Remo leaned against a light stanchion, facing the front of the hotel, waiting for Maggie to appear. He wore a white suit, and his hands were stuffed into his jacket pockets as they usually were, which ruined the line of his suits but made him comfortable and therefore, was, in his view, worth doing.
Remo glanced to the side as an auto drove by him, close to the curb, and he caught a glimpse of dark-brown hair in the back seat of a taxi.
He turned to follow the cab with his eyes. It stopped fifty feet down the street from him, under a streetlamp. The back door opened and a long leg slid out. It was Maggie. He recognized the leg, the long recurve from knee to ankle. He looked through the cab’s back window. It was Maggie all right. She had stopped—not out, not in—and turned again, and he could see her crisp profile through the window.
She was talking to a man and even at fifty feet, Remo could see his face was hard and lined, his hair so black it was almost blue, like a Superman comic strip.
He was gesturing to Maggie, imperiously, as if he were giving orders and Remo wondered idly who he was. Then she raised her hands toward him in the universal symbol of reluctant agreement, turned again and finished stepping from the cab. With undisguised admiration, Remo watched the long legs; the bust; the face and hair; the smooth, tanned skin. She wore a short, white sleeveless dress, and its contrast made her skin seem darker, healthier.
She smoothed her dress over her buttocks, pressing away wrinkles, then saw Remo watching her. Hurriedly, she shut the cab door, and it sped away. Turning on a smile, she walked toward Remo.
“Hi,” she said, throatily.
“Evening. I expected you from inside. That a boyfriend?”
She smiled. “No. The local representative of Ramses II. Had to tell him that I was otherwise engaged this evening.”
“You should have held the cab.”
“We’ll walk,” she said. “It’s a nice night.”
“This is Algiers, honey. We might both wind up being sold into white slavery.”
“Mr. Kenny,” she began.
“P.J.” He wondered, for the first time, what the initials meant.
“P.J.,” she said, “with you I’m not worried in the least. Let’s walk.”
She locked her arm through his and turned to walk off along the street, in the direction away from the taxicab.
“This is the tourist quarter,” she said brightly. “There are places not far from here.”
“Lead on,” he said, “but if you take me to a belly-dancer joint, I’ll lose all my respect for you.”
“Perish forbid.”
He liked her. It felt good to have her hanging on his arm. At times like this, he could almost imagine he was a real person, not someone whose name and fingerprints had vanished from the earth when he met death in the rigged electric chair. No, a real person. With a past, a present and a future, and with a pretty girl on his arm to share it with.
He liked her. It would be a pleasure finding out why she was interested in him, who the man was in the back of the cab, what she knew about Nemeroff and the upcoming meeting and if he had to drag her into bed to work his wicked will on her, why then, he was prepared to make that sacrifice for dear old Smith and CURE.
Smith, Smith, Smith. CURE, CURE, CURE. Three cheers and a tiger. Let’s hear it for all professional killers.
Remo Williams. P.J. Kenny. The colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady. Poor P.J. just never had the good sense to go to work for the government.
They walked slowly along the street, arm in arm, not chattering, silently enjoying each other’s company like old friends who were sure of each other. A black limousine was parked at the corner a hundred feet ahead, and Remo heard its motor start with the high-pitched shriek of a heavy-duty starter.
Curbside was filled with automobiles and the car pulled out into the roadway, which was empty of traffic, and slowly came down the street toward them. Remo noted the car casually. Strange that its lights were out.
Then he and Maggie were walking along an open stretch of curb where there was a fire hydrant, a street sprinkler and no cars were parked, and the car which had been leisurely coming down the street, suddenly sped up.
The car’s back window was open on the sidewalk side and before the car reached them, Remo saw the polished barrel of a gun suddenly extend from the window, gleaming blue and oily in the light of the street lamps. Almost as if it was happening in slow motion, he saw the barrel point toward them.
Remo changed direction in mid-step, pushing himself backwards, his body against Maggie’s, bearing her backward, but keeping his body between her and the car. Then they were out of the open area, behind a parked car, and Remo pulled Maggie down with his arm. In one motion, he was on his feet, ready to draw the fire away from Maggie, making himself a target. Bullets started spraying from the passing car now. Bullets by the tens, the dozens, the scores-ignoring Remo, slamming through and over and under the car-toward Maggie. Remo heard them hit with dull thunks into the parked car; he heard them crack crisply off the stone wall behind them; and he cursed the marksman for trying to ruin his night.
He saw a shiny black, hugely-muscled arm holding the submachine gun out the car’s window; then he lost his temper and started along the sidewalk, moving toward the front of the parked car which shielded Maggie, ready to go up onto its hood and over onto the roof of the passing limousine.
Crack!
Another bullet hit the stone wall behind him and this time it rebounded upwards and caught Remo in the head as he moved. It felled him. He saw a blue flash, but felt no pain. All he could think of was Chiun, telling him how inept he was not to anticipate a simple ricochet. He put his hand to his right temple, could feel the warm stickiness of blood, and then there was pain, as if he had been slapped by Chiun, as if his head had fallen off, and then he fell back, off the hood of the parked car, onto the sidewalk alongside Maggie.
