"Before I die, may I ask why?"
"I think it's drugs and buying people. Or something," said Remo. "Whatever it is, nobody else can get to you, so here I am."
"My most reasonable young man, may I ask what your name is, and why you would not care to reason with me a bit before I die? I could make you very wealthy, just for a few moments of talking with me. A bank account would be set up for you, and for, say, one minute of talk, provide you with a million dollars. I am not even buying my life, mind you. You can do your duty as you see fit. But for one minute of conversation, you will get one million dollars and of course remove this scourge you believe me to be. What do you say?"
"Nah. I don't need a million."
"You are rich then?"
"Nah," said Remo.
"A man who does not want money. What a rarity. Are you some kind of saint?"
"Nah. I just don't need money. I don't have a real home. I don't have anything."
"Ah, then you must want something."
"I'd like transportation out of here after I kill you. I don't know how well this plane will work with its roof torn off and bullets peppered into the cabin."
"Agreed," said Diaz with a smile of arrogant grace. The man certainly knew how to give up his life.
"Okay, you've got twenty seconds left."
"I thought I would get a minute."
"I've given you talking time. I mean, if I'm getting paid at the rate of a million dollars a minute I'm not throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars. You've got fifteen seconds left."
"Fifteen?"
"Twelve," said Remo.
"Then of course all I can do is say good-bye and express my felicitations."
Guenther Largos Diaz nodded and clicked his heels, folding his arms together and waiting for his death as others would for a glass of champagne. Remo was impressed by this dark-haired man of calm and grace. "Where's my plane out?" he asked. "You certainly don't look like the type who would bother to lie."
"But my time is up, sir. I don't even have the pleasure of your name."
"Remo. How many minutes do you want for the plane?"
"A lifetime," answered Diaz. The pilot peered around from behind him and then quickly looked back to the controls when he saw the thin man with the thick wrists smiling back at him. What was so chilling to the pilot was not the dark-haired, high-cheekboned handsomeness of the man standing in so much blood, it was the casual, almost friendly way the man looked at him with those dark eyes that seemed oblivious of the carnage.
And especially the answer he gave when Mr. Diaz asked for a lifetime.
"Don't worry. Whenever you give me that plane and pilot out of here, it will be your lifetime."
Diaz laughed. The pilot looked to his copilot. Men worked for this ruler of an illegal empire out of respect almost as much as money. But this was more than Mr. Diaz's legendary courage. This was sheer folly. The pilot cringed when he thought of the strange way the bodies had been strewn around the cabin. He looked straight ahead at the landing strip, as his stomach screamed for him to run and his legs sent up signals that they would refuse to move in such a dangerous situation.
And Mr. Diaz was still laughing.
"I like the way you do things. I will tell you what, my friend. We will talk while I arrange another plane. We must bring one in. I never allow two of my planes to be in the same airport at the same time."
"Why's that?" asked Remo. "In case someone rides in on the top of one, tears it up, and needs another to get out?"
Diaz laughed.
"No. You see, one way to ensure the loyalty of your people is to keep them out of contact with others. Contact creates danger. Come, we will get out of this bloody mess and get some fresh air, a shower, dinner while the plane is on its way from another base of mine. And then, if you must, kill away. Agreed?"
Remo shrugged. It was better than walking through jungles. Diaz was a lion among his sheep. While his soldiers and bodyguards and ground personnel cringed or kept sweaty palms near their weapons, Diaz coolly ordered another jet into the airport.
And then he ordered a repast set before them, great shiny mounds of delicacies set on white Irish linen in the still; pure air at the foot of the Andes.
Amid shellfish, meats, and champagne, Remo ate only a few grains of rice.
"Are you afraid of being poisoned?" asked Diaz.
"All of that's poison," said Remo. "You eat that junk and you need to burn up oxygen just to get it into your system, and then your system closes down."
"Ah, so you have special eating techniques."
"No. I just don't kill myself with my mouth. How long is that jet going to take?"
"Shortly, shortly," said Diaz. He lifted a glass of champagne and savored it a moment. "You work for the government, I take it, the American government. That is why you want to stop an evil man like myself."
"You got it, Diaz."
"Call me Guenther, Remo," said Diaz with a gentle gesture of a palm. The smile never left his eyes, as though he was as amused by his death as threatened by it. "You know I am not the big shot who escapes. I am more a very rich middleman."
"Yeah? Who're the big shots?"
"Certain very rich and established banks. They are the ones who make my dollars usable."
"You mean certain banks in Miami?"
"Small-time. I mean a very big bank in Boston, owned by an old, establishment family which regularly allows us to bring the money back into America and buy very safe American property, and very safe American stocks, and very safe American havens for the American dollar. And yet, who ever hears of them?"
"Your water's good, too."
"I take it you don't care about that?"
"Matter of fact, I do. Very much. It's in my bones. I hate to see the big shots get away with it."
"I thought that might be the case," Diaz raised a finger. The smile now disappeared from his eyes. His voice was low and intense. He spoke slowly. "I will make you this deal. I will give you the big shots."
