Remo decided to rephrase the question and there must have been something in the manner of his voice because he got an immediate response. Laurence Butler Lippincott was at the headquarters of the International Bank of New York City, 88th floor, the Lippincott Suite.
He appeared promptly each morning at 11:30 a.m. and worked through till 4:30 p.m. Non-stop. He was the responsible Lippincott. Remo released the man’s neck again.
“No one gives Mr. Lippincott orders,” said the briefcase man. “Maybe you stopped me, but there’ll be more. No one can stand up against vast money. No one. Not governments. Not you. No one. All you can do is serve and hope you’ll be rewarded.”
“You will personally see your vast money in little soggy lumps,” Remo said.
“Have you learned nothing?” shrieked Chiun. “Boasting? A boast is more fatal than a rushed stroke. A boast is a gift to an enemy. Have you learned nothing?”
“We’ll see,” said Remo. “Do you want to come along?”
“No,” said Chiun. “A boast is bad enough but a successful boast is worse because it encourages other boasts, and they surely will cost in price. Nothing in this world is without payment.”
Payment was a good word and Remo thought about it as the briefcase man drove him to New York City. Every so often, the two bodyguards would wake up and Remo would put them back to sleep. This went on until the Taconic Parkway when the two men finally got the general idea that they were no longer expected to overpower Remo.
Laurence Butler Lippincott did not have his offices in the huge tower his banks were famous for financing. They were instead in a tall, aluminum, looming building just off Wall Street, a narrow side street made wider by a large open entranceway with modern sculpture, which the briefcase man told Remo cost the Lippincotts more than two million in lost office space. Most people were amazed that Lippincott had spent $70,000 for the sculpture, but never considered that it cost so much more just to give it space. If Remo would think about reality, he too would appreciate what working for Lippincott meant. Remo did not appreciate reality.
He pushed the two bodyguards and the briefcase man ahead of him and managed to compress them all in a revolving door with the breaking of only one bone, the briefcase man’s left arm which didn’t quite fit. He screamed appropriately.
They had to take two elevators to the Lippincott floor. The first went only up to the 60th floor where three guards and a manager questioned Remo and his party.
Remo was polite and he was honest. He told the three guards and the manager that he was going to see Mr. Lippincott and would be delighted if they would accompany him. This, three of them did, with happy hearts. They were happy because they were not the fourth man who lay on the carpeting of the sixtieth floor foyer with his ribs and nose broken. The happy throng burst out into the 88th floor with exuberance, two guards going across the magnificent mahogany desk of Lippincott’s private secretary, driving her back into a Picasso original. The office was like an art gallery, except that few galleries could afford this collection of Picassos, Matisses, Renoirs and Chagalls. Remo grabbed a blue picture with many dots off the wall and led his group to see Mr. Lippincott himself. A guard protested, so Remo left him behind—with his head in a bookcase.
The office of Laurence Butler Lippincott had no door. None was needed, Remo realized. The door was really back down at the 60th floor.
Lippincott looked up from a typewritten page he was reading. He was a graying elderly man, with taut skin and the placid confidence of the very rich in his face.
“Yes?” he said, apparently undisturbed by the commotion.
“My name is Remo and I say no.”
“Mr. Lippincott,” the briefcase man tried to explain while clinging to a splintered arm, but he did not have a chance to finish because he was flying over his employer’s head. Lippincott scarcely noticed.
“Really, Mr. Mueller, must you? The man is injured.”
So Remo threw the sixtieth-floor manager at Lippincott.
“If something is on your mind, say it,” said Lippincott. “No need to hurt innocent people.”
Remo placed one of the bodyguards on Lippincott’s desk, which surprisingly looked very ordinary, right down to the pictures of family. Remo knocked the air out of the bodyguard. Lippincott merely removed the typewritten sheet from beneath him.
Remo placed the second bodyguard, who had suddenly tried to break for the door, on top of the first. He too suddenly lost his breath.
“You’re trying to tell me something,” Lippincott suggested.
“Yes,” said Remo.
“You’re trying to tell me that all my employees and all my money won’t do me any good with you.”
“Yes,” said Remo.
“Are you also threatening me with physical violence if I should attempt to send others?”
“Yes,” said Remo.
“Sounds reasonable,” said Lippincott. “Would you care for something to drink?”
“No thanks,” said Remo.
“Cigar?”
“No thanks,” said Remo.
“A fifteenth of Venezuela?”
“No thanks,” said Remo.
“Is there anything I can give you?”
“Leave me alone.”
“You’re sure we can’t make some sort of deal?”
“Right.”
“That sounds impossible,” Lippincott said. “Everyone wants something. What do you want?”
“None of your business.”
“Sounds reasonable although I don’t understand it. If you should ever want anything of me, please let me know because I want your help and somehow I think I’ll figure out a way to get it.”
Remo heard a scream from outside and he saw Lippincott switch on an intercom.
“It’s all right, Miss Watkins. No cause for alarm.”
“There’s a madman in your office, Mr. Lippincott.”
“It’s all right. First clear-talking man I’ve met since grandfather died.”
“I’ll get the police.”
