"Is that touching, Jim?" she asked.
"No. That's allowed," he said
"You know each other then," said the French ambassador's wife.
"No. Just met," said Lithia Forrester.
"Oh," said Colonel Sir Dilsy Rumsey-Puck. And when Lithia Forrester repeatedly turned the conversation to Admiral Crust, the French ambassador's wife excused herself, and finally Colonel Rumsey-Puck lowered the Union Jack and went to join the rest of the party. He had never understood just what it was that had made America so successful in the first place, but whatever it was, the middle-aged admiral obviously had it.
Rumsey-Puck had surrendered after trying to interrupt Dr. Forrester's comment on the tragic General Dorfwill, who had been at her therapy institute and one of those who suffered what she called "the power syndrome." They were easy to cure because they were not really sick, just responding normally to abnormal stimuli.
"It's almost like a football player's knee," Dr. Forrester had said. "The player is healthy. The knee is healthy. But he gets knee injuries because the knee was not designed to take the pressure of 250 pounds running 100 yards in 10 seconds."
"We noticed in Burma," said Colonel Sir Dilsy Rumsey-Puck, "that men who had…"
"Excuse me, Colonel," said Dr. Forrester, "but men groping around the jungles are not the same thing as men who hold responsibility for nuclear power. I think our nation has done remarkably well in not blowing up the whole bloody world. I dare say, I would not sleep at night if lesser men controlled that sort of power."
Then she turned back to the admiral who somehow had seemed to grow an inch and a half. Colonel Sir Dilsy Rumsey-Puck bowed slightly and excused himself. And Lithia Forrester went back to explaining how she could have cured poor General Dorfwill if she had simply had time to work with him.
Rumsey-Puck saw her leave the party shortly into the evening, shaking hands with the admiral. When he was out of the main room, the women became more alive.
As Lithia Forrester left the building, she scarcely glanced at her chauffeur, but settled down in the back seat of her Rolls Royce to mull over a very significant problem. She mulled it over through the streets of Washington and into the Maryland countryside. She mulled it over through the gates of the Human Awareness Laboratories Inc., through the long winding roadways, the 6.3 miles of road leading to the ten-story building surprisingly set in the middle of the lush greenery and rolling hills.
She mulled it over on the elevator to the tenth floor, where she stormed into a round and luxurious parlour-type room.
And when she was sure she was alone, she slipped out of her black silk gown and threw it against a wall.
"Balls," she said.
She did not mind losing General Dorfwill. That was part of the plan. He had had to die, since one did not want the poor nit back on the ground, being asked why he had decided to drop a nuclear bomb on St. Louis.
And Clovis Porter had to be killed. One could not possibly have known that he would stumble on the program. Granted, he was a banker, but he was a Republican. And from Iowa. He should have done what was expected of him, investigate and find nothing. When he dug too deep, he had to be killed.
But the Special Forces colonel was a mistake. A grievous costly mistake. And it was not the mistake itself that was so costly, it was the new element it disclosed.
Lithia Forrester strode to a marble-topped desk and withdrew a yellow pad from a drawer. She made a diagram with a string of dots along an arrow. The first dot was the telephone company security man. He had discovered the special scrambler line to that Folcroft Sanatorium. That was the second dot. And the President had used that line the night Porter's secretary had shown up at the White House. Then the conversation about "that special person." And that was the last dot. The "special person" in Miami Beach. Obviously some sort of special investigator. And that was where she had made her mistake.
Since the program was proceeding, that person had to be eliminated. But she was wrong in using the Special Forces colonel. It had seemed right. He could reinforce his weak masculine self-image. The big problem had been to convince him to use other men too, instead of playing Tarzan by himself. Well, she had convinced him.
So why was that agent, that Remo Donaldson, still alive? How had the colonel managed to get himself killed? That was the trouble with Special Forces people, with commandoes and Rangers and People's Special Liberators. If anyone could botch the simple assignments, it was those daredevils. The staff officers were right. You don't trust important missions to those zanies. Dorfwill would have done the assignment well. Even Clovis Porter would not have failed.
