praises of Emperor
Smith."
"If you wish, Chiun," said Smith. "You have trained Remo well
and we are grateful, but he knows enough now to operate without
you."
"There's a little problem here, Smitty," said Remo and Chiun
raised his long delicate fingers, silencing Remo.
"Gracious emperor," said Chiun. "The Remo who once belonged to
you now belongs to Sinanju." And seeing confusion on Smith's face,
he explained that when he began training Remo, Remo had just been
another American, but there was so much Sinanju training in him now
that he was Sinanju, and therefore no longer Smith's but
Sinanju's.
"What's he talking about?" asked Smith.
"Look," said Remo. "You give a guy a pot, right. A little dinky
metal pot."
"A pale pot," added Chiun. "A miserable worthless pale pot."
"And he adds a gold handle. And a gold top. And a full inch of
gold outside," said Remo.
"I like your choice of metals," said Chiun.
"Shut up," said Remo.
"Gratitude is dead," said Chiun.
"And now you've got this golden vessel with just the bare little
metal left of the original pot."
"The ingratitude is what is left," said Chiun.
"Well, it's not your pot anymore," Remo told Smith.
"What are you talking about?" asked Smith.
"The mountain is not the pebble," said Chiun. "And you cannot
violate this law of the universe. It is sacred."
"I'm not sure what you are getting at, Master of Sinanju, but we
are willing to double in gold the payments to your village for
your services. Since you regard Remo now as of Sinanju, a someday
Master of Siuanju, we will pay your village for you and
him. Double payment for double services."
"You don't understand, Smitty," said Remo.
"He most certainly does," said Chiun. "Listen to your emperor
and learn of him what is your next mission."
Smith opened his briefcase. There was a problem in the Chicago
grain markets that just might prove to be more disastrous for the
survival of the nation than anything Remo had handled before. It
had to do with the purchase of grain and famine spreading to the
Western world. Even with its vast network and computers, CURE had
been unable to ascertain just what was the matter. A lot of money
was making peculiar things happen.
And bodies were floating up around Lake Michigan.
CHAPTER THREE
The morning sun came up over Harborcreek, Pennsylvania, as winds
blew the chemical waste breezes across Lake Erie into Remo's car.
Remo explained the mission to Chiun. This Chiun had demanded, since
he was no longer just the trainer in the eyes of the organization.
He was a coequal partner. It always amazed Remo how Chiun managed
to grasp sophisticated Western concepts when it suited his purpose,
like coequal partner.
This, Chiun hastened to point out, did not mean that Remo was
his equal in the eyes of the universe, but only in the blurred and
narrow vision of the white organization for which they worked.
"I understand, Little Father," said Remo, turning off the
asphalt road into a dirty driveway. Remo could only use the
sideview mirror because Chiun's lacquered wooden chests jammed full
the back seat and made the rearview mirror useless unless Remo
wanted to look at a pink dragon on a bright blue background.
"We are looking for a man named Oswald Willoughby, who is a
commodities broker. He is going to testify about price-fixing on
the commodities exchange. Someone or some organization dumped
twenty-five million dollars worth of winter wheat on the exchange
just at planting time. This caused one of the smallest plantings on
record just when the world needed the most plantings. No one knows
why this dumping occurred, but of the dealers who handled the bulk
of the selling, two came up dead in Lake Michigan and the third is
Oswald Willoughby. We're supposed to keep him alive."
Chiun thought a moment. Then he spoke.
"However," he said, "coequal does mean equal payment to Sinanju.
It is good that we can get as much for quality as we can for
shoddy. The villagers will appreciate my business acumen."
"You didn't understand a word I said, did you?"
"We are to keep a man alive and then you mentioned some things
that could not be true."
"Like what?" snapped Remo.
"For instance, no one knows why these men were killed. This is
not true. Someone knows why."
"Well, I meant we don't know."
"I could have told you of your ignorance before we left."
"You don't understand how the market works, do you? Do you?"
Remo looked for a white frame cabin with a green fence. He could
see steam rise from the night-cool stream flowing through the hot
morning.
"You didn't understand a word about winter wheat and prices.
Well, I'll tell you. If prices are high at planting time, farmers
plant more grain. Most people don't buy the grain to keep. They buy
it to sell. They buy it now to sell at a future time, like harvest
time, when they expect the price will be more. Well, someone at
planting time bought up a lot of what they call futures and dumped
them on the market. Twenty-five million dollars worth. Now, while
that's not much considering the total, the sudden dumping all at
once sent the price skidding. Real low. It was perfect timing.
Farmers couldn't get credit for large plantings and they didn't
want them. So we've got a short crop this spring which explained
part of the price rise in food."
"So?" said Chiun.
"So we're afraid it might get worse. That's why we've got to
figure out what or who was willing to lose the bulk of twenty-five
million dollars. There's a food crisis in the world."
"Why are you so worried? Sinanju has known food crises. You are
telling me, you dare to tell me about food crises, you who were
raised on meat and never went hungry a day in your life."
"Oh, Jeez," moaned Remo for he knew he would now hear the story
of Sinanju, how because of starvation the village of Sinanju had to
put their newly born babies into the cold waters of the West Korea
Bay, how the village was food-poor, and how the Masters of Sinanju
were born in desperation, how each Master for centuries had rented
his services as an assassin to emperors and kings in far-off lands
so that never again would the villagers have to send the babies
"back to sleep" in the waters of the bay.
"Never again," said Chiun.
"It's more than fifteen hundred years since that happened," said
Remo.
"When we say never again, we mean never again," said Chiun. "This is your tradition now also. You should learn
it."
It sounded like a pot banging a pot down the road, through the
scrub pines, whipped short with almost greenless branches by the
Lake Erie winds. It sounded dull in the morning air that made the
car seat sticky. It sounded like a little pop that morning sleepers
shouldn't notice. It was a shot.
Remo saw a dark man run from the white house with the green
fence. He tucked something into his belt as he trotted to a waiting
pink Eldorado with its motor running. The car took off before the
door was shut, a fast but not screeching start, kicking up little
dust flurries. The driver intended to pass Remo on the left as all
oncoming cars should. Remo occupied the lane. Chiun, who thought
seat belts were bondage and was not about to wear one, caught the
car crash with a slight upward motion lifting his light frame so
that at the moment of impact, he was aloft. Two long fingernails of
the right hand caught the dashboard in such a way that it looked as
if he were doing a mild vertical one-handed pushup. The other hand
caught flying glass. Remo stopped his forward motion with an elbow
against the wheel and the same free flight uplift as the
Master.
The door popped open and he was out of the car, on the road
before the cars stopped their first spin. He caught the Eldorado,
snapping open a door, and reached in past a bloody body to put on
the brake.
He dragged the two still forms from the Eldorado and saw that
the dark man had a gun in his belt. It smelled of a fresh shot.
Remo felt for a heartbeat. It was the last strong flutter of a
muscle about to die. It stopped.
The driver's heart was better. Remo felt around the body. Only a
shoulder bone had that squishy loose feeling of a break. The face
flowed red from glass cuts but it was not serious. Remo maneuvered
his hand underneath the man's jaw, working on veins going up
through the neck. The man's eyelids opened.
"Ooooh," he groaned. "Ooooooh."
"Hi there," said Remo.
"Oooooh," groaned the man. He was in his late forties and his
face was a remnant of a teenage battle with acne. The acne had
won.
"You're going to die," said Remo.
"Oh, my God, no. No."
"Your partner made the hit on Willoughby, didn't he? Oswald
Willoughby."
"Was that the guy's name?"
"Yes. Who sent you?"
"Get me a doctor."
"It's too late. Don't go with this sin on your soul," said
Remo.
"I don't want to die."
"You want to go without a confession? Who sent you?"
"No one special. It was just a hit. A five-grand hit. It was
supposed to be easy."
"Where'd you get the money?"
"Joe got it. At Pete's."
"Where's Pete's?"
"East St. Louis. I was needing. I needed the dough. I was just
out of Joliet. Couldn't get work."
"Where's Pete's?"
"Off Ducal Street."
"That's a great help."
"Everybody knows Pete's."
"Who gave you the money for the hit?"
"Pete."
"You're a great help. Just Pete at Pete's in East St.
Louis."
"Yeah. Get me a priest. Please. Someone. Anyone."
"Just rest here," said Remo.
"I'm dying. Dying. My shoulder's killing me."
Remo checked out the small white house. The door was shut but
unlocked. The killer had had the presence of mind not to leave it
ajar so that the body would probably not have been found until it
made a stink.
Willoughby probably got it in bed, thought Remo, as he entered
the house. But then he saw the TV lit with the sound turned low,
and a silent interviewer asking a silent question to elicit a
silent response, and Remo knew Willoughby had spent the night here
in the living room. His last night.
The room smelled of stale whiskey. Willoughby lay on a couch
behind the door, an open bottle of Seagram's Seven and an
unfinished Milky Way on a tarnished end table. Willoughby's brains
were spread out on the high back of the couch, powder burns on the
close temple. A phone rang. It was under the couch. Remo answered
it.
"Yeah," he said, lifting the phone and resting the base on
Willoughby's stomach.
"Oh, hello, darling." It was a woman's voice. "I know I'm not
supposed to phone but the garbage disposal is stuck. It's been
stuck since dinner, Ozzie. I know I'm not supposed to call. Should
I get the repairman? I'll get the repairman. It's the cauliflower
that does it. And we don't even like cauliflower. You like it. I
don't know why cauliflower. I don't even know why they told you not
to give me the number. I mean, who have these few phone calls I've
made hurt? Right? Who have they hurt? Ozzie… are you
there?"
Remo tried to answer but the only suitable answers were lies and
he pressed down the receiver button terminating the conversation.
He left the phone off the cradle, buzzing a useless dial tone.
What was he going to tell her? That her phone calls had ruined
Willoughby's only protection, the secrecy of his whereabouts? She
had enough grief coming. By the time the dial tone turned into a
continuous out-of-order whine, Remo found a stack of notes in the
kitchen. They were in an old Eaton Corrasable Bond Box and there
was a title page: "Testimony of Oswald Willoughby."
Remo took the box. Outside, the driver of the hit car was
discovering that he only had a broken bone. He leaned against the
fender of the smashed-up car, pressing tight his injured shoulder
with his free hand.
"Hey, I'm not gonna die. You're a damned liar, fella, a damned
liar."
"No, I'm not," said Remo and with an ease of motion that made
his right hand seem hardly to move at all, he let his index and
forefinger out, penetrating the skull, which jerked the man's head
back as if it had met a crane-hoisted wrecking ball. The feet flew
over the head and the man slapped into the dust, silently and
finally, without even a twitch of the spine.
Chiun, noticing that even to the breathing the blow had been
without flaw, turned back to his trunks. They were undamaged. But
they might have been and he told his pupil that such carelessness
as his car driving could not be tolerated.
"We've got to get out of here and your trunks are slowing us
down, Little Father. Maybe I'd better do this assignment alone,"
Remo said.
"We are coequal. I am not only your superior in training but on
assignments now, by order of Emperor Smith I am on the same level.
My judgment is of equal weight to yours. My responsibility is equal
to yours. Therefore you cannot say anymore, go home, Master of
Sinanju, I will do this or do that alone. It is we. We do
this or we do not do that. It is we. Never
you anymore, but we. No more yous.
We."
"Willoughby, the man we're supposed to keep alive, is dead,"
said Remo.
"You failed," said Chiun.
"But there's some crucial evidence in this box," said Remo.
"We have saved the evidence. Good."
"It's not as good as Willoughby himself."
"You aren't perfect."
"But for the first time though, there's a lead on the source
which just might be the core of the whole thing."
"We have the solution."
"Possibly," said Remo.
"Fate takes strange patterns at times," said Chiun. "We may
succeed gloriously, as is the tradition of the House of Sinanju, or
you may fail, which would not be the first time in your life."
In the matter of the trunks, Chiun explained that they had to
take them along because their mission was to honor the Constitution
of the United States and to wear one kimono continuously would be
to dishonor the document by which Remo's nation lived. Chiun
understood these things now, being coequal.
The driver of a pickup truck understood the need to get the
trunks to the closest airport immediately and to forget about the
wrecked cars and the two dead bodies he saw when his country's
history was shown to him. Fifteen portraits of Ulysses S. Grant,
printed in green.
"You fellas want a lift, well, I'll show you, the spirit of
cooperation is not dead. That's fifteen of them little fellers.
Thirteen… fourteen… and fifteen."
The Piper they rented circled over the Mississippi River town of
East St. Louis because Chiun wanted to see it from the air.
"That is a fine river," said Chiun. "Who owns the water
rights?"
"No one exactly owns the water rights. It belongs to the
country."
"Then the country could give it to us in payment?"
"No," said Remo.
"Even if we glorify the Constitution?"
"Not even then."
"You were born in an ungrateful country," said Chiun, but Remo
did not answer him. He was thinking about Willoughby's testimony.
Willoughby did not give his life for it. He gave his life because
he let his wife know where he was. People died, not for causes, but
for stupidity or bad luck, which was another form of stupidity,
caused by incompetence. This was the essence of what he had been
taught for more than a decade. In the world there was competence
and incompetence and nothing else. Causes were frills and came and
went with each age. Luck was only the cloudy explanation for things
people did not perceive. In this, the Master of Sinanju, more than
fourscore in years, stood alone, atop the world.
A man like Willoughby had worked his entire life without knowing
what he did. He took orders and he executed orders and nowhere in
his testimony did it ever show that he understood more than a
minimum about how food was grown and gotten to market. He had laced
the testimony he had hoped to give with words like "hard futures"
and "soft futures" and the market strengthening. Remo knew in his
stomach that this was not how his country had become the greatest
food producer in the world.
There was talk today about his country being selfishly
food-rich, but all those talking like that made it seem as if the
food just grew by itself because the land was rich. This was not
so. Men planted seed, and sweated over seed, and tried to outsmart
the weather. Men invested their lives in the soil, from the
laboratories where Americans sought constantly improving grains and
fertilizers, to the iron shops of Detroit where men improved the
substitute for the ox, the tractor. America had invented the
automatic reapers. America had made the first real changes in
agriculture since man had left the caves and put seed in soil.
America's food wealth was the fruit of its character. Genius, hard
work, and persistence.
It deeply offended Remo when he heard it compared to coal or oil
or bauxite, generally by some man in a university who had never
broken sweat on his brow.
What made a country developed or underdeveloped was its people.
Yet these men who knew not of labor referred to the natural
resources of undeveloped countries as something belonging, by some
divine right, solely to the people who happened to live over them,
while at the same time they said the proceeds of those who worked
for food belonged to the whole world. If it were not for the real
workers of the world, the oil and bauxite and copper lying under
sand and jungle would be as useless to the underdeveloped nations
as they had been at the first tick of noticed time.
As Chiun had so well taught, there was only competence and
incompetence.
Willoughby happened to be one of the ones taking a free ride.
Nearly one hundred pages of written testimony and the man only
suspected that he was stumbling onto the greatest man-made disaster
in history.
"I don't know how," concluded Willoughby's written statement,
"but these peculiar investment patterns forebode, I believe, a
master plan of destruction. The depression of the winter wheat
market futures at planting appear computer-timed to highest impact
for maximum potential in minimizing food growth." Whatever the neon
wool that all meant. All the testimony lacked was advice to get
into this wonderful thing with your money while the getting was
good.
Willoughby had made eighty thousand dollars a year as a
commodities analyst, according to Smith's information.
In East St. Louis, you could see the heat rising from the
cracked sidewalks of Ducal Street, a row of two-story wooden
buildings and storefronts, most of them empty. Pete's Pool Parlour
had its windows painted green halfway up. It wasn't empty. A very
large redblotched face with shiny grease and rheumy black eyes
stared over the green paint line. The garbage pail of a face rested
dully under an immaculate bright red hat with pompon. Inside, Remo
and Chiun saw it had a body, large hairy arms like girders with fur
transplants hanging out of a worn leather vest. The hands ended at
the denim-covered groin where they occupied themselves with
scratching.
"Where's Pete?" asked Remo.
The face did not answer.
"I'm looking for Pete."
"Who are you and dinko?" said the garbage pail of a face.
"I'm the spirit of Christmas Past and this is Mother Goose,"
said Remo.
"You got a big mouth."
"It's a hot day. Tell me where Pete is, please," said Remo.
Chiun examined the strange room. There were green rectangular
tables with colored balls. The white ball did not have a number.
There were sticks with which young men pushed the white ball into
other balls. When certain of these other balls went into holes at
the sides of the table, the man hitting the white ball into the
colored balls was allowed to continue or, in some cases, collected
paper money, which, while not gold, could be used to purchase
things. Chiun went over to the table where the most money was
changing hands.
Meanwhile, Remo finished his business.
"Just tell me where Pete is."
The hairy hand left the groin to rub thumb against forefinger,
indicating money.
"Give me something," said the garbage pail of a face. So Remo
gave him a shattered collarbone and, true to his word, the garbage
pail of a face told him that Pete was behind the cash register and
then he passed out from the pain. Remo nudged the man's face with
his shoe. There was a grease spot on the floor.
Pete was holding a weapon behind the cash register when Remo got
there.
"Hi, I'd like to speak to you privately," said Remo.
"I saw what you did there. Just stay where you are."
Remo's right hand fluttered with his fingers almost braiding
themselves. Pete's eyes followed the hand for a fraction of an
instant. Which they were supposed to do. In that moment, just as
the eyes moved, Remo's left hand was behind the counter in
simultaneous flow, thumb into metacarpals, pressuring the nerves
into a gel of compressed bone. The gun dropped on a box of pool
chalk. Pete's eyes teared. A crazy pain-racked smile came across
his otherwise bland face.
"Wow, that smarts," Pete said.
A lounger whiling away his twenties and thirties would have seen
only the thin man with the thick wrists go over to Pete and walk
with him to a back room, holding Pete's arm in some sort of
friendly embrace. A lounger, however, would have been more
interested in the strange elderly Oriental with the funny
robes.
Waco Boy Childers was playing Charlie Dusset for a hundred
dollars a game and no one was talking, excepting that funny
Oriental fella. He wanted to know the rules of the game.
Waco Boy lowered his stick and sighed.
"Pops, I was shooting," said Waco Boy down to the old squint of
a gook. "People do not talk while I am shooting."
"Do you perform so well that it robs others of breath?" asked
Chiun.
"Sometimes. If they got enough money on it."
This brought laughs.
"Like, watch Charlie Dusset," said Waco Boy. Chiun cackled and
both Waco Boy and Charlie asked what he was laughing about.
"Funny names. Your names are so funny. 'Dusset.' 'Waco Boy.' You
have such funny names," and Chiun's laughter was infectious for
those crowding around the table laughed also, except Waco Boy and
Charlie Dusset.
"Yeah? What's your name, feller?" said Waco Boy.
And Chiun told them his name, but in Korean. They did not
understand.
"I think that's funny," said Waco Boy.
"Fools usually do," said Chiun and this time even Charlie Dusset
laughed.
"You want to put your money where your mouth is?" said Waco Boy.
He set his hand bridge on the green felt top and with a
smooth-honed stroke put away the seven ball in the side pocket, the
eight ball on a bank the length of the table, which left the cue
ball right behind the nine at a corner pocket. He put the yellow
nine away with a short stroke that left the cue ball dead where it
hit. Charlie Dusset paid out with bis last bill.
"I presume you wish me to gamble?" said Chiun.
"You presumes correctly."
"On the outcome of this game?"
"Correct," said Waco Boy.
"I do not gamble," said Chiun. "Gambling makes a person weak. It
robs him of his self-worth, for a man who places his fate in luck
instead of in his own skills surrenders his well-being to the whims
of fortune."
"You're just a talker then?"
"I did not say that."
Waco Boy grabbed a roll of bills out of his pockets and threw
them on the green felt table. "Put up or shut up."
"Do you have gold?" said Chiun.
"I thought you didn't gamble," said Waco Boy.
"Defeating you in any contest of skill is not gambling," said
Chiun and this remark almost leveled Charlie Dusset with
laughter.
"I got a gold watch," said Waco Boy and before he could get it
off his wrist, the long fingernails of the Oriental had it off and
then back on while Waco Boy's stubby fingers seemed to grub
hopelessly.
"It is not gold," said Chiun. "But since I have nothing else to
do at this moment, I shall play you for that paper. This is
gold."
From his kimono, Chiun took out a large thick coin, shiny and
yellow. And he put it on the edge of the table. But the people
around allowed they didn't know if it were real gold.
"It is an English Victoria, accepted the whole world over."
And the folks around the table allowed it sure was a
fine-looking coin and someone said he had read about British
Victorias and they were sure worth a lot of money. But Waco Boy
said as he didn't quite know if he wanted to risk $758 against a
single coin, no matter how much it was worth.
Chiun added another coin.
"Or even two," said Waco Boy. "Maybe a hundred against one of
them."
"I will offer two against your paper of what you think is a
hundred valuation."
"Better watch out, Mister," said Charlie Dusset. "Waco Boy's the
best in the whole state. All Missouri."
"All of Missouri?" said Chiun, clasping a long delicate hand to
his chest. "Next you will tell me he is the best in all America and
then the continent."
"He's pretty good, Mister," said Charlie Dusset. "He cleaned me
out."
"Ah, what formidableness. Nevertheless, I will take my poor
chances."
"You want to break?" asked Waco Boy.
"What is break?"
"Taking the first shot."
"I see. And how is this game won? What are the rules?"
"You take this cue stick and you hit the white ball into first
the one ball and you knock that in. Then the two and so on until
the nine. When you get the nine you win."
"I see," said Chiun. "And what if the nine should go in on the
first stroke?"
"You win."
"I see," said Chiun as Waco Boy placed the nine balls in a
diamond formation at the other end of the table. And Chiun asked to
hold the balls to see what they felt like and Waco Boy rolled him
one and he lifted it and asked to see another, but Waco Boy said
they were all identical. To this, Chiun answered no, they were not
all identical. The blue one was not as perfectly round as the
orange one and the green one was heavier than all the rest and
although those around him laughed, Chiun persisted in feeling every
one of the balls, and had they noticed that when he rolled them
back they stopped on the table exactly where they had been in the
rack, they might have expected what would happen next.
