No one had ever done it before. He would head the entire car industry in the United States. It had been his dream since he was a little boy playing with matchstick cars and trucks. And it was coming true.
"Miss Blaze, things are looking up," he said as his secretary entered the office.
"I don't know, Mr. Lavallette. What about that awful man who tried to kill you? I won't rest easy until that man is in jail."
"I'm not afraid of him," Lavallette said, tapping his bulletproof Kevlar suit. Even his tie was bulletproof. It was not technically necessary but he had had a set made, for a thousand dollars, because he liked his ties to match his suits. At any rate, his public relations firm told him they could probably get him a page in People magazine with that tie: "LYLE LAVALLETTE, THE MAVERICK AUTO GENIUS WHO WEARS METAL TIES."
Lavallette like the idea. He liked it all a lot and after this was all over, he might just keep wearing bulletproof ties. He checked his tie knot in one of the three full-length mirrors in his office. They were strategically placed so that, no matter how Lavallette faced visitors from behind his desk, he had at least one unobstructed view of himself. That way he knew whenever his tie was crooked or his hair not precisely combed, or if any similar near-catastrophe threatened.
Lavallette smiled at his own image now in the mirror facing his desk, and thought he was showing a little too much gum. He tightened his face. Yes, that was it. Too much gum was bad. It took away from the brilliance of his shiny ceramic teeth and he wondered if there was such a thing as gum-reduction surgery. It might be easier to submit to surgery than to have to keep adjusting one's smile. He made a mental note to look into it.
"I think you're very brave," Miss Blaze said. Lavallette popped out of his self-absorbed mood.
"What's that you say?"
"I said I think you're very brave. I know if I were in your shoes, I'd be petrified." Miss Blaze's body shook at the thought. Her breasts shook especially, and Lavallette decided that she was at her most appealing when she shuddered in fear. Maybe he would arrange for the experience to happen often.
"I survived one attempt. I'm not afraid of another," he said.
"But when I think of poor Mr. Millis, lying in a coma-"
"That moron," Lavallette snapped. "Do you know he fired me in 1975?"
"Yes. You've told me twenty times. I think it still bothers you."
"They all did. They all fired me. But I swore I'd be back on top again. And now I am. And look where they are. Mangan's dead; Millis is going to be a vegetable . . ."
"You shouldn't speak that way about him." Miss Blaze pouted. "The past is the past. You should let bygones be bygones."
"Miss Blaze, do you know what a bygone is?"
Her pouty face opened involuntarily and her brow furrowed.
"Sure. It's a . . . a . . ."
"Never mind," Lavallette said dismissively. The recollections of the black periods in his career still rattled him whenever they came to mind. "You came in here for a reason. What is it?"
"Oh, I did, didn't I? Let me think."
Lavallette rapped his fingers on the desktop impatiently. He stopped suddenly, his face freezing in horror. "Arggggh," he groaned.
"What is it? Oh, God, have you been shot? Tell me you haven't been shot. Should I get a doctor?"
Lavallette bolted from his chair, holding his right hand at arm's length, as if the pain were beyond bearing. Miss Blaze stared and stared, looking for telltale bloodstains but she saw none.
"What is it?" she wailed, biting her knuckles to keep herself under control.
"In that cabinet, quick. The first-aid box. Hurry."
She threw open a liquor cabinet, rummaged around, and found a teak box that said FIRST AID in gold letters. "Here it is. What should I do?"
"Just open it," Lavallette said in a tight voice.
She undid the latch of the box. Inside, instead of the usual first-aid equipment, she saw tweezers, combs, and two long plastic boxes, one marked "right" and the other "left. "
Lavallette took out the small box marked "right," still holding out his right hand.
Miss Blaze saw inside five oval-shaped objects, like wood shavings, except clear. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn they were fingernails. Not the long tapered kind that women wore, but blunt mannish versions.
