The first thing Remo tried to do was to avoid catching germs. The second was keeping the dye these people covered themselves with off his body. He did that by wrapping them in the quilted bedspread and then squeezing firmly. The last living one told him where he had gotten his orders. Remo rewrapped the quilt and heard the chains on the bodies jingle. Suddenly, he had an awful thought. He reopened the quilt and their bodies tumbled out but it was too late. Their hair had stained the quilt.
"I'm sorry," he told Pamela, who was having a grand old time beating up on the remaining muscled young man. He had his hair shaved so it looked as if his head were pointed. The point was a deep purple with green beads woven through it.
"Don't touch the hair," Remo called to Pamela. "It comes off."
"Why don't you help me then?" she said, as she swung a metal picture frame at the shaved part of the skull. It made a dent.
"You seem to be doing all right without me," said Remo.
Pamela threw a karate blow at his neck and stunned her attacker for a while. She grabbed an arm, threw the man over her shoulder, and then began kicking his face.
"What are you doing?" Remo asked.
"I'm finishing him, dammit."
"You're getting the stain on your bedroom slippers. Those colors come off, I told you."
"If you were a gentleman, you would help me."
"I never said I was a gentleman. Stay away from the hair. Kick him in the chest."
"He's got chains there."
"Well, kick his groin."
"He's got needles or something there," Pamela said.
"Well then, break his ankles. I don't know."
"What did you do?"
"I wrapped them up before I killed them," Remo said.
"What did you wrap them with?"
"A quilt."
"My good quilt?"
"It was the one on the bed," Remo said.
"If that's stained, I'll kill you, Remo."
"I couldn't help it," Remo said, and to make amends he finished off the multicolored brute by sending a chest bone firmly and eternally into a pumping heart which therupon stopped. Aortas did not function with bones sticking into them.
"It's about time," Pamela said. "You could have helped earlier. Good job on those three." She sighed. "Now I guess it's the police and explanations. Paperwork and such. Drat."
"See you around," Remo said.
"You're leaving me with this?"
"Somebody always picks up the bodies," Remo said. "I used to worry about that but I never saw a body left around long enough to cause pollution. I don't know about these four though. They may be the first."
"They're punkers. They think it's attractive, I guess," said Pamela. "Let's go. We'll leave them."
"I go alone," Remo said.
"You're not leaving me. I'm not responsible for your bodies," she said.
"I saved your life," Remo said.
"I would have had them," she said. "Besides, you need me. I know computers. You don't even know what a mode is."
"I don't care what a mode is."
"Well, you've got to know that if you're going to track down these people. You've got to know a lot of things you don't know. Or else have someone who does. I am that someone," said Pamela, pointing to a large left breast.
"What's it to you anyway?" Remo asked.
"I beg your pardon. These four lunatics come in here to kill me. I saw our office manager have her eardrums shattered. I have been subjected to abuse, teasing, and general mistreatment by a voice on a phone. I want whoever it is. I want that person real bad."
She had already slipped out of her robe and pulled a dress over her head. She picked up the pistol from the floor and tucked it into the waistband of her dress and did it so expertly that it did not show.
"What are you going to do with that?" said Remo, pointed to the gun.
"When I find them I am going to shoot off their gonads. Now you know. Are you happy?"
"Suppose they're women?" Remo said.
"There are other places to shoot them," said Pamela Thrushwell.
But when they got to the address that the dying punker had given Remo, Pamela uttered a little moan.
"I thought so. They've beaten us again."
"This is the place," Remo said. "He wasn't lying."
Remo looked around. There was no one on the corner. It was two A.M. on a filthy empty street where even muggers were afraid to venture out. Policemen rode two to a car with guns cocked and ready on their laps.
Behind them was a small branch bank. It was closed for the night and the only sound in the garment district was the sewer rats scurrying from one garbage bin to the other.
"He told me his contact was always ready for him. Always. I assumed it meant twenty-four hours a day," Remo said.
"He's beaten us again," Pamela said disconsolately.
"How do you know it's a he? I only have a number for him. Two-forty-two. How do you know that 242 is a he?"
"Until we see her, it's a him," Pamela said. She started to say more, then stopped. She looked to Remo excitedly. "He's here." She nodded toward the bank.
Remo looked inside and sensed nothing alive. This was not altogether unusual because sometimes when it was filled with bank employees, he got the same sensation.
"Where?" said Remo.
Pamela nodded again, this time toward the automatic card machine, a gray metal box set into the stone of the building front.
"Punch in that number," she said. "Go ahead."
Remo punched in 2-4-2. The screen lit up. Bright green numbers appeared on a gray background. The numbers blinked for a moment and were replaced by letters. It was a message:
"CONGRATULATIONS ON A SUCCESSFUL ASSIGNMENT. PLEASE TELL ME HOW WELL YOU DID."
"Go ahead." Pamela nudged Remo.
"We killed the man and the woman," Remo said.