· · ·
He woke up, lying on his back on a pleasantly hard mattress.
A girl hovered over him. She was beautiful and built. She had wrung out a cloth in a dish of water at a bedside end-table and placed the chilly wet rag on his aching forehead.
He opened his eyes; the girl spoke. She had an English accent. “P.J.? Are you all right?”
“P.J.? he thought. He said, “Yes, I think so. My head hurts.”
“Well it might.” She wore a white dress and was really lovely, tanned with deep brown hair and the brightest of green eyes. He hoped she was not just a nurse. He hoped she was someone he knew well. Maybe a wife or a girlfriend.
“What happened?” he said.
“You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“We were walking down the street and someone fired shots at you. A bullet grazed your temple.”
“Someone fired shots at me?”
“Yes.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought you might.”
“I don’t know anything,” he said. He sat up in bed, ignoring the throb of pain in his temple, and looked around the room. It was a hotel room, luxuriously furnished. For some reason, he wondered who was paying for it.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“You’re teasing me.”
“No, I’m not.” His tone was sincere and truthful, and quietly she answered: “This is the Stonewall Hotel in Algiers. Your room.”
“Algiers?” he said in astonishment. “What am I doing in Algiers?” He paused for a long moment, obviously thinking hard. “Who am I, anyway?”
She stared at him for a full ten seconds. Then she removed the cloth from his head and looked at the wound.
“It doesn’t seem too bad,” she said. “Just a small bandage job.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Who am I?”
“Your name is P.J. Kenny.”
It meant nothing to him. “And this is Algiers?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “What am I doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked around the room again. Knowing your name was no good at all, not unless it had some convenient handles of memory attached to it. His had none.
“Who is P.J. Kenny?” he asked.
“You are.”
“No, I don’t mean that. Really, who am I? What do I do? What am I all about?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No, I don’t.”
She stood up and walked away from the bed. He sank back onto the pillows. Sudden movements hurt some, but he could not resist turning slightly on the pillow so he could watch her as she walked away. She was exquisite. But who was she?
At the foot of the bed, she turned and looked at him, leaning forward on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know who you are either,” she said. “We just met. But you lie there and I’ll look around the room. Perhaps I can find something to help. You’ve got amnesia.”
“Amnesia! I thought that was just a hypnotist’s trick.”
“No,” she said. “It’s real enough. I used to be a nurse. I’ve seen many cases of it. Fortunately, it’s generally only a matter of a few hours.”
He grinned. “I’ll wait it out if you promise to stay with me.”
“I’d better look around,” she said. She started with the dresser drawers. Expertly, she rifled them, looking under and behind each piece of clothing, between the individual garments. She felt the inside of his socks. Nothing.
In the bottom drawer, she found an attaché case. She pulled it out, put it on the dresser and unsnapped the lock. Remo watched her with interest, admiring her technique.
She hummed slightly as she looked through the case. He could see her hands moving. What was she doing? It hurt, but he got to his feet and walked to her side.
The attache case held money, piles of hundred-dollar bills. He would guess the total at $25,000.
“I already like being P.J. Kenny,” he said.
“There’s a telegram here, too,” she said, pulling out a yellow sheet.
“Read it.”
“It’s addressed to P.J. Kenny, Hotel Divine, Jersey City, N.J. ‘Register at the Stonewall Hotel. Reservations made for you. Look forward to fruitful business relationship. Nemeroff.’”
“Who’s Nemeroff?”
She hesitated, just a fraction of a second too long. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he’s probably why you’re here.”
She walked away from him, and opened his closet, to look through his clothes. He went to follow; then, from the corner of his eye, saw his reflection in the mirror. He turned and looked into the glass.
It was the face of a stranger staring at him. A bad face. Not just the ugly-looking gash on his temple, but something else. His hair was short cropped and wavy. His eyes were hard and relentless looking; his lips long and thin. The face looked as if it were skin over bone, as if the flesh had been omitted. P.J. Kenny was not a nice man. He knew that.
He leaned forward toward the mirror, looking closer. There was something else, too. He raised his fingertips to his cheekbone. The skin was a little too thin, as if it had been stretched taut. At the corners of his eyes, the skin had the same feel. Plastic surgery. He knew it. Without a doubt, he knew it.
She had finished her inspection of the closet, and she watched him as he examined his face.
“Well?” she said, with humor in her voice. “Do you pass?”
“It’s odd. Looking at yourself and seeing a stranger. Did you find anything?” he said, shaking his head in puzzlement and returning to the bed.
She followed him, her hand at her side, hidden from view. He sat on the bed and she stood before him.
“Just this,” she said.
She extended her hand toward him. She held a stiletto. He could tell the blade was razor sharp.
He took the knife from her and laid it on his palm. It was eight inches in length and it had a professional feel to it, but it was a feel that seemed foreign to him. He turned it around in his hand, looking at the twin, razor-sharp sides of the blade, turning it over-first handle, then blade, then handle again and then, without thinking, raised it over his head and let it fly at the wooden hotel door.
