"I'm being stonewalled," his aide called back. "I don't like this."
"Maybe you ain't dialed the right number yet."
Then a quartet of soldiers came up the stairs, trailed by the mustached man in the blue business suit.
They took Reverend Jackman by the hands. Smiling, he attempted to shake hands with every one of them.
But shaking hands was not what the Iraiti soldiers had in mind. They took Reverend Jackman by the upper arms and forcibly marched him down the steps.
Trying to put the best face on it because of all the cameras, the Reverend Jackman lifted his arms to wave. His arms were held down.
"What the F is goin' on?" Reverend Jackman undertoned in panic.
The Iraiti in the blue business suit spoke up.
"Reverend Jackman, so happy to see you. I am Mustafa Shagdoof, deputy information minister. On behalf of our benevolent leader, President Maddas Hinsein, I welcome you as a guest to our peace-loving country."
"Thanks, but I . . ." Reverend Jackman's eyes started suddenly. "Wait a minute! What do you mean by guest?"
"What we say," the deputy information minister said, displaying an officious smile. "You are entitled to our hospitality."
"You ain't by any chance plannin' on duressing me?"
"Do you feel duressed?"
"As a matter of fact . . ." Reverend Jackman nearly stumbled. He looked up.
They reached the bottom of the stairs.
The deputy information minister addressed the gathering TV cameramen. "On behalf of the Republic of Irait, I formally welcome Reverend Jackman as a guest of the state. He will remain our guest until our own ambassador is accounted for."
If anything, Reverend Jackman's staring eyes protruded further. They resembled hard-boiled eggs with sick black spots at one end.
Thinking "Might as well go for broke," Reverend Jackman sucked in a deep breath.
"I came to trade myself for Don Cooder," he shouted. "You hear me? I'm not afraid to take his place." The sweat crawled down the reverend's face like transparent worms.
From the back of the TV crew a familiar Texas drawl was raised in excitement.
"That's me! That's me! Let me on that damned plane!"
And hearing that familiar voice, Reverend Juniper Jackman turned to the Iraiti deputy information minister.
"Just between you and me, I don't suppose you'd take my assistant instead of me? I'll throw in the plane. You can keep Cooder too."
"You should be very happy here in Abominadad," the deputy information minister said.
"What makes you say that?"
"You already wear the politically correct mustache."
Word of the detention of the Reverend Juniper Jackman was satellited from Abominadad to Washington through the Cable News Network.
The President received the report in writing during a cabinet meeting. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. No love was lost between him and the reverend, but the man was a political figure of some standing. When word of this hit the streets, there would be enormous pressure that he take action. Especially from the black community.
"Excuse me," the President told his cabinet. "Gotta make a call."
The President walked the lonely halls of power to the Lincoln Bedroom. Perching on the side of the antique bed, he opened the nightstand drawer, revealing a dialless red telephone.
He picked it up, triggering an automatic connection.
Hundreds of miles north, at the other end of the dedicated line, an identical telephone rang on the desk of Harold W. Smith.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"The Iraitis have taken Reverend Jackman hostage."
There was silence on the line as both men considered whether that was truly as bad as it sounded.
"They're threatening to give up Dan Cooder," the President added.
"Unfortunate," Smith said at last.
"They want their ambassador back. What do I do? If I ship them a corpse, they'll do the same. I don't want to go to war to avenge that glory-hound minister."
"I believe I can help you on this one," Smith said at last. "Leave the rest to me."
Harold Smith hung up the phone. An hour ago, he would have had to inform the chief executive of the United States that he couldn't send his special person to the Middle East. His special person refused to go anywhere unless it was into the arms-the four arms, according to his delusion--of a woman he believed was the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali.
But in the last hour, Harold Smith had made a breakthrough. Unable to trace Kimberly Baynes-or the woman who used that name-through the usual computer taps, he had reprogrammed the search to trap any Baynes with a feminine first name.
