Remo leaned away from the grabbing arms of the man. As the grasping hands found only empty air where a neck had been an instant before, Remo was already moving in past the extended right arm.
Behind the big man now, his hands flashed up, whipping the headdress down from atop the man's head. It slipped perfectly down around his throat. Tug, twist.
The Arab was trying to get his bearings. Remo was no longer in front of him. And there was a sudden, terrible pressure at his throat. The man's eyes bugged open as he realized what had happened. As he struggled to remove the strangling cloth from around his neck, the other men dived forward to assist.
Remo dodged the other three, spinning the big man in place, to use the bulk of the large body as a barrier between himself and the three other Arabs. He bounced them away with his living shield.
"Remo no play now," Remo called apologetically from behind the meaty mountain of Arab. "He very busy."
The giant gulped at empty air. Quivering fingers tore at the cloth, to no avail. Failing to loose the cloth, he reached back over his shoulders for Remo, grabbing at anything. Everywhere his hands snatched, Remo was not.
The Arab's leathery face went white, then blue. When the last of the oxygen in the huge man's lungs finally gave out, he slumped forward. Remo dropped the body to the floor.
"That's what you get when you mess with studio security."
With a sudden clear shot at Remo, the others hesitated.
They looked at the unconscious body of their comrade.
They looked back up at the thin white American smiling placidly at them.
And they reached the same conclusion at the same time.
The three men ran from the reception area as if it were on fire. Their frantically flapping robes looked like the bedroom laundry left out in a monsoon. The doors swung shut on the white California sunlight.
Remo stepped over the sleeping giant and up to the reception desk.
The receptionist had pushed her chair back to her accustomed spot behind the desk. The young woman took a deep breath, patting down her perfect blond hair as she did so.
"You okay?" Remo asked, concerned.
She shook her head, startled by the question. "What, that?" she asked. "Oh, I'm fine. I'm used to aggressive men." She finished fussing with her hair. "After all I've worked here for two years. These friends of the new owner are just a touch more aggressive than, say, your average action-film star."
"Aggressive?" Remo asked, astonished. "Where I come from that'd be considered attempted rape."
The woman winced. "That's a strong word. Don't you remember the claims of anti-Arabism when True Lies came out? I don't want to be accused of negative stereotyping."
"What, assault isn't assault unless it comes from a white European male?" Remo said in disbelief.
"That's right," she replied simply. There wasn't a hint of irony in her voice.
She had finally gathered her wits about her. After another deep, cleansing breath she turned her attention to the man who had saved her from certain physical violence.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Remo said uncertainly.
"Perfectly," she insisted with an efficient smile.
"All right," Remo surrendered. He would never figure out Hollywood. "I want to see whoever runs this asylum."
Her eyes narrowed in instant suspicion.
"Do you have an appointment?" the woman asked.
"WHAT ABOUT ARNOLD?" Hank Bindle asked his partner.
"Already locked up for the next year," Bruce Marmelstein said. "Besides, the bloom is off the rose on his box-office appeal." He shook his head, annoyed.
"Keaton?"
"Has-been."
"Willis?"
"Never was."
"Hoffman?"
"Puh-lease," Marmelstein scoffed. "We want this movie to make money."
Hank Bindle leaned back in his chair. He slapped the cold surface of his desk in frustration.
"Just our luck," he complained. "We've got a budget that can afford Hanks, Cruise and Carrey and we can't get one of them."
"It's this insane production schedule," Marmelstein griped. "We start in less than two days. Most of the real stars are locked up with next summer's projects already."
"Oh, gawd," Hank Bindle cried, placing his face in his penitent hands. Matching pinkie rings touched either side of his expertly sculpted tan nose. "Three hundred mil and we're going to wind up with PeeWee Herman and Soupy Sales."
It was during this-the closest thing to a prayer Hank Bindle had offered up in his entire adult life-that Ian suddenly buzzed in.
"There's someone here to see you."
