Fool's Gold

by Warren Murphy

  "Pray it off," Remo said. "Flash a buck and you'll have a thousand gurus over here to help you."

  "You're back to being nasty," Terri said.

  "Something about this country brings out the beast in me," Remo said.

  He strolled off, picking his way through the cowchips, toward a bank of telephone booths on the far side of the terminal.

  The first seven phones had dial tones but no sign of sentient life on the other end of the line. When Remo picked up the receiver on the eighth phone, an operator answered him instantly.

  He gave her the 800-area-code number in the United States.

  "That is wonderful," the operator said.

  "What is?"

  "That you're calling America. I've never placed a call to America. Are you American?"

  "Will it help me get my call through if I tell you yes?" Remo asked.

  "You don't have to be sarcastic. No wonder you Americans are hated around the world."

  Remo began to sing:

  "In the good old colony days,

  when we lived under the king,

  lived a butcher and a baker

  and a little tailor... bring back

  the British."

  "Vietnam," the operator yelled. "El Salvador."

  "Cowshit. Dirt," Remo yelled back.

  "Racism. Colonialism," the operator yelled.

  "Please," Remo said, surrendering. "Just get my number."

  He leaned against the wall and waited. He noticed a slight dark man, wearing a diaper around his midsection and a terrycloth turban, standing against the wall near the telephones, trying very hard not to be involved with Remo, trying very hard not to look in Remo's direction, trying very hard not to be noticed. He had a small bale of cotton alongside him. He picked it up and placed it on his head, moved a few steps along the wall, closer to Remo, then put the bale down on the floor again.

  After a lot of clicking, Smith's voice came on the phone. The operator said, "Imperialist pig calling you."

  She clicked the phone loudly in Remo's ear as she got off the line.

  "It's Remo. We're going to Spain. Right, Smitty, Spain. Don't ask me. She says Spain, we go to Spain. You're the one who told me to do this. I know. The world depends on it. Right, right, right, right, right."

  After Remo hung up, he walked over to the man in the turban and diaper who had just replaced the cotton bale on his head. Remo rearranged it even more with a quick stroke of his hand, slamming the bale down around the man's ears so he looked like a walking sofa cushion.

  "We're going to Spain," Remo said. "Just ask. It's not polite to eavesdrop."

  They were the only people in the plane's first-class section and Chiun took his usual seat by the window so that he could concentrate on the wing and make sure it wasn't falling off.

  While the plane was taxiing, he said, "You did well, Remo."

  Remo and Terri were sitting across the aisle.

  "Oh, how's that?" asked Remo.

  "By not getting us on an Air India plane. I would not fly anything manipulated by these savages," Chiun said.

  "My honor," Remo said.

  Chiun nodded and turned back to the wing.

  "How can he be so nice sometimes and so mean other times?" Terri asked Remo.

  "You think he's bad now?" said Remo. "Wait until you learn street Korean and find out what he's been saying behind your back."

  When the plane was airborne, a stewardess came from behind the galley wall and looked over the first-class section.

  When she saw Remo, she reached a hand up and opened two more buttons on her blouse. She was a tall brunette, long-legged and slim, and her candy-striped blouse was pulled tight over a full bosom.

  "That stewardess is looking at you." Terri sniffed at Remo.

  "Probably she's just trying to see to the end of her chest. Quite a set of chest, actually," Remo said.

  "If you like cows," Terri said.

  "For two days, you've been telling me to love cows. Now, all of a sudden, something's wrong with cows?"

  "You're disgusting," Terri said.

  The stewardess came to their seat and leaned forward over Remo's aisle seat so he could see into the dark valley of her cleavage.

  "Can I get you anything, sir? Anything at all?"

  "I'll have tea," Terri said.

  The stewardess ignored her. "Sir? Anything?" she asked Remo again.

  "No thank you," Remo said.

  "Tea," said Terri.

  "Oh, come on," the stewardess told Remo. "There must be something you want. Maybe you'd like to see the galley where we fix meals. It's just up there. Come on. I'll show it to you." She took Remo's hand but he extricated himself from her grip.