An airline reservation in the name of Calley Baynes had bubbled to the surface of the vast active memory. He might not have paid it much attention, but the flight's destination was Tripoli, Libya.
And as he wondered what this Calley Baynes would be doing in Tripoli, it sank in that his computers had provided a way to convince Remo to accept this assignment.
Provided Harold Smith was prepared to lie now and blame his computers later.
He shut down his terminal and sent it retreating into its hidden desk recess.
Remo, he felt confident, would be more than happy to go to the Middle East. But Smith would not send him to Libya. He would send him to Irait.
He just hoped that in his present state Remo Williams was up to the task.
Chapter 24
"I have found . . . ah, your Miss Baynes," Harold Smith told Remo.
"Where?" Remo's voice was calm--calmer than Smith had expected.
It was dark in the room. Only the bluish TV etched Remo's head and shoulders in the blackness. The sound was off. Remo had not turned his head once in the darkness.
"Hamidi Arabia."
"I've been there. It's all sand. She'll be hard to track down."
"I am working on that," Smith said. "In the meantime, the President has asked that we intervene in the Juniper Jackman situation. He has been designated a guest under duress."
Remo grunted. "Another breakthrough for jive diplomacy. Maybe Maddas will draft him as his vice-president."
"That is not funny."
"So how do we fix the problem?" Remo wondered.
"By liberating the reverend from Abominadad."
Remo perked up. "Do I get to nail Maddas?"
"No. That is not on the menu. Get Jackman to Hamidi Arabia. By the time you conclude this matter, I should have Miss Baynes's exact whereabouts and you can deal with that loose end."
"Then I was right," Remo said slowly. "The Middle East is where the Caldron of Blood will start to boil."
"Are you all right?" Smith asked.
Remo paused. "I went to the house. He was there, Smitty."
"Chiun's ghost?" Smith said dryly.
"I don't know what you'd call it. But I saw him. And I made him a promise."
"Yes?"
"I promised I would return to Sinanju."
"And what did Chiun . . . er . . . say?"
"Nothing. He looked at me like a drowning man. I don't understand, but I made the promise. I'm going to Sinanju. I'm going to do my duty."
"What about the assignment? And Kimberly Baynes-or whoever she really is?"
"I'll handle both of them. I'll have to. Then my responsibility will be to fulfill my duty to the House."
"As you wish. I will make the arrangements to get you to Hamidi Arabia. The entire country is in a high state of nervousness. I thought I'd send you on a military flight. It would be better in your . . . um . . . condition as well. I'll arrange for someone to liase with you."
"No need," Remo said.
"Oh?"
"Just get word to Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem."
Smith started. "The ruler of Hamidi Arabia? And what shall I say?"
Remo stood up in the darkness and Smith saw the play of bluish TV light on the folds of his black silk garment.
Remo turned, shadows crawlin
g across his face. They settled into the hollows of his eyes so they became like the empty orbits of a skull in which diamond-hard lights gleamed faintly. He tucked his hands into the wide sleeves of his long ebony kimono, on which facing tigers reared in frozen anger.
"Tell him the Master of Sinanju is coming to Hamidi Arabia," Remo Williams said quietly.
Chapter 25
Everything Maddas Hinsein knew about global politics, he had learned in the coffee shops of Cairo.
Young Maddas had spent several years in Egypt in the aftermath of a failed attempt to assassinate the Iraiti leader of that time. There he had argued about Arab unity with students from the nearby Cairo University.
They were smooth-faced man-boys, their heads filled with citified dreams. He could never understand their appetite for loud talk. They argued forever-never learning the great truth of Maddas Hinsein's life.
It was far, far quicker to shoot those whose views were unacceptable than to argue back.
Although no older than the university students, Maddas was already a hardened veteran of internecine political warfare. After the failed assassination attempt, although wounded in the leg, he had narrowly escaped capture by the Iraiti secret police. Limping through the flat opulence of Abominadad, he had ducked into an alley as the ululations of their sirens drew nearer, ever nearer.
