Summit Chase Read online

  He sat on one of the patios of his gargantuan estate, high on a hill overlooking the interior city of Algiers, nodding his head in approval of the story. He folded the paper and placed it carefully on the table next to his empty juice glasses. He wiped his mouth and swallowed the last few flakes of eclair which he scooped up off the cake plate with his fingertips.

  Only then did he laugh.

  The baron’s laugh was not a pleasant event. It sounded like a bray, and looked as if it should have been a bray, because it came from a face that was mule-like. Nemeroff’s head was long and rectangular, with a jutting jaw and a sloped forehead. A thick shock of red hair flew backwards from the top of his skull. His eyes were big and seemed to be vertical ovals. The long, broad triangle of his nose was pasted grossly on a face whose skin was pale, freckled and testified to the anguish of sunburn.

  Nemeroff was six-feet-eight inches tall, weighed 156 pounds, and he required six meals a day to keep his weight that high. A metabolic imbalance burned up energy as fast as he could take it in. His body was always moving; a foot shook as it dangled over his other leg, his hands drummed on the table, he waved as if to shoo off imaginary insects. His sleep was restless, troubled and twitchy, and could cost him five pounds of his weight.

  Missing a meal or two could drop his weight ten pounds. He would starve to death within seventy-two hours.

  So he stuffed himself like a caged goose being readied for liver pate.

  And now he laughed; it was an evil, hectic laugh that shook his body and seemed visibly to burn up some of his store of energy.

  He looked from his balcony toward the central city of Algiers, lying low before him, crowned by its tallest building, the Stonewall Hotel, and he laughed some more.

  It had gone exactly as he had planned. The intelligence experts of nations around the world would spend their time breaking into, bugging, de-bugging, bugging each other’s bugs, tripping over each other, trying to find out what was happening on the 35th floor of the Stonewall Hotel.

  He brayed some more. They should have asked; he could have told them. Absolutely nothing was happening there.

  The whole thing had been a front, a ruse to keep intruders away from his estate, where the Baron’s real business would be conducted during the next several days.

  He left nothing to chance.

  And now, the moment of hilarity over, he looked at his breakfast guest, the sweating hulk of jelly who would soon be the president of Scambia.

  Vice President Asiphar had been watching the baron intently, wanting to inquire into the cause of his good humor, but afraid it would be unseemly.

  “It all goes well, my vice president,” Nemeroff said. His voice was reedy and high-pitched. “Forgive my laughing, but I was thinking of how foolish are the men who would stop us, and how cleverly we will outwit them, you and I.”

  “And your guests?” asked Asiphar, who pushed away from in front of him the remnants of a Ry-Krisp cracker, which, along with black coffee, had been his breakfast.

  “They will begin arriving in the next day. Come, let me show you our arrangements.”

  He stood quickly, and did not notice the look of disappointment on Asiphar’s face. The vice president followed him to the edge of the balcony and turned his face in the direction of the baron’s outstretched hand.

  “You’ll notice that there is only one road leading to this villa,” he said. “And, of course, there are armed guards along its length. Every visitor must be approved by me. There is no other way for a car to approach.”

  Down came the arm, quickly, and up went the other, sweeping back and forth across the vegetation-shrouded hill that sloped away from them.

  “There are men stationed all over those slopes,” Nemeroff said. “Armed men, who will know how to handle any would-be intruders. And dogs, whose appetite for unwanted company leaves nothing to be desired.” He brayed once, softly. “And there are electronic devices, electric eyes, infrared television cameras, hidden microphones, that can detect and pinpoint the presence of any intruder immediately.”

  He turned away from the balcony. He shot both hands skyward, over his head. “And, of course, our helicopter fleet continually patrols the sky over the castle.” Asiphar looked upward. One plane circled lazily over the stone pile that was Nemeroff’s castle, its silhouette a deep red—almost black—against the washed-out blue sky.

  Nemeroff turned from the rail and put his arm over the shoulder and around the massive back of Asiphar.

  “So it is foolproof, my vice president. We shall not be disturbed.”

  Gently, he steered Asiphar toward the glass doors that led into the castle. “Come, I will show you our meeting facilities, and you must tell me of your flight from Switzerland. How were the stewardesses?”

  He brayed and listened intently as Asiphar described the women on the plane. In great detail.

  Nemeroff was dressed in white, from neck to toe and the white seemed more brilliant than the fine linen it was, against the backdrop of Asiphar’s dark suit. The vice president had travelled incognito from Switzerland, and so had stored his uniforms away, wearing only a black silk suit. It was soaked through now with perspiration and under the arms were white granular rings where his sweat had saturated the suit, and then dried, leaving only the salt remains.