“Nonsense. Get a doctor. We have wounded men in here. We don’t need the police.” He switched off the intercom. “A pleasure meeting you, Mr. Mueller.”
“Same here,” said Remo.
“If only these clowns knew how to talk to people. That’s the trouble with having so much money. Everybody thinks they know what you want and they don’t bother to find out what you really want. They do all sorts of horrid things in your name. I take it you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” said Remo.
“You weren’t going to destroy that Seurat, were you?”
“I was,” said Remo, returning the painting with dots.
“To prove that money meant nothing to you, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Remo.
“I’ll buy it back.”
“No need,” said Remo. “It wasn’t mine to begin with,” and he left Lippincott’s office feeling that if only people made their positions clear, half the problems in the world could be solved by reasonable men, reasoning together.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN REMO RETURNED TO the Berkshires, Upstairs had left a message. Chiun, who did not follow telephone codes, recognized the words “Aunt Mildred.”
“Aunt Mildred what, Chiun?” asked Remo.
“Aunt Mildred. I do not play your little word games. If Dr. Smith wishes to see you, why doesn’t he just say, ‘I wish to see you?’ Instead, Aunt Mildred is very sorry she cannot come or Aunt Mildred will have dinner ready or Aunt Mildred will refurnish the blue room.”
“Do you remember which one?”’
“I do not,” said Chiun imperiously, as if Remo had overstepped his bounds by asking.
“I only ask because one of the things you mentioned means we should run for our lives and another means that every thing is hunky dory.”
“Running for one’s life is the surest way to lose it.”
“That’s not the point, Chiun. It’s that they mean different th
ings.”
“They mean nothing to me.”
“But they mean something to me.”
“Then you should be here to answer the telephone instead of fulfilling boasts,” answered Chiun, thus closing the conversation to his satisfaction.
Remo waited until early dawn for the phone to ring again, but it did not, and he was about to nap when he heard a car pull up to the driveway. Just by the slow, careful and neat way it parked, by the careful opening of the door so as not to wear the hinges unduly, Remo knew that it was Upstairs, Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of CURE. The message must have been Aunt Mildred will have dinner ready. That meant stay where you are. Will contact in person.
“I see Chiun got the message correct,” said Smith, not bothering to thank Remo for opening the door or even acknowledging his greeting. “You really shouldn’t complain that he can’t relay codes. He did very well this time. You’re here.”
Smith wore a dark suit and a white shirt and striped tie. With the crispness of a mail clerk he walked onto the sun porch. The sun was sending little red cracks into the gray early morning sky over Lake Patusick.
“I don’t suppose you have any coffee,” asked Smith.
“Right. We don’t have coffee. Want some cold duck?”
“Alcohol this early?”
“No alcohol. Leftover duck from last night’s dinner.”
“Sounds awful,” Smith said.
“Tastes worse.”
Remo eyed Smith and the small bulge in his left jacket pocket that looked like an overstuffed envelope. He wondered how many people played small unknowing roles in collecting what went into that envelope…a secretary who made an extra income by adding a file in a magazine office that said Remo Mueller was a writer who could be counted on for Africa stories…a banker who a month before had quietly opened a bank account and a line of credit for a man he had never seen, but whose name was Remo Mueller and who came highly recommended by friends. CURE was in that envelope, hundreds of people doing little jobs and not knowing the overall picture.
“I see you’re interested in the envelope. Your tickets to Busati and your passports are in here along with an article under your byline. You should read it. You wrote it.”
“I read it,” said Remo.
“It hasn’t been published yet.”
“Some clown who works for Lippincott showed it to me. They offered to hire me.”
“Excellent. Beyond my fondest hopes. Perfect. We had planned to get you into Busati as a journalist, let the blame fall on the magazine. But working for Lippincott is even better. For the first time, Remo, I see operations proceeding even better than planned, which is unusual for you.”
“I won’t be working for Lippincott,” Remo said. “I sort of explained to him that I couldn’t.”
“You met Laurence Butler Lippincott?” asked Smith, with a tinge of reverence in his voice that Remo resented.
“Yeah. I met Lippincott. I threw a few of his employees at him.”
“You what?”
“I told him I didn’t want to work for him.”
“But he’d make an excellent cover. We need someone to take the heat if you get messy in Busati.”
Remo shrugged.
“You haven’t even been committed yet,” Smith groused, “and you’ve already created your first foul-up.”
“So, don’t commit me,” said Remo and left the sun-porch for the refrigerator where he grabbed the carcass of a cold duck and a bowl of cold rice and, against previous warnings by Chiun, ate even though his mind was not at peace. Smith had followed him into the kitchen.
Remo tore off a greasy drumstick and began to chew the mouthful into liquid. The problem, Smith explained, was not just that James Forsythe Lippincott was missing in the Africa bush. Those things happened. CURE wouldn’t bother to get involved for that, not even for a Lippincott. No, a dangerous pattern was emerging. Very dangerous.
Remo took a little ball of rice between his fingertips and placed it into his mouth. How he would love a hamburger, he thought.
“A pattern that could undermine the American people’s faith in the ability of its government to protect them,” Smith said.
Perhaps if he mixed the rice and duck together in his mouth, thought Remo, it might taste better.