"And let you go?"
"Would you?"
"Probably not."
"Then considering that life is but one day after another, why don't I offer you this. Let me live as long as I give you the big shots in your own country. Unless of course you are here just to kill Latinos. In which case, I will finish my champagne, and you may finish me. The plane will be over the mountains shortly."
Remo thought about the deal. Somehow, this cool, cunning man had found the one price Remo might accept. "Can you get me a phone link-up to the States?"
"Of course, I have everything your Central Intelligence Agency has in the way of electronics."
"It's a very private call, so you'll have to keep your distance. "
"Any call can be listened to without standing nearby, you know," said Diaz.
"Yeah I know," said Remo. "But it's form."
The telephone Diaz gave him was hardly bigger than a coffee cup. It was shiny aluminum and had a speaker at the bottom and a receiver at the top, and a dial pad.
"That is about as safe as you can get, but I wouldn't guarantee anything," said Diaz. "No matter how it is scrambled, someone will pick up the message."
"Will they be able to read it?"
"Probably not. But they will know it has been sent."
"That's good enough," said Remo.
"It may not be for your organization."
"I don't know what is good enough for them," said Remo. He called for another glass of water as he dialed. There was no such thing as pure water. All water really carried elements of something else. But when you got it from the runoffs of the snows of the Andes you did not get the chemical wastes of poisonous factories which was known as pollution.
As soon as the phone rang, another strange ringing occurred. And a computer voice said:
"This is an open line. Use another. Use another. Use another. "
"No," said Remo.
"This is an open line. Disconnect. Disconnect immediately," came the c
omputer voice.
"C'mon, willya, Smitty, just talk for a minute."
And then a screeching interruption. And the voice of Harold W. Smith himself.
"Remo, hang up and reach me on another line."
"I don't have one."
"This is important."
"It's always important."
"There is a national emergency regarding Russia. Now will you get to another phone before someone gets a fix on us?"
"Can we get another line?" Remo called out to Diaz, who was, out of courtesy, standing away from the table, leaning against an elegant carved stone railing looking at his mountains.
"I think so," said Diaz. "Yes, I see the problem. They're picking up certain waves. Yes, I could have assured you there would be a problem."
"You did," said Remo.
"Who is that?" asked Smith. The voice was horrified.
"Diaz," said Remo, hanging up.
"I think your commander will not like the fact that I heard things."
"Yeah. He'll hate it," said Remo, smiling.
Diaz called an aide and was very specific about the type of telephone he wanted. This one would use a different transmission system, which Remo did not understand in the least.
He did understand Smith, however. Smitty's normal, taciturn, dry behavior had turned hysterical. He spent three minutes explaining the dangers of letting the organization be compromised. Even more important than the success of any mission, Remo had been made to understand, was that the organization never be made known to the public.
For its purpose was to do outside the law what America could not do inside. It was to carry out the survival missions of the nation that the nation could no longer perform. It was an admission in its basest form that America did not work within the Constitution.
"All right. All right. I understand, Smitty. But first, I'll be killing Diaz, so that information, whatever it is, will die with him, and second, he has a wonderful idea. I like it."
"Remo, do you understand that Diaz is so dangerous precisely because he offers people wonderful ideas? That's how he ruined the narcotics squads of three police departments. "
"Yeah, but we're missing the big guys. There's this bank in Boston that-"
"Remo, neither the bank nor Mr. Diaz matters. There is something coming in from Russia that may be the most dangerous threat to our country ever."
Remo put a hand over the receiver.
"I think you've been dropped to second place, Diaz," said Remo.
"In these circumstances it might be welcome," said Diaz, toasting Remo again.
Remo took his hand off the speaker.
"You're already having conversations with Guenther Largos Diaz that you're not sharing with me. If that doesn't tell you something, Remo, nothing will."
"What is this big deal from Russia?"
"We don't know. But something big is happening."
"When you find out, let me know, Smitty. In the meantime, Guenther and I are going to Boston," said Remo, and he hung up.
"Shall we take a slow boat?" asked Diaz.
"Nah. You bought yourself a day at most," said Remo.
"Then to a wonderful last day," said Diaz.
The flight to Boston in the Diaz jet was luxurious. The 747 had beautiful women and movies and couches and deep pile rugs.
But Diaz found Remo more interesting than these pleasures. He sent the women to the rear of the plane while he talked with the thin man with the thick wrists. So well appointed was the plane that it carried its own tailor and Diaz offered Remo new clothes instead of his bloodied dark T-shirt, gray slacks, and loafers. Remo asked for a new dark T-shirt and a new pair of gray slacks.
"You will have it by the time we reach Boston. I gather your agency is not listed in the line of command in Washington. "
"Right."
"I would gather very few know of it, less than a handful." Remo nodded.
"But let me take another guess," said Diaz. "Because I have quite an extensive knowledge of what I thought were all of your country's law-enforcement structures."
Remo nodded for Diaz to guess away.