She saw Lavallette go frantically to work on the tip of his right index finger with a gold tool of some kind. It almost looked like a pair of fingernail clippers.
When the tool stopped clicking, a sliver of fingernail fell onto the desk.
Lavellette lifted one of the oval shapes from the box and carefully, with tweezers and adhesive, laid it over his right index fingernail.
The anguished expression slowly left his face as he examined the nail with a magnifying glass.
"A hundred-dollar manicure ruined because of you," he said at last.
"Me? How me?" she said.
"You made me wait and I was drumming my fingers and my nail chipped. Forget it. What was it you wanted, and it better be good."
"Oh," Miss Blaze said. "The FBI is on line one. They want to know if you'll reconsider their offer to put you under round-the-clock protection."
"Tell them no. I can handle this myself. Tell them I have it covered."
"And the Army is out in the lobby. They say they have an appointment."
"The Army? I didn't ask to meet with the Army."
"Colonel Savage said you did."
"Oh. Savage. You ninny, he's not the Army. He's part of my new bodyguard team."
"I thought you weren't afraid of anyone," Miss Blaze said.
"I'm not. But if that killer comes around again, I want to be ready for him this time."
"Should I send them all in? There's at least thirty of them, all dressed up in those jungly clothes with rifles and ropes and boots and all that Rambo stuff."
"No. Just send in Savage."
"Gotcha."
"And don't say 'Gotcha,' Miss Blaze. Say, 'Yes, sir.' You're not waiting on tables in a diner anymore. You're the personal secretary to one of the most powerful executives in America. And one of the most handsome," he added as an afterthought, checking his cresting wavy white hair in a mirror.
"Don't forget brave. You're also brave."
"Right. Brave. Send in Savage."
Colonel Brock Savage had prowled through the swamps of Vietnam in pursuit of Vietcong guerrillas. He had hacked his way through two hundred miles of the jungles of Angola. In the deserts of Kuwait, he had lived for eight weeks as a bedouin in order to infiltrate a sheik's inner circle. He was a specialist in underwater demolition, night fighting, and survival tactics. His idea of a vacation was to parachute into Death Valley with only a knife and a bar of chocolate and see how long it took him to get out.
All these qualifications were described in the "Positions Wanted" advertisement Lavallette had answered in Soldier of Fortune magazine. Lavallette could have had the FBI at his disposal for free but he didn't want only protection. He wanted men who would accept his orders without qualm or questions, regardless of what those orders might be. Colonel Brock Savage and his handpicked mercenary team fit Lavallette's needs perfectly. Savage was perfect-except he was not used to the boardrooms of executive America.
That fact became apparent when Savage, resplendent in jungle fatigues and battle gear, tried to enter Lavallette's office. He got through the doorway all right, but his Armalite rifle, slung low across his back, caught its muzzle and camouflaged stock against the doorjamb.
"Ooof," grunted Savage before he fell.
He landed on his rump. The cartridge-jammed bandoliers crisscrossing his chest ripped. Cartridges broke loose, scattering across the floor like marbles. A folding knife fell out of his boot. A packet of K-rations popped loose.
Under his breath, Lavallette groaned. Maybe he should have gone with the FBI after all.
Brock Savage struggled to his feet, weighed down by almost one hundred pounds of destructive equipment. Fin
ally, he shook off his bandoliers and rifle. After that, it was easy.
"Colonel Brock Savage reporting for duty, sir!" he said, scuffing the smeared K-rations off his boots and into the expensive carpet.
"Don't shout, Savage," said Lavallette. "Pick up your gear and sit down."
"I can't, sir. Not with all this equipment."
Lavallette took a second look and realized that if Savage could sit down, his canteen, K-ration packs, and other belted hardware would chew up his imported Spanish leather chairs.
"Fine. Stand. Let me explain my position and what I want you to do."
"No need, sir. I read the papers."
"Then you know the assassin who is stalking me, this Remo Williams environmentalist nut, is bound to come after me again."