One human being named Remo Donaldson and suddenly people start turning up mangled. Well, Mister Remo Donaldson, you are about to meet people who do not fail."
And on the yellow pad, she made a large X over the last dot. Then she looked up at the darkening sky, for she was standing underneath a giant plexiglass dome, the latest in designs for living. She knew it was the latest because she had designed it. And she had never yet designed anything that failed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The man who was the last dot on Lithia Forrester's yellow pad was at that moment at Dulles Airport outside Washington, trying to find a way to explain to his employer, Dr. Harold K. Smith, just why he was quitting.
"This is a very special case," Smith said. "Perhaps the most important we have ever faced."
Remo Williams, known to Lithia Forrester as Remo Donaldson, decided on the direct approach.
"Blow it out your ears," he said. "Every time you people lose a paper clip somewhere, I end up running my ass off at a moment's notice. I just don't think you realize that I take two weeks to come up to peak."
He sipped his water and pushed the rice away from him. It was not natural un-husked rice, but the mass-produced imitation guaranteed not to cling to other grains and to stand up fresh within one minute of cooking. One time-saving minute. It also had the nutritive value of spit. He would be as well off eating cotton candy.
The water was also a chemical concoction of which one ingredient was water. He remembered a line he'd read once: "the water contained all the necessary nutriments including chow mein." Chiun's teaching had become part of him and water was important, even if he sometimes longed for a Seagram's Seven and beer chaser and on a very rare occasion allowed himself a cigarette.
The waiter asked if there was anything wrong with the rice. Dr. Smith answered for Remo. "No, the rice is fine. Just peculiar taste of some people."
"Like wanting to see tomorrow," mumbled Remo, glancing at the arriving and departing planes.
When the waiter had left, Remo, without taking his eyes off a 747 that seemed suspended in air just above the ground, like a horizontal hotel that hadn't decided it should fall, said:
"What is it this time?"
Dr. Smith leaned forward across the table. He whispered: "The United States government is for sale."
Remo turned back to the table, eyed the water balefully, contemplated the edge of a shiny brown roll, then said laconically, "So what else is new?"
"I mean for sale on the world markets."
"Oh, it's going international. Well, that's been the way for the last quarter of a century," Remo suggested.
"I mean," said Smith, "that someone is offering control of the key departments of the United States government for sale. The defence department, national security, treasury department, espionage systems. For sale."
"What can I say? Buy."
"Be serious," said Smith.
"I am, damn you. I am serious. I'm serious when I take off some guy's head. Some guy I never knew. I'm serious when the only thing a person means to me is his move right or move left. I'm serious when I say it all doesn't really matter that much anymore and never mattered that much to begin with. And we were all pretty stupid to think it ever did."
Remo turned back to the airplanes, and added:
"I've been thinking about this a long time, Smith. I'm through."
<
br /> "Okay," said Smith. "Okay. Let's walk out of here. I want to tell you something."
"If you're going to try to remove me, don't bother," Remo said. "You can't."
"I wouldn't be foolish enough to try, Remo."
"Nonsense, You're loose enough to try anything when it comes to this country. You'd try to out-swim a tidal wave. I ought to put you out right now and then see what triggers those computers at Folcroft try to pull."
"I just want to talk to you, Remo. I want to talk to you about a man named Clovis Porter."
"Clovis Porter?" said Remo smirking. "You wasps sure do have a way with names."
"You may be a wasp yourself, Remo."
"Probably. It'd be my luck. Clovis Porter? C'mon. I wouldn't tell a Clovis Porter story to a hooker with a whip. Clovis Porter?"
"Clovis Porter," said Smith. "Just let me tell you about him."
But he did not speak in the cab from the airport and it was only later as they walked along the streets of Washington, D.C., that Smith opened the file on Clovis Porter, even to the dissolution of the century-old Porter fortune.
