"Destroyer 004 - Mafia Fix.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Ordinarily, a burly man with a mustache would have been sitting there. He was a fire chief from the Midwest, filled with loud opinions and ignorance, and he had sat there almost all day and all night on the trip down. He had called Chiun a "chink" when he thought the old man could not hear, but Remo had heard. Later Remo had seen him pick up a tip that someone had left on a waiter's tray, and so, when it became necessary to clear out a cabin to make room for Harold W. Smith, Remo had his candidate.

The Midwestern fire chief one fine day on the beach of Paradise Island, had mysteriously fallen asleep. He had slept in the hot summer sun for four hours and when he was awakened, the skin was already blistering. At Nassau General Hospital, they treated him for sun poisoning and severe burns, and cautioned him about staying out in the sun too long, then decided to hold him for treatment and observation, after he said that he had been knocked out by a touch on the shoulder from a husky young man with deep brown eyes.

Remo grinned as he passed over the empty chair and thought to himself that if the fire chief was a bad tipper, Smith was even worse. The waiters had gained nothing on the switch.

Remo padded silently across one of the steel crossbeams that held up the curved plastic roof of the swimming pool, then was back on the port side of the ship. He ran a few more steps, glided quickly around the barrier separating the public deck from his private verandah, and landed noiselessly on the deck outside his cabin.

He slid his feet back into his slippers and walked into the cabin through the sliding glass door.

Smith was sitting on the sofa and Chiun was kneeling behind him, pressing practiced fingers into clumps of nerves along the sides of Smith's neck.

"Thank you, Chiun," Smith said, pulling away as Remo came in.

"Seasick, huh?," Remo said.

"Never. I've spent more time at sea then you've spent sober," Smith sniffed. "Out for your evening stroll?"

"You might say that," Remo said, and then because he wanted to be cruel to this man who brought him dehumanizing missions and assignments, he said: "Hopkins knew it was you right away. As soon as I said cheap, he knew."

"Yes, yes. Well, that will do," Smith said. He rolled his eyes toward Chiun, who despite his deadly skills and despite his love for Remo did not really know what CURE was or what it did, and was content to know only that Remo was sent on killing missions and that it was his job to see that Remo was adequate to the task.

Chiun had sunk back on the sofa, slipping easily into a lotus position and closing his eyes. Smith stood up and opened his suitcase. He reached inside and brought out a shiny paper packet and held it toward Remo.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Sure, it's a fix. Heroin," Remo said, taking the packet in his hands.

"Do you know people would kill me for it?"

"Sweetheart, there are people who would kill you just for the fun of it," Remo said.

"Be serious, will you?" Smith said.

Ignoring Remo's faint protestation that he was being serious, Smith went on: "That's our problem right now. "Every year, illegal narcotics peddlers in the United States sell maybe eight tons of heroin. Most of the traffic's controlled by the Mafia. They grow the poppies in Turkey, process them in France or South America and smuggle them into the country. The Treasury Department slows them down. It har-rasses them. Occasionally, it makes a big arrest. But a big arrest is a suitcase full, maybe fifty pounds. And in the entire country, we use maybe sixteen thousand pounds a year. On the street, that's worth over a billion and a half dollars."

"So? Hire more men for the Treasury Department," Remo said.

"We tried that. It was all set up. And the Treasury men were killed. The stuff got in, Remo. We're not talking about suitcases full. We're talking about four truck loads. Maybe fifty tons. Enough heroin to supply the illegal market for six years. Ten billion dollars worth of heroin!

"And when the Mafia forces out the small dealers," Smith said, "it might be worth twice that much."

Remo looked again at the glassine envelope in his hand and then tossed it back into Smith's open suitcase.

"What do you want me to do?," he shrugged.

"You know where Hudson, New Jersey, is, don't you? You're from that neighborhood, aren't you?," Smith asked.

"I'm from Newark. Newark makes Hudson look like Beverly Hills," Remo said.