Remo The Adventure Begins Page 10

  George Grove would laugh at that. But it was true. When George Grove really wanted to get something done, he stopped playing games with personnel. He became as unemotional as one of his machines. At times like that, Mrs. Marker was indispensable. This was one of those times.

  For a week now, Grove had yet to humiliate anyone. He was too busy, burning up the lines on the special scrambler phones to Wilson five times a day. Wilson, after Mr. Grove himself, was the highest-paid employee of the entire vast network of Grove Industries. Only he had access to the vast sums of unaccountable company cash. Only he had immediate access by untappable line to Mr. Grove. And only Wilson made Mrs. Marker’s skin crawl. Wilson’s eerie lack of feeling for any human being under any circumstances made George Grove’s sadism look like a spiritual gift. Wilson had been in Mr. Grove’s office during an especially vicious humiliation. The secretary knew that grave damage had been done as soon as the top executives began to file out of the room ashen-faced. One of them asked openly, “How much are our inflated salaries worth?” Another bore a glaring red handprint on his cheek.

  Wilson had walked out of Grove’s office nibbling on a doughnut.

  “What happened in there?” asked Mrs. Marker.

  “In where?”

  “Mr. Grove’s office. Who was humiliated?”

  Wilson flicked a hint of a possible crumb off his dark blue designer suit.

  “Oh, I don’t know. George was at it again. It’s his hobby. I think he likes to upset an audience. I wish I could get upset. It would make George happy. But I don’t,” Wilson had said, and then his face suddenly tightened in a frown. It made his very smooth skin look like a collapsed leather bag.

  “Is that a Bonwit Teller suit?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” Mrs. Marker had said.

  “I thought so. Good lines.”

  “I guess I should be grateful that you didn’t tell me what happened in there.”

  “I honestly didn’t notice. Their suits don’t fit, you know. Executives getting paid six figures a year, and none of the suits really fit. Do you know what I mean? Really fit,” Wilson had said.

  But for the last week, in the two times he had come back to the main office, not once had he commented on clothes. And if it were not Wilson, she would have sworn a collar button might have been missing.

  Now Wilson was on the phone again, but this time he wanted Mrs. Marker.

  “Has Mr. Grove seen the personnel report?”

  “He’s been looking at nothing else all week,” said Mrs. Marker.

  “And what does he think?”

  “Wouldn’t he tell you if he wanted you to know?”

  “He would if he weren’t so busy. I am working at a similar problem from another end. Tell him I might have the answer tomorrow.”

  “Very good,” said Mrs. Marker and buzzed Mr. Grove.

  “Mr. Grove,” she said. “Wilson says he will have the answer to your problem tomorrow. Possibly.”

  “The hell he will,” answered Grove. “I have it today.”

  “Do you want me to tell him?”

  “No. I want to tell him.”

  “Very good, Mr. Grove,” said Mrs. Marker.

  The problem of course was the leak to the media. Who had informed the press about the AR-60? Wilson had a working knowledge of weapons and a superior knowledge of finances. He knew that while it might cost a quarter of a million dollars to stem a leak, to retool an entire factory could cost tens of millions. Therefore, one did not foolishly spend ten million dollars on retooling and investing in higher-grade steel when one could simply put in a plug.

  So a soldier was killed. Soldiers were always getting killed. If several thousand had been killed, then that of course would call for a change in the factory itself. But until then, it was absurd for Grove Industries to go running around changing manufacturing policy, when all Wilson had to do was take the Grove jet up to Boston to meet a friend, a columnist who ironically was against the defense establishment, anything to do with American power, and usually anything favorable about an American ally.

  But this columnist worked on the same New York paper that had first reported problems with the AR-60. What Wilson wanted to know was who had informed the press. And to do that he had to know which reporter got the tip, and to find that reporter, he had to ply his Boston source. He did not fly with an envelope of cash, or with a gift of an interest-free mortgage, or even with a promise of influence or promotion. Nor would he use blackmail or an extremely friendly woman adept in his special brand of press relations.

  Robert Tarbush was not someone who could be bought for ordinary things. What one paid to Robert Tarbush was far more subtle.

  Robert Tarbush was a columnist of international reputation who, from his elegant Boston town house, wrote three thunderous columns a week, rubbing readers’ noses in what was wrong with America.

  Robert Tarbush waged moral campaigns around the inequities in the world. He found these inequities only in America’s allies. He pointed out oppressions, until these countries were officially “liberated” by communist forces. Then he would turn to other “oppressed” nations allied to America. One could always tell when Robert Tarbush thought a nation no longer needed his moral watchdogging. One could always tell when one of those countries had been liberated. Their freedom began when their new communist government started to shoot people at the border for trying to escape.

  Wilson’s coin for buying Tarbush was simply to let him know how good a new American weapon was. Then Tarbush could reveal the weapon, the newest “enemy of humanity,” to his readers. Tarbush believed that this employee of an arms manufacturer, the man with only one name, Wilson, believed as he did, secretly. This Wilson accomplished by simply nodding once every minute, and interjecting every so often a sincere “how awful, too awful for words.”

