Remo The Adventure Begins Page 14

  The white sand was cold under his feet but not a penetrating cold. Sea gulls cawed and perched on nearby wharves. The sky was winter gray,, and no one strolled the boardwalk. Remo tasted his own breath which was clean and pure. Better than that. It was correct. He was correct.

  He knew the sand and he knew himself, and his body moved on the first toe of the first foot, leaving the sand slightly. Then, above the sand, he moved, quite cleanly, seeing a place ahead where the grains of sand formed a goodly mass, and then down, down with more force than any kick would allow, head first into the grains of sand, cutting deep into the place where the sand was dark and still warm from yesterday’s sun. Then, with one jackknife of his midsection, Remo turned upward toward the air, up out of the sand, bursting free like a dolphin through the water and running.

  If there had been an observer on the boardwalk he would have blinked several times and wondered whether to tell anyone what he saw. A man had moved along the sand faster than any sprinter, and then as though it were water, dove into the sand, and come up out of it without missing a beat.

  Chiun saw Remo stop and turn around.

  “Too much leg,” said Chiun.

  Remo stuck his tongue between his lips and made a derogatory noise.

  “You help. You give, and this is what you get for it. Thank you, Remo.”

  “I thought I did pretty well,” said Remo.

  “What is pretty well? What is this white talk? Pretty well? Are you fairly alive? Is someone mostly dead? What is this?”

  “Well I thought it was good. I did well.”

  “I am insulted for helping,” said Chiun, “and then the help is refused. Why ask me? What do you want from me?”

  “I’d like approval,” said Remo.

  “All right. Your legs did not do too much of the work. It was correct.”

  “No. I don’t mean that,” said Remo. “I’d like to hear a nice word now and then.”

  “Nice word,” said Chiun, chuckling, even though Remo didn’t seem to appreciate a good joke.

  “You know, people improve when they get encouragement,” said Remo.

  “I thought you said you were doing pretty well. Why, that is better than almost well, and it is close to fairly wonderful,” said Chiun. Chiun had made another joke. Remo was unable to appreciate that, too.

  They returned home for dinner, and Remo was waiting for the rice, though not because he wanted to eat it. Eating had lost its pleasure. He only hoped the same thing would not happen to his sex drive. But when the rice was put before him, he took one mouthful and spit it out.

  “Awful. You make lousy rice. You are the worst cook I ever tasted. I know oriental dishes and you are totally inferior, Master of Sinanju.”

  “Why do you say that?” said Chiun.

  “Because it is not correct,” said Remo. “Don’t expect compliments for almosts and partiallys. You served not correct rice.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Chiun again.

  “Because it tastes like cement and cow dung,” said Remo.

  “Then your taste is wrong,” said Chiun. “Another failing of yours that I must work on.” Remo walked away from his rice.

  “You really know how to be insulting, don’t you,” said Chiun. He proceeded to eat his rice in dignified silence. Remo asked if Chiun were truly insulted. Chiun allowed as how he most certainly was, when Remo walked away from his rice.

  Chiun did not understand why this made Remo happy, happy enough to eat his rice, but then all whites were strange.

  “Sometimes, people who do not appreciate good rice like it cooked with vinegar. The Japanese eat it with vinegar,” said Chiun.

  That evening Con McCleary came to the training house and told Remo the first assignment would be the next day. He asked Chiun what he thought.

  “Taste this rice,” said Chiun.

  “I’ve eaten, Master of Sinanju. I just came for Remo. We are going to use him tomorrow. Nothing I think too dangerous.”

  “Try the rice,” said Chiun.

  The lacquered bowl was before McCleary’s face and he couldn’t refuse.

  “Okay,” he said, and with the chopsticks Chiun provided pressed a small ball of white sticky rice together and ate it.

  “What do you think?” asked Chiun.

  “It’s rice,” said McCleary. Remo leaned against a wall grinning with his arms folded.

