Angry White Mailmen td-104 Read online

  "You're white," Remo insisted.

  "And yellow haired," added Chiun.

  "Dye," Tamayo said stubbornly as her face reddened.

  "I see no roots," said Chiun.

  "Okay, okay. Since this isn't my market, what's the difference? My maternal grandmother was one-eighth Japanese. I have a little Japanese blood in me. Enough to get a job in broadcast journalism. I was going nowhere as a blonde."

  "Tell that to Diane Sawyer," grunted Remo.

  "She made it before Asian anchors became de rigueur," Tamayo spat.

  "Looks like it's not working for you today."

  "The postmaster is stonewalling. No one is allowed in or out until coffee break is over. Have you ever heard of a post office being shut down for a coffee break? It's a cover-up."

  "What about the mail?" asked Remo.

  "Get real. Have you ever sent a videotape overnight with these people? You'll be lucky to see it within four days. And those three-day priority mail packages? Five to seven days minimum. Unless it's across town, then add an extra weekend. They don't even try to move mail across town on deadline."

  "Come on, Little Father. Let's look into this."

  "Take this in?" Tamayo asked, hefting her shoulder bag. "My undercover camera's inside. Oh, and my concealed mike. Turn around while I unhook my audio bra rig."

  "Forget it," said Remo, brushing past her.

  There was a uniformed security guard at the door, and he took up a position blocking the lobby, hand on holstered side arm. He might have been guarding Fort Knox from his cold expression.

  "We're on break," the guard said flatly.

  "You're not," Remo responded.

  "I'm on duty."

  "How would you like to be on break?" asked Remo.

  "I must ask you to turn around and wait until the doors open again," the guard said stonily.

  "They're open. See," said Remo, whose hands blurred toward the guard's gun belt, took hold and spun him around. The gun belt broke at its weakest link-the buckle-and the guard went spinning down the steps to land in a sprawl.

  Remo shut the door in his face. Tamayo's face, too. She dropped to one knee and, ripping open her blouse like Clark Kent turning into Superman, said, "Look directly at my cleavage and tell me why this facility is on lock down."

  GIRDING HIS PLUMMY SKIRTS, the Master of Sinanju put on a stern face and said, "We must prepare ourselves to enter the domain of the disgruntled."

  "I don't think we're going to have any problem," said Remo.

  They pushed open the inner doors to the service area and were surprised at the color. The walls were all a very bright pink.

  "Someone should talk to the painter," Remo grunted, looking around. "Looks like Zsa Zsa Gabor's bedroom."

  The teller windows were empty. But from the back, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee wafted, and they heard a low, musical humming floating out.

  "Sounds like a coffee commercial filming back there," said Remo. Looking around, he spotted the door that said Manager.

  "Let's see the guy in charge."

  The manager was working the telephone when they barged in. He looked up like a schoolboy who had been surprised picking his nose.

  "Who are you?" he demanded.

  "Postal inspector," said Remo. "In a T-shirt?"

  "Undercover. This is my partner, who's in deep cover."

  Chiun bowed, saying, "The Japanese display my picture in all of their postal offices."

  The manager sat back down. "The PG send you?"

  "Could be," said Remo, who had no idea who the PG was.

  "I think I've got everything under control here. They're on emergency sanity-maintainance coffee break now."

  "They sounded pretty happy about it."

  "Were they... singing?"

  "Sounded like humming to me."

  "My God. It works. I've got to see this."

  They followed the postal manager to the back room, where canvas mail sacks were stretched on old metal frames, mail sat in pink pigeonholes and the entire sorting staff of the Oklahoma city post office lounged about drinking coffee and singing Barry Manilow songs.

  "They always this chipper?" asked Remo.

  "It's the Prozac in the coffee," the manager confided. "It kicked in like an adrenaline rush."

  "You spiked their coffee?"

  "I did not. This is USPS-issue coffee rations, laid in for psychological contingencies on orders from the PG himself." He lowered his voice. "Never thought I'd have to deploy it, though."

  "What's it doing to them?"

  "Prozac raises the serotonin levels."