"You see, Porter invested his life's fortune to find out just what was going on. Like some other men you've known, he thought America was worth not only his fortune but his life."
The two white men crossed the invisible line into Washington's black ghetto, a line not marked by deteriorating houses, but by a growing absence of Caucasians, a border that contracted with the sun and expanded with the dark. A few people looked from their windows, startled to see two white men strolling through their neighbourhood as if the sun were noon high.
Remo kicked a beer can.
"So that was Porter," Smith said. "And that was MacCleary. You remember MacCleary?"
"Yes, very much."
"He believed America was worth a life. Mine, yours, his own," Smith said.
"Where does it stop?" Remo asked.
"Where did it stop for MacCleary?" Smith asked.
"When you killed him," he said, answering his own question. "And he knew why you had to do it."
Remo placed a hand on Smith's shoulder and Smith looked up, a parched face mirroring his parched life. Remo's first assignment had been to kill MacCleary, the man who had recruited him, because MacCleary had been injured and under drugs he might have talked.
"I never killed MacCleary," Remo said. "I never killed him."
"What?"
"I couldn't. He begged me to and I couldn't do it. So he did it himself."
"Oh, no," Smith said.
"Yeah. And when I read about it I figured okay, one assignment. For MacCleary's stupidity."
"I didn't know," said Smith and his voice wavered. "I didn't know."
"Yeah, well, one assignment became another and then another and what with Chiun's training, it was like I was meant to do this and nothing else. And then it became like punching a time clock. You know what I feel when I kill a man?"
"No," said Smith softly.
"Not a damned thing. Half the time I'm thinking about my technique. And they're human lives, and I just don't care."
"What's bothering you?"
"I'm telling you, dammit."
"No, you're not. Why all of a sudden now?"
"It's not all of a sudden. It's all of an accumulation."
"The new faces bother you, don't they?"
"You better believe it," Remo said.
"We'll bring you back close nest time."
"Unless you tell the surgeon to slip because I've suddenly become highly unreliable."
"Unless I do," said Smith.
From the streetlight above, insects swirled a storm of buzzing life as Remo said, "I could go through an operation like that without anaesthesia."
"I imagine you could."
"I know that Chain is one of your triggers if you push the button against me."
"That's obvious. He's a professional," Smith said.
"Even that's more of a reason than I have," Remo said.
Smith propped his briefcase against a street light and flipped it open. Remo made an imperceptible set, ready to move if necessary. But Smith brought out only a tape recorder.
"I want you to listen to this," he said, and flipped the switch.
The next voice was Clovis Porter.
And on that corner in Washington, D.C., under streetlights swimming with bugs, Remo heard an Iowa farmer say goodbye to his wife for the last time—goodbye to the wife he loved because he loved his country more.
And Remo finally said, "Okay, you sonofabitch. Just one more."
CHAPTER SIX
It was enough to make Philander Jackson give up mugging. It certainly was enough to make Piggy Smith and Dice Martin stop walking again and to make Boom Boom Bosely look for some form of employment which did not require the use of his hands.
Not that Boom Boom had ever held a job, and but for brief stints at the Auto-Quicki-Car-Shine, neither had Philander, Piggy or Dice.
Now they all had a legitimate excuse for welfare. This did not comfort them in the emergency room of the Fairoaks Hospital where Piggy blamed Philander for gross stupidity by calling him mother this and mother that. Dice was not about to blame anyone. He had not quite seen what had happened. And Boom Boom was too preoccupied with groaning to blame anyone. If one could decipher his unintelligible mumblings, he might be led to believe that Boom Boom was blaming his wrists for hurting so much.
This was unfair to Boom Boom's wrists. Any wrists would hurt after the bones had been crushed into blood-soaked pumice.
But how was Philander to know? It had looked too good to be true. Two white men standing alone in the heart of the ghetto just before the bars were closing, and those two honkies were grooving on a tape recording of some cat talking funny, real funny.