Their secretary's voice sounded odd. Almost dreamy.
Hank Bindle raised his face from his perfumed hands. His partner was looking at him, confused. Since the budget story had been leaked to Variety there had been a vast number of people trying to get in to see the studio executives. However they weren't scheduled to meet with anyone until later that afternoon.
Neither man had a chance to ask who their visitor was. All at once Ian hustled into the room, his normally pale face flushed red. He carried the same chrome chair he had brought with him before. But instead of Mr. Koala, he was followed this time by a thin young man who would have had to dress up to gain admittance to the Viper Room. The stranger wore a white T-shirt and tan chinos and walked with a quiet, confident glide that caused sparks not on the carpeting, but in Ian's longing eyes.
Ian slid the chair efficiently into its usual spot.
Without a word as to the identity of the man he had ushered in to the Taurus inner sanctum, Ian backed out of the room. His eyes never left Remo's lean frame, even as the door slid shut behind him. On the other side of the entrance, his breath formed clouds of steam on the glass.
"You people have cornered the market on ditzy secretaries," Remo commented to the studio heads. He avoided the seat, choosing instead to stand before the pair of soulless glass-and-chrome desks.
"And you are?" Bruce Marmelstein asked leadingly. His tone was frosty.
"Annoyed," Remo replied. "Where's Assola? Or Koala, according to your secretary. Or whatever the hell name he's going by today."
"Do you mean Mr. Albert Koala?" Hank Bindle asked icily.
"I thought the 'Al' was for 'Alvin,'" Bindle said to his partner.
Remo was looking at the two studio executives, a confused expression creeping across his features. It took him a moment to place them, but it suddenly came back to him.
Years before, while en route to a backup system in St. Martin, the files of CURE had been accidentally rerouted during a freak storm over the Atlantic, winding up in the computer of a Hollywood screenwriter. Without knowing what the information truly meant, the writer had fashioned into a screenplay some of the exploits of Remo and Chiun contained in the files. He had pitched the idea to a pair of producers who were as blind to the true nature of the files as the writer. Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein.
Remo had been on assignment at the time, and so it was up to Harold Smith to deal with the producers and the writer. Remo had met them only briefly when he had accompanied Smith to L.A. to retrieve both the computer information and the various screenplays the writer had left with the producers.
Apparently since that long-ago visit these two men had risen above their position as lowly producers. They were now in charge of an entire studio. With what little he knew of the pair, Remo was glad he didn't own stock in Taurus.
"Yes, well," Hank Bindle droned slowly, "in spite of what Ian might have led you to believe, we are not in the habit of passing out the locations of our business associates. Now if you don't mind, we are very deeply involved at the moment in the creative process."
"Yeah," Remo said with a nod. "Your megaflop."
"I'm calling security," Bruce Marmelstein snipped. He reached for his slender high-tech phone.
"You might want to reconsider that decision," Remo said, stepping over to the desk of the business arm of Taurus Stud
ios.
Marmelstein was hooking the wire to his radiotelephone around his head. He wiggled the mouthpiece in front of his overly-glossed lips.
"Give me one good reason why," Marmelstein said crisply.
"I'll give you two."
Remo held up two stiff fingers in the traditional Cub Scout salute. With a sweep of his arm, made deliberately slow so that the two men would not miss a thing, he brought his fingers down hard against the edge of Bruce Marmelstein's desk.
A loud, rattling crack filled the room, as from ice settling on a winter pond on a still night.
A perfectly straight fissure moved inexorably from the impact point of Remo's fingers across the surface of the wide desk. When it reached Bruce Marmelstein's corseted belly, the desk simply split in half. The two heavy sections flopped outward, thundering to their chrome sides. When they struck the carpet, the perfect halves of glass shattered into a million pieces each, raining down onto the chrome sections of desk like ice crystals dropped into the frigid office air.
Marmelstein was left sitting before empty space, the radiophone still hooked around his greasy, dyed-black hair.