  It did not matter really that Tarbush attacked Grove weapons. Only the people who believed like Tarbush ever read him. And that was very few. But Robert Tarbush never knew that. He never spoke to anyone who didn’t believe as he did, nor did he leave his Boston home.

  Tarbush was therefore at home, deeply engrossed in a television program, when Wilson entered.

  It was a dramatization of a work of fiction about India. The drama was very good. The novelist had added his artistic interpretations to what happened in India during the Second World War, and the screenwriter added his to the script. Then the director added his own to the shooting of the film, so that by the time it was ready for showing, it had no more to do with the reality of India than a cartoon. The difference was that a cartoon never claimed to be truth.

  Wilson had to wait through this program so he watched patiently while a British official, upon hearing of the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima, was stunned by the absolute horror of it all. Somehow, six million people stuffed in ovens hadn’t offended him, nor did the Japanese rape of Nanking. To this British official, the bombing of European cities, which killed many more people than America’s Hiroshima attack, was not a horror. Nor did the bleeding of Britain’s populace during its bloodiest war seem to bother the queen’s own man in India.

  “And I suppose this will be the end of the war,” the British official said on the television screen, reaching for a file folder. Tarbush was nodding at the wisdom of the broadcast. Once again, the only real horror of the war was perpetrated by the Americans, who also managed to end it.

  “And we won’t know the true horror of Hiroshima for twenty years. Terrible business. Horrible. But a magnificent show,” said Tarbush. Wilson nodded.

  “I will write that everyone should watch it. Then they will know what is happening in Nicaragua.”

  “Good idea, Bob.”

  “They will see how wrong we are, and how wrong we’ve been since World War Two.”

  “How true, Bob.”

  “This is as close as you’ll come to seeing the truth on television, you know.” Tarbush gestured toward the television set, now airing live coverage
of a gruesomely unsuccessful public broadcasting fund-raiser. “You’ll never get the truth from the network news, that’s for sure. Really, the things they allow news reports to show.”

  “Awful. Just awful. And I’m afraid I’ve come to talk about another awful thing.”

  “What has America done wrong again?”

  “Well, Bob,” Wilson said to the columnist who was adjusting himself in his easy chair. If Tarbush didn’t move in his chair, Wilson knew, the doctor warned he would get skin lesions from sitting there so long. “We have a problem. Someone with a distorted world view is getting things into your newspaper.”

  “They do that all the time; they embarrass me. I like to think Boston is above that sort of thing.”

  “Well I think someone in the military or our own industry is helping them.”

  “I hear from people who visit that those kind are all over. Though where they are exactly, I don’t know. I am always shocked when decent humanitarian candidates are defeated. Do you know anyone who votes against them?” asked Tarbush. He did not wait for an answer. “Neither do I.”

  “I need the name of your reporter, and the name of the person who gave him that information. Your reporter did not use a byline, but his story was picked up by the networks. Then, of course, the entire nation saw it.”

  “That’s what I was saying before—that’s how lies get started. And then those who don’t know the facts, who don’t know the people we know, will go right out and believe all those lies just because they’re backed up by a picture on the television screen.”

  “So you know why I need your help,” said Wilson.

  “Of course. You want to find out who is spreading those lies. At least now we can do something about it.”

  “I most certainly will,” said Wilson.

  Within fifteen minutes, Wilson had his answer—the reporter was a cub on the military beat.

  The last thing Tarbush said to Wilson before Tarbush began his column on the state of the world was:

  “Why are you wearing a coat?”

  “It’s winter, Robert,” said Wilson.

  “Already? Wasn’t it spring last month?”

  The reporter was a tougher nut. He not only wouldn’t divulge his source, but asked Wilson why he was so interested in the leak. What was wrong with Grove Industries that it should be so concerned? Wilson dismissed the questions. There was nothing wrong with Grove Industries, but considering what Grove meant to America’s defense, Grove had to be concerned with any leak, no matter how harmless or ill-founded. Undaunted, Wilson tried the reporter’s city editor but he couldn’t reach him either.

  George Grove himself called off that operation, though Wilson wanted to continue. He was sure he could work something out with someone at the newspaper, but if worse came to worst, he could use the “other means” Mr. Grove did not like to discuss. Wilson’s reasons were simple and strong:

  “HARP is coming up. Congress is holding hearings on further development. If AR-60 becomes a bigger scandal, then it might spill over to HARP. And the last thing we want is anyone looking into HARP.”

  “And killing a newspaperman might be the fastest way to attract unnecessary attention,” said Grove. He was robust this morning in his vast office with the high Georgian windows overlooking the Grove gardens on the Georgetown estate. “Wilson, I know men. More important, I know our people. I have tested them. I have tested their limits. I have looked over a list of everyone who might know about the AR-60 and have narrowed it down to five people.

  “Of those five, one has made phone calls to that paper. Very cleverly too. He first asked for the advertising department, for Classified. Then he hung up.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When he hung up, somehow his real message began. He works in accounting. His name is Nathan Archer.”

  “Do you want me to get all the details on how he delivered the message? We might be able to use it in the future.”