  “Good rice. Fairly good rice. Correct rice?”

  “Yeah. Rice. Correct.”

  “Of course,” said Chiun. “But some fools don’t know that. See, Remo. Even this alcohol-drugged meat-eating wretch knows correct rice when he eats it.”

  And Chiun motioned to Remo while talking to McCleary. “This thing without taste buds you give me to train. There is nothing he knew. Not breathing, and not even how to taste.”

  “I didn’t like his cooking,” said Remo.

  “There is nothing imperfect with my cooking,” said Chiun.

  “We’ve got work tomorrow,” said McCleary.

  “I have made rice longer than either of you have lived.”

  “There is some danger but I think we can avoid it,” said McCleary. “We are basically going to protect a woman in the Army, a woman who is doing her job.”

  “Rice is supposed to stick together and have taste, not be some tasteless form of separate-grain mush this one is used to,” said Chiun.

  “We’d like your thinking on this, Master of Sinanju,” said McCleary. Remo’s grin was growing wider.

  The situation was this. The organization had discovered that a Major Rayner Fleming might be the target of a hit when she went to the auditor general’s office the next day. What McCleary and Remo would do would be to make sure she lived through the next day. And longer.

  “Who is going to try to do the hit, do you know?”

  “A very powerful organization, one the taxpayers support, Grove Industries. She is a threat to them.”

  “How do you know they are going to do a hit?”

  “We don’t for sure,” said McCleary. “We pick up things. Smitty has got to be a damned computer genius. What the computers do is flag things, things that might not seem odd piece by piece but when put together, have to be looked into. We know Major Fleming is a danger to Grove’s profits. We don’t yet know how dangerous her enemies are, but we suspect they would kill. They do spread money around rather shrewdly.”

  “But the hit?” asked Remo. “How do you know about that?”

  “All right. Grove’s private lines are accessed. Bugs if you want. There is this super errand boy of George Grove’s named Wilson. No other name. Makes a fortune for salary. We pick up a phone call from him, and his voice just mentions a time. Millions of calls are picked up, but the computer flags this one. And there are just three words in the whole conversation. An airline, a flight number, and a day. Nothing much, right?”

  Remo nodded. Chiun looked at McCleary’s chopsticks.

  “But the call is to a man named Stone. Now I don’t know if you are aware how vast this computer system is, but in the billions of bytes, there is a flag set for this man named Stone, who we believed was working in North Africa. He is always a flag. He is a killer, a bit of a sadist to boot. But you take the phone call to Stone from Wilson of Grove and you add it to the flight schedule of our Major Rayner Fleming who is taking that precise flight on that precise day to go to the auditor general’s office in New York City, and you get a probable hit by Grove Industries using Stone to kill Fleming.”

  “And what if it’s not? What if this guy Wilson intends to take the flight himself tomorrow and wants to be met at the airport?”

  “Then our good friend Major Fleming is not in danger. We want her alive.”

  “I see,” said Remo. He looked at his hands. He had never killed with them before. Supposedly when he reached the full use of his powers he would never need a weapon again. He was the weapon.

  “Are you ready?” asked McCleary.

  “Sure,” said Remo, with a
grin. “Ready or not, here we come, breathing all the way.”

  “And you, Chiun? What do you think?” asked McCleary.

  “You didn’t finish your rice,” said Chiun.

  “I’ve had dinner,” said McCleary.

  “It needed vinegar,” said Chiun.

  “No. It was good. It was good.”

  “Take one chopstick full,” said Chiun.

  “One,” said McCleary. And he downed a ball of rice and gave Chiun a big smile, assuring him this was just about the best rice he had ever eaten.

  “Then why are you leaving it?” asked the Master of Sinanju.

  Reginald Stone did not believe in tailing someone like a lost puppy, afraid of losing a scent. For one thing, a traffic light, a minor auto accident, any number of things could snap a tail. And if you attempted to keep it despite interruptions, you attracted attention.