"My men and I are ready. We'll capture him if he shows his civilian face around here."
"I don't want him captured. I want him dead. You understand? If I wanted captured, I'd let the FBI swarm all around here. I can't have that. My Dynacar is a high-security project. Guarding it will be part of your job too."
"Yes, sir."
"And stop saluting, would you please? This is not a military operation."
"Anything else, Mr. Lavallette?"
"Yes. Throw away those stupid ration packs. Dynacar Industries has a wonderful subsidized company cafeteria. I expect you and your men to eat in it."
"Yes, sir."
"In the blue-collar section, of course."
Chapter 18
"Tell me about my mother."
"Kid, I've told you about your mother three times already. Give me a break, will you?"
"Tell me again," Remo Williams said. He sat on a big sofa in a Detroit hotel room, following with his eyes the man who was his father, feeling a strange mixture of distance and familiarity. His father had just gotten off the telephone and was looking for a fresh shirt.
"Okay. Last time. Your mother was a wonderful woman. She was beautiful and she was kind. She was intelligent. In the right light, she looked like twenty-three even when she was forty-three."
"How'd she die?" Remo asked.
"It was awful," the gunman said. "Sudden death. One minute she was fine; the next minute she was dead."
"Heart attack," Remo said and the gunman nodded.
"It really broke me up," he said. "That's why I left Newark and came out here."
"You haven't told me why you left me at the orphanage when I was a baby," Remo said.
"Your mother and I just weren't making it. We tried but you know how those things are. We got divorced and she got custody of you. You understand?"
"Yes,"' Remo said. In the evening light, he thought he could see the family resemblance in his father's eyes. They were the same flat unreflective black as his own.
"So, anyway, in those days, it was tough for a woman to be divorced and to have a kid. Neighbors, family, nobody would talk to her and finally, she decided it would be best if you went to the nuns. I was furious when I heard about it, but if I came to get you, it would look like I was saying your mother didn't know how to take care of you. So I left you there, even though it broke my heart. I just figured . . . well, I figured there was no looking back."
"I guess not," Remo said. "Do you have a picture of her? Sometimes, I used to try to imagine what my mother looked like. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed when I couldn't sleep and make up faces."
"Is that so?" the gunman said as he put on his jacket. "And what'd you think she looked like, kid?"
"Gina Lollobrigida. I saw her in a movie once. I always wanted my mother to look like Gina Lollobrigida."
"That's amazing, son. It really is. Your mother looked exactly like her, exactly. You must be psychic or something."
Remo looked up and said, "Where are you going?"
"Out. I've got business to attend to."
"I'll come with you."
"Look, kid. It's good that we found each other after all these years but I can't have you following me everywhere. Now relax. I'll be back in an hour or so. Go get yourself fed or laid or something. Practice. That's it. Practice. 'Cause when I come back you've got to start telling me how you do all that stuff with walls and fighting and all." The hotel-room door slammed on Remo's hurt face.
The gunman took the elevator to the hotel garage and drove his car onto the dingy street of Detroit.
"Jeez," he said to himself aloud. "This is going to be a bitch."
He lit a cigarette, hating the stale taste in his mouth. He had to get rid of the kid. What he didn't need now in his life was some overgrown teenager worrying about Daddy. Maybe he would wait until Remo had taught him his tricks. Sinanju, he called it, whatever that was. He didn't know what it meant, but you were never too old to learn new things, especially if they could help you in your trade. Maybe he'd wait and learn and then one night when the kid was sleeping, just put a bullet in his brain and get away.
That was one way. The other way was just not to return to the hotel and let this Remo kid try to find him. But Remo had found him before. Whatever Sinanju was, he seemed to be able to do things that normal people couldn't do. The old Oriental too, for that matter, and he had to be eighty if he was a day.
