Oil Slick

by Warren Murphy

  “You know,” Remo said, “that scar on your face is really striking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But it lacks symmetry.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. It needs to be part of a pair.” With that, Remo’s left hand flicked out. His fingers barely seemed to graze the officer’s face. It was only after Remo had vanished into the crowd that General Ali Amin realized he soon would have a matching pair of scars.

  Remo stopped at a juice stand and ordered carrot juice. He could not go back without having delivered the message. Chiun would go berserk. On the other hand, if he stormed Baraka’s palace as seemed to be necessary, Smith would go berserk.

  As he was wrestling with the problem, he saw a familiar face.

  Jessie Jenkins, her afro a black halo around her head, was being marched along with two other girls that Remo had been on the plane, guarded by a group of four Lobynian soldiers,

  “Hey, Jessie,” Remo called.

  She turned around and smiled. The caravan stopped. The soldiers looked impatiently at the approaching American.

  “Where are you going?” asked Remo.

  “We’re being marched from our compound over there”—she pointed behind the Revolutionary Triumph Building—“to dinner with Colonel Baraka. An invitation.”

  “Invitation?” Remo said. “At the point of a gun?”

  “It seems to be the way they do things around here,” Jessie said.

  “All right, enough talks,” said one of the soldiers.

  “Hold your camels,” Remo said. “The lady’s busy.”

  “That is no concern of mine. Let us be off,” the soldier said.

  Remo explained carefully to the soldier that haste makes waste, and then hastily proceeded to waste the soldier’s right shoulder which convinced him that they could wait a few moments more.

  Remo pulled Jessie aside. “You know we’re in the same business?” he said.

  “I’m a student,” she protested weakly.

  “I know. So am I. I’m majoring in foreign governments and threats against the United States. Can you deliver this to Baraka for me?”

  She looked at the rolled parchment. “I can try,” she said. She took the rolled paper and with her back turned to the soldier, slipped it into her white nylon blouse.

  “If you need me, call me,” Remo said. “Room 315, Lobynian Arms.”

  She nodded, turned and rejoined the group to continue the march to the palace. Remo watched them go, admiring the posterior of Jessie Jenkins and feeling pleased with himself. Message delivered and no one dead. Excellent. Chiun would be proud of him.

  However, Chiun was not proud of him.

  “You mean you did not deliver my missive personally to Colonel Baraka?”

  “Well…I gave it to someone to give to him.”

  “Ahhh, this someone. You saw this someone give it to Colonel Baraka?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly.”

  “I see. You did not exactly see this someone give the letter to Colonel Baraka. Which means that you did not see the letter given to Colonel Baraka at all.”

  “You might say that.”

  “In other words, you have failed again. I send you out on a simple mission, to deliver a letter, and you come back and tell me well, maybe, but not exactly, and you might say that, and on the one hand this and on the other hand that, but all it means is that you have not delivered my letter.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  Chiun shook his head. “It is too late for that. If I had it my own way, the letter would have been delivered to Colonel Baraka. To no one else. Ah well, what can one expect when he must do everything himself? No one tells me anything and no one helps me do anything.”

  “You’re making a lot out of nothing,” said Remo. “Baraka’ll get the letter. Wait and see. He’ll answer it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BUT COLONEL BARAKA DID NOT ANSWER the message, neither that night nor the next morning.

  This was not because he had not received the message. As a matter of fact, Jessie Jenkins had placed it personally in Baraka’s hand as she and the other two girls sat with him at a small dinner table in an opulent room in the palace, a room whose walls were finished in linen and around the bases of which were pillows, mats, and cushions of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

  Jessie had not read the missive, but she wished she had when she saw the reaction it drew from Baraka when he carefully removed the red tie and read it.

  The blood seemed to drain from his face. He blotted his face hastily with a napkin, stood up, excused himself from the table, and left the room through a side door.

  Baraka went through another door that led into a private corridor of the palace. He walked down the corridor, finally stopping outside a heavy walnut door. He knocked softly.