“The basis of any government is the protection it gives its citizens,” Smith said.
Remo tried mixing a sliver of duck with a few grains of rice.
“We don’t have final proof, but we believe that someone is raiding America for slaves.”
Perhaps if Remo washed down the duck and the rice with warm water. Maybe that would improve it.
“In the last year, several wealthy young girls from branches of the Lippincott family have met violent deaths. Or at least we thought they had. But now we have found out that the girls did not really die. In their coffins there were other bodies. We believe someone is somehow smuggling these girls out of the country to Africa, as slaves. Sort of a reverse slavery.”
Remo turned the water faucet on hot and filled a glass. He sipped it and that didn’t help either.
“Reverse slavery?” he asked.
“Yes,” Smith said. “Blacks taking whites.”
“Doesn’t sound reverse to me,” said Remo. “It’s slavery.”
“Correct,” Smith said. “It’s just that historically, whites took blacks.”
“Only an idiot lives in history,” said Remo repeating something Chiun had once told him and which he had never understood.
“Right,” Smith said. “It’s really a rather simple sort of operation. Get into Busati, find out what happened to the missing Lippincott, free the girls, and get out.”
“Why not do it through the government?”
“We can’t,” Smith said. “Our sources indicate that General Obode, the President of Busati, is somehow behind this. If we try to approach him directly, he’ll just kill the girls. No. We’ve got to get them freed first. Then our government can deal with Obode, and he can’t lie his way out.”
“Can I kill Obode?”
Smith shook his head. “Too risky. He’s a nut, but he’s our nut. Killing him might cause us real problems in that part of the world.”
“You say your sources say that Obode’s in it. How good are your sources?” Remo said.
“Impeccable,” Smith said. “CIA type sources.”
“Do your sources know where the girls are?”
“No. All we’ve heard is that there’s a white house with an iron gate in the capital city of Busati.”
“You don’t know though, right?”
“Correct.”
“And you don’t know how the girls are being kidnapped, right?”
“Correct.”
“And you were trying to get me fixed up with Lippincott, but you didn’t tell me you were doing it, right?”
“Right,” said Smith.
Remo returned the duck and the rice to the refrigerator. Nothing would improve its taste.
“You know, Smitty,” he said, “nothing works right in America anymore. Nothing.”
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESIDENT GENERAL DADA “Big Daddy” Obode would see no one that morning. The stars were wrong. Hadn’t a jackal made its way into the palace grounds the night before and howled three times, yet no one saw the jackal? Where was the jackal? This he demanded out loud on the balcony of his sitting room, once the sitting room of the former British governor—whom Big Daddy had served as a sergeant major in Her Majesty’s Kenya Rifles.
“Where is the jackal?” he yelled. And had not the elephants at the Busati Army compound been seen wandering, even before the dry season? Why were they wandering? Who were they looking for? And what of the Minister of Public Safety who had been found nailed to a tree?
General Obode asked these questions of himself and there was no answer. His wise men were not wise, his generals were not courageous, his counselors lacked counsel.
He walked before a large ornate mirror, and looke
d at his massive frame and his thick dark features. A Hausa among Hausa he was.
“Dada, I ask you to search your heart with honesty and truth,” he said to his image in the mirror. “Is it possible that you are the cause of your own problems? Be honest now, because I will brook no deceit, especially from you, you…sergeant major.”
General Obode furrowed his brows and thought. He thought a very long time. He looked at his gold watch. Fifteen seconds. Enough thought. He had the answer.
“It is not your fault, General Obode. You are a good leader. It is the fault of your enemies. Destroy your enemies and you will destroy he who was responsible for the jackal.”
With that he clapped his hands for his clothes, changed his mind and decided he would hold his morning audience. There was a full schedule today. The Ambassador from Libya—that was important because of the money; the representative of the Third World Liberation Organization—that was unimportant because all they did was talk and there were a lot of yellow men. He did not trust yellow men any more than he trusted Indians or white men, at least those white men who were not English officers.
He liked English officers. English officers never bothered anyone, especially during operations when they knew they would muck things up and so left the business in the hands of sergeants major who knew how to get things done. He thought another ten seconds and decided he did not like Arabs either, even though he had been a Moslem from birth.
“Who do you like—honestly, General Obode?” he asked himself.
“I like you, big fella,” he said. “You’re all right.” With that he laughed a booming laugh and laughed, while servants put on his boots and white uniform pants and shirts with the medals and general’s pips on the shoulders.
When he was ready for the day, he called for Colonel William Forsythe Butler, who had been insisting that the general see a magazine writer named Remo Mueller, because Remo Mueller had written a nice story about General Obode and nice stories were rare nowadays.
“Nice story today, bad story tomorrow, to hell with him,” General Obode had told his American-born chief of staff, who had all sorts of mixed blood mucking up his veins and who called himself black. He was a clever one though, this Colonel William Forsythe Butler. A good man to have around. He was not a Hausa, so he would not be jealous of General Obode’s magnificence; he was not a Loni, so he would not hate General Obode for no reason at all. He was, he once had explained, “just an American nigger, but I’m working on that.”
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