Chiun had but one question before he took a short cue stick.
"Yeah, what is it?" said Waco Boy.
"Which is the nine ball?"
"The yellow one."
"There are two yellow ones."
"The striped one with the nine on it."
"Oh, yes," said Chiun, for the nine had been on the underside of
the ball.
Those around would later say the old Oriental man had held the
cue stick in a peculiar way. Sort of one hand in the middle, kind
of. No bridge. Like a nail file almost. Alls he did was like flick
it. Just flick and that cue ball'd got wham-bam spinnin' like you
never seen. Drove right into the center of the rack and like zap.
Clipped that nine and smacked it dead into the left corner
pocket.
"Jeeezus," said Waco Boy.
"No. Not him," said Chiun. "Arrange the balls again."
And this time, because the rack was pressed with more tightness
than the first, Chiun sent the white ball first into the rack to
release the nine, so that the white ball coming off the left
cushion caught it properly and propelled it into the right corner
pocket.
In such a manner, he won seven games with seven strokes and all
around wished to know who he was.
"You have heard in your lifetimes that no matter how good you
are, there is always someone better?" said Chiun.
Everyone allowed as how they had heard that.
"I am that person. The someone better."
Remo, meanwhile, attended to business. In a forthright manner,
he asked Pete simply why he had promised five thousand dollars to
two men to kill Oswald Willughby. Pete answered forthrightly. He
had gotten ten thousand for it and paid out five. The money had
come from Johnny "Deuce" Deussio who had proprietary interests in
numbers, gambling, and narcotics in East St. Louis. Deussio, it was
said, worked for Guglielmo Balunta, who had a proprietary interest in all St.
Louis. Pete noted he would be killed for saying this about Johnny
Deuce. Of course, Deussio might be too late. Pete also noted that
it would be nice if Remo could possibly return his intestines to
his body cavity.
"They're not gone. It only feels like that. Nerves."
"That's nice," said Pete. "It's good to know it only feels like
my stomach's been ripped out."
Remo worked the muscles near Pete's ribs taking pressure off the
intestinal tract.
"Oh, my god, that feels good," said Pete. "Thank you. It feels
like my stomach is back in."
"You won't tell anyone I've been here, will you?" asked
Remo.
"Are you kidding? Mess with you?"
John Vincent Deussio, president of Deussio Realty and Deussio
Enterprises Inc., had a steel-link fence around his estate just
outside St. Louis. He had electronic eyes near the fence and what
might charitably be described as a herd of Doberman Pinschers. He
had twenty-eight bodyguards under command of his capo
regime who was his cousin, Salvatore Mangano, one of the most
feared men west of the Mississippi.
So what was he doing in his alabaster-tiled bathroom about three
A.M. with his face in the flushing toilet? He knew it was about
three a.m. because on an uplift which felt like his hair was coming
out of his head, he saw his watch and one of the hands, which was
probably the hour hand, was pointing toward his fingers. What was
he doing? He was waking up. That was first. Secondly, he was
answering questions which came rapidly now. He liked to answer
those questions. When he did so, he could breathe and John Vincent
Deussio had liked to breathe ever since he was a little baby.
"I got fifty grand from a friend of mine in a coast public
relations agency. Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan. They're big. I was
doing a favor. They wanted this guy Willoughby. I've done a lot of
work for them lately."
"Commodities people?" came the next question. It was a man's
voice. He had thick wrists. He was flushing the toilet again.
"Yes. Yes. Yes. Commodities."
"Who gave you the contracts?"
"Giordano. Giordano. That's Jordan's real name. It's a big
agency. They got some kind of wonder grain. Gonna save the world.
Make a fucking fortune."
"And what about Balunta?"
"He's gonna get his cut. I wasn't gonna hold out on him. For a
crummy fifty grand. He didn't have to ask like this."
"So Balunta didn't have anything to do with this?"
"He's gonna get his cut. He's gonna get it. What is this shit?"
And John Vincent Deussio saw the toilet flush again and everything
became dark and when he awoke it was four a.m. and he was retching.
He yelled for his cousin, Sally. Sally hadn't seen anyone, maybe
Johnny Deuce had dreamed it, sort of sleepwalking like. No one had
gotten in during the night. They checked the fences and checked the
men who handled the dogs and checked the bodyguards and even called
in this Japanese guy they had hired once as a consultant. He
smelled the ground.
"Impossible," he said. "I gave you my word that even the greats
of Ninja, the night-fighters of the Orient, could not penetrate
your castle and I stand by my word. Impossible."
"Maybe somebody better than Ninja?" asked Johnny
Deuce, who was now getting quizzical looks from his cousin
Sally.
"Ninja is the best," said the Japanese.
"Maybe you dreamed it, like I said," said Sally.
"Shut up, Sally. I didn't dream my head into a fucking toilet
bowl." And turning to the consultant, he asked again if he was sure
that there was nothing better than Ninja.
"In the world today, no," said the muscular Japanese. "In the
martial arts, one art breeds another art and thus today there are
many. But it is said, and I believe, that they all came from one,
the sun source of the arts it is called. And the farther from the
source, the less potent. The closer, the more potent. We are almost
direct from this source. We are Ninja."
"What's the source?"
"Some claim but I do not believe that they have even met
him."
"Who?"
"The Master. The Master of Sinanju."
"A yellow guy?"
"Yes."
"I saw a wrist. It was white."
"Impossible then. No one outside this small Korean town has ever
possessed Sinanju." He smiled. "Let alone a white person. But it is
only legend."
"I told you you was dreaming," said Sally, who didn't quite know
why he got a slap in the face just then.
"I know I wasn't dreaming," said Deussio, as he phoned his
contact on the coast and, in veiled words because you always had to
assume someone was tapping your line, told Mr. Jordan that
something had gone wrong with the recent account operations.
CHAPTER FOUR
"What went wrong?" asked James Orayo Fielding from his Denver
offices. He glanced at his two-faced digital calendar clock. The
inside figure read three months, eighteen days. He had stopped
looking at the outside figure when the fainting spells had started
two weeks and five days before.
"I don't have time for anything to go wrong," he said into the
telephone receiver. The office was airconditioned yet he was
sweating.
"Are the fields all right? Someone's gotten to the fields. I
know it."
"I don't think that's it," came the voice of William Jordan,
vice president of Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan. "In the overview,
you're still in a highly positive launch position."
"I know what that means. You haven't done anything yet. Is the
Mojave Field all right? That's the most important one."
"Yes. As far as I know," said Mr. Jordan.
"Is the field in Bangor, Maine, all right?"
"Bangor is top-notch."
"The Sierra field? There can be mountain floods, you know."
"Sierra is high."
"And Piqua, Ohio?"
"Buckeye beautiful."
"So what could have gone wrong?" Fielding demanded.
"I can't talk about it on the phone, Mr. Fielding. It's in that
sensitive area,"
"Well, get over here and tell me."
"You couldn't come here, sir? I'm rather chockablock with
work."
"Do you want to keep this account?" said Fielding.
"I can wedge in time this afternoon."
"You bet you can," said Fielding. "If you want to make
millions."
He hung up the receiver and felt better. He had Feldman,
O'Connor and Jordan just where he wanted them, just under his heel.
If he had paid them a fancy retainer, they would have given him
fancy footwork. But he had hung a piece of sweet bait just out of
reach of their quivering tentacles, and that kept them scurrying
where he wanted them to scurry. They smelled a monumental fortune
and they had already killed for it.
Fielding swiveled his chair to face the large picture window
filled by the Rockies, the new playground of the mindless. The
Rockies had killed men since the Indians came down across the
Bering Strait. Froze them like flies in the winter, let them thaw
out and stink in the summer. White men came, built their little
protected nests, briefly stuck their fur-wrapped faces into the
air, and said how beautiful nature was. Beautiful? Nature
killed.
Fielding looked at the Rockies and remembered the first meeting
with Feldman, O'Connor, and Jordan nearly eight months before.
Everything had been so Christmassy in December. The commodities
market had taken that dip and there was less whiter wheat growing
under the snows of America's plains than at any time since the
Thirties.
Feldman and O'Connor and Jordan had greeted him personally for
their presentation. Lights of red and green and blue hung from palm
trees. A ceramic Santa Claus which dispensed scotch from its groin
leaned against a bookcase. Feldman nervously explained it was left
over from the office Christmas party. He had a smooth tan with
manicured gray hair and a pinky ring with a diamond big enough to
send sun signals half way across the country. O'Connor was pale
with freckles and large bony hands that worked themselves together.
His blue striped tie was knotted tight enough for a penance. And
then there was Jordan, even-capped white teeth, black hair so
neatly billowing it looked as if it had come from a cheap plastic
mold. Eyes like black immies. He wore a dark striped suit with
too-wide shoulders and too-flaring lapels and, of all things, a
buckle in the back. The buckle was silver.
Fielding entered the room like a modest lord among gaudy
servants.
"It is truly an honor to have you here, sir," said Feldman. "And
I might add, a pleasure."
"A real pleasure," said O'Connor.
"A deep pleasure," said Jordan.
"There is no pleasure for me, gentlemen," said Fielding as
Feldman took his coat and O'Connor his brief-case. "I am in
mourning for a beautiful person. You may never have heard of him.
No history books will carry his name to future generations, no
songs will praise his deeds. Yet truly this person was a man among
men."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Feldman had said.
"The good die young," said O'Connor.
"Most distressing," said Jordan.
"His name was Oliver. He was my manservant," said Fielding.
"A good manservant is better than a rotten scientist," Feldman
had allowed. O'Connor thought so too.
"A good manservant is the closest thing to Christ on earth,"
said Jordan. Feldman had to agree with that. O'Connor noted that in
his faith it was the highest honor to be called handmaiden of the
Lord.
"I am determined that his name will be remembered. I am
determined that men will say Oliver with respect, reverence, and
yes, even joy. That is why I am here."
"We can set it to music," said Feldman and he began to hum a
Negro spiritual and then created the words to the music. "Anybody
here see my old friend, Oliver?"
Fielding shook his head. "No," he said.
"You're not focusing for prime thrust," said Jordan to
Feldman.
"Not at all," said O'Connor.
"I have a better idea," said Fielding.
"I like it," said Feldman.
"I have set up a foundation with an original endowment of my
entire fortune, fifty million dollars."
"Beautiful," said Feldman.
"Solid," said O'Connor.
"Beautifully solid base," said Jordan.
"It's more than a base, gentlemen," said Fielding and he
signaled for his briefcase. "As you gentlemen know, I have been
involved in industry, successfully involved, except for a few minor
tax losses in the southwest."
"And a leader of the Denver community," said Feldman.
"A solid leader," said O'Connor. "As were your parents and
grandparents."
"The sort of client we would be proud to represent," said
Jordan.
Fielding opened the briefcase. Carefully he took from it four
plastic boxes with metal latches. The boxes were clear plastic and
contained grain of white and brown and golden colors. One was
labeled "soybean," another "wheat," another "rice," and another
"barley."
"These are the basic grains of man's sustenance," said
Fielding.
"They have a natural beauty," said Jordan,
"I feel better since I've started eating granola," said
Feldman.
"The staff of life," said O'Connor.
"First I have a small request. Please refrain from comments
until I ask for them," said Fielding. "You are looking at four
miracles. You are looking at the answer, the final answer to man's
problems with famine. These grains were grown in a single month's
time."
There was silence in the room. Fielding paused. When he saw the
three partners' eyes start to wander uncomfortably, he went on.
"I don't think you are aware of what a month-grown grain is. It
is more than a faster process. It's twelve crops a year where a
farmer had only one or two before. Through my process, we can
increase the food yield a minimum of six times on earth. In all
weather and in all conditions. I need only one thing now. A demonstration, well-publicized, to commit the world-especially
the underdeveloped world-to this process. It is important, vitally
important now, because I hear the winter wheat crop this year will
be a small one."
"Who owns the patent?" asked O'Connor.
"It is not patented. It is a secret process I intend to give to
all mankind," said Fielding.
"But for your protection, don't you think it would be wise to
have some sort of patent? We could arrange it."
Fielding shook his head. "No. But what I will do for your
services is give your firm 20 percent of the profit on every
soybean, every grain of rice, grain of wheat, or barley grown in
the world."
O'Connor's tie knot bobbed, Feldman salivated, and Jordan, his
eyes glowing, breathed heavily.
"The entire world is going to use what I call the Oliver method,
in tribute to my noble servant."
The three men bowed their heads and Fielding passed out pictures
of Oliver, taken by a sheriff's office after the air accident. He
said he would appreciate it if they would keep those pictures in
their offices. They agreed. But it was when they saw the
demonstration that they vowed ultimate fidelity to the memory of
Oliver.
In Rocky Mountain winter, they saw a twenty-yard patch of snowy
mountainside planted with wheat treated by the Oliver method, as
Fielding had called it. Saw workmen pickax into the soil and cover
the seed with rock-hard pieces of ground and returned thirty days
later to see stalks of wheat growing in the sub-zero wind.
"The weather is only a slight hindrance to the Oliver method,"
Fielding yelled above the wind. O'Connor pocketed a stalk with his
gloved hand. Back in Los Angeles, they got the verdict from a
biologist.
"Yep. This is wheat all right."
Could it have been grown on a mountainside in winter?"
"No way."
If it could be, grown full in just one month, what would you
say?
"Whoever knew how to do it would be the richest man in the
world."
That report from the biologist had come seven months before.
Fielding had waited two days for them to get the biologist's
report, as he knew they would, and then he had brought his little
problem to Jordan. In an effort to make the market more receptive
to fast-grown grains, Fielding had sold winter wheat futures
massively with funds from the Oliver Foundation. He was troubled by
this. A couple of commodities brokers suspected something. Some
were trying to blackmail him. A third might be considering telling
the government. There was nothing else to do but confess all and
give the formula for Wondergrains-Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan had
changed what they called the packaging concept from the Oliver
method to Wondergrains-to the public. Just announce it and give it
away. Free.
"Don't worry. I'll take care of everything, Mr. Fielding. Just
you protect our little project, eh?" said Jordan, which was what
Fielding knew he would say, which was why he had selected Feldman,
O'Connor and Jordan, whom he knew to be Giordano with many cousins
who could make people disappear.
And there were a few more people who had threatened to get in
the way, people who had intruded upon the orderly plan to bring
Wondergrains to the world.
And Fielding had presented their names to Jordan in a kind of
laundry list for mass murder, and Jordan had said he would take
care of everything.
It had worked so well, thought Fielding. He had combined his
public relations element with his killerarm element and with luck,
he would live to see the fruits of his project-the vast and utter
destruction of entire civilizations. Without luck, it would happen
anyway. It was too late to stop it.
His digital desk calendar predicted he had three months,
eighteen days to live. The project itself should be finalized in a
little more than a month.
The intercom intruded upon his reverie. It was his new
secretary. He always had new secretaries. They didn't stay more
than a week.
"I have the list for tomorrow's demonstration," came her wriggly
voice.
''Bring it in."
"Could I slip it under the door?"
"Of course not."
"Those pictures in your office. They're sort of… sort of
stomach-turning."
"Those pictures," said Fielding looking at the sheriff's impact
shots of Oliver, "are what this whole foundation is about. When I
hired you, I asked if you were committed to decency and you said
yes. Well, I'm not going to put up lying pictures around the
office. He died horribly and I want the world to know that. I want
them to know the truth about Oliver. The truth will set you
free."
She brought in the lists with her eyes fixed on the mauve
carpeting. She did not even look up when she handed Fielding the
lists. Pakistan had officials at the Sierra and Mojave for the
first planting. Chad, Senegal, and Mali were listed for the Mojave
as those countries afflicted by drought opted mainly for the desert
demonstrations. Russia and China were scheduled for desert,
mountain, midwest, and north. England was scheduled for Bangor,
Maine, and France for Ohio.
But nowhere on the lists was India.
"Did you phone the Indian Embassy?" asked Fielding.
"Yes sir."
"Why aren't they coming? We've spent close to $700,000 on
pamphlets, brochures, charts, photos. Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan
had a postage bill of over $20,000. I know India was informed."
"Well, they said they didn't have anyone available."
"They have four agricultural experts in the United States. I
know that for a fact. I know their names. India is the most
important country on that list."
"Yes sir, I know that. Please don't yell. I have it written down
outside."
Fielding watched her scurry from the office. The intercom buzzed
on.
"Sir, the four agricultural experts assigned to the Indian
embassy are occupied tomorrow as follows: one is lecturing at Yale
on America's responsibility to share its food; another is a panel
member on… I have the title right here… 'America the
Monster'… he said he would have liked to come to the
demonstration but the ambassador made him go to the panel
discussion on the threat of being sent back to India if he didn't.
The third is speaking on American hypocrisy at Berkeley… he
never goes to any agricultural exhibits anyhow… and the
fourth is sick with stomach cramps. Too much rich American food or
something."
"But they must know this is the miracle grain."
"Their only answer, sir, was that they're too busy fighting
hypocrisy. Perhaps if we told them the process was part of a
nuclear weapon. When I mentioned nuclear, they were very interested
until they found out it only had to do with the seeds."
"No," said Fielding.
When Jordan arrived that afternoon to discuss his little
problem, Fielding demanded that an Indian representative be at one
demonstration at least.
"It's critical. India is the most important market of all," said
Fielding.
"India doesn't buy foodstuffs. I've checked this out
thoroughly," said Jordan. "If you give them grains on credit, they
take them, because if they wait long enough the credit will be
forgotten. But their policy, and it has generally worked,
Mr. Fielding, is that if there's a surplus of grain anywhere,
they're going to get it free anyhow. They'd rather put their money
in nuclear devices."
"But they have an incredible famine problem. I've seen it
myself."
"Mr. Fielding, do you remember what India did last year? First
they announced that they were not going to accept any more grain
from the United States which had given them something like $16
billion-that's billion-in free food. Then, to punish the imperialist
American monsters, they supported the Arab oil squeeze. When oil
prices went up, so did the price of fertilizer. It tripled. India
couldn't buy any, because all their money was going into nuclear
bombs. So they asked America for more free food. And we gave it to
them."
"That's insane."
"So's India," said Jordan. "If we paid them to take the
Wondergrain, they'd take it. But they're not going to buy it."
"Then we'll have to arrange some kind of credit for them," said
Fielding, "or else India will become…" And he did not finish
his sentence for it would have disclosed that if India did not buy
the Wondergrain, it would become the food-richest nation on earth.
What was left of earth.
"All right. What's the problem you mentioned?" said
Fielding.
Fortunately, it turned out to be minor. It had taken months for
Jordan's people to locate that talky commodities man, that
Willoughby. One of the men who had arranged Willoughby's "accident"
had had his house invaded. Mr. Fielding should be careful for the
next few weeks. Check his door locks and things like that.
"This was the only slipup," Jordan said. "The other commodities
people, those other names you gave me, all of them were handled.
Just this little problem and I think you should be careful."
"I've been careful all my life. It's too late to be careful
now," said Fielding. And he warned Jordan that if India were not
part of the Wondergrain plan, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan might
find itself without its percentage.
Of course, thought Fielding without mentioning it, if India
became the most workable nation on earth, that would be almost as
good as eliminating all the bugs all together.
CHAPTER FIVE
Remo and Chiun saw the demonstration site down the flat highway.
A herd of limousines, television trucks, and police vehicles
surrounded a high fence on a rise three miles off, baking in the
summer desert.
"I do not believe food could grow here," said Chiun and once
again told the story of how poor soil had forced Sinanju to send
its best sons to foreign lands to earn food for the village. The
way Chiun told it, a callow youth had ventured forth into a hostile
world with nothing but his hands, his mind, and his character.
"You were forty when you became Master of Sinanju," said
Remo.
"Fifty or a hundred, a new experience makes children of us all,"
said Chiun.
In his search for Jordan who had paid Johnny Deussio who had
paid Pete who paid the two who died in Harborcreek after killing
Willoughby, Remo had been told by an all-too-bubbly secretary that
Mr. Jordan "will be at the most major agricultural advancement since the
plow."
"Where?" Remo had asked.
"The stunning great step of mankind by the one small
agricultural step of one man, James Orayo Fielding."
"Where?"
"The salvation of the world which is what you might call this
Wondergrain. For…"
"Just tell me where it's happening," and hearing "the Mojave
Desert," Remo asked where in the Mojave and endured another three
minutes of windy wonder until he got the exact location. That was
yesterday. They rented a car and drove and there were Chiun's
trunks right in the back seat and in the car trunk.
"I feel like a porter," Remo had said, loading the large
colorful trunks into the car. "Could you make it on one less trunk,
maybe?"
To this question, Chiun had had a sudden attack of only being
able to speak Korean, and since Remo had picked up some Korean over
the years, Chiun could speak only a Pyongyang dialect which Remo
did not know.
As they neared the demonstration site, Chiun's English naturally
unproved, especially when he found an excuse to repeat the legend
of Sinanju. He also had a question. Where could he change paper
money for real money, gold?
"Where'd you get paper money?" asked Remo.
"It's mine," said Chiun.
"Where? You picked it up in that poolroom in East St. Louis,
didn't you?"
"It belongs to me," said Chiun.
"You played pool for it, didn't you? Didn't you? You
gambled."
"I did not gamble. I educated."
"I remember this big harangue you gave me once. The wasting of
my talents on games. How when you put your skills to something
frivolous, you lose your skills. I mean, you made it sound like I
was betraying Sinanju itself. You even told me about your teacher
and the balls that could go in all directions. I remember that. I
was never to use my skills in gambling."
"There is nothing worse," said Chiun solemnly, "than a talky
white man." And he would say no more on the subject.
It was not hard to find Jordan. Remo told one of the girls
handing out Wondergrain brochures that he was a magazine writer and
he wanted to see Jordan.
Jordan came trotting, fuschia Palm Beach suit, a tie of woven
mud and silver, capped teeth, and plastic black hair, wondering in
basso profundo how best he could be of service. Remo wanted an
interview.
"Mr. Fielding, the great agricultural genius of our times, is
busy now but you can see him after NBC News tonight. As of
today, you will be speaking to a world figure. That's the whole
world."
"The round one?" said Chiun, folding his long hands before
himself.
"I want to talk to you, not Mr. Fielding," said Remo.