  “Enter,” came a thin squeaky voice.

  Baraka entered the room. Nuihc sat at a desk, reading the topmost of a stack of newspapers and news magazines.

  He turned to look at Baraka.

  “What requires an intrusion?” he asked.

  “This,” Baraka said, holding forth the rolled parchment. “It just came.”

  Nuihc took it and read it quickly. A small thin smile flashed briefly across his face.

  He rolled it back up and handed it back to Baraka.

  “What should I do about it?”

  “Nothing,” Nuihc said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “What is it, this Master of Sinanju?” Baraka asked.

  “He is the man of the legend, come to reclaim the throne of Lobynia for King Adras.”

  “An assassin?”

  Nuihc smiled again. “Not as you know assassins. You are used to dealing with men with guns. With bombs. With knives. But this Master of Sinanju is like no man you have ever seen before. He is himself guns and bombs and knives. Your assassins are like breezes. The Master is a typhoon.”

  “But then should I not move against him? Place him under arrest?”

  “How many more commandos do you have that are expendable?” Nuihc asked. “For I tell you, you could turn loose all the armies of this godforsaken land, and when they were done, they would still not have touched the robe of the Master.” He shook his head comfortingly. “There is only one thing that can save you from that typhoon. That is another typhoon. I am he.”

  Confused, Baraka began to speak. He was cut off by Nuihc.

  “Do nothing. The Master will seek to make contact with you again. Soon, I will be ready to move against him. Leave it to me.”

  Baraka listened. He had no choice. He nodded, moved toward the door, but with his hand on the knob, he turned. “This Master of Sinanju? Do you think I will ever see him?”

  “You have seen him,” Nuihc said.

  “I have? Who?”

  “The old man during the funeral ceremony. That was he,” Nuihc said.

  Baraka almost permitted himself a laugh, then swallowed it. There was no humor in Nuihc’s voice. He had not been joking. And if Nuihc regarded that ninety-pound, aged wraith as dangerous, well, then, Baraka would not quarrel with that judgment.

  He nodded and returned to his dinner table, but the pleasure had gone from the prospects of the evening’s seduction. His mind kept returning to the two men he had seen during the funeral ceremony. The aged Oriental and the young American. They were something special. This he knew.

  “Who gave you the letter?” he asked Jessie as he began to bid goodnight to the surprised girls, who had fully expected to have to fight off a horde of lust-crazed Arabs.

  “A man I met on the plane.”

  “Did he have a name, this man?”

  “Yes. His name was…” she hesitated momentarily, knowing the virulent anti-Semitism of the Lobynians. “His name was Remo…Goldberg,” she finally blurted.

  Baraka ignored the surname, which she thought was very odd. “So his name is Remo. Remo,” he repeated.

  The names ran through his mind that night as he lay in his bed. R
emo and the Master of Sinanju. And as he finally drifted into sleep, he saw again the valley leading to the Mountains of the Moon, and remembered the prophecy of “the man from the East who comes from the West.”

  He woke up, sitting upright in his bed, sweat running down his darkly handsome face. He feared now. And he hoped that Nuihc was a great enough typhoon to stand against the aged one.

  It was a strange thing to put one’s faith in a man about whom he knew nothing.

  There was more to faith than that. And he got out of bed and kneeled at its side, facing East, prostrated himself, and began to pray earnestly and fervently to Allah to protect his servant, Muammar Baraka.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “SEE. HE DID NOT GET MY MISSIVE,” said Chiun, promptly at noon the next day.

  “Maybe he got it and decided to ignore it.”

  Chiun looked at him in astonishment.

  “That is absurd. It was a formal communication from the Master of Sinanju. One does not ignore such things.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know who you are. Maybe he never heard of Sinanju.”

  “Why do you persist in that foolishness? Did you not learn when we visited the Loni Tribe that everywhere the name of the Master of Sinanju is known and respected? What more proof do you need?”