  Reginald Stone did not like to attract attention. It was unnecessary. And unprofessional. If one knew where a target was going to be, it was easier to wait, and let the target come to you.

  And so he waited in a car outside the auditor general’s office in New York City, careful to check that no one lay in wait for him, although that was highly unlikely.

  He ran his tongue over his diamond tooth. Somehow that diamond always reassured him in moments like these, reminding him of his power and skill.

  A hot-dog vendor collected money with one hand as he shoveled sauerkraut atop a frankfurter on a roll with the other. Stone watched the movements. Too skilled for an undercover cop. Too concerned about the change.

  A single policeman struggled to direct traffic down the street. A traffic cop. No problem there.

  Stone’s blond good looks got him a few stares from women. He didn’t let them make eye contact. He might not be able to get rid of them.

  A stunning woman in army green walked smartly up the street. Reginald Stone touched his diamond tooth again with his tongue, and leaned his buttonhole slightly out the window. He squeezed a rubber ball inside his coat pocket. He heard a click under his lapel. He squeezed again. He heard another click.

  He had just taken two pictures of Major Rayner Fleming entering the auditor general’s office. Then he sat back and waited. He liked working with Wilson. Unlike most people who taught themselves most of their trade, he was thorough. Wilson did not panic. He wanted pictures. He wanted to make sure of everyone around the point of attack.

  Wilson was a compulsive about information. Stone had suggested a simple little kill. Wilson had refused. So Stone gave him his photos. If that’s what Wilson wanted, Stone would not argue. He’d had worse employers.

  Libya for one. The money was good. It was afterward, talking to their state committee for security, that showed what true amateurs they were. The Libyans felt they had not only a right to kill their enemies but also a duty to brag about it. They wanted details. They wanted pictures of the victims in pain. How different it was for Wilson. He wanted pictures only to make absolutely sure who was who where and when.

  Wilson’s genius was pure simplicity. Where could one conduct a torture operation with absolutely no one questioning the administration of pain? A hospital. Wilson had one near every major Grove plant. All Stone had to do was show up in a white coat. Then he could “treat” a patient in whatever manner he felt most effective.

  Wilson was that good.

  Stone felt the hardness of the diamond in his mouth. He had taken it that wonderful day when he realized what he should do with the rest of his life.

  It was in North Africa. A revolutionary group had discovered the best possible way to establish good press relations. What you did was kill anyone who wrote bad things about you. Just let your annoyance be known, then kill them. There might be an article or two about it, but nothing really big in the Middle East. Reporters would become quite wary before writing anything negative. On the other hand, the countries that got into trouble with the press were those that treated them openly, such as in a democracy. They got lambasted all the time, especially since it became fashionable to do so, and totally free of danger.

  This policy worked magnificently for the most ruthless of dictatorships, and of course some of it was Stone’s work. He was obviously not Arab, and therefore correspondents would let down their guard. His first kill was an American reporter for a midwest newspaper. She was worried because she had written extensively about the massacre at Hama, a Syrian town which was annihilated for opposing the government. Estimates had it that twenty thousand people were killed, or roughly sixty times more than were killed in Sabra and Shatilla camps by Lebanese Maronites.

  The difference between the two was that Sabra and Shatilla were in Israeli-occupied territory and Hama was not. There could be a news angle indirectly blaming Israel. That was safe. And fashionable, although as massacres went it wasn’t even in the top ten of the year in the Middle East.

  But this young reporter believed in facts, and stubbornly insisted upon writing about Hama.

  Stone befriended her, even told her of a safe place in the mountains where they could lunch. Nothing sexual. Just two friends. Besides, she was engaged anyhow.

  He took her into the mountains one fine morning and shot her eyes out of her head. It was beautiful.