  "What's serotonin?" asked Remo.

  "Some kind of soothing chemical produced in the brain, as I hear it. I'm exempt from drinking the stuff. Someone's gotta keep a clear head."

  Evidently they were overheard, because one of the postal workers started to improvise a little ditty. "Serotonin, Serotonin, Dormez-vous, Dormez-vous?" The others joined in.

  "Sonnez tes matines!

  Sonnez les matines!

  Mailman mood.

  Mailman mood."

  As they launched into their second chorus, Remo pulled out the blank FBI picture of Yusef Gamal and said, "We need you to fill in the blanks on this guy."

  "You got the hat right. In fact, it's perfect."

  "Thanks," Remo said dryly. "What about the face?"

  "Joe only worked here about a year, all told. I don't remember the color of his eyes. Not sure about his hair. He had a pretty ordinary mouth, too."

  "In other words, nada."

  "Well, he did have what you'd call a pronounced beak. Not like this one here, though."

  "Like a falcon or an eagle?" squeaked Chiun.

  "More like a camel, actually. It wasn't sharp. It was more bulbous."

  From a sleeve of his kimono, the Master of Sinanju extracted a folded sheet of paper, unfolded it delicately and held it up to the postal manager's eyes. "Such as this?" he asked.

  "You know, I never noticed the resemblance before, but that's a right good one. Except for skin color. He was pretty white."

  "What's this?" asked Remo, stepping around. Chiun directed the fluttering sheet of colored paper toward him. It was a cigarette ad, Remo saw. He blinked. Then blinked again.

  "He looked like Joe Camel?" Remo blurted.

  "Yes. More or less."

  "What do you mean, more or less?"

  "More the nose, less everything else."

  "You had a postal worker named Joe Camel who looked like the cigarette character Joe Camel, and when the FBI asked you and your people to describe him all you came up with was a cap?"

  "The PG asked us to cooperate as narrowly as possible."

  "Let me ask you something. Did this Joe Camel look Middle Eastern or talk with an accent?"

  "Sure, he talked funny. He was from New Jersey. They all talk funny out that way."

  "But did he look Middle Eastern?"

  "No, he looked Jewish. But so do a lot of folks from Jersey."

  "Spoken like an Okie from Muskogee," said Remo. "What happens when they find Camel?"

  "Not my concern. They always find these canceled stamps with a gun in their mouths. My job is to keep the others from going berserk."

  Remo eyed the still-singing postal workers. They were doing a barbershop-quartet rendition of "Please, Mr. Postman" that got so hopelessly mangled in the third verse they gave up and picked up "Take a Letter, Maria" in midchorus.

  "Hardly any chance of that now," Remo commented.

  "Thank God."

  "Getting the mail out will be interesting," added Remo, watching a mail sorter dive in a canvas-sided mail cart and start snoring "The Serotonin Song."

  "Mail? We can always deliver the mail somewhere down the road. Preserving service cohesion is the priority today."

  "Where does Gamal live?" Remo asked the postal manager.

  "Over in Moore. You can't miss the place. FBI has it staked out like an anthill."

  "Thanks,"
said Remo, walking out to the strains of "Message from Michael" as paper airplanes made from undelivered mail crisscrossed the air.

  OUTSIDE they were followed by Tamayo Tanaka, who demanded, "What did you find out?"

  "Prozac is good for the nerves," grunted Remo.

  "I take Zoloft," Tamayo said, "It's great. Not only do I wake up humming, but I have daily bowel movements."

  "Good for you."

  "Begone, rice-for-brains. We are busy," said Chiun. "We could share information."

  "What makes you think we have information?"

  "You guys are up to something. I can smell intrigue a mile away. Let's pool our facts."

  "You first," said Chiun.

  "Postal workers go nuts in two states. It's the beginning of the psychological disintegration of the whole postal system."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I'm a psycho-journalist. Dual major. Psychology and communications, with a minor in cultural anthropology."

  "Sounds like a career strategy," Remo said. Tamayo yanked a green-covered book from her big hag.