  “Of course,” said Grove. It was a good day. There was no way they wouldn’t get all the details, and very soon, from Mr. Archer. Wilson, of course, was about to use the “other means.”

  Nathan Archer felt dizzy after his first cup of coffee at the Grove headquarters cafeteria.

  “I don’t know what I ate,” he said. He stood around for a few minutes trying to keep his balance. Then he had to sit down. If he were working at any other company but Grove, he might have been in trouble. But Grove Industries had their own medical facilities near every plant or major office. Some were as small as clinics. Others, as in the Washington headquarters, were lush hospitals.

  Nathan Archer got a private room. By evening he was feeling absolutely fine.

  “Feeling fine? You haven’t felt nearly enough,” said the doctor.

  What did he mean by that? Archer didn’t want to waste time asking.

  “But I am ready to go,” Archer said. “My wife is worried.”

  “We’ll decide when you’re ready to go, Mr. Archer.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” said Archer.

  “Then just one test,” said the doctor. He had incredibly blue eyes and hair so blond it was almost white. A diamond glistened in his front tooth. Nathan Archer never remembered seeing a doctor with a diamond in his tooth.

  “Last one?”

  “Promise,” said the doctor with the ice-blue eyes.

  He helped Nathan buckle straps to his legs and wrists. Then he attached small electrodes to Nathan’s scrotum. Then he shot electrical currents into that most sensitive part of the body.

  “Does that hurt?”

  Nathan could not answer. He was screaming, but no sounds came out. He was screaming into a reinforced gag. The ice-blue eyes smiled.

  “Does this hurt?”

  Nathan Archer almost tore his arms out of their sockets trying to leap from the bed.

  “Now, we can either ask that question or we can ask another question.”

  Nathan tried to speak with his eyes. He tried to say, “Other. Other.” The gag was still in place.

  “All right,” said the man very pleasantly. Back to question number one. “Does this hurt?”

  When the face was red, contorted in pain, and when the body continued to tremble after the electricity had been turned off, the gag was removed.

  “Other,” sobbed Nathan Archer in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  “Good,” said the man in the white jacket. “Now why did you phone the New York newspaper?”

  “I was selling a house I own in Westchester.”

  “Good, and after you spoke with the Classified department whom did you speak to? More important, what did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t speak to anyone.”

  The pain began again. Nathan Archer did not understand the questions that followed, like how he managed to deliver the message after he hung up and what the new device was. He stayed in the hospital all that night, and in the morning he was dead.

  Wilson approached George Grove with the bad news.

  “Archer died this morning,” said Wilson.

  “Okay, what’s the bad news?” asked Grove.

  “He wasn’t the leaker. Someone else is working against us.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t Archer?”

  “Stone did the questioning,” said Wilson. “Stone had him in one of our hospitals. He had him in straps. He had him all night.”

  “Someone is working against us,” said Grove. He was quiet a moment. “What about that phony IRS man who got into our computer system briefly?”

  “We got the FBI report this morning,” said Wilson. “They found that the man who belonged to that face and those fingerprints was a Grove employee named Mel Bergman.”

  “Maybe he’s the leak,” said Grove.

  “No. It was a very cute trick. Somehow these people have access to the FBI computers, and what they did was to plant a phony name. Oh, there is a real Mel Bergman but he wasn’t the man who visited the plant that day.”

&nbs
p; Wilson paused. He hated to admit one of George Grove’s hunches was right. He hated business by instinct. The multiple accidental problems were now obviously not so accidental after all.

  “In creating somebody for us to chase around the world forever, these people have finally given themselves away.”

  “I knew it in my gut, Wilson. There are no accidents in this world,” said Grove.

  “And I suspect they know all the tricks we do, George. You don’t try to misdirect unless you’re hiding something. And what are they hiding?”

  “Who they are,” said Grove.

  “Exactly, George,” said Wilson.

  “Well, it is a bit discomforting to find out you have an enemy, but there are always the good points. Once you know you have an enemy, you can destroy him.”

  “Exactly, George. As for the leak. It might be whoever planted their version of Mel Bergman. Or it might even be someone on General Watson’s staff as we thought earlier.”

  “The trouble with trying to get General Watson to act is the man is terrified if he doesn’t have some damn committee behind him,” said Grove. “I have to kick him every step of the way.”

  “You were wrong about Nathan Archer in accounting,” said Wilson.

  “I said of all the people we had, he was most likely responsible for the leak. I did not say he was the leaker. Finding out he was not the leaker tells us we don’t have one.”

  “Yes, George.”

  “Get the other bastards.”

  “Yes, George.”

  “Are you just yessing me, Wilson?”

  “No, George.”

  “You are,” said Grove. He loved being right. When Wilson was gone, he put a small mark on his calendar. It was the date by which he was sure Wilson would find their new enemies and remove them quite successfully from the face of the earth. Wilson did not miss.

  9

  Chiun saw the way Remo moved. He saw the legs and the torso. He saw the head. He even saw his pupil’s will to move forward. And there was a great choice to be made here this day by a Master of Sinanju.