"Wasn't I, though? I looked downright Italian," Remo said. When Fabio paused, unsure how to answer, Remo added, "and now I look Neapolitan," giving the word the extra Italian accent on the last syllable, guessing that Fabio was Neapolitan because of the way he had raised his hand in greeting.
Fabio laughed out loud. "Yeah," he said, "that's a real improvement. And you're in with the baron?"
"Right-hand man," Remo said.
Nemeroff moved quickly into the conversation.
"Mr. Kenny has agreed to join with all of us in insuring that whatever agreement we reach will be fairly kept. I think he has that reputation for fairness," Nemeroff said.
"You bet he has," Fabio said. "Hey, PJ—remember when you got my brother, Matty?"
"Sure do," Remo smiled. "It was some job."
"Some job?" Fabio laughed. "They was picking up pieces of him for weeks."
"Yeah," Remo laughed. "I used my special cheese cutting knife for that job." Then he added, "Ho, ho, ho."
"Hee, hee, hee," laughed Fabio, remembering the one hundred twenty-seven pieces of the remains of his brother, Matthew, whose crime had been that he held up to ridicule the son of another gangland leader.
"Ha, ha, ha," whined Baron Nemeroff. Then he turned the smile and laugh off as if by a switch, and said,
"Come, Mr. Fabio. We will go to the meeting room upstairs. Some of our mutual friends have already arrived."
He stepped toward the picture on the wall and pressed the button hidden in the moulding of the frame. The door slid quietly open.
He stepped aside to allow Fabio to enter first, and turned to Remo: "The man-O'Brien-is in the study. Perhaps he can tell you more about this Williams. What he looks like or what to look for."
Remo nodded and waited until Nemeroff had entered the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The painting moved softly back over the door opening.
Remo turned and walked across the parquet floor, his tennis shoes noiseless on the highly polished wood. The door was a giant wooden panel, deeply carved with elaborate filigrees, but it pushed open as though it had been hinged on ball bearings.
The room was dark. Remo found himself looking at the stark silhouette of a man, who stared out the first floor window toward the end of the house. Over his shoulder, through the window, Remo could see a red helicopter coming into view. He realized the man was following the helicopter's flight with his eyes. Though neither knew, it was the craft that had taken Vice President Asiphar the few miles to the Scambian Presidential palace where he expected, within forty-eight hours, to occupy the presidential bed.
Remo moved up behind the man, close enough to touch him, and he said, "O'Brien?"
The man wheeled and as he turned, released the heavy drapes he had been holding, and the room again leaked into semi-darkness. But Remo could see the man's face was startled, and the man said: "Boy, you gave me a fright, sneaking up on me like that."
"Tennis shoes," Remo said, as if that explained it. "The baron tells me you know this Remo Williams?"
"No," O'Brien said, "I don't know him. But I saw him once." He brushed past Remo and walked back to a small chair alongside a desk, and plopped down heavily into it.
Remo turned, the sun glistening between the drapes now at his back and shining into O'Brien's face.
"What's he look like?" Remo asked.
"Well, when I saw him, he was dressed like a priest," O'Brien said.
"That's not going to help me much."
"Wait. I'm trying. He had brown eyes, but not like regular brown eyes. They were deep, like they had no black. All deep-coloured. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"And he had a hard face. Like he was dressed like a priest, but he sure didn't look like any priest. His nose was straight and he was the kind of guy that looked right in your eye."
O'Brien squinted to try to get a better look at the man standing in front of the window, but all he could see was the outline of his head and body.
"All right," Remo said, "cut the art class lectures. How big was he?"
"He was a big guy, but not that big. Maybe six feet. Not heavy either. But big thick wrists, like he worked on a chain gang or something."
Remo moved closer to O'Brien's chair. O'Brien was casually inspecting his toes. Remo leaned onto the desk top.
"Yeah, go on," he said.
O'Brien looked up, squinting. "As I said, he had thick wrists. Like yours," he added, glancing down at Remo's hands on the desk. "And there was something else."
"What's that?"