And Philander, Piggy, Dice and Boom Boom jiving cool and out of bread, man. Those two Charlies were a gift, man. A stone gift. Especially the skinny old one.
So Philander, Piggy, Boom Boom and Dice, just cool, man, made the scene.
"Evenin", folks," Philander had said.
The skinny old Charlie glanced briefly at the crew, then back to the other dude he was rapping with.
"Ah said evenin' folks," Philander said.
"Evening," said Boom Boom, Dice and Piggy.
"Uh, yes. Good evening," said the skinny honky with a briefcase. He didn't look shook at all.
"You all got a penny," asked Philander.
And then the younger honky said:
"Go suck a watermelon."
"Wha you say?"
"I said, go suck a watermelon. This isn't the welfare office."
"Oh, you come down real badass, man. You know where you is?"
"The monkey house at the zoo?"
"You grin, you in. That gonna mean grape to you, Charlie."
Then the older Charlie spoke. "Look. We don't want any trouble. Just leave us alone and you won't be harmed."
Piggy laughed. Dice grinned. Philander chuckled and Boom Boom brought out the little piece he had been packing. The pistol gleamed in the street light as if the metal were sweating.
"Ah kill a honky as soon as ah look at him," said Boom Boom.
"He a badass. A real badass," said Philander confidentially to the two Charlies.
"Ah kill them mothers fore they was born," said Boom Boom. "Ah waste them good."
"Better pump some grape his way, boys," said Philander. "He a mean mother."
And then, surprisingly, the younger white man spoke to the older as if Philander, Piggy, Dice and Boom Boom with his piece were not there.
"All right, it's settled. The general will be first tonight and then I'll check with you in the morning. I'm bringing Chiun up. I don't feel as sharp as I should."
"All right," said the older Charlie. "But now I imagine you understand why it's so important we are involved in this. Everyone else has been compromised because they're known."
"I've got bad news for you," said the younger honky. Boom Boom looked at Philander and shr
ugged. Dice and Piggy both pointed index fingers at their heads and circled them indicating the honkies were crazy. Standing in the middle of Washington's Harlem, four bloods with a piece looking to waste them, and these two loose ends were talking compromise this and set-up that as if they were going to make it out in one piece.
"Bad news," said the younger honky. "Somebody knows something. I was jumped in Miami. We're not totally clean anymore; we've been tapped somewhere along the line."
The old geezer put his hand to his mouth. "There's only one other person who…"
"That's right," said the young loony.
"My God," said the old skinny honky. "I hope it doesn't mean what I think it means."
Then Boom Boom mumbled a curse and pushed the revolver in the younger honky's face.
"You guys bugged about something, man," said Boom Boom. "Maybe I ain't coming down too clear, But this is a holdup."
"Okay," said the younger one. "How much you want?" Sweet as you please, he said that.
"How much you got?" asked Boom Boom.
"I'll give you guys a hundred apiece. And well call it even."
"Fifty,"said the old honky with the briefcase.
"Make it a hundred. Why not," said the younger screwball. "Fifty doesn't go far these days."
"A hundred here, a hundred there. It all mounts up. Make it seventy-five."
"Okay.Seventy-five," said the younger honky.
"Can ah get involved in this heah thing?" said Boom Boom, waving the gun wider because obviously someone was missing something. "This is mah holdup and ah got a right to say what ah's gonna get."
"Seventy-five be all right with you?" asked the younger honky.
"No," said Boom Boom.
"No way," said Piggy and Dice. "We wants it all. Everything you got. That briefcase too."
"Well, sorry," said the younger honky and then it all happened very fast. Boom Boom was shrieking and jumping up and down, shaking his hands which flopped as though attached to his arms only by loose rubber bands.
Piggy and Dice were on the ground, their legs stiff and then Philander thought he saw the flash of a white hand in the street light, but he could not be perfectly sure. He was still seeing the flash come at him when someone told him he was now in the hospital emergency room and everything was all right.
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