He happened to encounter an old woman in the alley. She wore the traditional black abayuh, which covered her like a shroud, black eyes peeping through her veil.
Maddas had approached her in the same direct way he had pursued his career as an Arab revolutionary.
"Sabah al-Heir," he had said. "May your morning be bright."
"Abah al-Nour," she murmured in reply. "May your morning be bright also."
As he knew she would, the woman modestly averted her eyes. And Maddas Hinsein reached down with one hand for the hem of her costume and lifted it straight up.
With the other, he yanked out his pistol and shot her once in the chest.
Stripping the body of the undamaged garment, Maddas Hinsein had pulled it over his head, hating himself for having to stoop so low. Wearing female garb was repugnant to him. Killing the woman was one thing-in revolution one recognized certain necessities-but being forced to wear soft garments was entirely different.
Besides, the woman was old, he saw as he pulled the veil from her face. She had had her life. And Maddas Hinsein was a man of destiny.
In the flowing black abayuh, Maddas Hinsein had traveled across the punishing desert, the traditional Arab respect for women saving him from search and inevitable capture. The longer he traveled, the safer he felt. He began to feel almost invincible when wrapped in this ebony shroud, his face masked, his life secure from harm. And as the miles melted behind him, Maddas Hinsein discovered a wondrous truth. He grew to enjoy the feel of the abayuh swathing his bulky, muscular body.
Upon reaching the Egyptian frontier, Maddas Hinsein had reluctantly folded the precious garment and carried it under his arm, telling the authorities it had belonged to his poor deceased mother.
"It is all I have to remember her by," he had told the curious border guards. He brushed a soulful eye with a spit-moistened finger, producing a convincing tear.
The sight of such a bear of an Arab moved to tears convinced the Egyptian border guard. They let him pass.
During the years in the Cairo coffee shops, Arab unity was on every lip. It was the Grand Dream, the Great Hope, and Paradise on Earth all in one. The reason was profoundly simple. No one could remember a time when there had been such a thing as Arab unity. So everyone was secure in the belief it would be wondrous. And in that atmosphere, Maddas had learned the lessons he had carried with him into his leadership days.
Truth one: the Arabs were disunited because imperialists kept them this way.
Truth two: the Arabs were meant to be united and only awaited a strongman like a modern Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who had captured Jerusalem in 597 B.C.
Truth three: for as long as the United States vied with Russia for world domination, Irait would be protected by the USSR from U.S. adventurism.
Truth four: Maddas Hinsein was destined to be the man who would unite the Arab nation under the Iraiti banner. This was Maddas' sole contribution to the discussions. Doubters were shot in the back at his earliest opportunity. Soon the Four Great Truths were discussed without dissent.
Had Maddas Hinsein learned his history from books and not idle conversation, he would have learned that the Arabs had enjoyed unity but once in their long history. And that had been under the prophet Mohammed, over a thousand years ago. Then Mohammed had died. United Araby was quickly dismembered under the ravenous talons of Mohammed's heirs.
Had he read newspapers, Maddas would have learned that the cold war had become a thing of the past and that Irait lay naked and exposed, no longer important in the global new world order that had shifted from ideology to the ultimate reality of international politics-economics.
So when after nearly a decade of unending war with his neighbor, Irug, Maddas Hinsein found his treasury bankrupt, he turned on his nearest oil-rich neighbor and swallowed tiny defenseless Kuran-hide, hoof, warp, and woof.
The unexpected appearance of a multinational force on his new southern border, when reported to him in the middle of the night by his defense minister, prompted him to conclude one thing: his adviser was drunk. And since alcohol was forbidden to Moslems, he had had the man shot before a firing squad. Then he had downed a stiff belt of cognac.