The screen printed out:
"ARE YOU SURE?"
"Sure. He died well," Remo said. "The woman made a lot of noise."
"WHAT KIND OF NOISE?" the screen printed.
"Good noise," said Remo. He looked to Pamela and shrugged. What was he supposed to say?
"YOU LIE," said the machine.
"How do you know?"
"BECAUSE I CAN SEE YOU. I CAN SEE YOU AND THAT BIGTITTED BRIT TROUBLEMAKER. TELL HER I WANT HER TO LICK THAT FIRE HYDRANT."
"Take a hike," Remo said.
"WHO ARE YOU? I CANNOT FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE."
"You're not supposed to," Remo said.
The machine's cash drawer opened. A stack of hundred-dollar bills an inch high appeared.
"What's this for?" Remo asked.
"FOR YOU. WHO ARE YOU?"
Remo took the money and slammed it back into the cash drawer, then shoved the drawer shut.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" came the printed message.
"To destroy you," Remo said. "I am coming to kill you."
The machine blinked again as though in some sort of joy and flashed out an insane jumble of letters and numbers. Then it flashed again in capitals:
"CONGRATULATIONS, WHOEVER YOU ARE. YOU ARE WORTH 50,000 POINTS."
The machine went dead dark in the night.
"It's gone. Bugger it, it's gone," Pamela said.
"Maybe we can trace it," Remo said.
"I hope so, I want to shoot his nougats off," said Pamela.
"You're a vicious little thing, aren't you?"
"I didn't bash in those three blokes at my flat, you know. And with my good spread, too. You did. You're violent. That's because you're an American. I'm British. I only do what is necessary to keep a bit of order in this world."
"Well, order this for a while," Remo said. "Figure out how we can find out who's using this bank's computer system."
"We can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because it's at the bank's main headquarters down on Wall Street. And the information storage is shielded behind steel doors that can't be opened by outsiders and can't be p
enetrated by another computer."
"But people can get into it," Remo said.
"They have guards and guns and walls and gates and things. Really, it's impossible."
"Yeah, yeah," Remo said. "You coming?"
"You want me now?" said Pamela.
"I've got to have someone who tells me what we'll find. If we get in to that computer thingamajig, can we get to whoever's behind this?"
"We've got a chance," Pamela said.
"Then let's go."
There was little trouble getting through the guards and rounding up the people who had the right combinations and keys to the secret computer files. Remo merely had to wake them up and tell them they were needed. He did this by holding them out of their apartment windows by their ankles. They were, of course, all vice-presidents of the bank.
"Listen," Remo said. "You and I have a problem. You don't want to see the street coming up at you and I don't want to spend the night waiting outside your main storage vault. Can we come to some mutual understanding?"
"Yes," agreed all five vice-presidents, they could. Negotiation was always preferable to confrontation. The one who did not wish to negotiate lived on the ground floor. But when it was explained to him that he could be worked into the concrete, facefirst, with the same amount of force as in a twenty-story fall, he too decided to join the management team that was going to open the main vault's computer section.
All five appeared in their underwear at 5:10 A.M. at the main vault, telling the guard to open up.
"Is something wrong?" asked the guard.
"No," said Remo. "We're having a pajama party."
sChapter Six
Western intelligence sources had determined there were five major missile units inside the Soviet Union, whose sights were aimed at the United States. This was because the Central Intelligence Agency had more faith in Russian technological competence than did the Kremlin.
The Kremlin actually had twenty main missile units, and three dozen secondary launch units. They had this many because, unlike peace activists, the Kremlin planners did not imagine their missiles landing dead center in whatever city some peace activist was talking in.
The Kremlin knew that war was a system of vagaries and things that go wrong. They knew it was the remnants of armies that won wars, not the armies a nation began the war with. Communism had given them a system far in advance of the West: through Communism, they already knew nothing worked; the West was still finding it out.
In their twenty main missile batteries were the most massive nuclear warheads available, each capable of destroying half of America. Enough nuclear firepower was aimed at the United States to irradiate America 279 times.
What the Kremlin hoped for was a good hit or two and then keep firing.
The Kremlin did not have people marching in the street telling the leaders to get rid of their arms. They did, however, have people marching in the streets. They marched in rows, carrying banners. The banners told Russia's leaders to build peace through strength. The banners were usually shown in parades, being carried right in front of the mobile nuclear missiles, and right after them.
No one was foolish enough to protest a Soviet missile, no matter where it was located. The missile protests began on the other side of the Berlin Wall and when Russia could move that wall westward-- perhaps to France-- then all the protests about missiles in West Germany would stop. They would stop because the protesters would realize that being next door to a missile or having one in your backyard was better than being shot, hanged, or jailed.
The onetime protestors of Western missiles would then become part of the truly peaceful peace movement of the Soviet bloc. They would line up peacefully where told, march peacefully where told, stop marching peacefully when told, and then go peacefully home when told, usually to get blind drunk and urinate in the living room.
