"You're welcome."
Remo had never seen Malibu before and he was disappointed. He had expected mansions with twisting drives and servants' quarters and what he found instead was a string of little houses packed tightly together along the oceanfront highway, their privacy guarded by high wooden fences, and he thought it didn't look much better than Belmar, New Jersey, three thousand miles away on the Atlantic.
Pamela was disappointed too. She said, "I don't see any movie stars."
"They're all out on the beach watching California erode," Remo said.
The house they were looking for was a quantum jump up in quality. It took up a full 150 feet of ocean frontage and was hidden from the roadside by a thick stone wall with a heavy solid iron gate embedded in it. There was a tiny buzzer on the side of the gate and a nameplate that bore no name, only the house's street address.
Remo reached out to ring the buzzer but Pamela grabbed his hand.
"Shouldn't we sneak in or something?" she said.
"Not if we don't have to. Why make work?" Remo said. He pressed the buzzer. There was no answer so he pressed it again.
A voice answered, coming from a small speaker hiding near the gate's top hinge.
"Who is it?" the voice asked.
"What's the owner's name of this place?" Remo asked.
"Mr. Buell," the voice said. "Who wants to know?"
"I do," Remo said.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I've come to kill Mr. Buell. Is he in?"
"Go away or I'll call the police," the voice answered.
"Don't be that way," Remo said. "Do you know how long I've been driving to get here?"
"I'm calling the police."
There was a sharp click as the speaker went dead.
"That was wonderful," Pamela said sarcastically. "We're still out on the street and now we're going to have the police for company." She kicked the iron gate in frustration.
"Don't worry about it," Remo said. He grabbed the handle of the locked gate, feeling the warm steel under his skin. Gently, he began to twist the handle back and forth until he could almost hear the hum of the metal as it vibrated under his hand. He speeded the twisting motion and the vibrations grew more rapid. He didn't know how he was doing what he was doing. It was a thing he had learned but it was so long ago that he had forgotten exactly what it was he had learned. But he remembered the result and how to produce it.
When he knew, by feel, that the metal was vibrating at the correct speed, he slapped out with the heel of his other hand at the steel plate just above the gate's lock and the steel plate snapped and fell, lock mechanism included, at his feet. He pushed the gate open with his right pinky.
"How'd you do that?" Pamela said.
"I sent away once for a 'Be a locksmith by mail. Earn Big Money.' This is all I remember from the course," he said. "When I figured out it wasn't going to make me rich, that's when I joined the telephone company."
Inside the house, Bondini put down the microphone and said, "I think he'll be coming in now. Everybody remember what to do?"
Hubble and Franko nodded. They were crouched behind couches with machine guns pointed at the front door. Bondini held a.44 Magnum. They all held the unfamiliar weapons gingerly, as if they might fire at any moment by themselves.
"Okay," Bondini said. "And then when we kill them, we get out of here."
"Right," said Franko.
"Anybody got any problems with that?" Bondini asked.
"Anything's better than screwing a sheep," Hubble said.
Almost three hundred miles away in a mammoth stone house built on a promontory overlooking the Pacific, Abner Buell watched a television monitor and saw the three men with guns in the living room of his Malibu home. Sitting alongside him was Mr. Hamuta.
"I don't really understand," Mr. Hamuta said. "I thought you called me for--"
"You will get your chance," Buell said.
"But those three men?"
"You will get your chance," Buell said. He snapped his fingers and Marcia, who had been standing in the corner of the room, rushed forward to refill his cup of mandarin-orange herbal tea. She did it silently, then backed away, never taking her eyes off the television monitor.
Pamela walked toward the front door of the house, her hand extended toward the doorknob, when Remo said, "You really going to do that?"
"Why not? You let everybody know we're here." In her other hand, she held her small revolver. "You think we're going to surprise anybody now?"
"No. But I think they're going to surprise you when you go through that door. Don't you know a trap when you see one?"
"I know that they probably think we've buzzed off," she said.
"Not a chance. They're waiting for us."
"You keep saying 'they,'" she said. "Why they? There was only one voice on the speaker."
"It's they. There's three of them," Remo said.
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"I can hear them."
She put her ear close to the door. "I can't hear anything," she whispered after a moment.
"That has more to do with your hearing than their noise," Remo said. "There's three of them. One of them has asthma or something 'cause he's breathing funny."
Pamela Thrushwell smiled. She knew when she was being joshed. "And the other two?" she asked pleasantly.
"They're breathing normally. For white men, that is. But they're nervous. The breaths are short. I figure that they're carrying weapons and they're not used to them."
"This is all the worst pile of rot I ever heard," Pamela said.
"Have it your own way," Remo said. "You go through the door if you want." He raised his voice. "But I'm going around the back and coming in through the ocean side."
He walked away from her and a moment later heard her feet padding after him.
"Wait for me," she said.
"Good." He leaned close to her and whispered, "We'll go up this trellis to the second floor."
"I--" she started, but Remo put a hand over her mouth.