  “You’re right, Little Father,” said Remo with a sigh. “The whole world knows about Sinanju. You can’t pick up a paper without reading about it. Baraka just didn’t get the note.” Remo had no desire to argue with Chiun. He was more interested in wondering about Nuihc, where he was and when he would make a move, than in getting involved in one of Chiun’s old blood feuds.

  “I know he did not get the missive,” Chiun said agreeably. “But today he will.” And as Remo sat and watched, Chiun withdrew the ink and the pen and the parchment and laboriously drafted a new letter to Baraka. When he was done, he looked up and said politely, “I will deliver this.”

  “Good for you, Chiun.”

  “If you had a letter to deliver, I would deliver it for you, too.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “I would make sure it got into Colonel Baraka’s hands.”

  “Absolutely,” said Remo.

  “Aha, you say ‘absolutely,’ but you do not believe Chiun. I can tell. Go ahead. Write a letter to Colonel Baraka. Go ahead, write one for me to deliver.”

  “Chiun, I don’t have to. I believe you, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You say that now, but the question will always remain in your head. Would Chiun really have delivered my letter? Go ahead, write a letter. I will wait.”

  And because there seemed to be nothing else to do, Remo took a piece of paper and wrote out quickly:

  Colonel Baraka

  I have discovered an inexpensive substitute for oil. If you are interested in talking to me before I talk to the Western powers, you can contact me in Room 315 at the Lobynian Arms, assuming the hotel does not fall down before your message gets here.

  Remo Goldberg

  “There, Chiun,” said Remo folding the note neatly. “Deliver that.”

  “I will. I will put it in no one’s hands but Baraka’s.”

  “You can try,” said Remo grudgingly.

  “Ahhh, no. You try. I do. That is the difference between being the Master of Sinanju and being…”

  “…a pale piece of pig’s ear,” Remo wearily concluded the sentence.

  “Correct,” said Chiun.

  Minutes later, Chiun left the hotel room. Remo walked downstairs with him because the room was driving him stir crazy and he decided that better than sitting in the room would be sitting in one of the lobby’s two chairs, because while the lobby was as ugly as the room, it was bigger. The other lobby chair was filled with the ample, suety, sweating bulk of Clayton Clogg. Clogg saw Remo ease into the chair next to him, and he nodded, as slightly as was possible, to acknowledge Remo’s existence.

  Remo watched Clogg sweat. So that was Smith’s idea of the man behind the killings of the American scientists. Of course, Remo knew what Smith didn’t—that Nuihc had masterminded the killings. But had he used Clogg as an instrument? Or Baraka?

  “When are you going to make an offer for my oil substitute?”

  “Why would I be interested,” said Clogg, looking up from a week-old Times, his porcine nostrils quivering as if they had just been jammed full of bad smell.

  “You don’t seem to understand, Clogg. In six months, plants can be busy turning out my substitute, probably as much as 10 percent of the total oil needs of the country. In a year, it’ll be 50 percent. Give me eighteen months, and we’ll have the technology for towns to build oil-making plants of their own. It’ll solve the solid waste problem. No more cities buying gas for their fleets of cars from the oil companies. They’ll make their own. And Oxonoco will be looking down the barrel of a gun. A gun loaded with garbage. You’ll be lucky to keep a fried chicken franchise.”

  Clogg watched Remo shrewdly. His nostrils flared.

  “You are serious, aren’t you, Mr…er, Goldberg?”

  “Of course, I’m serious. I’ve spent the best years of my life working on this project.”

  “I just don’t seem ever to have heard of you in the area of oil research,” Clogg said.

  “I’ve been in affiliated fields,” said Remo. “The oil discovery was just a happy accident. Actually, I’ve been dealing in garbage for the last ten years.”

  “Where have you worked?”

  Remo had known the question would be coming. Smoothly, he answered “Universal Wasting,” giving the name of a company that he knew CURE manipulated. He saw Clogg make a mental note of it.