"Anything to be of help. Mr. Fielding will be ready at 8:30
tonight after his worldwide exposure on NBC. I must run now."
But Jordan did not run far. In fact, he did not run at all.
Something was holding the padded shoulder of his fuschia
jacket.
"Oh, me. You want to interview me. Fine," said Jordan.
A loudspeaker crackled with a Western voice explaining the
limitations of available land as Remo went with Jordan into the
smaller of two tents, used as a press shed. Chiun stayed to hear
the lecture because, as he explained, he was an expert on starving
peoples. Just fifteen hundred years ago…
Two reporters hung, passed out drunk, over a small couch near
the press bar. The bartender washed glasses. Remo refused an
offered drink and sat down with Jordan across from a
typewriter.
"Ask away. I'm at your disposal," said Jordan.
"You most certainly are, Giordano," said Remo. "Why did you have
those commodities men killed?"
"I beg your pardon," said Jordan, his black eyes blinking under
indoor fluorescent.
"Why did you have Willoughby killed?"
"Willoughby who?" said Jordan evenly.
Remo pressured a knee cap.
"Eeeeow," Jordan wheezed.
The reporters woke up and seeing it was just a simple assault
went back to sleep. The bartender, a giant of a man with shoulders
like doorways, leaped over the bar with a thick three-foot wooden
stick. With a massive swing from his heels he brought the club down
on Mr. Jordan's assailant. There was a resounding crack. The crack
was the stick; the head was still untouched. The bartender brought
a fist smashing toward the assailant's face. The fist felt like it
was deflected by a small gust of air and then there was a very
funny sting under the bartender's nose and he felt very much like
going to sleep. He did, underneath a desk.
"You didn't answer me," said Remo.
"Right," said Jordan. "Answer you. Answer you. Willoughby. I
seem to remember the man. Commodities man. Willoughby."
"Why did you have him killed?"
"Is he dead?" said Jordan, massaging his knee.
"Very," said Remo.
"The good die young," said Jordan.
Remo put a thumb on Jordan's throat. It brought the truth out of
the man. Gagging, but the truth. Willoughby was killed because he
was threatening the greatest agricultural advance in the history of
mankind. In the history of mankind.
"What other history is there?" asked Remo.
Willoughby had evidence that the grain market was artificially
depressed. Willoughby did not know why but he suspected something
big. It was hard to breathe. Would the stranger release his throat
grip?
"Whew," said Jordan getting all the oxygen he needed. "Thank
you," he said and straightened his tie and brushed flat his fuschia
suit. "Vito, Al," he yelled. "Will you come here a minute?" And to
Remo he confided they could help explain some things. Willoughby
wasn't the only one, nor were there just commodities brokers. There
were some construction men too. And oh, yes, said Jordan when two
large men in silk suits with heavy bulges at the shoulders entered,
there would soon be a reporter who couldn't keep his hands to
himself.
Hearing "hands to himself" one of the reporters in a boozy
slumber said, "I'm sorry, Mabel. You've got to realize I respect
you as a person."
"Vito, Al. Kill this sonuvabitch," said Jordan.
"Right here, Mr. Jordan?" said Al, drawing a large square .45
with pearl insets on the handle.
"Yes."
"In front of the reporters?"
"They've passed out," said Jordan.
"You said it, boss," said Vito. "Maybe we should use a
silencer?"
"Good idea," said Jordan, hobbling to his men. "I have important
things to do. Don't worry about police. It's self-defense. Defend
yourselves."
Remo idly listened to this, drumming on a typewriter roll with
his fingertips, legs crossed, leaning back in a chair. When Al
aimed the bolstered barrel of a small automatic at him, Remo
centered his weight and just in case Chiun might be looking into
the press tent, he kept his left wrist very straight behind the
typewriter carriage. He had one worry. The chair. But as his spine
pressed down suddenly into the chair, it held. That was good. And
his left hand was perfectly straight from palm to forearm.
Al was squeezing the trigger when he saw and felt simultaneously
the silenced automatic come back into his chest along with
something else. It was heavy. He felt himself jammed into a desk. A
Royal Standard was in his chest along with, he guessed, the
automatic. At least that was where his arm ended and the last time
he had seen the gun a fraction of a second before. The return arm
of the carriage was jammed into his right ear. The black roller was
into where his nose bone had been. He found breathing impossible,
largely because his right lung was flat. Which was all right too
because the heart didn't need oxygen anymore since his left aorta
supplied only a space bar and the right ventricle ended at "D,"
"F," and "G."
"Keep down the frigging noise, will you?" said one of the
reporters. "I'm trying to work." The reporter rolled over on a
desk, fluffing a raincoat for a softer rest for his head.
"Jeez," said Vito.
He said it again. "Oh, Jeez," and without silencer he squeezed
the trigger of his .45 and kept on squeezing. Unfortunately his
target had moved. So had the .45. It was in his mouth and before
everything went black forever, which was very quickly, he was
amazed at how little it hurt. Sort of one loud sting in the back of
his head.
Jordan watched the back of Vito's head splatter against the new
fuchsia suit and onto the imported tie with the silver and mud
weave.
"We should talk," said Jordan. "Let us reason together."
"Am I correct in assuming you had those commodities people
killed because they knew about efforts to depress the market in
wheat, winter wheat to be exact?"
"Correct. Absolutely. Totally correct. Totally."
"And that was so that people would invest in this new
Wondergrain, because of the larger need now?"
"Make people more responsive. Correct. Totally correct. Greater
need. Greater buying. It's going to be a boon to mankind. A boon. A
helpful boon. Totally a boon. I can cut you in. You'll be rich
beyond your wildest dreams."
"And Fielding?"
"He's an idiot," said Jordan. "We can control the whole thing.
That dummy wanted to give away the profits. Name the grain after
his dingy butler. It was I who saw the whole thing as Wondergrain,
the miracle answer to today's food problems. I took over the
packaging and marketing. I control the shares. We can be rich.
Rich. Rich." Jordan screamed the "rich."
Most men scream when their spinal column snaps into their
navel.
If Remo had thought only about what Jordan was saying and let
his body flow the stroke, there would would have been no problem.
If he had thought about just the stroke, there would have been no
problem. But thinking about both, Remo noticed something wrong. Not
that the final effect was different. Jordan lay on the press tent
floor, ears at heel like a folded card.
It was the performance that was wrong, the angle of penetration
that lacked the perfect perpendicular to his upper arm, which now
felt a small meaningless twinge. The difference between Sinanju and
other methods, other methods of anything for that matter, was that
the form must be precisely correct, no matter what the result.
As Chiun had said: "When the results are different, it is too
late." So Remo did the stroke twice more around an imaginary
Jordan, the flat hand tip coming back towards itself in the snap
that became perpendicular on final impact. It was right. Good.
"Disgrace," came the squeaky Oriental voice from the flap of the
tent. "Now you learn to do it right. Now you bother to learn
correctness. You have shamed me." It was Chiun.
"In front of whom? Who the hell else would know?" said Remo.
"Imperfection is its own disgrace," said Chiun. And then in
Korean bewailing the years of pearls cast before ungrateful pale
pieces of pig's ear and how not even the Master of Sinanju could
transform mud into diamonds.
"No," said Chiun to someone behind him. "Do not come in. You
should not look upon shame."
A telephone rang behind Remo. A reporter stirred, woke up, and
answered it groggily.
"Yeah. Right. It's me. I'm right on top of everything. Yeah.
They planted the grain this morning under sparkling hot skies, the
new Wondergrain that can save the world from starvation, according
to James O. Fielding, 42, of Denver. Yeah. Let the lead stand.
Nothing happening. I'll stay right on it. Right. Harvest will be in
four weeks… the Wondergrain. It's rough out here in the
Mojave. Let me tell you. Change that lead to planted the grain in
the dry unyielding sand of the Mojave Desert.' Etcetera. Etcetera.
Right." The reporter hung up and crawled over his raincoat to the
bar, where he poured a full glass of Hennessey cognac, drank two
gulps, and went slowly to the floor head first so that he was
sleeping upside down.
"It is CIA plot," came a woman's voice behind Chiun.
She was beautiful standing there in the desert sunlight, rich
black hair flowing to her shoulders, full womanly breasts and a
face of jeweled perfection, eyes dark like an unlit universe, and
skin smooth with youth. She also had a mouth. Loud.
"Is CIA plot. I know. CIA plot. CIA ruining goodwill of American
peoples, attempting to destroy the revolution. Hello, my name is
Maria Gonzales. Long live the revolution."
"Who is this?" Remo asked Chiun.
"A brave young girl helping revolution against white imperialist
oppressors," said Chiun sweetly.
"You tell her who you work for?"
"He is a revolutionary. All third-world peoples are
revolutionary," said Maria.
"Could you put aside that revolutionary jazz while you're with
me?" said Remo.
"As a matter of fact, yes. I am a farmer first. I talk
revolution like you talk apple pie. If you are a friend of this
sweet old gentleman, I'm really glad to meet you." She extended a
hand. Remo took it. The palm was soft and warm. She smiled. Remo
smiled. Chiun slapped the hands apart. Such touching was improper
in public.
"I'm an agricultural representative of the democratic government
of Free Cuba. I think you people really have something good here,"
said Maria. She smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun got between
them.
Fielding was pressing the final soybean into the crusty dry soil
when Remo got to the inner edge of the crowd. The field itself was
on top of a small hill. While the planting area was no more than
twenty yards square, it sat inside an open area four times that
size, surrounded by high, barbed-wire-crowned hurricane fencing.
The field had a strange smell to Remo, a slight odor that was more
a memory than a sense.
"Tomorrow," Fielding was saying, "I will plant a similar crop in
Bangor, Maine, and the next day in the Sierras, and the following
day, the final planting in Ohio. You are welcome to attend those
also."
After he covered the last seed with his foot, he straightened up
and rubbed his back. "Now, the sun filter," said Fielding and the
workmen covered the plot with an opaque plastic tarpaulin, shaped
like a tent.
"What you have just seen," said Fielding, catching his breath,
"is the most significant advance in agriculture since the plow. I
will tell you this. It is chemical. It eliminates the need for
expensive land preparation, it expands the parameters of
temperature and water needs which has kept tillable land at only a
small percentage of the earth's surface. It requires no fertilizer
or pesticides. It will grow in thirty days and I hope you will all
be back here that day to witness this revolution. Gentlemen, you
are seeing an end to world hunger."
There was a scattering of applause from foreign newsmen, some
mumbling about whether this would be ten or fifteen seconds on
national television, and then from the press shed came a
shriek.
"Dead men. There are dead men all over the place. A
massacre."
"Wow," said a reporter near Remo and Maria. "A real story now.
I'm always lucky. Send me to a nothing story and I always luck
out."
Like seepage from a ruptured water tank, the mob flowed toward
the press shed trailing television cables. A turbaned man, with a
nameplate that said "Agriculture India" tugged at Remo's arm.
"Kind sir, does this mean I do not collect my money for
attending?"
"I dunno," said Remo. "I don't work here."
"I took a trip for nothing, then. For nothing. Promised two
thousand dollars and will receive nothing. Western lies and
hypocrisy," he said in his Indian singsong, the language of a
people Chiun had once said had only two consistent traits:
hypocrisy and starvation.
Sweat beaded on the patrician face of James Orayo Fielding as he
watched the press disappear from the Mojave compound, heading for
the twin tents outside the perimeter fence. Suddenly, it appeared
as if his entire life descended on him with fatigue and he reached
out for a steady arm. He grabbed for support a thin young man with
high cheekbones and thick wrists. It was Remo.
"Your friends are gone," said Remo.
"The news mentality," said Maria. "In Cuba we do not allow
journalists to cater to such morbid curiosity."
"Sure," said Remo. "That's because murder is an everyday
thing."
"You're being unfair," said Maria.
"It is hard to make an American fair," said Chiun. "It is a
thing I have been trying to teach him, lo these many years."
"Korean fairness, Little Father?" said Remo, laughing.
Chiun did not think that was funny, nor did Maria. Fielding
steadied himself. Weakly he took a pill from his shirt pocket and
swallowed it dry.
Remo's eyes signaled ever so briefly for Chiun to get Maria out
of hearing range. Chiun suddenly noticed a vision of hibiscus, lo,
across the desert, like rising zephyrs above the Katmandu Gardens,
Had Maria ever seen the Katmandu gardens when the sun was mellow
and the river cool like a gentle breath of a friendly north wind?
In an instant, Chiun had her walking out into the desert
aimlessly.
"You have very unnice friends," said Remo to Fielding.
"What do you mean?"
"Your friends kill people."
"Those deaths in the shed that everyone's yelling about?"
"Others," said Remo. "Commodities men. Construction men."
"What?" said Fielding. He was feeling weak, he said.
"Feel stronger or you'll go the way of your soybean. Planted." But Fielding collapsed and Remo could tell it was not
an act.
Remo carried Fielding to a small shack built inside the fenced
compound for security guards and there, Fielding recovered and told
Remo how he had discovered a grain process that could end
starvation, could literally end hunger and want. All his troubles
had started when he discovered this. Yes, he knew about the
commodities men. He knew about the depressed grain market.
"I told them, I told Jordan, we didn't need that sort of help.
The Oliver method, as I called it-now it's Wondergrain-it didn't
need artificial help. It would replace other grains naturally
because it's better. But they wouldn't listen to me. I don't even
own the company anymore. I'll show you the papers. Greed has ruined
us. Millions will starve because of greed. I'm going to have to go
to court, won't I?"
"I guess," said Remo.
"All I need is four months. Then I'm willing to go to jail for
life or whatever. Just four months and I can make the most
significant contribution to mankind, ever."
"Four months?" asked Remo.
"But that won't do any good," said Fielding.
"Why not?"
"Because people have been trying to stop me since I started. Did
I say four months? Well, really I don't need that. Just a month.
Just thirty days until the miracle grain comes up. Then the whole
world will plant it. They will throw out their old crops and put in
the new feed for mankind. I know it."
"I'm not in the food business," said Remo. But what the man said
haunted him and he sneaked some seeds from the briefcase of James
Orayo Fielding and told him he might be able to help.
"How?" asked Fielding.
"We'll see," said Remo who that afternoon checked out two
things. One, according to a botanist, was that the seeds were real.
The second, according to a city clerk in the Denver municipal
building, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan now owned the controlling
shares of the corporation which had rights to Wondergrain, as of a
date three months and sixteen days in the future.
As Remo explained to Chiun that night:
"Little Father, I have a chance to do something really good for
the world. This man is honest."
"For one to do what he knows, is good," said Chiun. "That is all
the good any man can do. All else is ignorance."
"No," said Remo. "I can save the world."
And to this the Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly.
"In our records, my son, we know that those who would make
heaven tomorrow make hell today. All the robbers who ever stole and
all the conquerers who ever conquered and all the petty evil men
who preyed on the helpless have not, in their counted history,
caused as much massive grief as one man who attempts to save
mankind and gets others to follow him."
"But I don't need others," said Remo.
"So much the worse," said the Master of Sinanju.
CHAPTER SIX
Johnny "Deuce" Deussio saw it on television while waiting for
the Johnny Carson show. It was the latenight action news. Johnny
Deuce always watched it between his feet. Beth Marie did her nails.
She had so many curlers and pins and rods in her starkly blonde
hair that Johnny Deuce long ago stopped making advances to her. It
was too much like loving an erector set with cream.
Beth Marie did not complain. She thought it was nice, in fact,
and that Johnny was becoming more gentlemanly. The bed came around
their feet in a circle. To his left was the light panel indicating
the electronic security systems were working. It also had an open
phone to his cousin, Sally. Because of the dream that night, he now
had a small-caliber pistol tucked near the control panel.
Beth Marie lathered cream on her face to his right. He fingered
the panel a lot while watching late night action news, starring Gil
Braddigan, anchorman. Un-like many other newsmen of St. Louis,
Braddigan did not require little gifts to do favors. He didn't know
enough to be bought off. Beth Marie thought Braddigan was sexy.
Johnny Deuce did not tell her that Braddigan was a flaming fag. You
didn't use that kind of language to your wife in bed.
"I think he's sexy," said Beth Marie, as Braddigan rode the
television into their bedroom with manicured face, hair, smile, and
voice. Johnny Deuce fingered the rising edge of the plastic call
buttons on the panel. He hoped Johnny Carson wouldn't unload
another rerun or have that squeaky-voiced writer as moderator.
Johnny Deuce did not like to fall asleep without the sounds of
friendly voices.
"Terrible," said Beth Marie.
"Huh?" said Johnny Deuce.
"Three men were mauled to death in some vegetable laboratory.
Out in the desert."
"Too bad," said Deussio. He was thinking about business. His
secretary had nice legs. She had nice breasts and a nice duff. She
had a sweet face. She wanted Deussio to get a divorce. Even though
she worked in only the legitimate fronts of Deussio enterprises,
she knew too much already. She had threatened that either she got
Deussio in marriage or she would leave. This was not a major
business decision. It was a simple one. If she left, her next
residence would be the bottom of the Missouri with concrete panty
hose over that lovely duff. Such was life. Deussio was startled to
feel Beth Marie touch him. In bed no less.
"They found one guy in this press room with a typewriter mashed
into his chest," she said.
"Awful," said Deussio. Willie "Pans" Panzini was another matter.
He was spending too much money on what Deussio was paying him. This
meant that Willie Pans was either stealing from Deussio, which was
bad and could be corrected by a firm lecture or some moderate
grief, or he was collecting money on his own from other sources,
which would be nonnegotiably terminal. Sally would have to find out
which. Perhaps stick a blowtorch in Willie Pans's face. Blowtorches
brought the truth out of people.
"Another man had his back broken. A whole piece of his spine
went right through his stomach. That's what the coroner out there
said," Beth Marie said.
"Awful," said Deussio.
"I think we knew him. We knew the man. We saw him last year when
we went to the coast. That lovely public relations person."
"What?" said Deussio sitting up in bed.
"All those killings. Your friend James Jordan was killed today
at some vegetable experiment."
"Wondergrain?"
"That's right."
"Jeeez," said Deussio, grabbing Beth Marie's shoulders and
demanding she repeat everything Gil Braddigan had said about the
desert killings. This was much like getting a stock market report
told to a social worker and filtered through a retard. All he got
was intimations of something horrible happening to their friend
Jordan whose wife had set such a nice spread in their Carmel home.
As Deussio listened and questioned he began to wonder.
"Thanks," he said, leaving the bed and ringing for Sally.
"John," said Beth Marie.
"What?"
"You want to?"
"Want to what?"
"You know what," said Beth Marie. "That."
"That's some way for a wife of eighteen years to talk," said
Deussio and met Sally running up the hallway with a drawn
snub-nosed .38.
He slapped Sally in the face.
"Dummy," said Johnny Deuce.
"What I do? What I do?"
And for that Johnny Deuce hit harder. The smack echoed down the
hallway.
"Will you shut up out there, I'm trying to watch TV," came Beth
Marie's voice.
"Why didn't you tell me about Giordano, out-on-the-coast
Giordano?"
"What Giordano?"
"Giordano who was killed today. Dreaming, huh? I was dreaming
that last time, huh? Dreaming. Those guys was frigging crushed to
death."
"I didn't hear nothing."
"Don't we get word no more? What is this? I could be killed in
my sleep. Dreaming, huh? I ain't sleeping in this house. We're
going to the mattresses," said Deussio, meaning his crime family
was preparing for war.
"Against who?" said Sally.
"Against what, you mean," said Johnny Deuce. "Against what."
"Yeah. What?"
"We don't know what, dummy," said Johnny Deuce and he slapped
Sally hard in the face and when Beth Marie complained again about
the noise in the hall, he told her to go finger herself. Sally did
not protest the slapping assaults against his pride. The closer one
got to John Deussio, the less one became affronted by his famous
temper and the more one appreciated an artist.
Deussiq had raised the level of mob war in the midwest to
exquisite craftsmanship. Neat surgical strikes that took out
precise portions of organizations and left profits undisturbed.
A group of bookmakers on Front Street in Marietta, Ohio, who
thought profits did not have to be shared totally with St. Louis
connections, learned one night the folly of independence. Each one
found himself in a warehouse, tied but not gagged. In this way, he
was able to hear the shock sounds of friends he knew. In the center
of the warehouse was a man stripped nude. When a spotlight flashed
on his face, they saw it had been the man who had promised them
protection from St. Louis for a far smaller cut than they had been
paying St. Louis. The man was swinging from a rope. The searchlight
lowered and they saw a reddish wet cavity where his stomach had
been. They heard their own groans and sobs and then the lights went
off and they were all in darkness.
One by one, each felt a cold edge of a knife press against his
solar plexus, felt his shirt buttons be unbuttoned, and waited. And
nothing happened. They were escorted out of the warehouses, untied,
and taken, shaking, to a hotel suite where food was laid out in
abundance. No one was hungry. A fat man with stains on his shirt
and great difficulty in speaking English introducted himself as
Guglielmo Balunta; he worked for people in St. Louis who provided
these gentlemen services and he wished, what was the word for it,
to toast their health and prosperity. Excuse his poor English.
He was worried, he said, because animals were about. They did
awful things. They were not businessmen like him and his guests.
All they knew was kill.
Cut stomachs and things. This did not help business, did it?
Everyone in the room assured Balunta it sure as hell didn't.
No.
But Balunta had a problem. If he couldn't return to St. Louis
and assure his people that they would get their cut, they would not
listen to him. These animals always have their ears for violence.
He needed to bring something home, he said, some pledge of good
faith, that business would continue as usual. Maybe a little better
than usual.
Men who just minutes before could not control bowel or bladder
assured their host he spoke very good English even if all the words
were not in English. The increased cut, well, yes, it seemed
reasonable. Fear made many previously unacceptable things
reasonable.
The success of this was only a small part of Johnny Deuce's
genius. For not only had he arranged it that not one bookmaker was
hurt and thus no profits were lost for the day but he saw great
possibilities and he shared his reasoning with Guglielmo Balunta.
They spoke in a Sicilian dialect, although Johnny's was not good,
having only learned it from his parents.
There were times, said Johnny Deuce, that offered incredible
opportunities, just because no one else had thought of them.