  To remind himself of his success, he took her engagement ring and had the diamond mounted in his tooth. Ever since then, when working, Stone always got comfort from running his tongue over its facets. He had done it eighty-seven times. He had eighty-seven hits. There was no reason why, on this day in New York City, he would not make it eighty-eight.

  Suddenly he looked around. Was someone watching him?

  Con McCleary knew how to wear an officer’s uniform. He had served three years as an airborne officer in Vietnam before joining the CIA. The colonel’s uniform felt just like his captain’s uniform. Awful.

  Con McCleary hated uniforms. He had a theory about them. People wore uniforms so they could disguise themselves as soldiers.

  “Major Fleming is here, Colonel,” said the secretary.

  “Send her in,” said McCleary, reminding himself not to appear as though he enjoyed what he was doing. He never remembered a colonel enjoying what he did. Sergeants enjoyed what they did, and generals seemed to enjoy at least a speech or two, or a command decision under pressure, but Con McCleary never remembered a colonel who had fun.

  This was hard to affect the moment he saw Major Rayner Fleming. Her full body and stunning smooth skin made him wonder if, as a colonel, he could order this major to take off her clothes. Maybe threaten court-martial if she failed to make love as ordered.

  He dismissed these lovely thoughts from his mind with a simple salute. His job now was to keep her in his office until Remo got into position. Stone had been spotted outside in the street.

  Major Fleming saluted. McCleary returned the salute.

  “I believe we have the documents you requested,” he said.

  “I didn’t know that a colonel was in charge of them. I thought a captain would sign them over.”

  “Well, sometimes captains have difficulty getting access to things.”

  “Captains aren’t the only ones. HARP seems to be the most difficult access file I have ever seen. Those who are supposed to have authorization need someone else to confirm, and so on. Even the normal financial reports are somehow always hiding in another computer. I don’t even know how you got the reports.”

  “Make sure they’re right,” said McCleary, handing her a sheaf of computer printouts.

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yes, and of course sign for them.”

  Major Fleming looked at her watch. Con McCleary looked at Major Fleming looking at her watch, or thereabouts. He wondered if he were to unbutton her blouse with his tongue if he would go on report. Since he was using cover rank and cover name, no report could harm him.

  “Yes. This is it. This is what we need. How did you get it? How do you have access codes that the Joint Chiefs don’t have?”

&n
bsp; “Military secret,” said McCleary. He wondered if he should tell her she was the most wonderful woman he ever met, his one true contact in the great void of all eternity. He only had ten minutes at most, though. Remo would have scouted the area and been in position by then. Con McCleary needed at least a good half an evening to establish his deepest relationships.

  Ironically, he had a personality trait similar to that which distinguished Remo’s profile—an inability to form a lasting relationship with a member of the opposite sex—but for the converse reasons. Remo couldn’t sustain a long relationship because he cared too much, almost drove women away in his previous life. McCleary didn’t care about the next day. On the sea of love, Remo plunged to the depths too quickly, and McCleary floated into the clouds, neither of them ever moving smoothly across the surface for any length of time.

  “Yes. This is what I need. But these are the strangest figures I have ever seen for a project. Do you understand the implications?” asked Major Fleming.

  McCleary glanced at the numbers. Not a decimal, he thought. “We assumed they would prove useful,” he said. He went to the window. Remo had just entered the building. “You can read them all back in Washington,” he said.

  “How did you access these records?”

  “I am not at liberty to say. Good day, Major,” said McCleary, wondering briefly if he might give her a more personal good-bye.

  It was, of course, Smith who had broken into parts of the HARP file using the information McCleary had sneaked out of Grove in Washington after his stint as an Internal Revenue Service examiner. There would be more information forthcoming, to be relayed directly to Major Fleming’s terminal in Washington.

  If Major Fleming had met the real colonel in charge of this section of the auditor general’s office, as she had planned, she would have gotten one solid stone wall, not because he wasn’t doing his job, but because he was doing his job legally.

  She also might have gotten killed. She still might, thought McCleary.