  “If you had such a thing, Mr. Goldberg, we might well be interested in making you an offer.”

  “Straight cash or a percentage of sales?” asked Remo.

  “I don’t think you’d find a percentage of sales very profitable,” Clogg said greasily.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Obviously we could not put such a new development into the market before it had been fully tested. It might be years before it could meet our rigorous standards of quality.”

  “In other words,” said Remo, “it would be buried and forgotten. Like the carburetor that can triple a car’s gas mileage.”

  “That carburetor is a myth. There is no such thing.”

  “How much cash for an oil substitute?” asked Remo.

  “The concept is so unique that a price in six figures might not be out of range. Of course, that’s probably not so much when you share it with your fellow researchers.”

  “No way,” said Remo. “There are no fellow researchers and the whole thing is filed up here.” He tapped his head. “I wouldn’t trust anybody else with my secret.”

  “That is intelligent of you. There are unscrupulous people in this world.”

  “That there are.”

  “Universal Wasting, you say.”

  “That’s right.”

  Then Clogg was silent again. Remo soon tired of looking up his nostrils and retreated back to his room for his afternoon phone call.

  He asked Smith to phony up a cover story for one Remo Goldberg, finally admitting that he was one and the same.

  “I wish you had told me yesterday,” Smith sniffed.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasted a lot of time and money trying to track down an oil researcher named Goldberg.”

  “I can’t do anything about the time, but you can take the money out of Chiun’s next gold shipment to Sinanju.”

  “Be sure to tell him it was your idea,” said Smith, in what Remo could swear was his first attempt at humor. Ever.

  “One other thing,” said Remo. “I don’t know anything about international politics, but it might be a good idea if King Adras were ready in the wings, waiting to return to his throne.”

  “Why?” asked Smith excitedly. “Has something happened to Baraka? Is there…?”

  “No,” Remo interrupted. “But he might get something
in the mail that doesn’t sit well.”

  However such concern about Chiun was unnecessary, Chiun himself told Remo that afternoon.

  There had been nothing complicated about it, he told Remo. He had simply gone to the front door of the palace, explained who he was, and in no time at all had been ushered in to see Colonel Baraka. Colonel Baraka had been kind and polite and had treated Chiun with the utmost respect and deference.

  “Did he promise to abdicate?”

  “He asked for time to consider the prospect. Of course, I granted him an extension until the weekend.”

  “And you had no trouble getting in to see him?”

  “None at all. Why should I? And I delivered your worthless letter, too.”

  And Chiun stuck to this story, even later when, on the radio which passed for entertainment in Lobynia, there were frenzied news accounts of chaos and violence at the presidential palace. Apparently a group of Orientals, as many as one hundred in number, had assaulted the palace in broad daylight, disabling twenty-seven soldiers. They had been foiled in their attempt to kill Colonel Baraka by his undaunted courage in facing down his attackers.

  “Hear that?” Remo asked Chiun.

  “Yes. I wish I had been there to see it. It sounds very exciting.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “What else is there?”

  Remo bowed in the face of inexorable logic and let the subject drop.

  It was still in the mind of Colonel Baraka, however. Nothing else had been in his mind since the aged Oriental had demolished the palace guard and torn open Baraka’s bolted door as if it had been made of paper.

  His hand still shook when he thought of the diminutive old man who presented him with written demands. He counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life. As soon as he was sure the old man had left, he brought both letters to Nuihc’s room.

  “They’ve invaded my palace. What can I do?”

  “You can stop chattering as a child,” Nuihc said. “Forget the notes. The time has almost come for me to deal with these two.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE THIRD WORLD INTERNATIONAL Youth Conference opened bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and noisy at 9:00 a.m. the next morning. Three hundred and fifty delegates from all over the world assembled in the Revolutionary Triumph Building to condemn the United States and Israel for murder and savagery, of which they were not guilty, and to praise the Arabs for murder and savagery, of which they were guilty, but which were now labeled heroism and daring.