The gunman wondered why the old Oriental was hounding him. First, he showed up at the Mangan hit, and then at the Dynacar demonstration and then at the Millis shooting. All because the man who hired him had insisted on sending the stupid environmental warning to the newspapers. That part had been dumb and unprofessional, but it was part of the job. The old gook though; he wasn't part of the job.
He had tried to escape from the two of them that early evening when he had left them fighting on the rooftop. But even as he was pulling out of the parking lot, he saw the kid coming down the side of the building and running after him.
He had sped up to seventy-five, then slowed to sixty-five once he got to the interstate highway, thinking he was free. And suddenly the passenger door was pulled open.
He had stomped on the gas pedal and swerved to the right so the twin forces would slam the door shut, but the door would not close. It was being held open, and then a voice had yelled, "Hey. Keep the wheel steady."
It was the kid, Remo, running alongside the car, holding the door open, and then he hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door after him.
"Don't worry, Dad," the kid had said. "I'm all right." Just the memory of it made the gunman's mouth dry.
It was going to be hard to shake this Remo. At least for a while. The best way to stay alive was to play along. And what if the kid was right? What if Remo was his son? It was possible. A guy who could run as fast as a car could be anything he wanted to be.
Remo Williams sat in the darkness of the hotel room which to his eyes was not darkness at all, but a kind of twilight.
It was something he did not even think about anymore, this power of sight, but simply allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Unlike ordinary eyes, the pupils did not simply dilate to catch all the available light; it was something more. Chiun had once called the phenomenon "fishing for light." Somehow, in a way Remo was trained to achieve but never to understand, his eyes fished for the light and even in utter pitch darkness, he was able to see.
Remo wondered if it was a talent that had been in all men back in the days before artificial light, before campfires and candles, when man's earliest ancestors had to hunt by moonlight, and sometimes, without even moonlight. Remo did not know; he only knew he had the power to do it.
Thanks to Chiun.
His feelings toward his teacher, as he sat in the darkness that was not darkness, were confused.
Chiun had always done what was best for Remo, except when Sinanju came first. That was understood between them. Sinanju was the center of Chiun's personal universe.
But this was different. Chiun-Smith, too-had hidden from Remo the truth about his father. It was hard to take and even harder to understand.
It was all hard. Remo had not thought of his parents for years. Th
ey had been no part of his childhood, much less his adult life. They were simply an abstract concept because everyone had parents at one time and Remo just assumed that his were dead.
Once, well into his Sinanju training, Remo discovered he could tap into his early-life memories, calling them up the way Smith called up information on his computers. So he sat down one day to call up the faces of the parents he must have seen when he was an uncomprehending infant.
Chiun had found him seated in a lotus position, eyes closed in concentration.
"What new way have you found to waste time?" Chiun had asked.
"I'm not wasting time. I'm calling up memories."
"He who lives in the past has no future," Chiun had said.
"That's not real convincing from somebody who can recite what every Master of Sinanju liked to eat for breakfast. All the way back to the pharaohs."
"That is not the past. That is history," Chiun had sniffed.
"Says you. Now would you mind? I'm trying to summon up the faces of my parents."
"You do not wish to see them."
"Why do you say that?" Remo asked.
"Because I know," Chiun had said.
"No, you don't. You can't possibly know. You knew your parents, your grandparents, all your forebears. I know nothing about mine."
"That is because they are not worth knowing," Chiun had said.
"Why is that?"
"They are not worth knowing because they were white," said Chiun.
"Hah!" Remo shot back. "I've got you there. All the time you're trying to convince me I'm part Korean, just to justify your giving Sinanju to a white. Now you're changing your tune."
"I am not changing my tune. You are changing your hearing. You are not white, but your parents were. Somewhere in your past, overwhelmed by generations of diluting mating with non-Koreans, there is a drop of proud Korean blood. Perhaps two drops. Those are the drops that I train. It is my misfortune that the white baggage has to come along with them."
"Even if my parents were white," Remo had said, "that doesn't make them not worth knowing."
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