Balunta waved his hands, indicating he did not understand. Johnny,
driving their car back to St. Louis-he had asked to take Balunta
alone personally-had difficulty talking with both hands on the
wheel, but he continued.
Balunta was in for a very nice cut of the increase from the
gambling in Marietta. Not much. But enough of a causa bono
for contentment.
Balunta assured Johnny Deuce that he too would be rewarded for
his brilliant work. Johnny Deuce said this was not the point. Who
was the one man in the organization most trusted now by the top man
in St. Louis? It was Balunta, of course. He had just done a good
job.
But some day, Johnny reasoned, Balunta would be offended by what
was given him. Some day he would be cut out of something that
belonged to him. Some day he would have grievance against his
boss.
Balunta said this would never happen. He was close with the don.
And he held up two stubby fingers. Especially now that he had
brought this small southern Ohio town into line so neatly.
Especially now.
"No," said Johnny Deuce. "I am young and you are old but I know
as surely as the sun rises that disagreements occur in business."
And he named incidents and he named names and even pointed out that
Balunta had gotten his own position because his predecessor had had
to be eliminated.
This was true, admitted Balunta. And it was here that Deussio's
strategic brilliance began to show. When you have this disagreement
or trouble, or even when they are on the horizon, how hard will it
be to get to the top people? And when he said "get to" he took one
hand off the wheel and pointed it as if it were a gun.
Very hard, agreed Balunta. He conceded that they might even get
to him first. In fact, probably. Which was what kept most people in
line.
"Now tell me," said Deussio, "what does the horizon look like
now. You said it yourself. Clear."
"You're the guy coming home with the bacon," he said, lapsing
into English. "You're the guy who's due a bigger cut. You're the
fucking hero."
"So what you saying, Johnny Deuce?" asked Balunta.
"We hit the top now."
"Mi Dio," said Balunta. "This is a big thing. Too
big."
"It's either you hit them now while you got the advantage or
they get you when they have it. I admit, it's a hard choice. But
you do the hard thing today when it's easy or you take the hard
thing in the face tomorrow. When it's tough. Frigging tough. You
know I'm right."
Balunta was quiet as the car went through the countryside. And
Johnny Deuce further showed his genius, a genius that would give
most of the midwest mob quiet for more than a decade.
He began by telling Balunta he knew what Balunta was thinking.
If this young man is willing to have me go against my boss now,
wouldn't he, at the moment of success, do the same thing to me?
Balunta said he was thinking no such thing.
"But I would be foolish," continued Johnny Deuce. "If I go
against you, then my number two would see this and go against me.
Now if I do not go against you, my number two will worry what you
will do if he succeeds with me. I am the only one who can stop what
I have started and I have a vested interest in doing so. You are
going to give me a very big piece of the action from the outset. A
very big piece. Together we have no worries. We will work things
out for both our safeties."
But everyone, Balunta pointed out, wants it all.
"Everyone who doesn't know that all of it is a oneway ticket to
the marble orchard," said Johnny Deuce. "You'll see. It'll work if
we share. If we share, we're strong." "Mi Dio," said Balunta and Deussio knew that this was a
"yes." For ten days, bodies turned up downstream in the Missouri,
shotguns bloomed from the front windows of cars, brains were blown
into dinner linguine. Deussio struck so fast and so
quickly it was only when the St. Louis wars, as they were later
called, were over that those who mattered knew where the killing
had come from. And by that time, it was Don Guglielmo Balunta.
Johnny Deuce's talents and his proven loyalty created a new
order from St. Louis to Omaha. Such was Don Guglielmo's trust in
his young genius that when others would come to him with stories of
the crazy things that Johnny Deuce did, Don Guglielmo would
say:
"My Johnny does crazy things today that come out smart
tomorrow." When he hired the electronics experts, people hinted he
was crazy. When he hired the funny Orientals, people whispered he
was crazy. When he hired computer programmers, people said he was
crazy. And each time, Don Guglielmo Balunta would answer that his
Johnny would be proven smart tomorrow. Even when the word got
around about his strange dream and how he had young athletes try to
climb up to an impossible-to-reach window in his home, even then
Don Guglielmo told everyone his Johnny would be proven smart
tomorrow.
But when Johnny started ordering everyone to go to the
mattresses when there was no enemy in sight, Don Guglielmo was
instantly worried. He did not even have to send for Johnny Deuce.
Johnny came himself, with no bodyguard and a very fat
briefcase.
Johnny was paunchier now than in those early years when first
the two had assumed control. His hair surrendered to shiny scalp
along a thinning line of resistance. His face had lost the hard
lines to a smothering layer of flesh but the dark eyes still shone
with sharp fury.
Don Guglielmo, in a ruby smoking jacket, lounged on the edge of
a plush green couch set on what appeared to be acres of marble
flooring. Johnny Deuce sat on the edge of his chair, his feet
planted forward, his knees together, refusing a glass of Strega, a
piece of fruit, talk of weather and family. He told his don he was
worried.
Over the years Don Guglielmo would listen very carefully but
this time his hands raised and he said he would hear none of
it.
"This time," said Balunta, "you listen to me. I am more worried
than you. You listen. I talk. You go to the Miami Beach. You get
the sun. You get the rest. You get yourself a girl with those nice
titties that go up. You have wine. You eat the good food. You get
sun. Then we talk."
"Patron, we face the most deadly enemy. Deadliest
ever."
"Where?" said Balunta, his hands rising to the heavens. "Show me
this enemy. Where is he?"
"He is on the horizon. I've done a lot of thinking. There's
something going on in this country that eventually means the end of
us all. All of us. The organization. Everything. Not just here but
all over. It's not just that bad night I had. That was just the tip
of an iceberg that's going to destroy us all."
Don Guglilmo leaped from the sofa and grabbed Johnny Deuce's
head in his hands. Palms to ears, he raised Deussio's head so their
eyes must meet.
"You get the rest. You get the rest now. No more talk. You
listen to your don. You get the rest. No more talk. After you rest,
we talk. Okay? Okay?"
"As you say," said Johnny Deuce.
"Atsa good. I worry for you," said Balunta.
And Johnny Deuce told his don he could use a drink but not the
bought stuff. Good red wine made especially for the don. And wine
was brought in in a large green gallon jug and placed on the
slate-gray table top. Deussio placed a hand over his glass and did
not raise it.
"You won't take the drink with your don?"
Johnny Deuce removed his hand from the cut crystal glass.
"The worries are in your head. You think your don would poison
his right arm?" said Balunta. "Would I poison my heart? My brains?
You are the legs of my throne. Never. Never." And to show his good
faith, Balunta took the glass sitting before his Johnny and drank
it all. Then he threw the glass toward the wall but it fell short,
cracking on the marble floor.
"I knew you wouldn't poison me, Don Guglielmo," said
Deussio.
"Then why you no drink the wine with your don?"
Guglielmo Balunta wanted to express himself with his hands.
Wanted to throw them out wide to express his confusion. But they
did not move very well. They felt icy and they stung gently as if
immersed in fresh Vichy water. He felt giddy and light. When he
stepped back to the couch the legs did not step with him. So he
went back anyway and almost reached the couch. The fall seemed far
away, not hurting as a collapse on marble usually did but rather a
gentle laying down so that he was looking up at his beautiful
ceiling. His Johnny was saying something. He kept talking about
inevitabilities and rolled from his briefcase that funny long paper
with the holes in it. Guglielmo Balunta did not care. He thought of
a very white little rock he once had near Messina where he was born. He had thrown it down into the narrow
straits that separated Sicily from Italy and told his friends: "I
will live until the sea gives up that rock." He thought about his
youth and then saw a vision of the straits of Messina. Something
white was coming up through the waves. A speck. No. His rock.
Johnny Deuce did not know for sure if Don Guglielmo could hear
him. Sally and the other men were already coming through the
outside gate of the Balunta estate. Balunta's household men would
be sent to a small regime in Detroit. They would not fight if the
don were dead because there was no one left to fight for. However,
if Johnny were alone and standing over the corpse, they might take
out their rage of their own failure on him. So it would be quick.
And in case his don could still hear him, he wanted him to know why
he had to kill him.
"This sheet is the figuring of several years. Things are
happening in this country that have no reason to happen. I saw it
several years ago when Scubisci had his troubles in the east. We
called this 'no reason' the X-factor. And we said this "no reason"
is a reason. So all of a sudden a tight city becomes untight and
politicians and police are going to jail all of a sudden with
prosecutors having evidence they shouldn't have. Judges we've owned
for years suddenly terrorized by some other force. That force is
the X-factor, and if you look at it, you'll realize we're through.
In ten or fifteen years, we're not going to be able to do
business."
Sally was past the front doors with his own men and their
weapons came out. There was murmuring in the hallway outside the
vast marble-flooring living room and Johnny Deuce called everyone
inside.
"Heart attack," he said, keeping the computer printouts
concealed against his side, even though he knew the bodyguards
would no more understand them than Balunta did.
"Yeah. Heart attack," said one of the house bodyguards and
Johnny Deuce nodded for Sally to take them out of the room. On the
way out, one of the guards whispered to Sally: "What is he, talking
to a stiff?" And Sally cuffed him in the back of the head and the
bodyguard understood that.
Deussio continued in the empty room. He told his dead don that
the X-factor was a force that was making government work, not for
those who tried to buy it but for those who voted for it. And this
X-factor was growing stronger. Therefore every day an attack was
delayed, the chances of overcoming X-factor grew smaller. By the
time someone with Balunta's mentality had been ready to move, it
would be too late.
The enforcer unit of this X-factor had brushed through St. Louis
a few days before, just an edge of the iceberg. It was after
something else at the time.
"We have one small advantage and I'm going to use it," said
Deussio. "The X-factor does not know we understand it. See here.
Look."
And he unfolded the long computer printout listing
probabilities. Even if Don Guglielmo had been breathing, he would
have understood it no better. Which was why he had to die. The
strategist, John Vincent Deussio, knew he had to move now, even if
others didn't. Which made him what he was. Which made him very
dangerous. Unlike the others, he knew he was in a war for survival.
So he felt very free to kill anyone who would not aid the
cause.
He drank the unpoisoned wine Balunta had poured for himself, the
wine into which Johnny had not dropped the poison pellet, and sat
back on the sofa to prepare his attack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The first Remo saw the rough sketch of himself was at the Ohio
demonstration. The surrounding fields were green with corn and
Fielding had explained that he also had to show the process worked
in good, moderate climate soil as well as bad. The field was raised
on a little hill surrounded by a chain-link fence.
Maria Gonzales, carrying a Russian passport because her country
did not have relations with the United States, spoke with a French
agronomist who noted his country had large farming sections with
climate and soil like Ohio.
Chiun engaged several cameramen from television networks, asking
why there was so much violence and filth in daytime dramas
nowadays. Obviously one had replied with a sharp answer because
Remo saw ambulance attendants lifting the portable TV camera from a
man's shoulder and placing him on a stretcher.
Newsmen worked in shirt sleeves. The Miami County Sheriff's
office wore open-necked short-sleeved shirts and carried heavy
sidearms, the sheriff having vowed that there would be no
Mojave-type incident here in Piqua, Ohio.
"We're not like those people out there," said the sheriff.
"Out where?" asked a reporter.
"Out anywhere," said the sheriff. Sweat ran down his face like
glycerin beads over packaged lard. Remo scanned the crowd looking
for any possible attack on Fielding. He caught Maria's eye. She
smiled. He smiled back. Chiun walked between them.
A soft breeze caught the corn in a neighboring field and made
the lazy summer day smell like life itself. Remo caught an exchange
of glances between a man in a Palm Beach hat and another in a gray
light summer suit. They were across the field from each other. And
both looked at a paunchy man with large shoulders who glanced at
something in his hands, then looked at Remo. When Remo looked back,
the man tucked the object into his trousers pocket and became very
interested in what was happening in the field. The three men had
the field triangulated. Remo sidled to the paunchy man in the white
suit.
"Hi," said Remo. "I'm a pickpocket."
The man stared straight ahead.
"I said hello," said Remo. The man's alligator shoes pressed
into the newly turned Ohio soil under the weight of 280 pounds of
muscles and flesh and a twoday growth. He had a face that had been
banged here and there by fist and club and a whitish lumpy line
which was the completed healing process of a long-ago blade. He was
slightly taller than Remo and had shoulders and wide fists that had
obviously done some banging themselves. His body oozed the odor of
yesterday's scotch and today's sirloin.
"I said hello," said Remo again.
"Uh, hello," said the man.
"I'm a pickpocket," Remo repeated. The man's hairy heavy hand
moved down to his right trouser pocket.
"Thank you for showing me which pocket I should pick," said
Remo.
"What?" said the man and Remo cut two fingers down between fatty
palm and hefty hip, making a neat tearing slice down the right side
of the man's trousers.
"What?" grunted the man who suddenly felt his undershorts under
his right palm. He grabbed for the skinny guy but when his huge
hands closed on the shoulders, the shoulders were not there and the
skinny guy kept on walking and looking through the trouser pocket
as if strolling through a garden reading a book.
"Hey, you. Gimme back my pocket," said the man. "That's my
pocket." He swung at the back of the head but the skinny guy's head
was just not there. It didn't jerk or duck, it was just not there
as the swing went through where it was. The two other men in the
triangle moved toward the commotion. The Miami County sheriff's
office moved toward the commotion.
"Anything wrong?" said the sheriff, surrounded by deputies with
their hands on their sidearms.
"No," said the big man with the tear in his trouser. "Nothing
wrong. Nothing." He said this by instinct. He could not remember
ever telling a policeman the truth.
"Anything wrong?" the sheriff asked Remo.
"No," said Remo, examining the pocket he had picked.
"All right, then," said the sheriff. "Break it up." Seeing that
all his deputies were clustered around him, he yelled for them to
get back to their positions. There wasn't, he said, going to be
another Mojave Desert incident in this county.
Remo threw away car keys and some bills from the pocket. He held
onto a small square paper that looked printed. It was a sketch of
two men, the stiff expressionless lines of what might have been a
police composite. An old Oriental with wispy hair and a younger
Caucasian with sharp features and high cheekbones. The Caucasion
had hair similar to Remo's. The Oriental's eyes were deeper than
Chiun's and then Remo realized it was a composite sketch of himself
and Chiun. The deeper eyes told him and told him who had stood over
the artist telling him 'yes' and 'no' as eyes and mouths appeared
on paper. All eyes looked deeper when there was direct above light,
as over a pool table in a pool hall.
Pete's Pool Parlour in East St. Louis. The Caucasian's eyes
weren't so deep set because Remo had not stood at the table. He
waved to Chiun.
Chiun came in behind the two other men of the triangle.
"Look," said Remo, showing the card to Chiun. "Now I know you
won that money playing pool. You were at the pool table. Look at
the eyes."
The man in the Palm Beach hat whispered something about having
somebody. The big man trotted to a white Eldorado at the edge of
the crowd.
"The shading of the eyes. Yes, I see," said Chiun. "The light
from above."
"Right," said Remo.
The big man without the trouser pocket eased the Eldorado over
the soft ground to Chiun and Remo. He threw open the driver's door,
disclosing a shotgun in his lap. The door hid the gun from the
sheriff's men. It pointed at Remo and Chiun.
"That could not be me," said Chiun. "It is a very close likeness
of you considering it was obviously painted from memory. It lacks
the character I put into your face. The other person is a stranger
to me."
"Looks just like the gook," said the man in the Palm Beach hat,
coming up behind them. "We got 'em. You two, get in that car and
move quietly."
"This could not be my face," said Chiun. "This is the face of an
old man. It could not be me. It lacks warmth and joy and beauty. It
lacks the grace of character. It lacks the countenance of majesty.
This is just the face of an old man." He looked up to the man in
the Palm Beach hat. "However, if you could give me a large size of
the white man, I would like to have it framed."
"Sure, old man," said the man in the Palm Beach hat. "How big?
Eight by ten?"
"No. Not that big. My picture of Rad Rex is an eight-by-ten.
Something smaller. To stand near my picture of Rad Rex, but
slightly behind it. Do you know that Rad Rex, the famous television
actor, called me gracious and humble?"
His face sparkled with pride.
"All right," said the man with a tight-lipped smile. "You got an
eight-by-ten of a fag, I'll print you one of these but
smaller."
"What is it, this fag?" Chiun asked Remo.
Remo sighed. "It is a boy who likes boys."
"A pervert?" asked Chiun.
"He thinks so," said Remo.
"A dirty disgusting thing?" asked Chiun.
"Depends on how you look at it."
"The way this creature-"Chiun jerked his head toward the man in
the Palm Beach hat-"looks at it."
"The way he looks at it," Remo said. "Right, dirty and
disgusting."
"I thought as much," said Chiun. He turned to the man in the hat
who had begun to wonder why Johnny Deussio was sending all the way
to Ohio to collect a couple of half-decks where there was no
shortage of the mentally ill back home in St. Louis.
"You. Come here," said Chiun.
"Get in the car," said the man with the hat. Enough was
enough.
"After you," said Chiun and the man with the Palm Beach hat did
not notice anything and did not really feel anything and then he
was being propelled over the old man's head, toward the open
waiting door of the car. He slammed into its front seat. His head
hit the head of the driver and his body slammed down atop the
barrel of the shotgun. The driver's head snapped back and his
finger jerked the trigger involuntarily. The shotgun went off with
a muffled roar.
A red whoosh of flame darted out of the car. Pellets kicked up
dirt around Remo and Chiun's feet.
"Hey, fella, careful," said Remo. "Somebody could get hurt." He
turned around to see if anyone had paid attention to the shotgun
blast. The third man was now standing behind him, a .45 in his
hand.
"In the car."
"In the car?" said Remo. "Right, in the car."
The third man went over Remo's head and landed atop the other
two hulks in the front seat. But Remo did not notice that because
he saw two sheriff's deputies approaching him.
"Oh, oh," said Remo. "Let's get out of here. Get in the car,
Chiun."
"You too?" said Chiun.
"Please, Chiun, get in the car."
"As long as you say please. Remembering that we are coequal
partners."
"Right, right," said Remo.
Chiun was in the back seat of the Eldorado and Remo behind the
wheel. The sheriff's deputies, he could see through the window,
were closer now, starting to walk faster in the manner of police
who aren't sure anything wrong has been done but by God they don't
want anybody to go leaving the scene of the crime.
Remo chucked one of the groggy squirming bodies into the
backseat.
"No," said Chiun firmly. "I will not have them back here."
"Why me, God?" said Remo. He shoved the remaining quarter-ton of
flesh against the passenger's door, put the car in gear, and drove
off. For a moment, in his rearview mirror, he could see the
sheriff's men looking at him driving away, only slightly
interested. Then his view was blocked as the body from the backseat
was reinserted by Chiun into the front.
He drove out along a dirty road that crisscrossed through
cornfields, feeling pretty good. The last Mojave demonstration by
Fielding had lost much of its frontpage space to the violence at
the demonstration site; this time he had prevented that. It was the
least one could do for a man who was going to save the world from
hunger and starvation.
The man in the Palm Beach hat was the first to regain control of
himself. Surprisingly, he found his gun still in his hand and he
fought his way out of the mass of arms and legs and pointed the
automatic at Remo. "Okay, bright eyes, now pull over to the side
and stop."
"Chiun," said Remo.
"No," said Chiun. "I will not soil my hands with anyone who
defames the good name of Rad Rex, brilliant star of As the
Planet Revolves."
"C'mon, Chiun, act right," Remo said.
"No."
"This isn't the one who said anything about Rad Rex," lied
Remo.
"Well, you can't blame me for making such a mistake. Everybody
knows all you whites look alike. But…"
The man with the .45, past whom the bickering had drifted, never
had an opportunity to witness its outcome. Before he could move,
before he could speak again to warn this skinny punk at the wheel
to pull over, there was a slight pain in his head. It never felt
like more than the irritation of a mosquito's sting and he never
felt anything again as Chiun's iron index finger went through his
temple into his brain.
The man dropped back onto the pile of bodies.
"You lied, Remo," said Chiun. "I could tell he was the one of
the evil mouth, because his head is empty."
"Never trust a white man. Particularly a coequal partner."
"Yes," said Chiun. "But as long as I am at it-" He leaned over
the back of the front seat and while Remo drove, sent the other two
men to join their companion, then sat back in his seat
contentedly.
Remo waited until he had gotten out of sight of the
demonstration area, then parked the car under a tree. He left the
motor running.
"C'mon, Chiun, we'd better get back. There just might be more
back there, with Fielding as their target."
"There are no more," said Chiun.
"You can't be sure. Somehow, they made us as Fielding's
bodyguards or something. Probably they think if they got rid of us,
they get a clear shot at Fielding."
"There are no more," Chiun insisted. "And why would anyone
attempt to harm Fielding?"
"Chiun, I don't know," said Remo. "Maybe they're trying to get
the secret of Fielding's miracle grains. Steal the formulas and
sell them. There are evil people in the world, you know."
"Remember you said that… partner," said Chiun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The last time Johnny Deuce had looked forward with anticipation
to the six o'clock news had been when the United States Senate was
investigating organized crime and he'd had a chance to laugh at his
old friends.
They had come on in a parade. People he had given advice to,
people he had tried to straighten out, but for all the new clothes
and even though they didn't carry weapons anymore and even though
they had all wrapped themselves up in corporate blankets, they
still had the old Mustache Pete mentality. So they wound up
providing six o'clock news fodder for America while Johnny Deuce
was home in his living room, trying to keep his wife's hand away
from him and laughing aloud.
But this time the news was no laughing matter, not because of
what was on it but because of what wasn't on it. There was a long
glowing story of the Fielding demonstration in Ohio. A made-up
newcaster came on in a shot taken next to the freshly planted field
and talked glowingly about the great benefits to mankind from the
miracle grains. He was an Ohio-based newsman and in a burst of
parochial pride, he pointed out that today's planting had been a
marked change from the one in the Mojave that had been sullied by
still-unexplained violence.
Johnny Deuce stopped listening when the newscaster began to
blather about America living up to its responsibilities to provide
sustenance for the world.
He heard the weather forecast call for bad weather and then he
sat in his small room thinking and it was only when the eleven
o'clock news came on that he rose himself from his reverie and
focused his attention again on the screen.