  "No, that's all right," he said, smiling at her.

  "The washroom," she said. "You'd like to inspect the washroom. Come on." She took his hand again. "I'll show the washroom to you. Show you how the door locks."

  "No, thank you," said Remo.

  "Tea," said Terri.

  "Come on," the stewardess said. "There's got to be something you want." She leaned over farther, exposing more of her bosom. Terri turned away and looked out the window in disgust.

  "Something. Anything. I'll get you a pillow."

  The stewardess reached into the overhead compartment, standing on tiptoe and pressing her belly against the side of Remo's face as she rooted around in the overhead luggage section. Remo turned to Terri and shrugged helplessly. Terri stuck out her tongue.

  The stewardess slipped the pillow behind Remo's head.

  "It's a nice pillow. Not as nice as the ones I have in my apartment, but all right. You should try the ones in my apartment. It's all right. My roommate's out of town."

  Remo said, "Thank you. Maybe some other time."

  Terri said, "Tea."

  The stewardess said, "Here, let me brush those crumbs off your lap."

  "I don't have any crumbs on my lap."

  "I'm sure I saw some. Right there."

  The stewardess brushed Remo's lap.

  Remo sighed and reached behind the young brunette, placing his hand on her back, feeling the vertebrae of her spine.

  "It think it's the fifth," he mumbled to himself. "Fifth or sixth. Chiun. Is it fifth or sixth?" he called out, as the stewardess continued brushing his lap.

  "On a cow, it doesn't matter," Chiun snapped back, not turning away from the window.

  "Hooray for common sense," Terri said.

  "Fifth," Remo mumbled. "I'm sure it's fifth." He pressed his left index finger into the flight attendant's back. Her hands froze in position on his lap and a look of tranquillity came over her face.

  Remo touched her cheek with his hand.

  "Later," he said gently. Carefully, he turned her around and gave her a tiny push down the aisle toward the front of the plane.

  As if she had no will of her own, she walked away, pausing to rest, leaning against a seat, then unsteadily lurching down the aisle.

  "That was awful," Terri told Remo. She looked at the stewardess who was leaning against the bulkhead wall, her face wreathed in a smile. She seemed unable to move.

  "What'd you do to her?" Terri asked.

  "I just gave her something to remember me by. It was the only way to get her off me. You saw."

  "How did you do it?"

  "I don't know. I touched a nerve. You want one?" Remo asked.

  "Keep your hands to yourself, you lecher."

  "Just asking was all," Remo said.

  Terri watched the stewardess. She had been leaning with her back against the wall, and slowly her feet slid out from under her. In a moment, she was sitting on the plane's floor.

  "That's incredible," Terri said.

  "It's a pain in the ass is what it is," Remo said. "Women sense it and they just won't leave me alone."

  "I'll leave you alone. You know, you don't affect me at all. I don't even really like you."

  "Oh?"

  "That's right. Nothing. You do less than nothing fo
r me. Zip code. My ideal man is cultured, noble, regal."

  "And my ideal woman doesn't have a loose upper plate," Remo said.

  Terri harrumphed, got up and stepped across Remo. She moved to the other side of the aisle and sat next to Chiun.

  Chiun said, "I prefer to sit alone. Be gone, woman." He spun around and clamped his gaze on the wing again.

  Terri rose and moved to a seat behind Remo.

  He turned and smiled. "Welcome to the club. When he abuses you, he likes you."

  "You must both love me then," she said.

  "Only him," Remo said.

  Smith regularly awoke at 5:29 A.M., one minute before his alarm was set to go off. Then he turned the clock off so that the ring would not disturb his wife.

  By this day, he awoke at 5:24 A.M., a full five minutes early, and knew something was wrong. He must have been dreaming. But what was it about?

  Then he remembered. It wasn't a dream. It had been a thought. The lunatic he had been talking to in the West somewhere had been talking about motion pictures.

  Suddenly, it all made sense— his talking about gross points, his maundering about how everybody was stealing from him.