"It was his mouth. It like didn't have any lips. It was thin and hard looking and you just knew he was a bad-ass. That was some bad mouth," O'Brien said. He looked up and squinted again into Remo's shadowed face, reflecting slowly, "It was like yours."
"And his eyes were brown?" Remo asked.
"Yeah. Brown… like yours."
"And his hair?"
"It was dark," O'Brien said. "Dark . . . like yours." He jumped up from the chair and his hand flashed to his side, but then his hand didn't work anymore and he was back in his chair, and a pain more excruciating than any he had ever felt before was happening along his partially-crippled right arm, and the man who thought he was PJ Kenny said, "What the hell's the matter with you? What are you trying to pull a gun on me for?"
O'Brien said, "Don't give me that. How'd you get here?"
"What are you talking about?" Remo said. "I work for the baron."
"Sure," O'Brien sneered. "He just went ahead and hired Remo Williams."
"Remo Williams? What the hell are you talking about?"
"You're him, man. Maybe you can shit the baron but you can't shit me. You're Remo Williams."
"And you're nuts. I've been assigned to kill Williams."
"Well, just cut your wrists, man," O'Brien said. "And Williams'll die of the bleeding."
"You're dreaming," Remo said.
"Look, Williams," O'Brien said. "I don't know what you're pulling here, but how about letting me in on it? I can probably be some help to you."
Remo was busy trying to sort out what O'Brien had said, but it was all wrapped up in darkness. He was PJ Kenny. But this man said he wasn't. This man would know and he said that he was Remo Williams. But how could he be?
"I just had plastic surgery," Remo said. "It must just be a coincidence."
"No way," O'Brien said. "How about it? You and me? Fair split?"
A fair split. Remo thought about it for a second, O'Brien's hand went toward his gun again, and Remo suddenly hated this man who had brought confusion into a life that was simplifying into the daily humdrum of the professional assassin. So he reached high into the air and brought the side of his fist down against the top of O'Brien's skull and heard the bones cracking like ice cubes splintering in a warm mix and O'Brien slumped forward in his chair, dead.
Remo let the body fall heavily onto the floor.
Remo Williams? How could it be? He was PJ Kenny. Nemeroff had known him. Maggie had known him. How could he be Williams?
But there was the chink. Had the chink recognized him when he stepped into that door at the hotel? Had the chink known he was Remo Williams? Then why hadn't he said something? Why had he just stood there, waiting to be killed by PJ Kenny?
He tried to consider the moves and every move came back to Chiun, to that old Oriental calmly awaiting death in his cell, humiliatingly bound, wrist and ankle to the floor, and Remo knew his answer was there and he would have to confront the old man.
At that moment, the telephone rang. It sat on a small walnut table in the center of the room and Remo stepped over and picked it up. "Hello."
"This is Nemeroff. Was O'Brien any help to you?"
"Yes," Remo said. "A great help."
"Good. May I talk with him, please?"
"Afraid not, baron," Remo said, looking at the body. "He's lying down." He saw the brains and blood oozing from O'Brien's skull. "He said he had a splitting headache."
There was a p
ause. "Oh, all right," Nemeroff said. "I am just beginning my meeting now. My men will have to forego their pleasure with the Englishwoman. Would you please dispose of her and the Oriental and then join us up here in the fifth floor conference room?"
"Yes, sir. As fast as my little legs can carry me," Remo said.
"Thank you. We will all be waiting."
Remo hung up the telephone, looked at it momentarily, then stepped out into the hall. He would have to confront the old Oriental, and clear up this mystery once and for all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The dungeon corridor was empty, even though Nemeroff had told ferret-face to watch the prisoners. The mold felt damp and slippery under Remo's feet as he slid down the dungeon corridor to Chiun's cell.
The door was locked, bolted heavily with an iron lock that weighed four pounds. Remo took the lock in his hands, and looked around to call the guard for the key, but then changed his mind for some reason, and twisted the lock in his hands until the metal fractured and it came loose from the door.