"Whisper," he said.
"I thought we were going around the back."
"You're not too smart, are you?" Remo said. "I said that for them inside."
"Why?"
He pointed over the front door. "They've got microphones and cameras all over the place. I don't want them to know what we're doing."
"Don't tell me you're afraid," Pamela said.
"Not for me," said Remo.
Pamela thought, then nodded. "All right. I'll be right behind you."
The second-floor window was open and Remo hoisted Pamela through before slipping inside himself. They were in a guest bedroom, whose walls, bedspread, furniture, rug, and drapes were all a bright red.
"This room looks like a freaking hemorrhage," Remo said.
"I kind of like it," Pamela said.
"Great place to bleed to death," Remo said. "If they get you, I'll bring you up here to die."
"Thank you. I'd really appreciate that," she said dryly.
The bedroom door opened onto a balcony which fronted all the rooms on the second floor and looked down into the large living and dining areas.
Remo gestured to Pamela for silence and brought her to the edge of the balcony. Below, they saw the three men hiding behind sofas and chairs, aiming guns at the sliding glass doors that led to an outside patio and the sandy beach beyond. The ocean looked very green today. It reminded Remo of the Caribbean.
"Should I shoot them?" she whispered softly in his ear.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Get them before they get us. They've got us outgunned."
"Christ, you even think like James Bond," he said.
"Well, we can't just stand here until they all fall asleep," she hissed again.
He raised a hand to silence her. "Leave it to me," he said. He lightly vaulted over the railing and dropped the fifteen feet to the room below. He landed on the cushions of the sofa, rolled backwar
d over its back, landed on his feet between two of the would-be gunmen, and snapped the machine guns from their hands.
The man behind the chair heard the sound and turned toward him, slowly raising his Magnum to firing height. But before he could do anything with it, Remo had taken it from his hand. Remo stood there among the three men holding all three guns. Three guns were awkward, he realized. He tried holding one machine gun in each hand and the revolver under his chin but that wasn't comfortable.
"Who are you? What do you want?" the man behind the chair said.
"Just hold your horses," Remo said. It was hard to talk holding a gun under your chin.
He put both machine guns under one arm and held the pistol in his other hand, but the machine guns began to slip. They might fall out, go off and hurt somebody that way, he thought.
"Are you all right?" Pamela yelled from the balcony.
"Fine, fine, fine, fine," Remo said. "Will you all just wait a minute?"
Finally he gave up and tossed all three weapons into a corner of the room. "Listen," he told the three men. "I put them over there but that doesn't mean you should think you can run over and get one or something because then I'll have to kill you."
Pamela came down the steps into the living room. She covered the three men with her small pistol and Remo noticed that she held it low and close to her hip, the way people did who were expert in the law-enforcement use of firearms, not out in front of her where anyone could slap it away.
"Don't anybody move," she snarled.
"They weren't planning to move, Mrs. Peel," Remo said sarcastically. "Now aim that thing away from me." He turned back to the three men. "Okay, what're your names?"
"Who wants to know?" said the man who had been hiding behind the chair.
Remo upended the brass coffee table behind the couch and twisted one of its legs into a corkscrew shape.
"Next question?" he said.
"Bondini," the man said. "Bernie Bondini."
Remo glanced at the other two men, who were still on the floor, cringing in front of Pamela, whose gun pointed unwaveringly at them.
"Hubble."
"Franko."
"Any of those sound like the voice that's been calling?" Remo asked Pamela.
"I can't tell from just their names," Pamela said. "They've got to say more."
"Who are you?" Bondini asked.
"Will you stop saying that?" Remo said. "All right. Now I want you to take turns. One at a time, repeat this: Four score and something ago, our forefathers brought up--"
"You're getting it wrong," Bondini said.
"Just say it any way you want," Remo said. "I never told you I was any good at history."
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon--"
"That's good," Remo said. "You remember that from school?"
"Yes," said Bondini.
"I could never remember it," Remo said. "I kept mixing up fathers and forefathers. I was supposed to recite it on Memorial Day but I kept getting it wrong."
"That's a shame," Bondini said.
"Yeah. They got Romeo Rocco to do it instead. Boy, did he stink. He sounded like that guy who does the fast commercials. He wet his pants in the middle and he still finished the speech before any liquid reached the floor."
He turned back to Pamela.
"Him?" he asked. She shook her head no.
"Okay, you," Remo said, pointing to the bearded man on the floor. "What's your name?"
"Hubble."
"Okay. Recite the Gettysburg Address."
"I don't know the zip code for Gettysburg," Hubble said.
"Very funny," Remo said. "Now will you try for a broken neck?"
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers something something," Hubble said.
"Him?" Remo asked Pamela.
"No," she said.
"That leaves you," Remo said to Franko. "Recite."
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in--"
"That's enough," Remo said.
"--liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether--" Stash Franko rose to his feet. "-- this nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated--"
"I said enough," Remo said.