  "This is your basic psychiatric-case-study book. Tells everything you need to know about any kind of psychotic and how to diagnose him. With this, I was able to discover the deepest, darkest secrets of the postal service."

  They looked at her.

  "It's just riddled with psychotics," hissed Tamayo.

  "Where do you get that?" demanded Remo.

  "From this book. According to this, psychotics are drawn to regimented and highly structured environments. Like the police, the military and the post office."

  "Yeah?"

  "These guys all look, act and behave normally. Until you hit their specific area of paranoia. Then they go off. We psych majors call them land-mine personalities because they suffer from explosive personality disorder. Say an ordinary postal worker is on his rounds and he keeps stepping in dog pooh. It can happen once in a blue moon, and he'd be okay. But when it happens every week over three months, then, say, every two weeks, and then one day he steps in two different dog turds. Snap! Just like that, he suffers a psychotic break. Completely decompensates. Grabs up his trusty shotgun and blows away all his coworkers."

  "Why not shoot dogs?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "Because he's a postal worker, and once they go off, all rationality flies out the window. Don't you watch the news?"

  "Sounds farfetched," said Remo, looking around for a pay phone.

  "Did you know that Son of Sam was a postal worker?"

  "I think I heard that."

  "And that creepy fat guy on 'Seinfeld,' he's a postal worker, too."

  "That isn't reality."

  "And Son of Sam was? The man took his orders from a dog that wasn't even his. Think of it. The way they run the postal service these days, they're practically breeding Son of Sams. If America doesn't get a grip on the mail system, we could all be massacred. Is that a story or what?"

  "It's a load of crap."

  "Yes," said Chiun, "it is bullock manure. You are speaking idiocy. None of these things explain what has happened."

  "Then you explain it," retorted Tamayo.

  "Muhammadans have-"

  "Don't say it, Chiun-" Remo warned.

  "-infiltrated the post office."

  "Muhammadans? What are they?"

  "For us to know and you to find out," said Remo, pulling the Master of Sinanju away.

  Down the street, Remo found a pay phone. "Did you have to spill the beans?" he complained.

  Chiun composed his expression. "They are true beans. Why should I not spill them?"

  "We don't want her to cause a nationwide panic by going on the air with that story."

  "Why would Muhammadans cause more panic than gruntless mailmen?"

  "Actually it might cause less," Remo admitted. "But we don't want to blow our investigation." Dialing Folcroft, Remo got Smith on the line. "Smitty, you'll never believe this. The local post office is feeding its employees Prozac to calm them down. They got the walls painted pink, too. And we know how that works."

  "What about Joe Camel?" asked Smith.

  "Can your computers take that blank face and superimpose another? Kinda morph them into a human face?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Take one of those Joe Camel cigarette ads, paste the camel's face into the blank spot, then try to make him look as human as you can"

  The line was dead for possibly fifteen seconds. "That is not funny," Smith said tartly.

  "And I am not joking. We showed the blank FBI poster to the local postal manager, and all he could remember was that the guy had a nose like a camel. That was when Chiun whipped out a magazine, and the manager said-I swear to God-'That's him.' Hey, Chiun, where'd you get that ad anyway?"

  "From a magazine on the airplane."

  "Are you telling me that Yusef Gamal looks like the Joe Camel of the cigarette advertisements?" Smith asked.

  "At least close enough to give us something to work with. Try what I said and give it to the FBI. How's it going on your end?"

  "I have alerted FBI branch offices to the identities and whereabouts of the other conspirators on the Gates of Paradise bulletin board. The roundup has begun."

  "How'd you find them so quick?"

  "Their Gates of Paradise user names turn out to be the names by which they are operating in this country."

  "Yeah ... ?"

  "Most of them are listed in their local phone directories," added Smith.

  Remo grunted. "Sounds like the World Trade Center screwups all over again."

  "We cannot underestimate these people," Smith warned.

  "Think picking them up will be as simple as that?"

  "We can only hope."

  Just then a single beep came over the line.

  "Hold the line, please," said Smith, his voice turning tense. Remo recognized the sound of Smith's computer issuing a warning bulletin.