He quietly laid the two pieces on the floor, listening. There was no sound in the dungeon except the soft sobbing of Maggie in her cell, behind the closed door, across the narrow passageway. She would be next, but first, the Oriental.
Remo pulled the door open slowly, and remembered how he had last seen the old man, helpless, wrists and ankles chained to the floor.
The door opened softly. The old man sat on the bunk in the cell, a full six feet away from the metal ring, and Remo looked toward the ring.
It was inch-thick steel and it had been-sheared in half. Laying next to it were the chains. Broken. So were the ankle and wrist manacles, mashed and broken as if they had been pounded by a hammer wielded with enormous power.
But of course that was impossible, since the old man's hands and feet would have been in the chains when such a hammer was wielded and he would have suffered injury.
The old man stood as Remo walked into the cell, then bowed from the waist and smiled.
For the moment, Remo would not ask how he had escaped. There were other, more important, things for the man who thought he was PJ Kenny.
"Old man," he said, "I need your help."
"You have but to ask."
"I think I know who I am, but I'm not sure. Help me."
Chiun looked at the small bandage still covering Remo's temple. "You received a blow on the head, did you not?"
"Yes."
"And it was after that that your memory disappeared?"
"Yes."
"Then perhaps a similar blow," Chiun said, and before Remo could move or react, a small rock-hard fist lashed out, and a thumb knuckle hit against his temple, missing the exact mid-point of the bone by a precise 32nd of an inch, and Remo lived by exactly that distance. He saw stars. He shook his head to clear it. And then in a rush of memories, his life flooded back into him: his identity, his mission, who he was and why he was here.
"I know," he said, smiling happily, yet shaking his head from the shock of the attack. "I know. I'm Remo."
"I am glad," Chiun said. "I have something for you." And then, quicker than eye could see or body could move, the old man's hand lashed out, open, fingers extended, thumb drawn in alongside the fleshy part of the palm, and the four extended fingers slapped Remo's cheek with a sharp report.
Remo's head spun, and he growled, "C'mon, Chiun, now what the hell was that about?"
"That is for calling Sinanju a suburb of Hong Kong and for calling me a Chinaman. That is for being insolent to your elders. That is for not staying on your diet and for consorting with women and for bothering Doctor Smith and for endangering your country's interests."
"Had you worried, huh?"
"Worry? About a piece of worthless carrion who will, without me, eat himself to death in a week? What is to worry?"
When he had been PJ Kenny, Remo had planned to ask how the old man had broken his iron bonds. Now that he was again Remo Williams, the question was not necessary. The old man had broken his bonds because he was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, and because there had never been anything quite like him in the world before. Even if he felt he was getting old, there was color in his cheeks now and the happiness of the hound on the chase.
"Come, Chiun, we have things to do," Remo said, turning toward the door.
"A common pattern," Chiun said. "First the personal abuse, and now the orders. Do this. Do that. Am I to be treated like a wage slave? Is there no respect due a man my age, a frail old specter barely able to stand erect?"
"Don't," Remo said. "You'll have me in tears. And let me warn you. If you kill anybody this trip, you clean up the bodies yourself."
"You are without feeling, without soul, without heart."
They were both now in the corridor, and could hear Maggie's fault sobbing from behind the closed door of her cell. The door had no lock, and Remo pushed it open softly.
Maggie was there as she had been left. But the dress that had ridden up on her buttocks, was now slung up over her hips. The ferret-faced guard stood behind her, his back toward Remo. His right hand moved rhythmically, back and forth between Maggie's legs, and Remo saw he held a gun in his right hand. He was giggling and still talking to himself. "There's more for the little lady where that came from. Stay with poppa and poppa will give the little lady all she wants."
Remo cleared his throat. The guard partially turned and saw Remo there. Chiun was in the shadow of the corridor and was unseen. The guard grinned at Remo and giggled again. "She likes you, PJ but she likes this better. Don't you, little lady?" Then his left hand reached over and joined his right between Maggie's legs, working the gun in and out.
Remo spoke, and his voice was edged ice.
"I like your style kid. You're being promoted."