"An agency could not remain secret using many personnel, least of all those who kill like you."
Remo nodded.
"So I would estimate that there are fewer than three of you in the entire organization, three who are licensed to kill."
"I never knew someone needed a license."
"Governments give them to agents. The only way your organization could have escaped detection was with a very small enforcement arm."
"Are you trying to find out that if you kill me, there won't be someone else coming after you?"
"No, as a matter of fact. I've given that up. I don't think I'll have to. I am more valuable to your people alive than dead. And I think you people and I can make a deal. I would like to meet this Smitty."
"No deal. He'd have a heart attack."
The boardroom of the Boston Institutional Bank and Trust Company of America seemed unchanged from the nineteenth century. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany. The painted portraits showed rigid, moral New Englanders casting their gazes down as if considering whether the viewer were good enough to be in the room.
These were the framers of the American Constitution, and the arbiters of America's moral standards. These were the men who, when they decided slavery must go, helped finance the Civil War. Of course, these same men had built their family fortunes on buying slaves in Africa, selling them for molasses in the Caribbean, and turning that molasses into rum in New England, which they sold for slaves in Africa. It was called the golden triangle. And it made them and their descendants rich beyond imagination.
But only after the slaves were bought and paid for did New England provide the strong impetus to abolish slavery. As one Southerner had said:
"If we were smart enough to have bought our nigras on time instead of paying outright, there never would have been a Civil War."
The descendants of these righteous souls now sat beneath the portraits of their ancestors in the boardroom, keeping to the strictest morality in their banking. They would accept no cash of uncertain origin.
However, when one talked hundreds of millions of dollars, one was not talking cash, one was talking wealth. With that amount, there were no questions asked; so when their biggest depositor, Senor Guenther Largos Diaz, insisted on a meeting that day, they were more than happy to talk with him.
And this despite the presence of the man in the very casual black T-shirt and gray slacks, which were such a contrast to the elegant white suit of Senor Diaz.
"Tell me, young man, where do your people come from?" asked the chairman of the board.
"I don't know. I'm an orphan," said Remo. "I'm just here with Mr. Diaz to see if what he says is so. That he does business with you. And I see by this meeting that he does. "
"We find him above reproach."
"Guenther here runs cocaine and suborns police departments. Is that above reproach?"
"I know nothing of that," said the chairman of the prestigious bank.
"Well, you do now," said Remo.
"I only know what you say, and I am not going to jump to hasty conclusions to defame the character of an upright businessman," said the chairman of the board. The other board members nodded.
"Well, I'm sorry to say, fellas, this isn't exactly a fair trial."
And there in the stuffy boardroom of the Boston Institutional Bank and Trust Company of America, the chairman of the board watched a thin man go from chair to chair, and as though flicking a finger, send head after head crashing to the table. Some members tried to run, but they were caught, their eyes going wide and stupid as their brains fluttered out under the shrapnel of their shattered skulls.
Their best depositor only stood by as though waiting for the beginning of a show. The chairman of the board was about to use his imposing moral presence when the intellectual signals for that presence scattered with the rest of his nervous system around the pr
estigious boardroom of the Boston International Bank and Trust Company of America.
"Thank you for your lead, but I really am sorry, Guenther, to tell you you've had your day."
"But, my dear Remo," said Diaz. "These are only the small fry. "
South of Boston in Rye, New York, on Long Island Sound, a computer gave Harold W. Smith some of the most frightening information to come in during CURE's history. Through its actions, Russia was telling the organization's computers that it was after something far more formidable even than atomic weapons. And there was no way to reach the killer arm. He was off somewhere disposing of bankers.
Chapter 3
The President was calling, and for the first time in his life, Harold W. Smith did not answer his commander in chief when he should have.
He watched the blinking light signal that the President was on the line and he let the light blink off. He knew what the President wanted, and he knew he couldn't help him.
The network that had made this one organization so powerful was revealing two things. First, Russian internal activity was extraordinary in volume. Anyone could spot it. There was no great mystery to intelligence operations. When one nation prepared to attack another nation, you could see the armies massing for months and miles.
Something very important was happening. What Smith didn't know, and he was sure the FBI had to be just as aware of this, and just as worried. They had to have contacted the President. He could imagine the FBI mobilizing its magnificent staff; the organization that had momentarily faltered with a loss of its strong leader was now better than ever. It was the great secret of international politics that the FBI was perhaps the finest counterintelligence agency in the world. So, if the President was phoning Smith, it had to be for the use of CURE's special techniques, namely Remo, and hopefully not his trainer, Chiun.
The second piece of news coming into the headquarters hidden within Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound was a multiple murder in Boston. Six directors of a prestigious bank had been killed when, according to the best police reports, someone using a powerful device had crushed six skulls.
The coroners had determined that only a hydraulic machine could have done such damage to a skull, and since there were no marks of such a multi-ton machine within the boardroom itself, it was therefore concluded that all six were killed elsewhere and brought to the boardroom. The papers were rife with speculation.
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