  Smith's tone was urgent when it came back. "Remo, it appears that we have something. A SWAT team has cornered one of the suspect terrorists near the South Postal Annex in Boston. The man is up on the roof of South Station and will not come down. He is heavily armed."

  "Can't they just pick him off?"

  "That is what I am afraid of. I do not want him picked off before he can talk. We need to know who controls this terror group. You and Chiun fly to Boston."

  "Let's hope we'll be on time," Remo said.

  "His name is Mohamet Ali."

  "No kidding. What do we do with him after we're done squeezing out information?"

  "If the roundup goes well, his usefulness will be over once he talks," Smith said coldly.

  Chapter 18

  The mosque was a pristine vision of white stone capped by an alabaster dome. Two lofty minarets lifted to the heathen, unclean sky of Greenburg, Ohio. Mosaic tiles trimmed its supreme beauty.

  All this, Yusef Gamal saw as the Egyptian who was tainted with Crusader blood and might or might not be a secret Copt drove him up the winding access road.

  The road was immaculate. All was immaculate. There was only one strange thing.

  The mosque appeared empty of all life. No garden­ers tended the green grounds. No light showed any­where, though it was growing dusky. It might have been deserted.

  And there was something else, which Yusef could not put his finger on. It was there, but it was hidden. It was palpable, but it was also ineffable.

  "What is this place called?"

  "Al-Bahlawan Mosque," he was told.

  "A good name."

  "An Islamic name," the red Egyptian agreed as the car rolled to a stop and it was time to get out.

  "Why have I not heard of this mosque?"

  "You will be told this." "This is the greatest, most magnificent mosque in all of Christendom," Yusef marveled. "I have never seen its equal outside of the Holy Land."

  "It is not a place of worship," Jihad Jones snapped.

  "Is it not a mosque? Does it not possess magnifi­cent minarets
pointing the way to Paradise?"

  "Yes, yes."

  "Then why is Allah not worshiped within? Tell me this."

  "I need tell you nothing, Jew. Except that Allah is served in other fashions by this mosque."

  And because he never again wanted to be called a Jew by a man he suspected of being a Copt, Yusef Gamal ceased his questions. He was becoming very thin-skinned about this Jewish question. Also his side- lock-festooned wig itched, and he desired to remove the entire despised costume.

  Inside, there was more magnificence. Arabesques. High ceilings. The clean smell Yusef always associ­ated with the mosques of his homeland. Except here the smell was somehow... dead.

  After they had removed their shoes and performed the ritual washing, they were greeted by Sargon, the Persian aide to the Deaf Mullah.

  "As-salamu 'alaykum.' "

  "Peace be upon you," they returned in respectful Arabic.

  "You are expected, for you have done well."

  Yusef turned on the Egyptian, Jihad Jones. "See? I have done well. I am not to be killed."

  "My cousin's carnage was better than your car­nage," the other sneered. "And my carnage will ex­ceed his." "My carnage is not yet complete. You will see. The Deaf Mullah has further work for me."

  "He has further work for both of you," said Sargon the Persian.

  "If I am to meet the Deaf Mullah, I must rid my­self of these offensive garments," Yusef protested.

  "Proper attire awaits both of you," said Sargon.

  Yusef did not know what this meant. Jihad Jones looked down at his own Western clothes and looked vaguely embarrassed.

  "What is wrong with my attire?" he wondered aloud.

  "It is unsuitable for the work that lies ahead of you."

  "He means you dress like a Cross-worshiper," Yu­sef sneered.

  "I spit upon you and your lies!"

  But to himself, Yusef only smiled. He had gotten under the Egyptian's thick red skin.

  In a chamber that looked as antiseptic as a hospital operating room, they were given strange garments of one piece. They were green, and the Western-style fly zipped up from crotch to collar.

  "See?" said Yusef, pointing proudly. "This is an Arab's fly. For my tool is an Arab's tool."

  '' My fly is also large,'' Jihad Jones protested.

  "It is not the same as having a large tool. Obvi­ously your fly is only a disguise to convince unbeliev­ers you are not Egyptian."