But there was just the same newscast. No reports of violence, no
reports of Fielding's bodyguards being killed, and as he listened
Johnny Deuce wasted no time coming to a truthful conclusion. The
three men who had been sent to do in the hard-faced white man and
the old Oriental were dead.
If they had succeeded, their work would have been on the news.
That was the deductive evidence; the inductive evidence was that
they had not called and Johnny Deuce had told them they had better
call by seven p.m., no later, or they would have their balls filled
with sand.
He let the sound of the rest of the newscast drone on as he
lapsed immediately back into the rest state of the last five hours,
sitting languidly while his brain whirred along, formulating his
plans, setting up his attack, and this time in his mind making sure
it would work.
He was satisfied and convinced and he snapped out of it just
long enough to catch the end of the newscast. The weatherman was
on. He was a thin man with a mustache and a half-a-bag on. The
forecast was still for rain.
CHAPTER NINE
At the same time Johnny Deussio was thinking, Remo was bringing
his mighty intellect to bear upon much the same problem:
killing.
Who could want Fielding's formula so badly that they would try
to get it by first disposing of Remo and Chiun? Since the magic
Wondergrains were virtually going to be given away, who would gain
by stealing their secret?
Despite the accumulated mass of scar tissue and raw knuckles
that he and Chiun had been running into, Remo's instincts told him
that it was not a mob venture. The mob had other things to worry
about besides farming. Loan-sharking was quite profitable enough;
so was prostitution, drugs, gambling, and politics, the usual kinds
of crime in America.
No. Not the mob. Remo decided that some foreign power was behind
the violence that seemed to dog Fielding's steps.
His first suspicion was India, but Chiun scoffed at that
suggestion when Remo made it.
"India would never hire killers, even fat ones, to try to do a
job. They would not want to waste a few thousand of your dollars
when it could be used to help build more nuclear weapons."
"You sure?" asked Remo.
"Of course. India would try to get the formula exclusively for
itself by praying for it."
Remo nodded and lay back down on the sofa in their Dayton hotel
room. Who else, if not India? Who else had been at the
demonstration?
Of course.
Cuba. Maria Gonzales.
"Chiun," said Remo again.
Chiun was sitting in the center of the hotel living room rug,
staring at his fingertips which were steepled together.
"That is my name," he said, not taking his eyes from his
fingers.
"Do you know where that Cuban woman is staying? Did she tell
you?"
"I am not in the habit of finding out the hotel rooms of strange
women," said Chiun.
"I don't know. You kept getting between the two of us, and I was
beginning to think that maybe you were ditching Barbra Streisand
for her."
"Be cautious," said Chiun, resenting any levity about the great
unrequited love of his life. "Even coequal partners must speak with
discretion."
"You don't know where she is?"
"She is a Cuban. If she is still in town, she will be in the
cheapest hotel."
"Thank you."
The desk clerk downstairs told Remo that the Hotel Needham was
the cheapest hotel in town. In fact, not only the cheapest but the
dirtiest.
When Remo called the Hotel Needham, he found that indeed a Maria
Gonzales was registered there. In fact there were three Maria
Gonzaleses registered there.
"This one's kind of good-looking."
"Most of the girls registered here are kind of goodlooking,"
said a man's oily voice over the phone. "Course it all depends on
your taste. Now if you want my advice…"
"No, I don't think I do. This chick would have checked in just
today."
"I'm not in the habit of giving out such information," the voice
said as the verbal oil congealed.
"I'm in the habit of giving out fifty-dollar bills to people who
tell me what I want to know," said Remo.
"Maria Gonzales checked in today into Room 363. She's different
from our other two Marias. She's a Cuban; the other two are spicks.
We don't get many Cuban broads around here but I guess she hasn't
had a chance to establish herself yet because there haven't been
any phone calls or visits or…"
"I'll be right over," said Remo. "I've got fifty for you."
"I'll wait. How will I recognize you?"
"My fly will be zipped."
The desk clerk at the Hotel Needham had looks to match his
voice. He was fifty struggling to look only forty-nine; 195 dressed
to look 150; short dressed to look tall, balding but coiffed to
look hairy. If Brillo strands coated with spar varnish could be
called hair.
"Yeah?" he said to Remo.
"I'm Pete Smith, looking for my brother John. You got a John
Smith registered here?"
"Twelve of them."
"Yeah, but he'd have his wife with him," said Remo.
"All twelve," said the clerk.
"Yeah, but she's a blond in a miniskirt, good legs, big boobs,
and wears too much makeup."
"Ten of them."
"She's got the clap."
"Not here," said the clerk. "This is a clean place."
"Good," said Remo. "That's really what I wanted to find out. My
brother's not registered here. I just wanted to look the place
over. IBM might want the grand ballroom for its next annual
stockholders' meeting."
"Listen, buddy, do you want something?"
"I want to give you fifty dollars."
"I'm listening, I'm listening."
Remo peeled a fifty from a cluster of bills in his pocket and
dropped it on the desk. "Maria Gonzales still in room 363?"
The clerk put the money away before answering. "Yes. Want me to
announce you?"
"No, don't bother. Surprises are always such fun, aren't
they?"
From inside room 363, martial music was playing. Remo knocked
loudly to be heard over it.
He knocked again. The music dropped suddenly in volume. From
behind the door, a voice asked: "Who is it?"
"Cuba Libre," said Remo.
The door opened cautiously, still fastened with a chain. Maria
peered through the crack. Remo smiled.
"Hi. Remember me?"
"If you have come to apologize for the behavior of your
countrymen, you are too late," she sputtered.
"Aaaah, what happened?" asked Remo solicitously.
She glanced downward toward Remo's groin. "At least you know how
to behave yourself. You have learned manners from the grand
Oriental. You may come in. But behave yourself."
"What's happened to make you mad at us?" asked Remo, stepping
inside the room.
Maria was wearing the same clothes she had worn that afternoon,
a khaki miniskirt and khaki blouse, both of them filled just right.
She looked like a security guard at the local Playboy Club.
She turned toward Remo and put her hands on her hips in a
gesture of pout. "I have been here but four hours. Already five men
have been pounding on my door, demanding that I let them in. They
say unspeakable things. One displayed himself."
"Exposed," corrected Remo.
"That is correct. What kind of country is this where men do
that?"
"They think you're a different Maria Gonzales. A hooker."
"What is this hooker?"
"A prostitute."
"Ah, yes. The prostitutes. We had them before Fidel."
"You had sugar harvests back then too."
"Ah, but now we have the dignity."
"And the empty belly."
Maria started to answer, stopped, then nodded abruptly. "Right.
And that is why I am here. And you can help me because you are a
most important Yankee."
"How do you know that?"
"The Oriental. He told me, as a Third World comrade, that you
were very important. You were in charge of keeping the Constitution
safe. He said he was your coequal partner but no one believed he
was as important as you because his skin was yellow. Are you in
charge of keeping the Constitution safe?"
"Absolutely," said Remo. "I keep it in a footlocker under my
bed."
"Then you must tell me how Mister Fielding does his miracle
growing." Maria's face was an open appeal.
"You really want to know, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Why? Wondergrain's almost going to be given away."
"Almost is not good enough. My country is a very poor country,
Remo… it is Remo, isn't it? Any cost is too high a cost. All
our funds are committed. We owe our souls to the Russians. Can we
now give our bodies to the American Yankees? That is why I was
sent, to try to find out how Fielding does this thing he is going
to do."
"Would you be willing to kill for it?" asked Remo.
"I would be willing to do anything for it. It is for
Cuba… for Fidel… for the memory of Che… for
the socialist revolution."
She raised her hands and began to unbutton her khaki blouse.
When it was open she pulled it back exposing her breasts. She
smiled at Remo. "I would do anything for the secret. Even be your
hooper."
"Hooker."
"Right. Hooker." Maria sat back onto the bed, removed her
blouse, then arranged herself in a prone position as if she were
setting a vase with flowers. "I will be your hooker and then you will tell me your secrets. Is
it a deal?"
Remo hesitated a moment. If she had killed people already to
find out Fielding's secrets, why would she be trying to screw it
out of Remo? On the other hand, if she had nothing to do with the
killings, then Remo would be taking advantage of her by pretending
to know something about the formula that he did not know.
Remo wrestled with his conscience, which maintained its
unblemished scoreless record.
"You'll go to any lengths, won't you?"
"If the lengths, it is depraved, I will do it," said Maria,
licking her lips as she had seen done in American films before they
stopped being shown in Cuba. "I will do anything for the formula.
Even go to the lengths."
Remo sighed. No wonder she and Chiun seemed to get along so
well. When they chose, neither could understand English.
"All right," said Remo. "To the lengths!"
Remo figured himself a winner by at least twenty-six lengths.
This was preordained by some of the first training he had received
when he entered the world of CURE and Chiun.
Women, Chiun had warned Remo on that long-ago occasion, were
warm-bodied animals, like cows, and as cows would give more milk if
they were kept contented, women would give less aggravation if kept
in the same state. However, he explained, a woman did not get
contentment as a man did, through the pleasures of his intellect or
his work. Women must be kept contented through heart and
emotions.
"That means they're less worthy than men?" said Remo.
"That means you are stupid. No. Women are not less than men.
They are different from men. In many ways, they are more than men.
For instance. One can frighten an angry man. But no one has ever
been able to frighten an angry woman. See. That is called an
example. Now. Stop interrupting. Women must be made content through
heart, through emotion. In this country of yours, that means by sex
because women are not allowed to have any other emotions in this
country, lest they put her name in the newspapers and everyone will
point her out as a freak."
"Yeah, yeah, right, I've got it," said Remo who did not have any
of it.
Then followed Chiun's thirty-seven steps toward bringing a woman
sexual bliss. He cautioned Remo that these lessons were just as
important as learning the correct method of the flutter stroke with
the back of the knuckles.
Remo promised that he would practice Chiun's thirty-seven steps
with great diligence and regularity, even as he did not practice
the flutter stroke. But he found that when he had learned them, all
thirty-seven, and was able to jellify women, he had lost almost all
capacity for sexual pleasure. When he should be thinking about his
own body, he was instead trying to remember if the next step was
the woman's right knee or her left knee.
His training was also hindered by the fact that he had never
gone past step eleven with any woman before jumping right ahead to
step thirty-seven. He doubted that there was a woman in the world
who could cope with steps twelve through thirty-six and keep her
sanity, and when he asked Chiun about this, Chiun said that all
thirty-seven steps were practiced regularly upon Korean women, and
Remo did not feel inclined to make such a sacrifice just to perfect
his technique.
Maria Gonzales had taken off her short skirt and panties and was
lying back on the bed. The skin of her body was. as smooth and
creamy as the skin of her face and Remo decided that whatever Maria
Gonzales might be-spy, killer, revolutionary, agronomist, or
left-wing twit-she looked like something more than just another
assignment.
Remo moved alongside her in bed and quickly went through steps
one, two, and three, which were merely to put her in the mood. Step
four was the small of the back.
"Who's behind all these killings?" asked Remo.
"I do not know. What is the secret of Wondergrain?"
Step five was the inside of the left knee, followed by the right
knee, and steps six and seven the perimeter of Maria's armpits.
"Why all this violence at Fielding's demonstration? Who hired
the people to do it?"
"I do not know," said Maria. "How long have you known Fielding
and what do you know about him?"
Step eight was the inside of the upper right thigh and step
nine, the upper left thigh, closer to the heart.
"What can you tell me about what is going on?" asked Remo.
"Nothing," said Maria through tightly pressed lips. The word
came out as a gasp. This time she did not ask a question.
Step ten was the mountain climbing of the fingers over the right
breast. Maria's breath turned into sips of air. Her eyes which had
watched Remo cagily now closed as her discipline weakened and she
surrendered.
Good, Remo thought. She had held out a long time.
This time for sure. He'd get to step thirteen at least. The
eleventh step was the slow trailing of fingers over the left breast
to a peak which was hard and vibrant. Remo smiled. The twelfth step
was next. He removed his hand from Maria's left breast. He began to
move it down her body and Maria jumped into the air and clambered
atop Remo, enveloping him, swallowing him up. Above him, her eyes
flashed brilliant black and her lips bared her teeth in an
involuntary rictus.
"To the lengths!" she screamed. "For Fidel!"
"To the lengths," Remo agreed dully. As she lowered her face to
his neck to nip at it with her teeth, he shook his head slightly.
That damn step eleven again. Someday he would. Someday, step
twelve.
Maybe he was doing it wrong. He would have to ask Chiun. But
there was no time to think about that now because he was deep, deep
into step thirty-seven and he stayed in step thirty-seven a long
time, much longer than Maria had ever been in step thirty-seven
before and when that step was done, Maria collapsed off
him and lay on her back staring at the ceiling, her eyes
unfocused, almost glazed over.
"You didn't have anything to do with the killings?" Remo
asked.
"No," she hissed. "I am a failure."
"Why?"
"Because I went to the lengths and you have not told me what I
wanted to know."
"That's because I don't know anything," said Remo.
"Do not make sport of Maria, American. You are the keeper of the
Constitution."
"Really, I don't know anything. If I knew anything, I would tell
you."
"Several people who are the breakers of commodities…
''
"Brokers," Remo said.
"Yes. Brokers and contractors have been killed with Fielding.
You know nothing of this?"
"Nothing. I thought you did." Something nagged at Remo. He
remembered. Dead contractors. Jordan had mentioned that too before
Remo had killed him but Jordan had not explained the contractors.
Why contractors?
"Contractors?" he asked Maria. "What contractors?"
"Our intelligence people do not know. They think it may have
something to do with Fielding's warehouse in Denver. I
must see. I cannot fail my country."
"Don't be upset. There's always room for another Maria Gonzales
in this hotel."
"I do not belong in this hotel. I am here to get the secrets of
Wondergrain for my government."
"And if you fail, so what? I know Fielding. He's going to sell
it so cheap it'll be like giving it away. Why pay for what's going
to be a gift?"
"You do not understand socialist dedication," said Maria. She
looked at him carefully. "Or capitalist greed."
"Maybe not." Remo was interrupted by a knock on the door. He
rose lightly and went to the door, opened it and peered through the
crack.
A man said, "I want to see Maria."
"You know Maria?" asked Remo.
"Yes. I was here last week."
"Wrong Maria," Remo said.
"I want to see Maria. I came up here to see Maria.
I want to see Maria. I won't wait to see Maria. I have to see
Maria now."
"Go away," said Remo.
The man stamped his foot. "I won't go away. I want to see Maria.
You've got no right to make me stop seeing Maria. Who are you
anyway? Let me see Maria and when we're done, we'll have bacon,
lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. On toast. I want a sandwich. With
mayonnaise. On light toast. Whole wheat toast. They have good whole
wheat toast across the street at Wimple's. I want to go to
Wimple's. I have to have a sandwich. Why won't you let me go and
have a sandwich? I'm going to Wimple's now and if they're all out
of whole wheat toast, it'll be your fault for keeping me here
talking. I'm hungry."
"What about Maria?" Remo asked. "Maria? Who's Maria?" asked the
man and walked away down the hall, a walk that wasn't quite a walk
but more of a cross between it and a bunny hop, the walk of a child
who just knows there has to be a bathroom somewhere around and is
determined not to wet his pants, because he'll find it. Remo waited
a while before closing the door, lest Peter Rabbit change his mind
and come skipping back. But when he heard the elevator door close
at the end of the hall, he went back into the room.
"Who was it?" Maria asked.
"I don't know. It was either Chicken Little or Henny Penny."
"I do not know these people," said Maria. As Remo turned, he saw
Maria was up out of bed and full dressed.
"Where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked.
"To Denver. To see what I can find. You have pumped me…
is that the word?"
"Almost," Remo said.
"Anyway, you have pumped me and I have pumped you, and we have
found out that neither of us knows anything and so I will go to the
Fielding warehouse in Denver to find out what I can find out." She
smiled. "You were very good. I enjoyed myself."
"I won't tell Fidel," Remo said.
But Maria did not hear him. She was out of the room and gone,
and Remo watched the closed door for a moment before sighing
heavily and dressing himself.
CHAPTER TEN
Seven secretaries did not know where James Orayo Fielding was.
The eighth and ninth knew but would not tell. The tenth knew and
told, particularly after Remo had said that if she did not tell him
where Fielding was, he would not come back to her apartment that
night and explain to her, at very close range, why his facial bones
were so hard and why his eyes were so dark.
Fielding had a penthouse suite atop the Hotel Waiden, which
differed from the Hotel Needham in the presence of hot water and
cleanliness and the absence of hot-and-cold-running occupants all
named John Smith.
"Of course I remember you," said Fielding. "We had that talk out
in the Mojave, after that unpleasant violence. You're a government
man, aren't you?"
"I didn't say that," said Remo.
"You didn't have to. You've got that look of someone who has a
mission. I've found in life that the only people who have that look
are people who work for a tight structure like a government…
or people who are dying."
"Maybe they're the same people," said Remo.
"Could be," said Fielding, walking back away from Remo and
sitting himself again behind his desk. "But on the other
hand…"
Remo, who had no tolerance for philosophy, jumped in with "I
think people are trying to kill you, Mr. Fielding."
Fielding looked at Remo with large open eyes, bland and blank.
"It wouldn't surprise me. There's money to be made in food.
Anywhere money is to be made, there's potential for trouble."
"That's my question," said Remo. "Why don't you just give away
the formula for Wondergrain? Just publish it and let it go at
that?"
"Sit down… Remo, you said?… sit down. There's one
simple reason, Remo. The same greed that may have people trying to
kill me. That's the same greed that stops me from giving away my
secrets. Human nature, son. Give away something and people think
it's valueless. Put a price tag on it-any price tag, no matter how
small-and it becomes like gold. People just won't accept what's
free. Another thing. I had to make a deal with Feldman, O'Connor
and Jordan to publicize Wondergrain. Well, they took over the
ownership of it from me. And they want a profit. I thought I
explained all this to you. Didn't I?"
Remo ignored the question. "I understand you've got a Denver
warehouse?"
Fielding looked up quickly and his eyes hooded over. "Yes," he
said slowly. He seemed about to say more, then stopped.
Remo waited, then said, "Don't you think you should have
security guards there?"
"That's a good thought. But guards cost money. And frankly, all
I had, my personal fortune, it's all gone into Wondergrain. I
wouldn't worry too much about it though." He smiled, the satisfied
smile of a cat licking its face after an uncooperative meal.
"Why not?"
"It kind of guards itself," said Fielding. "Anyway, anybody in
there wouldn't know what it was all about anyway."
Remo shrugged. "I think you ought to be protected too. There's
been just too much violence at your plantings."
"Are you volunteering, lad?" asked Fielding.
"If I have to."
"We have an old saying, at least in the Army I was in: never
volunteer." Fielding essayed a small smile. It was the smile of a
man who didn't care, Remo thought. Was it possible that Fielding's
only purpose in life was to get his Wondergrains to the world and
to hell with everything else?
"You aren't afraid?" asked Remo.
Fielding picked up the digital calendar from his desk. It read
three months, eleven days. "I have no more than that to live. You
think I've got something to worry about? Just let me get my work
done."
Later, talking to Chiun in their room, Remo said, "He's an
incredible man, Little Father. All he wants to do is some good for
mankind."
Chiun merely nodded. He had taken to becoming morose in the
daytime hours lately since he had begun boycotting the television
soap operas. Instead, he spent his time with pen and inkwell and
large sheets of paper, writing letters to television stations,
demanding that they stop introducing false violence into their
daytime dramas or he would not be responsible for the consequences.
He gave each of them three days in which to acknowledge the
acceptance of his demand. The three days was up today.
Remo noticed Chiun's nod was unenthusiastic.
"All right, Little Father, something's wrong. What is it?"
"Since when have you become so interested in mankind?"
"I'm not."
"Then why are you so interested in this Fielding person?"
"Because even if I'm not interested in mankind, it's nice to
meet someone who is. Little Father, he's a good man."
"And As the Planet Revolves was a good story. Good and
true. But it isn't anymore."
"Meaning?"
"One spells out small words only for children." And Chiun folded
his arms and stubbornly refused to explain his remark.
"Do you know why organizations should never promote people?"
asked Remo.
"No. But I am sure you will tell me."
"Now that you're a coequal partner, you've stopped working. It
happens all the time."
Chiun snorted.
"All right," Remo said. "You sit there, but I'm going to make
sure that no one rips off Fielding's formula. If he wants to give
it away on his own terms, well, then I'm going to make those terms
work."
"Waste your time anyway you wish. Since you picked this
assignment, I will sit here thinking of something important to do
on our next assignment. Since I am a coequal partner now, I have
the right to choose."
"Do what you want." Remo went into the next room and flopped
onto the bed. First things first. He was dealing now with two
threats: some force that was using violence and might have Fielding
as its target, and Maria Gonzales who was trying to steal
Fielding's formula.
He dialed the Hotel Needham and recognized the oily desk
clerk.
"Remember me?" Remo said. "I came by to see Maria Gonzales, the
Cuban one, the other day."
"Yes sir, I certainly do," said the clerk.
"Is Maria back?"
"No."
"There's another fifty in it for you if you let me know when she
comes back to her room."
"As soon as," the clerk said.
"Good. Don't forget," said Remo, and gave the clerk his number,
then closed his eyes and slept.
But when the phone rang, it was not the clerk. It was the lemony
whine of Dr. Harold Smith.
"I wouldn't like to hang by my thumbs waiting for you to
report."
"That's funny. That's just what I'd like you to do," said
Remo.
"There were three persons… er, found at that planting
site in Ohio. Any of that yours?"
"All three of them." Quickly Remo filled in Smith on what had
happened and what he had learned. "I don't know why," he said, "but
it seems someone's gunning for Fielding."
"It could be. I'll leave that with you. It's not why I
called."
"Why did you call? Am I overdrawn on expenses again this
month?"
"We have some early indications that someone-we can't say who
yet-is trying to get close to us. Questions are being asked around.
Anyone close to us might be getting close to you."
"That'd be their tough luck."
"Maybe yours too," said Smith. "Be careful."
"Your concern is deeply appreciated."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maria did not return until the next day, but she would not have
had time to take off her hat before the room clerk at the Hotel
Needham called Remo.