This was the typical march of the typical Russian peace activist. Sometimes, American ministers and peace activists were along the route of march and waved at them. One peace activist kept bothering the marchers, saying he wanted to "get to know the real Russian, to understand my Russian brother."
But he made a small mistake. The real Russian he was to get to know hadn't shown up on time and another real Russian he was to get to know had to be found quickly, and barely had time to memorize all his answers at KGB headquarters, where these real Russians were trained and then turned loose to let themselves be hugged by American ministers who would then return home to write newspaper columns on the Real Russia, insinuating that news reports of Russian life were misleading.
It was one of the better jobs in the Soviet Union, being a "real Russian" for American clergymen or, for the equally predecided, the average British journalist. Although the British journalists were even easier: they didn't need "real Russians" to give them the Real Russian story. They had already learned that back in Britain from their Marxist professors. For the British, a Real Russian didn't even have to avoid urinating on the living-room floor. For when a British journalist was practicing realism, nothing could bring him out of his trance. Not even soggy feet.
Average Russians, the men in the street, were never allowed near a missile battery. Not only did the Russians not have to face protests about where they located missile bases, if they did not like the town a battery was to serve in, they removed it. The town, that is.
Each missile battery had its own food supplies for a half year, stores, schools, and hospital. Each battery was like a little city, commanded by a full field marshal.
Each field marshal had the highest perks available to any Communist in Russia. Each field marshal lived like a little capitalist and there was no way to reach one with any material goods because he lived like an an upper-middle-class American.
Only the lowest-ranking privates ate Russian food or used Russian goods and then only as a strict punishment. It was the only punishment available because they could not be sent to Siberia, since they already were in Siberia. Discipline therefore was very good at those bases, they being the last bastion in the world where an American car or machine was thought of as superior.
They even had American video games.
And that was how Abner Buell decided he could infiltrate the Russian missile command and have them ready to start World War III when he decided he was bored enough and it was time to end the world.
Marshal Ivan Michenko considered himself a ladies' man and a superior chess player. He considered life a game and his rise to field marshal in the Soviet Missile Command a game won. There were few challenges left until he played Zork Avenger and quickly became the best player on the base, even when his subordinates were really trying, even when he had a quart of vodka in his belly and a woman on his lap.
Michenko got a monthly score sheet, available to the highest-ranking Russians, so that they could compare their scores in Zork Avenger, Eat-Man, and Missile Attack against other players.
Marshal Michenko's were always the second highest scores in the world. He was second in Zork Avenger, second in Eat-Man, and when it came to Missile Attack, he was, to his shock and shame, second in that also. He was second in all three games to a player known simply as AB.
Michenko was sure that AB either cheated or did not exist, that an impossibly high score had been set up in these games so that a Russian could not win. He let the KGB know about his suspicions. He let others know that a Russian field marshal had lost at Missile Attack.
"Comrade Michenko, what are you getting at?" he was asked by the KGB officer with whom he was sharing his worries.
"The great danger in this world is to appear weak. Second best in Missile Attack, although admittedly it is but a game, is still just second best. And to whom? An American."
"It is just a game, comrade field marshal."
"I know that and you know that. But who knows what some fools will say?"
"Who cares what fools say?" the KGB officer said.
"If that be the case, then you eliminate the value of the op
inion of ninety-nine percent of the world," Michenko said.
Within a day, Field Marshal Michenko got the information he wanted. AB did indeed exist but no one could track him down. However, AB had a standing offer of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could defeat him at Missile Attack. He had almost as many offers as there were dollars, but AB accepted none, saying they were unworthy of his time.
Michenko issued a challenge but got no response. There the matter lay for months, until one day he was notified that AB would play him.
AB sent a special joystick, one designed for head-to-head combat, to an address in Switzerland. The KGB picked it up.
The first game was conducted by satellite and beamed to a station in Zurich. Michenko, through brilliant conservation of his atomizing power, and concentration of his beam modes, won a magnificent struggle. Barely. AB won the second game as if he had been playing a child. And then came the third game and soon Michenko was down by 220,000 points, his time and firepower diminished, and he could do only one thing. He harnessed the most powerful brain energy in Russia. He used his American computers that guided his Russian missiles. He locked them into the game and he won.
He did not know that across the world, an American who fit the initials AB, Abner Buell, had just given himself five thousand points.
They played seven more games, sometimes beaming challenges to each other, sometimes asking personal questions. During one questioning period, about the taste of good cognac, a fire order came to Michenko from Moscow. World War III was on.
Michenko looked at the orders and his stomach felt as if it were dissolving through his rectum. There were no countermands, only his American opponent AB signaling another friendly question.
Michenko made one last check. He telephoned Moscow. The phone did not answer. Moscow, he thought, must be destroyed.
He messaged regrets to his American counterpart and said, "Good-bye."
The End of the Game td-60 Page 7