  The two men stood in front of an immense oil painting of a Russian cossack, in battle array, atop a black charger as Nemeroff explained “There are seventy rooms in the castle, more than enough for all our…business associates.” He pressed a button, hidden in the wooden frame of the painting, and the painting silently slid aside, revealing a small stainless steel elevator compartment.

  They stepped inside and Nemeroff pressed a button marked V.

  Noiselessly, without even the sensation of starting, the elevator moved upward. Quickly, the door opened, and they stepped out into a giant room, fully one hundred feet long and forty feet wide. Its walls were hewn of the same rough stone of which the castle itself had been built.

  The room was so large it dwarfed the giant mahogany conference table that had been set up in its direct center, but as Asiphar looked, he slowly realized that the table held chairs for forty men. The chairs were of soft red glove leather, and in front of each chair on the table was a desk blotter, a yellow pad, a silver tray of pencils, a carafe, and a crystal stem goblet.

  “Our meetings will be held here,” Nemeroff said. “In this very room, within the next three days, will be made the decisions that will make you president of your nation.”

  Asiphar smiled, his white teeth playing lighthouse in the night of his face.

  “…and will make your nation a power among the powers of the earth,” Nemeroff said, his arms gesticulating wildly.

  “Imagine,” he said, slowly walking Asiphar around the room. “A nation that is under crime’s flag. A retreat for all the hunted of the world. The place where no power can touch them. And you will control that nation. You, Asiphar. You will be a man among men. The most powerful man in the world.”

  He smiled, a grim, thin-lipped smile that spoke more truth than his words, but Asiphar did not see his smile.

  His eyes, instead, were drawn to an immense dome in the center of the room’s ceiling, through which sunlight poured into the conference room. The dome was of stained glass, in carefully leaded sections worked into a symbolic Byzantine religious design.

  Nemeroff followed his eyes. “It is quite bulletproof,” he said. “And beautiful, is it not? And up there are our helicopter pads.”

  “And your guests will arrive tomorrow?” Asiphar asked, unable to keep the anxiety from his voice.

  And Nemeroff understood. “Our business guests,” he said. “There are other house guests here now. One in particular whom you must meet. Come, I will introduce you. You must be tired after your journey, and I can think of no more certain way for you to relax.”

  Asiphar giggled.

  They reentered the elevator and Nemeroff pressed the button marked I
V. The door closed, then reopened again before Asiphar had felt any sense of movement.

  They stepped out into a long, wide hallway, carpeted with animal skins, its walls mirrored in a delicate gold-veined pattern. Along the walls stood marble statuary depicting naked bodies. The carvings showed the great skill and even genius of the craftsmen, and the stone blocks themselves showed the precise taste of Nemeroff. The marble blocks, from which the statues had been carved by his order, were pure white, recrystallized limestone, with none of the pinkness that confessed to manganese oxide traces. The stones had come from a quarry Nemeroff owned, in the hills of northern Italy.

  He ignored the statues, steering Asiphar down the hall to the right. “This way,” he said.

  He paused at an unnumbered door, not distinguished from the other doors all along the hallway. He knocked once, softly, then pushed open the door. It swung open noiselessly, and he stepped aside to let Asiphar peer in.

  It was a bedroom, its walls and floor covered with red woolen carpet and its ceiling mirrored, in glass blocks with streaks of gold and black swirling through them.

  The bed was a huge four-poster, with a red fringe around the posts, but there was no canopy over the top, permitting an unobstructed view of the mirrored ceiling.

  On the bed lay a woman. She was tall-looking, even in repose, and her skin was so fair that it appeared never to have seen a day’s sun. She wore a long white transparent negligee that hid her skin only when the sheer material was formed into a fold. The negligee was open. Her long almost-white hair, was pulled in front of a shoulder and casually covered one breast. The other breast was bare, and full and crowned with a delicate pink mound. She was blonde all over.

  She stood up and walked slowly toward the door, not caring that her negligee was fully open and trailing behind her. Her eyes lighted with excitement and her mouth partially open, revealing perfectly even lines of teeth, she extended her arms toward Asiphar.

  “As you see, she has been awaiting you,” Nemeroff said.

  Asiphar could not speak. Then, his throat dry and sandy, he crackled, “Thank you.”

  “She is lovely, is she not?” Nemeroff said. The girl stood in front of them now—lush, inviting—her arms still extended toward Asiphar.

  “Look at those breasts,” Nemeroff said. “Those legs. Do you agree she could make a man forget the cares of burdensome office?”

  Again, dry-throated, Asiphar croaked, “Yes.”

  “She is yours. She waits only to serve you. To do for you anything you wish.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything,” Nemeroff said coldly. “And if she does not please you, there are others who will.” He looked at the woman now, meeting her eyes for the first time. More perceptive eyes than Asiphar’s might have noticed the glimmer of fear which crossed her face, disappearing almost immediately, and the grimace of scorn and hatred on Nemeroff’s face.