When the reports from the field told him that such a force not only existed but also was growing daily, President Hinsein had had the adviser exhumed and returned to his place of honor at the Revolting Command Council as a gesture of contrition.
"Let no man say again that Maddas Hinsein is not a man who readily admits his mistakes," he pronounced, as his advisers sat around the big table holding their noses against the stench of corruption.
Only when the corpse had begun to fall apart was he returned to his shallow grave. With full military honors.
It was in those early days of the U.S. buildup that Maddas, who had kept the nameless old woman's abayuh in a sealed trunk, exhumed it for the first time since his Cairo days.
The fine fabric reassured him as it had in the days he crouched under donkey carts as the secret police-his secret police now-blew past.
He knew it would protect him until the Soviets came to succor him.
When word came that the Soviets had joined the global embargo, Maddas Hinsein had taken to carrying the abayuh in a briefcase, and toting the briefcase wherever he went.
And at night, when he slept, he slept swathed in its protective folds. He told himself that this was to facilitate his escape in case of a coup, or worse. But the truth was far different.
The truth was that Maddas Hinsein loved to wear the abayuh.
He had first begun to suspect these tendencies in Egypt. Once he had assumed the presidential office-by doing away with the previous President, his mentor-President Hinsein had buried the abayuh in a trunk, where it would not tempt him. And most of all, where his wife, Numibasra, would never find it. The woman was a witch. And her brothers, Maddas knew, secretly plotted against him. Only because he would never have heard the end of it from his wife did Maddas refrain from having them beheaded.
One day, he told himself. One day.
But today Maddas Hinsein's thoughts were not of his wife and her cutthroat brothers, but of the reports he was receiving from his general staff.
Maddas paced his office. The aides would come to the door, knocking their timid, sycophantic knocks.
"I am receiving no one," Maddas barked. "Give me your report and go."
"They have found more dead soldiers," the aides called. "The yellow cords around their throats."
"Soldiers exist to die," Maddas spat back. "They are martyrs now and better off."
"The defense minister wants to know if you plan a military response to these outrag
es?"
Maddas Hinsein stopped pacing. The black abayuh skirt rustled against his shiny black paratroop boots.
This was the question he feared. He had brought the wrath of the world down on his head through his own ignorance, but he dared not admit it. So he had hunkered down, giving pronouncements, calling on rival Arab nations to join him in a jihad. And he had been ignored. Nothing that he had done worked. No threat. No bluster.
And now his own high command, the cowardly toadies, were demanding to know what response he would make to this CIA assassin who was terrorizing Abominadad.
"Tell him," Maddas said at last, "I will make a response to the world once this infidel strangler is brought to my door. And if he is not, then I will demand the defense minister's head instead."
The aide rushed away. Beneath the black cloth covering his face, Maddas Hinsein smiled suavely.
That would keep them occupied. Maddas Hinsein would not be stampeded into war by one mere CIA assassin-spy.
Lifting his hands over his head, he snapped his fingers in an ancient syncopation and performed the dance of the seven veils in the privacy of his office, throwing his hips out with each snap and humming under his breath.
"Mad Ass Mad Ass Mad Ass," he crooned. "I am one crazy-assed Arab, and the whole world knows it."
But as the hours passed, the aides kept coming.
"More dead, Precious Leader. Strangled."
"We have searched everywhere, Precious Leader. The she-wolf is not to be found."
"The minister of the interior, Precious Leader, has been found in his quarters. Assassinated with a yellow cord."
"Do you not see what the Americans are trying to do?" Maddas thundered back. "They are trying to trick us into war. I will not have war on their terms, but on mine."
That had held them another hour while Maddas luxuriated in the feel of the fine abayuh, bumping and grinding merrily.
Then came a knock unlike any other. More tentative, more faint of heart. The knock of a fear-struck coward.
"Precious Leader," the quavering voice began. "What is it?" Maddas barked.
"I am very sorry to report this to you, but the Renaissance Guard surrounding your home has been decimated."
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