"I think he's at L.A. Harbor," Hank Bindle offered without missing a beat.
"Definitely," Bruce Marmelstein said. "Say, while I've got the phone, would you like coffee? Bagel? Croissant?"
"I'm all set," Remo said. "Thanks."
He turned and left the office. Ian had to jump to avoid being struck in the face by the thick glass door.
After he was gone, Hank Bindle smirked at Bruce Marmelstein's broken desk. Just then the tanks in the parking lot behind him resumed their maneuvers. His own desk began its persistent glassy rattle.
"You know, three hundred million is a lot of cash," Bindle offered, nodding absently to his desk. Marmelstein looked from the rattling, intact desk of his partner to the shattered remains of his own. "New desks?" he asked, suddenly happy.
"New desks," Bindle affirmed.
Chapter 6
The Air Force 727 climbed steadily into the warm Italian sky after pulling away from the gummy tarmac of Ciampino Airport outside of Rome.
The moment she was settled on board, United States Secretary of State Helena Eckert treated herself to a long, well-earned nap. She had spent three days in the American Embassy at Via Veneto. Three long days awaiting a mere forty-five-minute audience at St. Peter's Basilica with the ailing Pope. It was a meeting that the beleaguered U.S. administration had insisted was politically prudent considering the health of the pontiff.
All things considered, the Pope had looked fine. A little weary, perhaps, but not particularly ill. The secretary of state viewed the time she'd spent in Italy completely wasted. And she had no intention of similarly wasting her time on board the plane. Before the plane had even leveled off for its flight across the Mediterranean, she was asleep. The sound of the secretary's snoring could be heard by the flight crew all the way up in the cockpit.
Lately Helena Eckert took her naps when she could. It was only recently that the nightmares had stopped. About a year ago she and two other highranking diplomats attached to the United Nations had been kidnapped. She and the British ambassador to the UN had come through the ordeal in one piece. The late Russian ambassador had not been so lucky.
While in the clutches of their crazed abductors, the three diplomats had been subjected to bizarre scientific experimentation that had enhanced their physical abilities to incredible extremes. After her liberation, Helena had been forced to undergo a reversal of the process-otherwise, she had been bluntly assured, she would die.
Afterward, she reverted to her normal physical self-a schlumpy sixtyish matron with an ample bottom, a short fuse and an inability to climb more than two stairs without getting winded. And she had trouble sleeping. Fortunately that aftereffect of her ordeal seemed to be waning of late. On her plane ride over the Mediterranean, she slept like Rip van Winkle on NyQuill.
Unfortunately the restful slumber didn't last long. Helena was awakened by an aide after what seemed like only a few minutes.
"What is it?" she snorted, blinking the sleep from her saggy, mascara-smeared eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, ma'am," her efficient male aide said. "We're ready to land."
Tasting the film on the roof of her mouth, the secretary of state looked out the small window next to her seat. She was startled to see that the plane was indeed on its final approach. The green-and-brown tinged ground of Italy had been replaced by an endless wash of beige.
Rising wearily from her seat, the secretary of state gathered up her handbag wherein resided her omnipresent supply of makeup.
Helena Eckert hurried to the rest room. She had only a few minutes to compose herself before her plane would touch down in the capital of Akkadad in the Khalamite Kingdom of Ebla.
THE CAR RIDE from the airport to the Great Sultan's Palace was odd. Yes, that was how the secretary of state would have characterized it. Distinctly odd. In fact, if not for the good relations Ebla enjoyed with the U.S., Helena would almost judge the atmosphere as tense.
She knew her driver-an Eblan diplomat she had met twice before-spoke English, but the man offered very little in the way of conversation. He and another Eblan companion sat silent as stones in the front seat. They did not even communicate with one another.
The secretary chalked their silence up to a bad day. After all, everyone was entitled to have one once in a while. Helena herself was working on her second full year of them.