  Somehow CURE's records had gotten into the information system of a moviemaker. No... a writer, as Smith recalled the conversation. Out there somewhere was a writer with CURE's records and now he was writing a screenplay based on the exploits of Remo and Chiun.

  A small chill shuddered through Smith's body.

  "Are you all right, dear?" his wife asked in the darkness of their bedroom in a little ranch house in Rye, New York.

  "Yes. Why?"

  "You're awake early," she said.

  "Yes. I had an idea."

  "How unusual," she said.

  "Sorry to disturb you, dear," Smith said.

  "Oh, you didn't disturb me."

  "Go back to sleep, dear," Smith said.

  "If you're sure everything's all right," she said.

  "Everything's all right." Smith leaned over and pecked a kiss on his wife's cheek, then quickly left the bedroom to dress.

  But Mrs. Smith knew something was wrong, two minutes later, when the alarm sounded. Smith had forgotten to turn it off, and that was something he hadn't done in twenty years.

  Chapter Thirteen

  His bags were flawless. The ammunition and auxiliary weapons were stashed neatly in lead-lined cavities on the inside of mock typewriters and dictating machines, so the airport's randomly used x-ray equipment would show only the familiar shape of those ordinary objects.

  But most of Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer's arsenal was on his body, built into his suit, his shoes, his sleeves, his belts.

  "How will you get past airport security?" Wissex had asked him.

  "The same way I escaped from Moscow in 1964," Spencer had said. "Did I ever tell you? I was— —"

  "Well, I really have to go now," Wissex said. "Good luck on your mission."

  "Luck has nothing to do with it, old top," Spencer said.

  At London's Heathrow Airport, there was a long corridor leading to the waiting and boarding area for Air España planes. Only passengers were permitted past the human x-ray security machines that controlled the corridor.

  Forty minutes before he was due to board, Spencer was at a cocktail lounge in the airport, waiting for someone to arrive.

  "Stolichnaya, double," he ordered from the bartender.

  "How do you like it, sir?" the bartender asked.

  "Neat, of course," Spencer said. "And bring the pepper."

  When the bartender came, he set the large shot glass in front of Spencer, along with the pepper shaker. Spencer sprinkled some of the spice on top of the liquor. The pepper grains floated there for a few moments, then slowly settled to the bottom of the glass.

  Spencer looked up at the bartender and smiled. "The only way to drink vodka, don't you know," he said. "The pepper takes out the impurities and carries them to the bottom of the drink. What's left is pure vodka. I've always drunk it that way."

  "I see it all the time," the bartender said in a bored voice. "I read about it once in a James Bond book. Even Yanks do it now."

  "Until I told him about it," Spencer said frostily, "that man who wrote about James Bond used to drink his vodka with Coca Cola." His eyes defied the bartender to argue with him, but the man just drifted off toward another customer.

  Spencer nursed his drink for about ten minutes until the man he had been waiting for showed up. The man was Spencer's size and wore an identical blue pinstripe suit with a red handkerchief in the lapel. Like Spencer, he had a rust-colored mustache and he wore an ecru-colored Panama straw hat. Standing alongside Spencer in the darkened bar, they looked like twins or an actor and his stunt double.

  "Are you ready?" Spencer asked.

  "As I'll ever be, Commander," the other man said.

  "Synchronize watches," Spencer said. "Two forty-three and forty seconds. Forty-two. Forty-four."

  "Got it," the other man said.

  "All right," Spencer said. "At exactly 2:47, we move."

  "Righto."

  "Here's the ticket," Spencer said. He handed the other man his airline ticket and the man strolled off down the corridor toward the Air España loading gates.

  Spencer drained the last of his vodka, careful not to disturb the pepper at the glass's bottom, which he knew was now contaminated with fuel oil. He thought about leaving the bartender a tip, but decided not to. Let his Yank friends who drank vodka and pepper leave him a tip. Spencer picked up his thin nylon gymnasium-style bag and stepped into the men's room next to the bar. Inside one of the toilet stalls, he took from the nylon bag a long doctor's robe, which he put on over his suit. A pair of dark wrap-around sunglasses covered his eyes. From the bottom of the nylon bag came a worn brown leather doctor's satchel.