"Hey, pal, this is your old friend at the Hotel Needham."
"She's back?"
"Just got in." He paused. "Your turn now," he added with a
dirty-minded chuckle.
"Thanks," said Remo who did not feel thanks and determined then
to beat the clerk out of the fifty he had promised him.
Maria was a long time answering Remo's knocking at the door and
when she did her face was drawn and pallid.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "Well, as long as you are here, come
in. But don't ask me to go the lengths."
"What's wrong? You look awful."
"I feel awful," said Maria. She wore an identical outfit to the
one she had worn two days before. She locked the door behind Remo
and then sat down heavily on the chair at the small Formica-topped
desk the Hotel Needham provided, apparently for that .0001 percent
of people who paid by check. She tried a thin smile. "Must be
Montezuma's revenge. I have the upthrows."
Rerno sat on the edge of the bed facing her.
"So what did you find out?"
"And why should I tell you? We are on different sides."
"No, we're not. We both want Fielding's formulas to get to the
world. If you can steal them for your country, fine," Remo lied.
"I'm only worried about keeping him alive so that everyone isn't
cheated out of them."
Maria did not speak as she thought about this for a while. "All
right," she said finally. "Anyway, it is not like I am giving away
anything. You are the keeper of the Constitution. If I do not
cooperate, you may have me deported from your country. Or worse. Is
that not right?"
"That's it exactly," said Remo. If justification was what she
wanted, justification was what she'd get. "I'd go to any lengths to
find out what you learned."
Maria raised a right index finger in warning. "I told you. No
'to the lengths'." Remo noticed the tip of her finger was
discolored and blistered.
"So what did you find?"
"I found Mr. Fielding's warehouse. It is not in Denver however.
It is outside Denver. It is in a big building that is carved into
the side of a rocky hill outside the city."
"And what was there?"
"Nothing. Barrels of grain. And barrels of a liquid I could not identify." She held up her finger again. "Whatever it was, it was powerful. It did this to me." She looked ruefully at
the blister, seemed about to speak, then jumped to her feet and ran
for the bathroom. Remo could hear her retching, and then the toilet
being flushed. Maria returned, her face even whiter than
before.
"Forgive me."
"No workers there? No guards. Nobody?"
"There was no one to be seen. Just barrels and that was all."
Her voice trailed off as she spoke and she seemed ready to pass
out. Remo got up and went to her side.
"Listen, Maria. You've got probably a touch of flu or virus or
something."
"A virus," she said. "Americans always have the virus."
"Right," Remo said. "A virus. Anyway, you shouldn't stay here
alone until you're well. I want you to come with me."
"Aha. A Yankee plot. Get Maria away from her room and then throw
her in a dungeon."
"We don't have dungeons. Except in New York, and there they call
them apartments."
"All right. A jail cell."
"No. Just a clean hotel room where you can get some rest."
"Alone? With you? That is not moral."
Remo thought this strange for a girl who forty-eight hours
before had gone to the lengths, but he shook his head. "No. We'll
have a chaperone. Chiun."
"The gracious Oriental?"
"I think so."
"Good. Then I will go. He is a man of much wisdom and kindness
and he will protect me from you."
In the lobby, Remo sat Maria in the only chair that might have
won even conditional approval from the city's building department
and approached the oily clerk.
"I owe you something," said Remo.
"Well, don't look on it as owing. I did a favor. You're going to
do me a favor."
Remo nodded. "Fifty favors if I remember right."
"You remember right."
Remo leaned on the desk casually. On a table behind it he saw a
small cashbox.
"Want to play double or nothing?" Remo asked.
The clerk's eyes narrowed warily. "Actually, no."
Remo reached into his pocket and pulled out a fifty. He held it
away from his body in his right hand. "It'd be easy," he said. He
manipulated his fingers, almost as if playing an imaginary piano
with a vertical keyboard, and the bill vanished. "Just tell me what
hand it's in," he said nodding toward his right fist.
"That's all?" said the clerk, glancing quickly at Remo's left
hand, resting on the counter, four feet away from the fifty.
"That's all?" he repeated.
"That's all."
"Double or nothing?" said the clerk.
"Double or nothing. What hand's it in?"
"That one," said the clerk with a sheepish smile, pointing to
Remo's right hand.
"Look and see," said Remo. He extended his right hand toward the
clerk. As he did, his left hand was over the counter, opening the
cashbox and flipping through the bills there. With his fingertips,
he felt for the twenties and peeled off eight, curled them into a
tube, closed the box, and put the $160 into his left pants pocket.
Meanwhile, the clerk was trying to pry open Remo's right hand.
"How can I tell if I won?" he asked plaintively.
Remo relaxed his fingers and opened his hand. Curled up in the
palm was the fifty-dollar bill.
The clerk grinned and snatched up the bill. "Terrific," he said.
"Now you owe me another fifty."
"You're right," said Remo. He dug into his righthand pocket but
brought his hand out empty. From his left pocket, he pulled out the
tube of twenties.
He unrolled them and counted off three. "I'm out of fifties.
Here. You've been such a good guy. Take sixty." He handed the bills
to the clerk who set them on top of the fifty and quickly jammed
them all into his pocket.
"Thanks, old buddy."
"Anytime," said Remo. He walked away, the hotel's other five
twenties in his pocket, offsetting the two fifties of his own he
had given away. He whistled as he escorted Maria from the
building.
She felt worse when Remo reached his hotel and he quickly put
her into bed. Chiun was sitting in the middle of the living room
floor when they entered but he did not speak, not even to
acknowledge their greetings. When Maria was sleeping, Remo came
back outside.
"You're a real charmer when you want to be, Chiun."
"I am not paid to be charming."
"Good thing."
"Remo, how could they do it? How could they do violence to the
beautiful daytime dramas? I have sat here this night and asked
myself that and I do not know the answer."
"It was probably a mistake, Little Father. Start watching
again. You'll see. It was probably just a thing they did once and
won't do again."
"You really think so?"
"Sure," said Remo, feeling very unsure.
"We will see," said Chiun. "I will hold you personally
responsisble for this."
"Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm not in charge of the television
shows. Blame somebody else."
"Yes. But you are an American. You should know what goes on in
the minds of the other meat-eaters. If not you, who?"
Remo sighed. He looked in on Maria who was sleeping deeply then
went into the living room to sleep on the couch. Chiun meanwhile
had unrolled his sleeping mat in the middle of the floor and,
reassured by what he would forever regard as Remo's personal word
that the daytime dramas would not again be sullied by violence, had
fallen instantly asleep. For five seconds of sleep, he seemed like
a normal man, breathing normally; for the next ten seconds he was
the Master of Sinanju, breathing deeply and almost silently; and
then he turned into a flock of geese.
"Honnnnk," he snored on the intake. "Hnnnnnnk," he snored on the
exhaust.
Remo sat up on the couch. He was about to make the decision, one
he had made often before, that sleep this night would be
impossible, when the telephone rang.
Chiun's snoring stopped abruptly but he slept on. Remo was at
the phone halfway during the first ring. He picked it up.
"Hello."
He was answered with the click of someone hanging up.
Remo shrugged, and went back to the couch. Wrong number
probably. If a man answers, hang up. At least the phone had stopped
the snoring.
He lay back down on the couch.
"Hooonnnnnnk." Intake.
"Hooonnnnnnk." Exhaust.
"Shit." Remo.
He left the suite, went downstairs out into the early morning
air of Dayton, filled his lungs deeply, and immediately wished he
hadn't. There were trace elements of arsenic, carbon monoxide,
sulphur dioxide, cyannic gas, hydrochloric acid, swamp gas, and
methane.
And then he forgot the air as he sensed something else, an
unconscious pressure on him as if he were living inside a dark,
opaque balloon and a giant was squeezing the sides. He stopped for
a moment, not breathing, not moving, just sensing and knew he felt
it.
He turned toward the left, began to step in that direction, then
wheeled and came back toward the right. Behind him, he heard a soft
spat, a click, and a thud.
He did not turn to see what it was. It was a bullet. The
pressure had been a marksman zeroing in on him. From the way the
bullet had hit behind him, smacking the hotel wall then a water
outlet pipe and then the sidewalk, Remo judged it came from the
roof of a building across the street.
That was the phone call. To try to get him outside.
Remo moved along the sidewalk, apparently walking casually. To a
passerby, he would seem to be another insomniac out for an aimless
early morning stroll. But to Anthony Polski, atop the roof of an
old apartment building across the street, Remo seemed to be moving
like a squirrel. A burst forward, a pause, a burst, a pause. It was
as if Remo were in darkness and was illuminated only by the
flashing of a strobe light at random intervals.
Polski sighted down the barrel of his silencer equipped rifle,
peering carefully through the light-gathering scope. There he was.
Moving ahead slowly. He led Remo just a hair with the rifle, then
softly squeezed the trigger. But even as he squeezed and the rifle
softly fired, he knew he had missed. In the scope he saw Remo stop,
pause, then start again at a slightly different angle.
The bullet splatted almost quietly against a wall ahead of Remo.
Angry now, Polski fired again, allowing for Remo's pause, allowing
for his stopping, leading him, but then stopping the lead and
shooting right at where Remo stood. When he fired, he knew he had
missed again. The bullet hit into the wall behind Remo.
On the street, Remo had learned enough. Only one marksman up
there. If there had been more, shots would have bracketed him by
now. He moved into a doorway. Across the street, Polski saw him
move into the doorway. He circled the edges of the doorway with a
slight movement of the tip of his rifle barrel. Sooner or later,
the bastard'd have to come out of that doorway and it wouldn't be
any stop-and-go movement then. He would have to come straight out
and when he did, Polski would let him have it right in the chest.
He lay there, arms propped up on the slight roof overhang, the tip
of the rifle moving back and forth gently, and waited.
"Pardon me, boy, is this the Pennsylvania Station? I'm the
Minister of Silly Walks."
The voice came from behind Polski. He rolled onto his back,
wheeling the gun around, pointing it at the other end of the roof.
There he was. The bastard was standing there, thirty feet away,
smiling.
"No. This is the morgue," said Polski grimly and he jerked down
on the trigger of the rifle.
The shot missed. The bastard wasn't there. There he was, six
feet off to the side and closing.
"Son of a bitch," Polski yelled and fired again. But he missed
and Remo kept moving, sideways, frontwards, skittering crablike
across the roof and Polski had but one more chance and even before
he fired that shot, he knew, with a sickening thump deep into
inside his stomach, that it would miss too.
Polski felt the rifle come loose from his hands and then
he was standing there, smiling down at Polski, the rifle
held loosely across his two hands. He had thick wrists, Polski
saw.
Polski kicked up at the man standing above him, aiming a hard
leather-clad toe toward the groin, but that missed too and Polski
gave up and just lay there.
"Who sent you here, fella?" asked Remo.
"Nobody."
"Let's try again. Who sent you here?"
"Shoot and get it over with," said Polski.
"No such luck, junior," said Remo. Then Polski felt a pain in
his shoulder, as if a shark had just bitten out a large chunk of
it.
He wanted his shoulder back. "A contract. I got it by phone," he
hissed, through pain-distorted lips.
"From who?"
"I don't know. It came on the phone and the money came by mail.
I never saw nobody."
"Money? Tell me. What am I worth these days?"
"I got five thousand for you and they told me how to do it. From
up here on the roof."
Remo squeezed, Polski pleaded, and Remo knew he was not lying.
He released the shoulder. Polski cringed against the small brick
wall atop the roof.
"What are you gonna do to me?"
"What would you do if you were me?"
"Yeah," said Polski. "But that was a contract. I didn't mean
anything against you."
"Well, don't you go thinking that this means I don't like you,"
said Remo and then Polski saw a flash and then, not stars but one
single bright star and then he felt nothing more, not himself being
lifted up, not himself being dropped off the edge of the building,
not himself getting tangled in the rope of the building's ancient
metal flagpole. He came there to an abrupt stop, hanging off the
flagpole like a pennant for a long-ago World Series.
Remo looked down on Polski. "That's the biz, sweetheart."
He put the rifle back onto the roof and trotted lightly toward
the back of the building and the drainpipe he had clambered up.
Even though he had learned nothing, he felt good. A little
exercise was good for both the body and spirit. And then he did not
feel quite so good anymore. His senses told him Polski had not been
alone. There was someone else.
Remo went over the edge of the roof and started down the
drainpipe. The pipe was warm in places under his hands. The
rough-painted cast iron did not draw the heat from his hands the
way it should. As he went down, he felt the warmer spots on the
pipe. The spread between them was sixteen inches. That meant a
small man had climbed the pipe after Remo.
As he neared the ground, Remo glanced back up.
Against the dark shadow of the roof overhang was an area of
slightly darker shadow and Remo forced the pupils of his eyes to
open even wider, absorbing light from darkness, giving up the
precise and narrow but light-robbing focus, and he was able to make
out a head peering over the roof. It was wearing a black hood.
A black hood?
Ninja. The ancient Oriental art of deception, invisibility,
hiding, and then attacking out of darkness.
At the end of the alley, the dark walls on both sides ended in a
bright rectangle of light, illuminated by the street beyond.
Remo sensed movement to the left of him, in the shadows. He
breathed deeply, then paused, saturating all his tissues with
oxygen. He did it again. And then stopped breathing, so the sound
of his breathing did not interfere with his senses. Behind him he
heard the faint rustle of linen-the black linen night-fighting suit
of the Ninja-and he knew it was the man coming down the drainpipe.
It would probably be an attack from the rear. He took a step toward
the front of the alley, slowly. There was a faint rustling to the
right also. They had him boxed, left, right, and back. The exit
from the alley, brightly lighted, might be a trap also. They could
have men waiting there for him.
He kept strolling casually toward the light at the end of the
alley, and then, casually still, without seeming to change stride
or direction, he melted into the shadows along the right side of
the wall. There, in pitch blackness, he paused. He heard breathing
near him. He worked his eyes again, and saw an Oriental man in a
full black costume. He had not yet seen Remo, although they were
close enough to kiss. Remo reached out his right hand and grabbed
the man's thin neck through the linen.
He touched the exact spot with the exact amount of pressure
required. The man neither moved nor made a sound. Remo held on and
waited. He heard the rustle of footsteps moving down the alley,
following the path he had taken. Then all sounds stopped. Their
quarry had disappeared. Where had he gone?
And then the small man at the end of Remo's right hand went
flying out into the alley and hit the man who had come down from
the roof, in the midsection. The second man crumbled with a noisy
"ooooof."
Remo was out of the darkness and into the parallelogram of
light, silhouetted against the brightness of the street beyond.
The first Ninja man was finished; he would never again skulk
down an alley. The second scrambled to his feet, unaccustomed to
the bright flash of light that shone in his eyes over Remo's
shoulder as Remo moved out of the light.
Remo took him out with an index finger to the right temple, and
then decided he should have used a back elbow thrust. He did and
was rewarded with a satisfying bone-crushing crunch.
Chiun should have been there to see that, he thought, but then
he thought no more as he moved into the shadows on the left where
one more was hiding, and he stopped, and cut off his breathing, and
he heard the tiny sip of air characteristic of Ninja, as if the man
were breathing through a straw, and Remo followed the sound and was
on him.
But the man darted away, slipping into the darkness, and across
the silence and the blackness the two men faced each other as if it
were high noon in Dodge City.
The Ninja waited, as was traditional, for Remo to make a move, a
mistake that would open him to the Ninja's counterthrust, but Remo
made a move that was no mistake and the back of his left foot was
deep into the muscle and gut of the man's stomach.
As the man fell, he gasped: "Who are you?"
"Sinanju, buddy. The real thing," Remo said.
Remo left the bodies behind and walked out onto the sidewalk. He
looked upward over his right shoulder, toward the roof, where
Anthony Polski dangled by his neck from the flagpole and Remo threw
him a snappy military salute.
He paused again and behind him he heard a faint sound… a
tiny repetitive clicking… but he sensed it as machinery and
not a weapon and he decided to ignore it and go back to his room.
Perhaps now, having exercised, he could sleep.
Above the alley, on the roof of another nearby building, Emit
Growling quickly packed away his camera loaded with infrared motion
picture film and headed home for a long night's work in his
darkroom.
Not that he minded. He was being paid a great deal of money to
have those films processed by morning. And later when he saw the
films, he would realize he might have been witness to something
special. Even though he had barely been able to see what was
happening while it was happening because of the darkness, the films
were sharp, almost seeming brightly lighted, and as he watched the
thin white man with the thick wrists move, he was glad that the
infinitestimal clicking of his motion picture camera had not given
him away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Refreshed and invigorated by the night's exercise he had given
his adenoids, Chiun was awake before Remo.
Remo found him sitting in the middle of the floor, right hand
pressed up against the right side of his nose, breathing in through
one nostril and exhaling through the other.
"You look in?" said Remo. "How's the girl?"
"Dead," said Chiun without interrupting his exercise.
Remo sat up on the couch. "Dead? How?"
"She died in the night. After you went out and left me here all
alone, I lay here listening to her breathe and one moment she was
there and there was the breath of life and the next moment there
was no breath and she was dead."
"Didn't you try to help her?"
"That is unkind," said Chiun, lowering his right hand from his
nose. "She was a very nice lady and I tried to help her. But she
was beyond help. This is a very bad thing."
"When did you start worrying about bodies?" asked Remo.
He got up and walked past Chiun into the bedroom. Maria Gonzales
lay peaceful in death, covers pulled up tightly to her neck.
Remo stood alongside the girl, looking down at her body. Her
right hand rested on the pillow next to her head and the blister on
the tip of her index finger seemed larger than it had the day
before. Remo pulled down the sheet. Maria's body made him shake his
head. Yesterday so white and creamy it had seemed like freshly
stirred wall paint, it was now covered with red and yellow oozing
blisters that seemed to weep like rheumy tired old eyes.
Remo grimaced, then pulled the sheet back up. When he turned
away, Chiun stood in the door.
"I've never seen anything like that, Little Father," said
Remo.
"It is not chemicals or poison," said Chiun. "It is something
else."
"Yeah. But what?"
"I have seen it before," said Chiun. "Many years ago, in Japan.
After the big bomb."
Radiation blisters.
In the living room, Remo's first phone call was to Dr. Smith. He
told him about Maria's body and told him to make arrangements to
have the body collected and an autopsy run upon it.
"Why?" asked Smith. "Isn't it just another of your usual bodies?
Necks broken, skulls crushed, dismemberment. I've been reading the
paper. People hanging from flagpoles."
"No," said Remo. "I think it's radiation poisoning and I think
you better tell the people who collect it to be careful."
He started to hang up, then added, "And unless you want another
missile crisis, you'd better find some neat way of disposing of the
body and just let Cuba think their spy was lost."
"Thank you for your advice, Remo. Have you ever
considered…"
Before Smith could finish the sentence, Remo had depressed the
receiver button and was dialing his second call.
No, Mr. Fielding was not in his office. He was out inspecting
the four Wondergrain sites around America. Of course, the secretary
remembered Remo. She was angry with him for not coming to her
apartment as he had promised, but not so angry that she would
withdraw the invitation forever. Yes, she understood about
business. Some time soon. Yes. And oh yes, Mr. Fielding went to the
Mojave site first. He had left only this morning. Now about Remo's
brown eyes...
Remo hung up, satisfaction jousting with dissatisfaction. He was
satisfied that Fielding was still alive. Whoever had been behind
last night's attacks on Remo had not reached Fielding yet. But Remo
was dissatisfied with Fielding's security. That dizzo secretary had
been quick enough to tell Remo where Fielding was. She might tell
anybody just as quickly.
Because they were now coequal partners, Rerno asked Chiun if he
wanted to accompany Remo to the Mojave.
"No," said Chiun. "You go."
"Why?"
"If you have seen one desert, you have seen them all. I have
seen the Sahara. What do I need with your Mojave? Besides, I am
going to take your advice and watch my beautiful stories today. I
believe your promise that there will be no more violence to mar
them."
"Hold on, Little Father, it's not my promise."
"Do not try to go back on your word now. I remember what you
said, as if it were just a moment ago. You personally guaranteed
that there would be no more violence. I am holding you to that
promise."
Remo sighed softly. What it meant was that Chiun had weakened
and was going back to his television shows and nothing Remo could
say or do would stop him. But if the shows went badly, Chiun wanted
someone to blame.
After arranging for Chiun, his trunks, and his television set to
be quietly shipped to a new hotel, Remo went to the Vandalia
Airport. A quick jet flight and a helicopter ride brought him to
the edge of the Mojave and a rented Yamaha motorcycle brought him
out into the desert.
Mile after mile, following the narrow road, as straight as a
weighted string hanging inside a well, Remo rode on into the heat
and sand. Far ahead, on the rise off to the left, he saw the
hurricane fencing surrounding Fielding's experimental farm, and he
saw tire tracks through the sand.
He ran ahead another mile, then made a sharp left off the road
and dug his bike twistingly through the sand, sputtering and
spitting, following the other tire tracks, until he reached the
fence.
A uniformed guard surveyed him from inside the fence.
"I'm Remo Barker. I work for Mr. Fielding. Where is he?" Remo
could see a small pickup truck with rental plates parked inside the
compound.
"He's over inspecting the field," the guard said lazily. He
unlocked the wke gate by pressing a button built into a panel on an
inside post.
Remo propped up the motorcycle and walked inside. "Must be kind
of lonely duty out here," he said.
"Yeah," said the guard. "Sometimes." He nodded toward the small
wooden shack inside the compound. "Me and two other fellows around
the clock." He leaned over to Remo and said softly, "Strange. Who'd
want to steal wheat?"
"That's what I keep asking myself," Remo said walking toward the
area in the back, covered by the almost black plastic sun shield.
The compound itself was almost a hundred yards square. The planting
field took up one-quarter of the space. The only other thing inside
the hurricane fencing was the guard's small wooden shack.
There was no sign of Fielding. Remo went to the edge of the
planting area, then lifted up a corner of the plastic sun shield
and stepped inside.
It was a miracle.
Thrusting up from the arid, barren sand of the Mojave was a
field of young wheat. To the left was rice. In the back, barley and
soybeans. And there was that strange smell Remo remembered from the
first time he had been there. He recognized it now. It was oil.