"--can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield--"
Remo clapped his hand over Franko's mouth. "If there's anything I hate, it's a show-off." He looked at Pamela and she again shook her head no.
"I'm letting you go," Remo told Franko. "If you promise to speak only when spoken to. You promise?"
Franko nodded and Remo released him.
"--of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion--"
Remo straightened out the brass table leg, snapped it from the table, then wrapped it around Franko's neck, tightly enough to frighten him, not so tight that it would hurt him.
"I'll be quiet," Franko said meekly.
"What do you want?" Bondini said.
"Who's Buell? The owner?" Remo asked.
"We just met him once," Bondini said. "Abner Buell. A twerpy-looking guy with plastic hair. I don't even really know him."
Remo looked at the other two men, who shook their heads.
"Why were you going to kill us then?" Remo asked.
"Because I didn't want to beat my mother with a stick," Bondini said.
"And I won't make it with no sheep," said Hubble.
"Or a corpse," said Franko.
It took Remo a while to sort it all out but with Pamela's help, he finally figured out that the three men were counting on getting some money from the owner of the place and they didn't even know who Remo was. He was glad about that because it meant that he would not have to kill them.
"How were you supposed to notify Buell that I was dead?" Remo asked.
"He didn't tell us."
Remo said to Pamela, "That means this place is wired or something. Probably sound and camera."
He turned back to the three men. "All right. You guys can go."
"That's it?" Bondini asked.
"You're not going to turn us in?" asked Hubble.
"Not me, pal. Go in peace."
Franko was silent, gazing out toward the ocean. Finally he said, "There was one thing."
"What was that?"
"The guy who owns this place. I heard him say he had a place just like it in Carmel and he was expecting company. Does that help?"
"Yes," Remo said. "Thanks."
"It's better than making it with a corpse," Franko said as he walked toward the door. He paused in the doorway.
"Another thing," he said.
"What?" said Remo.
"--of this battlefield as a final resting place for those who here gave--" he said, and then ran as Remo started toward him.
* * *
In Carmel, north along the Pacific shoreline, Buell turned off the television monitor and said to Mr. Hamuta, "Get yourself ready. He should be here soon."
"I am always ready," Hamuta said.
"You'd better be."
Hamuta left and Marcia came into the room. Buell graced her with one of his infrequent and emotionless smiles. She was wearing a train engineer's outfit, but the legs of the jeans were cut off almost to her crotch and she had on no shirt and her breasts bobbled back and forth under the overalls' bib front.
"He escaped, this Remo?" she said.
"Yes."
"Who can he be?" she asked.
"Some government spy. I don't know," said Buell.
"Too bad he escaped," she said.
"No, it isn't. He was supposed to, remember? I just wanted him to be on his guard when he gets here. Make it a tougher game for Hamuta."
"Suppose Hamuta fails?" the woman asked.
"He never fails."
"But if he does?" the redhead persisted.
Buell rubbed a hand over his patent-leathered hair. "It doesn't matter," he said. "The whole world still g
oes up. Boom."
"I can't wait," Marcia said. "I can't wait."
sChapter Ten
"He flew the coop, Smitty," Remo said. "But I know who he is."
"Who?" asked Smith, whose computers had discovered the Malibu house but had not been able to identify its owner.
"Abner Buell."
"The Abner Buell?" asked Smith.
"An," said Remo.
"An?"
"He's an Abner Buell. That's all I know. I don't know if he's the Abner Buell. I don't even know who the Abner Buell is. An. But I think I know where he went. We're going there now."
"We?"
"The girl I'm with."
"Does she know who you are?" Smith asked.
"No. She thinks I work for the post office. No. The phone company."
"Get rid of her then," Smith said.
"She knows Buell's voice."
"And you know his name. I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out when you meet him. Get rid of her."
"Okay," Remo said.
"Where is Buell now?" Smith asked.
"I think he's got a place in Carmel. That's in California."
"Let me see if I can find it," Smith said. He fiddled with his computer. "Do you know how I found out the address in Malibu?"
"No," Remo said.
"Do you care?" Smith asked.
"Not even one whit," Remo said.
Smith snorted. "I've got an address in Carmel. It's probably his."
"I'll try it," Remo said and Smith gave him the address.
"By the way, Remo. Buell's got a very interesting background. Are you interested?"
"No."
"I beg your pardon," Smith said.
"That's okay," Remo said.
"What is okay?"
"Look. You asked me if I was interested in Buell's background. I said no. Does it have to get more complicated than that?"
"I guess not," Smith said slowly.
"Then we're done," Remo said.
"Remember. The man is capable of causing World War III. He's come very close in the last few days. Extreme measures are called for," Smith said.
"You mean, make pate out of him."
"I mean make sure he can never do this again."
"Same thing," Remo said. "Good-bye."
* * *
Pamela Thrushwell was not pleased.
"I'm sorry," she said curtly, in her crispest British accent, "but I'm going."
"No, you're not. I'll handle this myself."
"No, thank you very much. I'm going, I said."
The End of the Game td-60 Page 11