  Spencer rolled up the nylon gym bag and stuck it inside the waistband of his trousers. He checked his watch. Two forty-six and thirty-five seconds.

  Almost time.

  He stepped out of the men's room, just as the digital clicker of his watch registered the full minute.

  Two forty-seven.

  He heard a scream from down the Air España corridor. He ran toward the sound. Ahead of him, a group of people were clustered together.

  "Let me through," Spencer called out in a heavy German accent. "I am a doctor. Let me through."

  He ran past the x-ray detector machines and pushed his way through the crowd until he was next to the man with the red mustache. The man was lying on the floor, gasping for breath, his hands clutching his chest.

  Professionally, Spencer knelt alongside the man and felt his pulse.

  "Very serious," he said. "I vill need room to work. Stand back. All of you. Schnell."

  He hoisted the man into his arms and walked along the corridor toward the planes, then pushed his way through the door of the first men's room he reached.

  It was vacant and the other mustached man quickly got to his feet. Spencer leaned against the door, keeping it closed, as he stripped off his doctor's robe. The other man put it on, along with Spencer's wrap-around sunglasses. He tucked Spencer's nylon gym bag into his waistband, turned, and glanced at himself in the mirror.

  "Pretty neat if I do say so myself," he said. Spencer checked himself in the mirror on the back of the door. He heard people thumping outside.

  "All right," he said. "Let's go. Ooops, the ticket." The man now wearing the doctor's costume handed Spencer the Air España ticket and then led the way through the door.

  With the same thick German accent Spencer had used, he said, "Everything isss all right. Lucky I vas here. Just a piece of candy stuck in ze throat. Lucky I vas here. I fixed him up all right."

  Quickly, the man in the doctor's smock walked away. The eyes of the crowd followed him as Spencer stepped from the men's room and walked over to the Air España counter, where he got a boarding pass, then took a seat and buried his face in a magazine.

  Three minutes later
, the passengers were boarding, and five minutes later, his arms and legs wrapped with guns and rockets and knives and bombs, Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer was sprawled comfortably in a window seat in the plane's first-class cabin.

  It had been a while, he thought, since he had an interesting assignment from Wissex. And these two, the Yank and the old Oriental, might be interesting. Eighteen men had already died trying to remove them. It might be fun.

  Eighteen dead. It did not bother him. None of those eighteen had been Brits. Wait until the Yank and the Chink ran up against British steel.

  He smiled, and the faint pounding began again inside his temples.

  The union of motion pictures authors had been no help to Smith.

  "I'm looking for a screenwriter," he had said, and the woman who had answered the phone had said, "Pick one. We've got seven thousand members."

  "This one would probably have a word processor or computer," Smith said.

  "That narrows it down to six thousand nine hundred," the woman said. "It's a great excuse not to work. They can't write movies but they sure as hell can play Pac-man. Got any more clues?"

  "Maybe he's doing a script on Oriental assassins," Smith said hopefully.

  "Not a chance," the woman said.

  "Why not?"

  "Nobody's doing assassins. Chopsaki. The movies never gross anything. Bruce Lee is dead but he was dead at the box office long before he died. Afraid I can't help you." And she hung up.

  And that was it. Smith realized that he had no choice except to wait for the lunatic to call him again. The telephone rang.

  "Smith here."

  "You know who this is," the voice said.

  "Yes," said Smith. "Except I don't have a name to put with the voice."

  "That's all right. No matter what you call it, a rose is a rose."

  "Obviously, you're the product of a classical education," Smith said.

  "You know," said Barry Schweid, "I don't really trust you."

  "I thought we were getting along fine," Smith said.

  "We'll see when our negotiations go on," Schweid said.

  "What negotiations? I gave you everything you asked for."

  "That's why I don't trust you. What kind of producer are you anyway? I ask for 250 and you give me 250. What kind of crap is that? I ask for ten points and I get ten points. Gross points. Marlon Brando don't get points that easy and he wanted to play Superman's father in a suitcase."