He looked around, but could not see Fielding. He walked through
the field, through a miracle of growth, expecting to find Fielding
crouched down, inspecting some stalk of grain, but there was no
sign of the man.
At the back of the planting area, Remo lifted an edge of the
sunscreen to find that it had been erected right against the
hurricane fencing. There was no place for Fielding to be. He looked
between the sunscreen and the fencing, left and right, toward the
angled corners of the hurricane fencing but saw nothing, not even a
lizard.
Where could Fielding have vanished to? Then he heard a truck's
motor start and tires begin to drive off through the heavy
sand.
Remo went back through the planting area, stuffing samples of
the grains in his pockets. At the gate, he saw the truck speeding
off in the distance. "That Fielding?"
"Yeah," said the guard.
"Where'd he come from?"
The guard shrugged. "I told him you was here but he said he was
in a hurry and had a plane to catch."
Remo walked out through the gate, hopped on his Yamaha, and took
off through the sand after Fielding.
Fielding was driving along the narrow road at seventy miles an
hour and it took Remo almost two miles to catch up to him. He
pulled up alongside Fielding's open window and then thought himself
stupid for startling the man, because Fielding jerked the wheel and
the truck spun left and sideswiped Remo's motorcycle.
The cycle started to lean to its side and Remo threw his weight
heavily in the other direction and pulled back on the bike, but the
front wheel lifted as Remo regained its balance, and the motorcycle
did a fast wheelie, standing up on its end, while Remo guided it
through the deep sand to a safe stop off the road.
Fielding had stopped on the road and looked out the window, back
at Remo.
"Hey, you startled me. You could've been hurt," he said.
"No sweat," said Remo. He looked at the dented bike and said
"I'll ride in with you if you don't mind."
"No. Come on. You drive."
Driving back toward the airport, Remo said, "Some disappearing
act back there. Where were you?"
"Back at the farm? In the field."
"I didn't see you."
"I must have come out just as you were going in. It's coming
like a charm, isn't it? Is that what you came for, to see how my
crops are doing?"
"No. I came to tell you I think your life is in danger."
"Why? Who would care about me?"
"I don't know," said Remo. "But there's just too much violence
about this whole thing."
Fielding shook his head slowly. "It's too late now for anybody
to do anything. The crops are coming so good that I'm moving up the
schedule. Three more days and I'm going to show them to the world.
The miracle grains. Humanity's salvation. I thought they'd take a
month to grow, but they didn't even take two weeks."
He looked at Remo and smiled. "And then I'll be done."
Fielding would not hear of Remo accompanying him to the other
planting fields.
"Look," he said. "You're talking about violence but all the
violence seems aimed at you. None at me. Maybe you're a target, not
me."
"I doubt it," said Remo. "There's another thing too. A girl went
to your Denver warehouse." He felt Fielding stiffen on the seat.
"She died. Radiation poisoning."
"Who was she?" Fielding asked.
"A Cuban, trying to steal your formulas."
"That's a shame. It's dangerous in Denver." He looked at Remo
hard. "Can I trust you? I'll tell you something no one else knows.
It's a special kind of radiation that prepared the grain so it can
give such miracle growth. It's dangerous if you don't know what
you're doing. I feel sorry for the poor girl." He shook his head.
"I haven't felt this bad since my manservant, Oliver, was killed in
a tragic accident. Would you like to see his picture?"
In the mirror, Remo saw Fielding's lips pull back in a grimace.
Or was it a grin? Never mind. Many people smiled when under
tension.
"No, I'll skip the pictures," Remo said. As he parked the truck
at the airport later, Fielding put a hand on his arm. "Look. Maybe
you're right. Maybe these attacks are eventually aimed at me. But
if they think the way to me is through you, then it's best we're
separated. You see my point?"
Reluctantly Remo nodded. It was logical, but it made him uneasy.
For once, he had found a job he wanted to do. Maybe in decades or
generations, if Remo's life ever became known, maybe he would not
be rated by the people he had killed but for this one life he had
saved-the life of James Orayo Fielding, the man who had conquered
hunger and starvation and famine in the world for all time.
He thought this while he watched Fielding's plane take off. He
thought of it on his own plane back to Dayton and he thought of it
when, just on a whim, he remembered his pockets filled with grain
and stopped at an agricultural lab at the University of Ohio.
"Perfectly good grain," the botanist told Remo. "Normal, healthy
specimens, of wheat, barley, soy, and rice."
"And what would you say if I told you they were grown in the
Mojave Desert?"
The botanist smiled, showing a set of teeth that were discolored
by tobacco stains.
"I'd say you'd been spending too much time in the sun without a
hat."
"They were," said Remo.
"No way."
"You've heard of it," Remo said. "Fielding's Wondergrains. This
is it."
"I've heard of it, sure. But that doesn't mean I have to believe
it. Look, friend, there's one miracle nobody can do. Rice cannot be
grown in anything but mud. Mud. That's dirt and water. Mud,
pal."
"In this process, the plants draw their moisture from the air,"
Remo said patiently.
The botanist laughed, too loud and too long.
"In the Mojave? There is no moisture in the air in the Mojave.
Humidity zero. Try drawing moisture out of that air." And he was
off laughing again.
Remo stuffed his samples back into his pockets. "Remember," he
said. "They laughed at Luther Burbank when he invented the peanut.
They laughed at all the great men."
The botanist was obviously one of those who would have laughed
at Luther Burbank because he was giggling when Remo left. "Rice. In
the desert. Peanuts. Luther Burbank. Hahahahahaha."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With the ratchety click of a child's toy, the small 16mm movie
projector whirred into fan movement, flashed light, and fired a
string of pictures on the beaded glass screen in front of Johnny
"Deuce" Deussio.
"Hey, Johnny, how many times you gonna look at this guy? I tell
you, you just give me three good guys. No fancy stuff. We just go
and pop him."
"Shut up, Sally," said Deussio. "In the first place, you
couldn't find three good guys. And if you did, you wouldn't know
what to do with them."
Sally grunted, his feelings hurt, his hatred for this skinny,
bone-faced motion picture subject growing by the second.
"Anyway," he grumbled, "if I had a chance at him, he wouldn't be
throwing no people off no roof."
"You had your chance at him, Sally," said Deussio. "The night he
sneaked in here. Right past you. Right past all your guards. And he
stuffed my head in a toilet"
"That was him?"
Sally looked at the screen again with greater interest. He
watched as Remo seemed to stroll casually down a street, while
bullets pinged around him. "He don't look like much."
"You dumb shit," Deussio yelled. "What do you think you
would do if somebody was on a roof across the street, popping away
at you with a rifle and a night scope?"
"I'd run, Johnny. I'd run."
"That's right. You'd run. And the shooter would give you a lead
and then put a bullet right in your brain. If he could find one.
And this guy that you don't think is much made that goddamn shooter
miss just by walking away. Now you get your stupid ass out of here
and let me figure out how."
After Sally left, Johnny Duece settled back in his chair and
watched the film again. He watched as Remo climbed a drainpipe as
effortlessly as if it were a ladder. He watched as he made the
marksman miss up close and then threw him off the roof into the
flagpole rope.
He watched Remo come back down the drainpipe and watched Remo
pause on the pipe, feeling it with his fingertips, and he knew that
at that moment Remo had sensed that someone else had followed him
up the pipe.
But Remo had continued down and Johnny Deuce watched the movie
and watched his own man come back down and he watched three of them
stake out Remo in the alley and the three of them wind up dead.
The last shot was of Remo standing in the light at the opening
of the alley, looking upward at the marksman's body twisting
slowly, slowly in the wind, and tossed a salute.
Deussio hit the rewind button and the film started clicking back
to the load reel. As he sat in the darkness, Deussio knew there was
something in the film, something he should be able to figure
out.
He had sent a modern attack-an armed rifle man against this Remo
and he had sent an Eastern-style attack, three Ninja warriors. Remo
had wiped them all out. How?
Johnny Deuce pressed the forward button again. The projector
lamp lit and the screen filled with the black and white images.
Deussio watched Remo, seeming to walk casually, dodging sniper's
bullets. Deussio had seen a walk like that before.
He watched the film as Remo climbed the drainpipe easily.
Deussio had seen climbing like that before.
He saw Remo dodge bullets on the rooftop. He had been told
before of people who could do that.
He stopped the projector to think.
Where before?
Where?
Right. Ninja. The Ninja techniques of the Oriental
night-fighters involved things like that-the walk, the climbing,
the bullet dodging.
OK. So Remo was a Ninja. But then why didn't the three Ninja men
get to him? Three should have been better than one.
Johnny Deuce pressed the button again. The projector whirred and
the pictures flashed. He sat up straighter as he saw his three
Ninja men surround Remo, in perfect positions, and then all wind up
lumps of deadness.
Why?
He stopped the projector again. He sat and thought.
He ran the film to the end. He rewound it. He showed it again.
And again. And again. And he thought.
And finally, just before midnight, Johnny Deuce jumped out of
his chair, clapping his hands together, whooping in joy.
Sally came into the room on the dead run, automatic in hand. He
saw Deussio alone in the middle of the floor smiling.
"What's wrong, boss? What happened?
"Nothing. I figured it out. I figured it out."
"Figured what out, boss?"
Johnny Deuce looked at Sally for a moment. He didn't want to
tell him, but he had to tell somebody and even though the
brilliance of it would all be lost on Sally, it was better than
keeping it inside himself.
"He mixes his techniques. Against a Western-style attack, he
uses an Eastern defense. Against an Eastern attack, he uses a
Western defense. When our Ninja guys went after him, he didn't do
any fancy moves. He just dove into them like a goddamn machine and
piled up the bodies. Rip. Slash. He had them. That's the secret. He
defends in the way opposite to the attack."
"Dat's terrific, boss," said Sally who had no idea of what
Johnny Deuce was talking about.
"I knew you'd appreciate it," said Deussio. "Well, I know you
can appreciate this. He gave us the key for going after him. The
way to get him."
"Yeah?" said Sally, paying more attention now. These were things
he understood. "How?"
"Simultaneous attacks. Eastern and Western style at once. He
can't use just one style to defense them. If he goes East defense,
the East attack'll get him. If he goes West defense, the West
attack'll get him." Johnny Deuce clapped his hands again.
"Beautiful. Just goddamn beautiful."
"Sure is, boss," said Sally who had again gotten lost.
"You don't know, Sally. Because, we get this guy out of the way
and we move in on Force X."
"Force X?" Sally was getting more and more out of it.
"Yes."
"Well, okay, boss, but listen. You want me to get some guys from
the east and the west to go after this lug? Back east, there's a
terrific pair of brothers. They say they're great with chains. And
for the western attack, I got these two friends of mine in LA
and…"
Sally had been smiling. He stopped when he saw the cloud come
over Deussio's face.
"Get out of here, you stupid shit," said Deussio and dismissed
Sally with a wave of his hand.
It wasn't worth it. How could he explain Force X to Sally who
thought a Western attack meant one from Los Angeles and an Eastern
attack meant New York City?
How tell him about the computer printouts, gathering all the
information on arrests and convictions and crooked politicians
bagged, and how the computers had confirmed the existence of a
counterforce to crime and had high-probability located it in the
northeast in Rye, New York. High probability, Folcroft
Sanitarium.
It all waited for him now, wiping out Force X. But first this
Remo would have to go. First him.
Deussio went to his desk, took out paper and pencil and from the
bottom right-hand drawer a pocket calculator, and he set to work.
There was no margin for error.
Well, that was all right. Johnny Deuce didn't make errors.
He told himself that more than once. But it didn't help. There
was something in the back of his mind and it was telling him he had
forgotten something or someone. But, for the life of him, he
couldn't think of what it was.
Not for the life of him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"I don't understand it, Little Father."
"It belongs then in a vast category of human knowledge," said
Chiun. "Which of the many things you do not understand are you
talking about?"
"I don't understand this about Fielding. If someone wants to
attack him, why have they been coming at us first? Why not go right
after him? That's Mystery Number One."
Chiun waved his left hand as if it were beneath him even to
think of Mystery Number One.
Remo waited for an answer but got none. Chiun sat instead in his
saffron robe on a tufted pillow in the middle of the floor and gave
Remo his fullest attention. It was Sunday and Chiun's soap operas
had not been on the television that or the previous day, although
he had watched them for the preceding two days and satisfied
himself that Remo had fulfilled his promise to keep violence off
the TV screen.
"And then there's Mystery Number Two. Maria died from
radioactive poisoning. Smith's autopsy showed that. Fielding has a
radioactive warehouse. But the grain samples I brought back show no
signs of radioactivity. How can that be? That's Mystery Number
Two."
With a wave of his right hand, Chiun consigned Mystery Number
Two to the same scrap heap as Mystery Number One.
"How did Fielding disappear in the desert when I was looking for
him?" started Remo.
"Wait," said Chiun. "Is this Mystery Number Three?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"All right. You may proceed. I just want to be sure to keep them
all straight."
"Mystery Number Three," said Remo. "Fielding disappears in the
desert. Where was he? Was he lying when he said he must have just
come out from under the sunfilter just as I was going in? I think
he was lying. Why would he lie when he knows I'm trying to protect
him?"
Pfffit with both hands. So much for Mystery Number Three.
"Why so many deaths surrounding this project, for God's sake?
Commodities men. Construction men. Who's behind all that? Who's
trying to louse things up? That's Mystery Number Four?"
Remo paused waiting for Chiun's wave to dismiss Mystery Number
Four but no wave came.
"Well?"
"Are you quite done?" asked Chiun.
"Quite."
"All right. Then here is Mystery Number Five. If a man sets out
on a journey and travels thousands of miles to reach a place that
is but a few miles away, he is doing what?"
"Going in the wrong direction," said Remo.
Chhin raised a finger. "Aaah, yes, but that is not the mystery.
That is just a question. The mystery is why would a man who has
done this and come to know it… why would that man go in the
wrong direction again and again? That is the mystery."
"I assume all this blather has a point," Remo said.
"Yes. The point on your head between your ears. You are that man
of Mystery Number Five. You travel and travel in the same direction
always, searching for answers, and when you do not find them you
keep traveling in the same direction."
"And?"
"And to unravel your mysteries-how many was it, four?-you must
take another direction."
"Name one."
"Suppose your judgment of Mr. Fielding is wrong. Perhaps he is
not victim but victimizer; perhaps not good but evil; perhaps he
has seen what so many see about you-that you are a fool." Chiun
chuckled. "After all, that is not one of the world's great
mysteries."
"Okay. Say you're right. Why would he do this? If he is evil,
what is he gaining by doing good?"
"And again I say do not jump from false opinions to empty
conclusions without stopping to breathe. And sometimes to
think."
"Are you saying that maybe Fielding has a scheme to do
evil?"
"Aha. Sunrise comes at last, even after the darkest night."
"Why would he do that?"
"Of all the mysteries, the human heart is the most unfathomable.
It is many billions of mysteries for which there are never
solutions."
Remo plopped back on the couch and closed his eyes as if to
puzzle that one through.
"How American. There is never a solution so now you will weary
yourself trying to find a solution. Better you take up one of those
things your people call sports, as when two fools try to hit each
other with a ball that they hit with paddles. I watched it earlier
today."
"They're not trying to hit each other. They're trying to hit the
ball somewhere so that the other player can't hit it back."
"Why not just hit it over the fence?"
"That's not in the rules."
"The rules are stupid then," said Chiun. "And what does that
pudgy boy with the long hair and the face of a blowfish mean by
strutting around like a rooster after hitting a ball?"
"It's complicated," said Remo. He started to sit up to explain,
then thought better of it. "It's tennis. I'll tell you about it
next time."
"And another thing. Why do they love each other if they are
competitors? It might be one thing for the men to love the pretty
woman with the sturdy childbearing legs and the ears despoiled by
rings. But to play love games with each other, that is sick."
"They're not in love with each other," said Remo. "That's how
they keep score."
"That's right. Lie to me because I am Korean. I just heard on
television that the one with the blowfish face had a love game.
Would Howard Cosell lie to me?"
"Not if he knew what was good for him." Remo sank back onto the
couch and began to ponder the Fielding mysteries. Let Chiun try to unravel the mysteries of
tennis and its scoring. Each man has his own mysteries and
sufficient unto the man… That was from the bible. He
remembered the bible. It had been frequently referred to at the old
orphanage although the nuns discouraged the children from reading
it, under the assumption that a god who peeked into bathrooms, thus
requiring them to bathe with undergarments on, would not be capable
of defending himself against the mind of an inquisitive
eight-year-old. Such was the nature of faith, and the stronger the
faith the stronger the mistrust and misapprehension that it
appeared to be based upon.
Was his faith in Fielding just that? Or was it just a suspicion
of Chiun's?
Never mind. He would soon know. Fielding's Mojave unveiling was
tomorrow and Remo and Chiun would be there. That might provide the
answer to all mysteries.
There was another thing Remo remembered Chiun once saying about
mysteries. Some cannot be solved. But all can be outlived.
Remo would see.
There were others making plans to go to the Mojave too.
In all of America, there were but eight Ninja experts who were
willing to put their training into practice and kill. This, Johnny
"Deuce" Deussio found out, after surveying the biggest martial arts
schools in the country, weeding his way through overweight
truckdrivers hoping to be discovered by television, executives
trying to work out their aggressions, purse-snatchers looking for a
new tool to aid them in their advancement to full-fledged
muggers.
He found eight, all instructors, all Orientals. Their average
age was forty-two but this did not bother Deussio because he had
read all he could about Ninja and found that it differed from the
other martial arts by its emphasis on stealth and deception.
Karate, kungfu, judo, the rest, they took a man's strength and
intensified it. Ninja was eclectic; it took pieces from all the
disciplines, and just those pieces that did not require strength to
be efficient.
Johnny Deuce looked at the eight men gathered in the study of
his fortress mansion. They wore business suits and if they had had
briefcases, they might have resembled a Japanese executive team out
scouring the world to squander its nation's newfound wealth on
racehorses and bad paintings.
Deussio knew the eight included Japanese and Chinese and at
least one Korean, but as he looked at them sitting around him in
the study, he felt ashamed to admit to himself that they did all
look alike. Except for the one who had hazel eyes. His face was
harder than the others; his eyes colder. It was the Korean and
Deussio decided, this man has killed. The others? Maybe. At any
rate, they were willing. But this one… he has blood on his
hands and he likes it.
"You know what I want," said Deussio to them. "One man. I want
him dead."
"Just one?" It was the Korean, speaking in a neat, flavored
English.
"That's all. But an exceptional man."
"Still. Eight exceptional men to bring him down seems
excessive," the Korean said.
Deussio nodded. "Maybe after you see this, you won't think
so."
He nodded to Sally who flipped out the room lights and turned on
the movie projector. Deussio had cut the film and this part
included only Remo dodging the bullets, climbing the drainpipe, and
disposing of the marksman.
The lights came back on. Some of the men, Deussio noticed,
licked their lips nervously. The Korean, the one with the hazel
eyes, smiled.
"Very interesting technique," he allowed. "But a direct Ninja
attack. Very easy to handle. Eight men for this job is precisely
seven too many."
Deussio smiled. "Just call it my way of insuring success. Now
that you've seen the film, are you all still in?" He looked around
the room. Eight heads nodded in agreement. By God, they did all
look alike, he decided.
"All right then. Five thousand dollars will be deposited in each
of your accounts tomorrow morning. Another five thousand dollars
each will be deposited upon successful completion of the…
er, mission."
They nodded again, simultaneously, like little plaster dolls
with heads that bobbed on springs.
The Korean said, "Where will we find this man? Who is he?"
"I don't know much about him. His name is Remo. He will be at
this place tomorrow." He gave them Xerox copies of news clippings
about Fielding's Wondergrain and its unveiling in the Mojave.
He gave them a moment to look at the clippings.
"When do we attack? Is that left to our discretion?" asked the
Korean.
"The demonstration is set for seven p.m. The attack must begin
precisely at eight P.M. Precisely," said Deussio. "Not one minute
early, not one minute late."
The Korean stood up. "He is as good as dead."
"Since you are so sure of that," said Deussio, "I want you to
head this team. That is not making judgments on any of you others;
it's just that everything works more smoothly if one man is in
charge."
The Korean nodded and looked around the room. There were no
dissenters. Just seven inscrutable masks.
Deussio gave them airline tickets and watched them leave his
study. He was satisfied.
Just as he had been satisfied the night before when he had met
with six snipers who had been recruited from the ranks of mobdom
and had showed them the film of Remo wiping out the three Ninja in
the alley.
He had promised them each ten thousand dollars, appointed a
leader, and stressed the necessity that the attack begin at eight
p.m.
"Exactly eight o'clock. Exactly. You got that?"
Nods. Agreement. At least he could tell the men apart.
He did not tell the snipers that the Ninja would also be
attacking Remo, just as he had not told the Ninja about the
marksmen. Their minds should be on only one thing. Remo, their
target, and that target was as good as dead.
If he went straight-line attack against the Ninja, the rifles
would take him out. And if he went Eastern-style against the
rifles, Deussio's eight Ninja men would get him.
And if some of the snipers or Ninja got wasted… well that
was part of the risk in a high-risk business.
The important thing was this Remo dead. And after him the rest
of Force X. High probability, Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New
York.
But as the next day dawned, Deussio remembered his head in the
toilet and decided that it would not do just to stay home and wait
for the good news. He wanted to be in at the kill.
"Sally," he ordered, "we're going on a trip."
"Where we going?"
"The Mojave Desert. I hear it's swinging this time of year."
"Huh?"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Mojave.
The sun and heat, like hammers to the head, numbed the senses.
People stood around, eyes baked dry, seeing everything through
shimmering waves of heat. At night, the same people would still see
everything through wavering lines, but they would not even notice
it, so quickly did the human body and brain adjust to its
environment.
The two large tents had again been erected outside the
chain-link fencing that surrounded the experimental planting area,
and both tents were crowded now in early evening with press men,
with agricultural representatives of foreign countries, and with
just the merely curious.
No one paid particular attention to six men who seemed to lurk
about the scene in a group, each carrying a cardboard tube that
looked as if it might hold a chart or a map. When a reporter with
too much to drink tried to engage one of the men in conversation,
he was brushed off with: "Get out of here before I shove my foot up
your ass."