The guard turned to look at Remo. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Right upstairs." Then there was a knuckle in the windpipe. It hurt too much to cough and he was dying too fast to choke, so the guard fell onto the damp floor.
"Or downstairs, as the case may be," Remo said.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder, as far as she could in her position, and saw Remo. At first her face showed relief, and then it turned again into a mask of hatred.
Remo moved around in front of her and Chiun joined him, quietly lowering her dress over her flanks.
"You," she said to Remo. "Leave me alone. I don't want any help from you."
"Maggie, honey. I can't explain now, but trust me. We're on the same side."
She started to speak, to spit out her distrust, her hatred, but then Chiun stood alongside Remo and the look in his eyes told her somehow that everything was now all right.
She watched as Chiun and Remo knelt on the floor next to the iron ring. Then they each launched a hand slash at the ring. The two blows landed only a fraction of a second after each other. The vibrations that Chiun started in the metal, Remo interrupted; the metal swallowed its own vibrations, and the inch-thick-ring screeched in pain, then splintered into fragments.
Then, as if the locks were not there, the iron bands on her wrists and ankles were broken, and the chains fell heavily to the floor.
Maggie straightened up, painfully, rubbing her wrists which had been chafed raw by her writhing movements on the point of the guard's gun. She stared disbelievingly at the broken shards of steel on the floor, the remnants of the manacles that had held her so tightly.
Then, Remo had her by the elbow and said, "Come. Nemeroff is waiting for us."
She followed Remo and Chiun out of the cell, then stopped, and went back in. The guard's gun lay at his fingertips. It was a .45 automatic. She picked it up.
"I may need this," she said to Remo.
"Don't get in our way. It'll be safer."
"For whom, Mr. Kenny?" she asked.
"For all of us. And I'm not Mr. Kenny."
They moved quickly up the stairs leading to the main floor, Chiun leading the way. By the time Remo and Maggie had reached the first floor, Chiun was pressing th
e secret button for the elevator. Remo asked him: "How did you find that?"
"It gives off vibrations. One must listen for them."
"I didn't hear a thing," Remo said.
"Of course not. The perpetually open mouth impedes the efficiency of the sometimes-opened ear," Chiun said and led them into the elevator.
Remo pressed the button marked V.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Every seat at Baron Nemeroff's conference table had been filled.
From all over the world they had come, white men, black men, yellow men. They wore the costumes of their native countries: dashikis from Africa, cotton suits from Asia, dark blue mohair from the United States.
Among them, the thirty-odd men present had accounted for thousands of deaths on a one-by-one basis; they had sent thousands of girls to the brothels; through them, tens of thousands of adults and children had fallen prey to the perils of the needle.
They thought of themselves as indispensable businessmen in an indispensable business. And across all the lines of all their businesses ran the influence of Baron Isaac Nemeroff and when he called, they all came.
Now they all listened.
Overhead, the helicopters flew with their slow flapping sound, occasionally shrouding the room in a flash of shadow as one passed over the multi-coloured, glass dome set over the conference table.
Angelo Fabio, the biggest man in the United States was toying with a pencil between his fingertips. Nemeroff's idea seemed to make good sense to him. Occasionally, he would look up and his eyes would meet those of Fiavorante
Pubescio who had come from California or Pietro Scubisci who had come from New York, wearing his dirty suit and carrying his omnipresent bag of peppers. He would nod and they would nod in agreement.
Still something nagged at Fabio; he wished he could pinpoint it.
Nemeroff stood at the head of the table, towering over the seated men, his blotchy face flushed with excitement as he spoke to them.
"Consider, gentlemen. Our own nation. Under crime's flag. Where no laws will be enforced that we do not want enforced. Where poppies will grow freely in the fields. Where hunted men from anywhere on the face of the earth can find shelter and refuge."
He looked around the table, from man to man, to murmurs of approvals. One man spoke. He was short and thin; his skin was yellow; his white suit was wrinkle-free; but Dong Hee, crime's undisputed king in the Far East, ran a finger down the crease in his sleeve as he spoke:
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