The knife transcribed one lazy, half-turn, flashing across the room, and then hit the door, chest high, point first, and it tore through the thin plywood covering of the hollow door, burying itself two inches deep along its blade before stopping. It hung there, imbedded, its handle quivering slightly.
The girl looked at it, then turned her eyes back to him. He watched the knife until it stopped vibrating, then smiled up at her.
“At last,” he said, “I know who I am.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I’m a knife thrower in the goddamn circus. I don’t even know how I did that.”
The girl sat on the edge of the bed and her dress hiked up on her thighs, revealing a lot of well-turned, well-tanned leg. She took her hands in his.
“It’s apparent,” she said, “that only this Nemeroff, whoever he is, will be able to clear up your identity. I’m going to go out for a few minutes and see if I can find out anything about Nemeroff. Who he is. Where he is. Then we can figure out what to do.” She squeezed his hands gently. “Will you be all right for a few minutes?”
“Without you? I don’t know.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the bridge of the nose. “I’ll make it up to you when I get back,” she said.
“Then hurry.”
“I will.” Then she was on her feet and out the door, closing it tight behind her, and as the door closed, the knife quivered again, and he lay there, looking at it, wondering just what kind of man he was to be able to throw a knife like that.
CHAPTER TEN
MAGGIE WATERS JABBED IMPATIENTLY AT the elevator button, and while waiting, nervously tapped the sole of one high-heeled white shoe on the heavy beige carpeting in the hallway of the twenty-fifth floor of the Stonewall Hotel.
After what seemed an interminably long time, the elevator came, opened, and Maggie stepped in. She rode down to the twelfth floor, and with a key from her handbag opened the door to Room 1227.
She glanced around the room, which she now found distasteful after having been in Remo’s room. Hers was like a cheap Alabama motel room, with linoleum tile floors, and thin drapes, and mica-finished furniture. She closed the door behind her, pressing it tightly, since she had noticed that it was warped and stuck, unlocked, in the dampness that pervaded the halls of the lower floors of the Stonewall.
Inside, she walked to the phone and dialed four short digits.
“Yes,” a voice answered. It was a British male voice, professionally bored, and for some reason, it annoyed her as much as her room. The sun was indeed setting on the empire. Sensible people would prepare for night. The British had too much tradition to be sensible. They went on, unconcerned, and each one acted as if he were King Arthur.
“Maggie here,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” the man said. “What’s new? How’s the boyfriend?”
“The boyfriend took a bullet in the head,” she said, viciously happy to be overstating the case, to see what reaction she could draw from the man on the other end of the telephone.
“Oh,” he said.
She pursed her lips. “But he’s all right,” she said, after a pause. “Just a flesh wound. Now, dammit, he’s suffering from amnesia. He doesn’t know who he is.”
“I say, that’s interesting. What about Nemeroff?”
“He’s never heard of him. I tried the name on for size.”
“That’s a piquant turn of affairs, isn’t it?” the man said. “The baron hires a professional killer and now the killer not only doesn’t know the baron, he doesn’t even know that he’s a killer.”
If he chuckled, she thought she would die.
He chuckled.
“Yes,” she said. “Very piquant.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said.
“Yes, indeed,” she parroted. “But what happens when Nemeroff comes for him?”
“Well, my dear, that may very well be your entree to the baron’s company.” He chuckled again. “You can pose as P.J. Kenny’s private nurse. Would you like to play nurse with him?” he asked, his voice attenuated in the spoken equivalent of a leer.
“I would presume,” she said coldly, “that it would be safer to play nurse with him than it would with you. He probably does not have a dose.”
The man’s voice sputtered slightly. “It was in the line of duty, Maggie.”
“It’s amazing how you’re always running into five shilling whores in the line of duty. The top agent in her majesty’s secret service.” It was an accusation.
“The hazards of the trade,” he said. “You should not forget that my discomfiture has given you the opportunity to carry out this mission and make your own reputation.”
“Should I thank you or your trollop?”
“Thanks are not necessary,” he said. “At any rate, see if you can get to Nemeroff through P.J. Kenny. The Scambia plan must be stopped at all costs. Stop Nemeroff. And if that appears impossible…”
“Yes?”
“If that appears impossible,” he repeated, “kill P.J. Kenny.”
She did not answer for a moment and he went on: “When his memory returns, and it will, he will kill you in a minute. He is a vicious cold-blooded maniac with a knife. If you must, kill him before he kills you. Don’t hesitate.” Then, he said: “Oh, I wish I were on this case instead of you.”
“I wish you were too,” she said.
“Unfortunately…my physical condition…” He left the rest of the sentence unspoken.
“Imagine,” she said. “The secret service laid low by the clap.”
“To hell with the service.” He chuckled sardonically. “I was laid low.”
“You are always laid low,” she said. “Ta, ta. Don’t forget your penicillin.”
“Be careful,” he said. “Remember, this is important. The stakes are mortal. An international crime empire stands in the balance. Nothing can be more important than stopping the evil Baron Nemeroff and his nefarious scheme. Nothing. Not your life. Not mine. Not…”
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