People peered through the fence of the still-locked compound,
hoping for a glimpse of what Fielding might have produced. But the
sunscreen filter still stood over the planting area and nothing
inside was visible except seating benches.
A string of limousines, Cadillacs and Lincolns, were parked in a
long line leading to the tents, along with one Rolls-Royce which
belonged to the delegate from India, who was complaining that parts
of America were so beastly hot, what, that it was no wonder the
national character was so defective.
"We understand, sir," said a reporter, "that your country is the
only one which has made no effort to sign up for Mr. Fielding's
miracle grain, if it is successful."
"That is correct," said the delegate smoothly. "We will first
examine the results and then we will plan our future policy
accordingly."
"It would have seemed," said the reporter, "that with your
chronic food problem, your nation would have been first in
line."
"We will not have policy dictated to us by imperialists. If we
have a food problem, it is our own."
"It seems strange then," said the reporter who was very young,
"that America is continually asked to supply your nation with
food."
The Indian delegate turned and walked away haughtily. He did not
have to be insulted.
The reporter looked after him, then saw standing next to him an
aged Oriental, resplendent in a blue robe.
"Do not be confused, young man," said Chiun. "Indians are that
way. Greedy and unappreciative."
"And your nation, sir?" asked the reporter, gently prying.
"His nation," said Remo quickly, "is America. Come, Little
Father."
Out of hearing of the reporter, Chiun spat upon the sand floor
of the tent. "Why did you tell that awful lie?"
"Because North Korea, where Sinanju is, is a Communist country.
We don't have diplomatic relations with them. Tell that reporter
you're from North Korea and your picture'll be on every front page
tomorrow. Every reporter will want to know what you're doing
here."
"And I will tell them. I am interested in the onward march of
science."
"Fine," said Remo.
"And I am employed in a secret capacity by the United State
government…"
"Great," said Remo.
"To train assassins and to kill the enemies of the Great Emperor
Smith, thus preserving the Constitution."
"Do that and Smith'll cut off the funds for Sinanju."
"Against my better judgment," said Chiun, "I will remain
silent."
Chiun seemed to stop in mid-sentence. He was looking through the
opening of the tent at a group of men,
"Those men have been watching you," said Chiun.
"What men?"
"The men you are going to alert by turning around like a
weathervane, shouting 'what men?' The Korean and the other
nondescripts inside the tent."
Remo moved casually around Chiun and took in the men at a
glance. Eight of them, Orientals, in their thirties and forties.
They seemed ill at ease as if the business suits they wore did not
really belong to them.
"I don't know them," Remo said.
"It is enough that they know you."
"Maybe it's you they're after," said Remo. "Maybe they came
looking for a pool game."
Chiun's answer was interrupted by a roar from the crowd, which
surged forward toward the locked guarded gates, Remo saw that
Fielding had just driven up in a pickup truck.
Reporters pressed toward him as he stepped down from the
driver's seat.
"Well, Mr. Fielding, what about it? We going to see anything
today?"
"Just a few minutes. Then you can see to your heart's
content."
Fielding signaled for the uniformed guards to open the gates and
as they did, he turned toward the crowd.
"I'd appreciate it if you would move inside and take seats on
the benches," he said. "That way everyone will be able to see."
Escorted by the three guards, Fielding walked to the black
pastic sunscreen and turned to face the rows of benches which were
filling rapidly. The last arrivals were Remo and Chiun and the
delegate from India who had found a tray of delicious canapes and
had tarried for just a few more. He finally entered through the
open gates, walked to the front bench, and forced his way onto it
between two men, while mumbling about American
inconsiderateness.
Remo and Chiun stood behind the last bench. Chiun's eyes ignored
Fielding to rove the compound.
"It was in here," he whispered softly, "that Fielding
disappeared?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"Very strange," said Chiun. Almost as strange, he thought, as
the six men holding cardboard tubes who had taken up positions
outside the chain-link fence and were looking in. And almost as
strange as the Korean and the seven other Orientals who now stood
together in a corner of the compound, their eyes fixed on Remo. For
a moment, the eyes of the younger Korean met Chiun's but the
younger man looked quickly away.
Fielding cleared his throat, looked over the crowd, and intoned:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this may be one of the greatest
days in the history of civilized man."
The Indian delegate snickered, while sucking a small lump of
caviar from between his front teeth.
Fielding turned and with a wave of his hand signaled to the
guards. They lifted the front edge of the plastic sunscreen, pulled
it up, and then began hauling it toward the back of the planting
area.
As the dying afternoon sun hit and glinted gold on the high
healthy field of wheat, the crowd released one large collective
breath. "Ooooooooh."
And there in the back was rice and barley and next to the wheat
were soybeans.
"The fruits of my miracle process," Fielding shouted, waving a
hand dramatically toward the field of food.
The audience applauded. There were cheers. The Indian delegate
used the edge of his right thumbnail to pick a piece of cracker
from between two back teeth.
The applause continued and swelled and it took
Fielding repeated shouts of "gentlemen" to quiet down the
audience.
"It is my intention that this process will be used-virtually at
cost-in any country which desires it. Wondergrain will be provided
on a first-come, first-served basis. I have warehouses now filled
with seed and it will be available for the nations of the world."
He glanced at his watch. "It is now twenty after seven. I would
suggest that you gentlemen inspect this crop. Take samples if you
wish, but, please, only small samples since there are many of you
and this is, after all, only a small field. In thirty minutes, let
us reassemble inside the tents. I have representatives there who
will meet with those delegates of any nations wishing to sign up
for the Wondergrain process, and I will also be able to answer any
press questions too. Please keep to the walkways through the field
so the crop is not trampled underfoot. Thank you."
Fielding nodded and the reporters sprinted for the wooden
walkways that divided the field into four sections. They grabbed up
small handfuls of samples. Behind them, the other delegates began
lining up to walk through the fields. The Indian delegate walked
straight ahead, ignoring the wooden walkway, through the waist-high
wheat, trampling it underfoot, grabbing samples to stuff into his
briefcase. He turned and smiled. Back in the rear of the line he
saw the French ambassador. How pleasant. The French ambassador was
a Parisian, someone with whom he could honestly discuss the
crassness and crudity of Americans.
Remo and Chiun watched and were watched.
"What do you think, Chiun?" asked Remo.
"I think there is a strange smell in this place. It smells like
a factory."
Remo sniffed the air. The faint smell from before was there
again. He was able to pin it down closer now; it was the scent of
machine oil.
"I think you're right," said Remo.
"I know I am right," said Chiun. "I also know something
else."
"What's that?"
"You are going to be attacked."
Remo looked down at Chiun, then his eye caught a motion off to
the side. He saw a lone Cadillac limousine, tooling its way down
through the sand toward the front of the line. Behind the wheel was
a face Remo recognized, even though the man now wore dark glasses
and a hat, and the last time Remo had seen him he was wearing a
toilet bowl. Johnny Deuce. Now what was he doing here?
Remo looked back on Chiun.
"An attack? On us?" said Remo.
"On you," corrected Chiun. "The Korean and the others. Those men
outside the fence with their little cardboard tubes. Their eyes
have all been on you and they are moving leadenly, like men on
their way to deal with death."
"Hmmm," said Remo. "What should we do?"
Chiun shrugged. "Do what you like. It is no concern of
mine."
"I thought we were coequal partners."
"Ah, yes. But that is in official assignments. If you go getting
yourself into trouble on your own, you can't keep expecting me to
help you."
"How many are there?" asked Remo.
"Fourteen. The eight Orientals. The six with the tubes."
"For fourteen, I don't need you."
"I certainly hope not."
Fielding was now leading the way to the twin tents outside the
gates and the crowd was falling in line behind him, slowing down,
unable to fit all at once through the gates.
As the Indian ambassador passed Chum, he nodded curtly to the
old man. "Gross, these Americans, what? How like them to try to
sell this process which should rightly belong to all mankind."
"They pay their bills on time. They manage to feed themselves,"
said Chiun. "But don't worry. Wait long enough and they will give
you this seed for free as they always do. They have a large stake
in keeping you people alive."
"Oh," sniffed the Indian. "And what might that be?"
"You make
them look good," said Chiun. The Indian snorted and moved away from
Chiun. Remo was thinking about the smell of oil, fainter now with
the powdered sand kicked up by so many feet, drifting through the
air. The compound was almost empty. The fields of grain had been
denuded by the sample pickers and had returned to the bare sand it
had been only weeks before. The sunscreen was rolled up against the
back fence and looking in over it, at Remo, was a hard-faced man
carrying his cardboard tube. The man glanced at his watch.
"What do you think they've got in those tubes?" asked Remo.
"I do not think they are carrying flutes to play the music for
the party."
Remo and Chiun turned toward the tents. The last of the crowd
was disappearing through the door openings in the canvas, and now
standing before them, blocking their way through the gates, were
the eight Orientals.
They stood in a line across the gate and at a signal from the
one with hazel eyes, they began to peel off their suits to reveal
Ninja black combat suits.
"They are going to attack you with Ninja and the men with guns
are going to attack you Western," said Chiun.
"Don't tell me your problems," said Remo. "You already said you
were out of it."
"You are not good enough to stand against such an attack," said
Chiun.
"It's all right," said Remo. "I've got to do everything around
here anyway. It's not like I had a coequal partner or anything. But
it's just me and my employee. And you know how hired help is these
days."
"That is vileness unequaled by anything you have said
before."
The Korean in the Ninja uniform spoke to Chiun. "Away, old man.
We have no quarrel with you."
"I quarrel with your continued existence," said Chiun.
"It's your funeral, old man," the Korean said, glancing at his
watch. Behind him, Remo heard a cardboard tube being ripped open
and he turned to watch the six men around the outside of the fence
pull out rifles.
"Eight o'clock," the Korean yelled. "Attack."
"Work the inside, Little Father," said Remo.
"Of course. I get all the dirty work," said Chiun.
The man at the far end of the compound was just raising his
rifle to his shoulder as Remo and Chiun moved toward the eight
Ninja men. The Orientals ignored Chiun and moved toward Remo but
Chiun passed before Remo, moving from the left to the right,
pulling in upon himself the force of the eight men, collapsing with
it, and opening a gap that Remo darted through. The Ninja noticed
Remo was gone only when they looked for him, but when they tried to
follow him through the gates, they found them blocked by Chiun, his
arms spread wide, his voice intoning in Korean:
"The Master of Sinanju bids you die."
The six men outside the fence saw nothing but a pile of bodies.
Where the hell was the white man? Fred Felice of Chicago was
nearest the mass pileup, but the wire of the fence was in his way
and he moved his head to see more clearly. Then the wire of the
fence was no longer in his way as his head went through the fence
like a hard-boiled egg being slammed through a wire slicer. He
didn't last long enough to scream.
The next man screamed.
Remo reached him by moving crablike, skittering, remembering the
lessons-the hour after hour of running at top speed along wet
toilet tissue and being lectured by Chiun if he should so much as
wrinkle the paper-and by the time he reached Anthony Abominale of
Detroit, Abominale was just turning toward him. He shouted, then
the shout turned into a scream that drowned in his throat on the
blood that leaked into it from his shattered skull.
The shout brought the eyes of the other marksmen toward
Remo.
"There he is. There he is." Bullets started pinging as the
riflemen fired shot after shot from automatic clips. Remo kept
moving, seeming to travel back and forth, seeming to take only one
step forward and two steps back, but still moving like a slow wave
of water toward the corner of the compound where another man
waited, firing point blank. He was lucky. He was able to squeeze
the trigger one last time. He was unlucky in that the rifle barrel
was in his mouth when the gun went off.
As he moved, Remo glanced over his shoulder. The Ninja battle
had moved into the center of the compound and all he could see of
Chiun was an occasional flash of blue robe. Well. Nothing to worry
about. There were only eight of them.
Remo went over the fence of the compound to come up upon the
fourth man, then took him by vaulting back over the fence and with
his feet driving the man's skull and spine deep down into his
shoulders.
The fifth man got off two shots more before his intestines were
ruptured with his own gun butt and the sixth dropped his weapon and
ran but got only two steps before his face was buried deep in sand
and he inhaled deep, sucked in the deadly grains, twitched once,
and was still.
Then Remo was back at the front of the compound and running away
from the tents through the dusk. A crowd had come out of the tents,
attracted by the gunshots, and Remo moved silently past them, so
quickly most did not even notice anyone passing. Then Remo was at
the Cadillac which sat, motor idling, with Johnny Deussio behind
the wheel.
Remo jerked open the door without bothering to depress the
door-handle button.
Deussio looked at him in surprise that turned to fright, then to
horror.
"Hiya," said Remo. "I almost didn't recognize you. You're not
wearing your toilet."
"What are you going to do?"
"How many guesses you need?"
"Okay. Okay. But tell me. You really are a force fighting crime
in this country, aren't you? Just tell me if I'm right."
"You're right. But don't look on us as a force. Look on us as a
CURE."
And then Remo cured Johnny Deuce of life.
He did not wait for the autopsy. Instead he was back, moving
through the crowds of people into the compound. Ahead he saw only
motionlessness and as he grew nearer a mound of bodies. But no
Chiun. He raced forward faster and as he neared the bodies, he
caught a glimpse of the blue robes and he heard Chiun say, "Is it
all right to come out?"
"Well, of course it's all right to come out."
Like a dolphin rising from water, Chiun moved up, seemingly
unwrinkled, out of the mass of the dead, and Remo took his arm and
walked him away, ignoring the crowds beginning to cluster around
them.
"Why of course?" asked Chiun. "You play your games and those
silly men are firing bullets all over and you think that one might
not hit me? Do you think coequal partners are that easy to find?
Particularly one who takes care of eight enemies while you are
fooling around with only six?"
"Seven," said Remo. "I found another one over there in the
car."
"Still. It is not eight."
A reporter clapped Chiun on the shoulder. "What happened? What
happened? What's going on here?"
"Those men tried to overthrow the United States Constitution,
but they did not reckon with the wiles and skill of the Master of
Sinanju and his assistant," said Chiun. "They did not-"
"Some kind of gang war," interrupted Remo. "These guys in here;
those guys out there. The guy behind it is over in that Cadillac."
He pointed to Johnny Deuce's car. "Talk to him."
Remo moved backwards with Chiun toward the far corner of the
compound, out of the reach of the tent lights in the suddenly
accumulated night darkness, and then he felt the sand under his
feet and for a moment, it did not seem sandy enough.
"Chiun, what about this sand?"
"The feel is wrong," said Chiun. "Why do you think I worried
about being hit by a bullet? I could not move right."
Remo sniffed. "Is that oil?"
Chiun nodded. "I have taken many breaths. Even your deserts
smell in this country."
Remo rubbed his toe in the sand. The consistency underfoot did
not feel right. He spun on his right foot, pushing off with his
left, corkscrewing his right foot into the sand, and then
stopped.
"Chiun, it's metal." He moved his leg around. His foot rested on
a large metal plate. Through the thin leather soles of his Italian
loafers, he felt small holes in the plate.
Remo pulled his right leg from the sand like a person yanking a
toe from a too-hot bath.
"Chiun. I've got it."
"Is it contagious?"
"Don't be funny. The Wondergrain. It's a fake. Fielding's got an
underground compartment here. The grain doesn't grow here. It's
pushed up from underneath the sand. That's why those construction
men were killed. They knew. They knew."
"And you have solved the riddle."
"This time, yes. The radioactive warehouse. This bastard's going
to peddle radioactive grain and make farmland all over the world
worthless. It'll make every famine the world ever had look like a
picnic." He looked down at the sand, more in sorrow than in
surprise. "I think it's time to talk to Fielding."
They moved through the crowd and then heard it --the whoop,
whoop, whoop of an ambulance.
"Little late for an ambulance, Little Father," said Remo.
The ambulance rushed up toward the tent, kicking up sand sprays
from its wheels and two men jumped from the back carrying a
stretcher.
"What's going on?" Remo asked a reporter.
"Fielding. He collapsed."
Remo and Chiun passed through the crowd as if it were not there.
As Fielding was being put on the stretcher, Remo leaned over to him
and said:
"Fielding, I know. I know the whole scheme."
Fielding's face was chalky white, his lips almost violet under
the harsh overhead light. The lips split into a thin smile as his
unfocused eyes searched out Remo. "They're all bugs. Bugs. And now
the bugs are all going to die. And I did it." His eyes closed again
and the ambulance attendants carried him away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"It couldn't be worse." Smith's voice sounded as forlorn and
sour as his words.
"I don't know why. Just get rid of the radioactive seeds."
"They're gone," said Smith. "They've been moved from the Denver
storage depot and we haven't yet been able to trace them. But we
think they're probably someplace overseas."
"All right," said Remo. "Then just let the government brand the
Fielding process as a hoax."
"That's the problem. That lunatic public relations company that
Fielding's got, they're already out spreading the word that
powerful government forces are trying to stop Fielding from feeding
the world. If the government acts now, America'll wind up being
labeled antihuman."
"Well, I've got a solution," said Remo.
"What's that?"
"Just let the seed get out and get planted around the world. And
then there won't be anybody left to label us anti-human."
"I knew I could count on you for clear thinking," said Smith,
his voice dripping ice. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," said Remo.
"Call anytime."
After he hung up the phone, Chiun said, "You do not feel as good
as you try to sound."
"It'll pass."
"No, it won't. You feel you have been made a fool of by Fielding
and now people may suffer because of it."
"Maybe," Remo conceded.
"And you do not know what to do about it. Fielding is dying; you
cannot threaten to kill him unless he tells the truth, because he
just will not care."
"Something like that," Remo said. He looked out the window over
the city of Denver. "I guess it's because Smitty feels so bad. You
know, I could never tell him but I kind of respect him. He's got a
tough job and he does it well. I'd like to help him out."
"Bah," said Chiun. "Emperors come and emperors go. You and I
should go to Persia. There assassins are appreciated."
Remo shook his head, still looking at the skyline. "I'm an
American, Chiun. I belong here."
"You are the heir to the title of Sinanju. You belong where your
profession takes you."
"That's easy for you to say," said Remo. "I just don't want to
leave Smith and CURE."
"And what of your coequal partner? Does my opinion count for
nothing?"
"No, you're on the team too."
"All right. It is agreed."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What is agreed?"
"It is agreed that I will solve this little problem for you. And
in the future, you and Emperor Smith alone will not determine the
assignments. I will have something to say about what you and I
do."
"Chiun, did you ever do anything for anybody without extracting
a price for it?" asked Remo.
"I am not the Salvation Army."
"What makes you think you can solve this problem?"
"Why not?" asked Chiun. "I am the Master of Sinanju."
James Orayo Fielding had only brief periods of consciousness
now. The leukemia that was eating him up would win. It might be
hours. It might be days. But the fight was over. Fielding was
doomed.
Because of this, the doctors did not make any plans to operate
or to minister to Fielding around the clock. Despite the fact that
he was dying, he seemed to be happy, lying in his hospital bed, his
face wreathed in smiles.
Until that afternoon when the aged Oriental appeared before him
and offered to kiss his feet.
"Who are you?" asked Fielding softly of the ancient man in the
light blue robe who stood at the foot of his bed.
"Just a humble man who has come to bring you the thanks of all
mankind," said Chiun. "Already my poor village has been saved
through your wonderful genius."
Fielding's eyes narrowed and for the first time in twenty-four
hours, the smile passed from his face.
"But how?"
"Oh, you did not have all the process. You were very close,"
Chiun said, "but you missed one thing. The chemicals you put into
the grain, they could be very dangerous, but we found the thing to
render them harmless."
As Fielding's face lengthened, Chiun went on. "Salt," he said.
"Common salt. Found everywhere. Seeded into the soil with your
grain, it makes plants grow, not in weeks, but in only days. And it
has no bad effects. Like that bomb long ago in Japan. Look!"
Chiun opened his hand and lowered it to show Fielding his palm.
In it rested a solitary seed. From his other hand, Chiun sprinkled
some white grains on the seed. "Salt," he explained.
He closed the hand and then opened it again. The seed had
already begun to sprout. A tiny shoot rose from the top of it.
"It takes now only moments," said Chiun. He closed his hand
again. When he reopened it, a few seconds later, the shoot had
grown. It was now an inch tall, sprouting above the seed.
"All the world will sing your praises," said Chiun. "You will
feed the world instantly. Never again will there be hunger because
of you."
He bowed deeply at the foot of Fielding's bed and then backed
from the room, as if leaving the presence of a king.
Fielding's mouth tried to move. Salt. Just common salt could
make his process work. Because of him, the buggy humans would eat
happily ever after. He had failed. His monument that was to be
carved from the deaths of billions had failed…
unless…
The public relations firm of Feldman, O'Connor and the late Mr.
Jordan had no trouble getting the press to meet in Fielding's
hospital room for a major press conference at six o'clock that
night. After all, Fielding was a world-famous figure. His every
move was news.
Chiun and Remo sat in their hotel room watching on television,
as James Orayo Fielding told the reporters that his Wondergrain
process was a hoax.
"Just a prank," he said, "but now I find that it can be very
dangerous. The radioactivity in the seeds could hurt the
bugs… er, that is the people who come in contact with it. I
am ordering the ships that were carrying this seed overseas for
distribution to dump their cargo instantly to protect the people of
the world from harm."
Remo watched on the television, then turned to Chiun.
"All right. How'd you do it?"
"Shhhh," said Chiun. "I am listening to the news."
After the press conference, the newscaster reported that the
first comment on Fielding's announcement had just been received
from the government of India. While India had not bid on the food
process, it might be interested in taking the radioactive waste off
Fielding's hands-at no charge, of course-for further research into
potential military uses of it. Booby traps, the newscaster
said.
When the news show had turned safely to weather and sports, Remo
asked again: "How'd you do it?"
"I reasoned with him."
Remo stood up. "That's no answer." He walked around the room,
stalking, awaiting another word from Chiun. None came. Remo went to
the window and looked out again. His hand came to rest on the
windowsill and brushed against something.
He picked it up.
"And what is this plastic plant doing here?" he asked.
"It is a gift for you. To remind you of the everlasting goodness
of your Mr. Fielding. May the bugs feast forever on his body."
REVISION HISTORY
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