But the mute escorts were not the only odd thing about this trip. The car that had been sent for her was strange, as well. It was not a limousine, as was the norm. A group of nondescript government vehicles had been waiting on the tarmac for the sec retary of state and her entourage. As soon as she'd deplaned, she had been ushered wordlessly into the first car.
Odd. Definitely very odd.
There was one other American in the car with Helena-the young man who had awakened her on the plane. The two of them sat together in the back seat.
The secretary turned to the young diplomat, pitching her voice low. "Hugh, did something happen while I was asleep that I should know about?"
The aide shrugged, shaking his head. "Nothing Washington told us about," he admitted.
There was a worried look lurking in the back of the young man's eyes. He tried to mask it as he looked back over his shoulder. The other cars were still following closely behind the secretary's. He seemed relieved that they were.
As she straightened up, the secretary of state gave the young man a comforting pat on the back of his hand.
"All in a day's work, Hugh," she said with a certain smile. She adjusted her lumpy frame in the car seat.
But behind the studied diplomatic expression, seeds of doubt were beginning to germinate in the mind of America's chief diplomat.
THE RUMORS OF SULTAN OMAY'S resurgent illness had been filtering out of Ebla for some time now. For a moment after leaving her car in the burning sun of Rebellion Square and walking into the main entrance of the Great Sultan's Palace, the secretary of state felt like some sort of morbid diplomatic vulture, swooping down to check for signs of life in heads of state.
She knew that this was a silly thought. These sorts of junkets were necessary. Especially in this region, and especially given the utter lack of anything even remotely resembling a coherent foreign policy in the current administration. It was important to the United States that the sultan reaffirm his commitment to the peace process. Even after all these years as a proved conciliator.
The concerns Helena Eckert had felt in the car vanished the moment she saw the careworn face of Ebla's leader. The famous face was kind, not cruel. The laugh lines beside his eyes had crinkled in joyful appreciation at every meeting they'd had since Helena assumed her post. In the touchy-feely brand of diplomacy she trafficked in, the secretary of state would even go so far as to term the man a friend.
But her friend was gravely ill. There was no doubt about it. The thought that it
might be a resurgence of the cancer that the Eblan leader had so valiantly battled years before filled Helena's heart with pity. And a dying ruler would certainly explain the unusually taciturn manner of her driver.
The secretary wore an appropriate bland-bordering-on-concerned expression as she mounted the purple-carpeted staircase to the second-floor landing of the palace. Sultan Omay met the American delegation at the head of the stairs.
The Eblan leader's smiling face did not smile today. Helena did for him.
"Sultan Omay," the secretary of state said, stopping beneath the high marble arches at the top of the long staircase. "It is my pleasure to renew our friendship."
The secretary of state bowed slightly and offered a hand to Omay.
So frail he looked as if a desert breeze might topple him down the staircase, the sultan of Ebla dropped his eyes to the extended hand. He left it empty. Omay raised his eyes to the secretary of state's. The sickly white tip of the sultan's tongue appeared between his parched lips.
A phlegmy wet sound issued from the mouth of the sultan of Ebla. To the shock and horror of all the assembled American diplomats, it was followed by the expulsion of a single ball of viscous saliva.
Sultan Omay's spit slapped into the jowly face and neck of America's first female secretary of state. "What on earth!"
Helena instantly lost her diplomatic poise. She recoiled from the foreign ruler, grabbing instinctively at the handkerchief she always kept tucked inside the sleeve of her light designer blouse.
The response of the secretary of state to Sultan Omay's unexpected attack brought an even more unexpected reaction. As she reached for her silk hankie, every door in the palace seemed to burst open at once. Armed Eblan soldiers poured out into the hallway. They were shouting and waving Russian-made weapons. More swarmed menacingly up from the bottom of the staircase.
The tension level they'd experienced in the car soared through the roof as the secretary's entourage wheeled. Heads whipped back and forth in terror. Guns jammed ribs. Hands rose into the air.
It seemed as if the entire Ebla Arab Army had been dispatched to subdue the small group of unarmed diplomats.
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