  But Asiphar noted nothing, only the breasts, inviting him, and the hips and legs, inviting him, and the opened arms, calling for him. His breath came harder, and Nemeroff finally said, “I will leave you two to get acquainted. You must lunch with me, my friend. On the terrace at one.”

  Then he gently pushed Asiphar into the room and closed the door behind the two.

  Quickly, Nemeroff walked back to the elevator and pushed the button marked III.

  The elevator opened again into a hallway, identical with the one Nemeroff had just left, except that there was only one door in sight.

  That door led to the suite of rooms which were Nemeroff’s own living quarters, and he went through it now, through a living room, through a bedroom, and into a large, bare study in the corner of the building.

  He locked the door behind him, went to a large wall cabinet, and pulled open its doors.

  The cabinet held a 46-inch television screen, with a panel of buttons and controls on its right side. Nemeroff turned one dial to 4 and another one to A, then pressed a button.

  He sat down in a contoured foam chair, which reclined under his weight. The television screen lightened, flashed into blue color at the side, and then a picture came into view.

  It was Asiphar lying naked in the bed, alongside the woman, his blue-black skin accenting the smooth whiteness of her body. His hand was around her shoulder. Her left hand went out to Asiphar’s body. Her right hand reached down to pick up something off the floor. It came back into view carrying a small, battery-operated vibrator.

  Nemeroff felt a tremor of excitement. He leaned forward and pressed a button marked “tape,” then sank back softly in the chair to watch his favorite television show.

  CHAPTER SIX

  REMO SANK BACK IN THE soft, cushioned seat of the big jetliner. When John F. Kennedy International Airport receded in the distance, back beyond the left wing, Remo kicked off his loafers, stretched his legs, took a magazine from the wall rack next to his seat, and, over the top of the magazine, eyed the stewardesses.

  He had never understood why men went for stewardesses. They represented the ultimate triumph of plastic in a world of flesh and blood. There was only one step to go past the dehumanization they represented: the robot. And when one was invented and it looked real enough, the first buyer would be the airlines who would paste on a pair of 34C’s, a thirty-two-tooth smile, and turn them loose down the aisles of their planes.

  “I’m XB-27, fly me. I’m XB-27, fly me. I’m XB-27, fly me.”

  Remo watched as one blonde stew lectured a passenger in an aisle seat three rows in front of Remo. The passenger had a cigarette burning; the no-smoking sign was still on.

  Remo turned up his hearing to listen in.

  “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to put out that cigarette.”

  “I’m not going to set anything on fire,” the man replied. He waved the cigarette at the girl. He held it with his thumb on one side, his index and middle fingers on the other, and he used its lit end as a pointer when he talked. The gesture struck Remo as familiar.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you must obey the rules, or I’ll have to call the pilot.” She was still smiling.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the man answered. “You call the pilot. You call the whole goddam air force if you want. I’m smoking this cigarette.” That voice. It raised a stirring somewhere in Remo’s memory. He tried to place it.

  He leaned forward in his seat for a better view of the man’s profile.

  No help there.

  He was a medium-tall man, lean, with a baby face and horn-rimmed glasses; Remo had never seen the face before. Then the man turned slightly in his seat, gave Remo a little more than a quarter view, and Remo noticed something else: the slight puff of scar tissue around the eyes, and as the man kept turning, Remo saw the same artificially-taut skin around the nose.

  Remo recognized it. He had seen it often enough on his own face. The residue of the plastic surgeon’s craft. Whoever he was, the man with the cigarette had had his face changed.

  He was still jawing with the stewardess. Remo remembered what made his voice familiar. It was guttural New Jersey, the accent Remo had been brought up with until CURE had throatwashed him of it and retrained his speech in the bland middle-American pattern that admitted no antecedents.

  The man jabbed the point of the cigarette toward the stewardess again. Where had Remo seen that gesture before?

  The scene lost its potential for ugliness, all at once, when the no-smoking light flashed off.

  “There,” the man said, his voice harsh and wrong sounding, coming out of that gentle, delicate-featured face. “See. It’s all right now.”

  The stewardess turned around, glanced at the sign, smiled wanly and walked away. The man in the seat followed every movement with his eyes. She disappeared into the cabin up front and the man relaxed, then looked around, over both shoulders, and Remo conscientiously looked out the window, watching the man’s reflection in the glass.

  Finally, the man stabbed out the cigarette with a thrust that left it half-burning in the
seat-arm ashtray, stood up and walked toward the lounge in the rear of the plane. Remo wondered if the psychology of entertainment on an airliner was sound. Didn’t people wonder if you were spending too much time booking acts and too little time overhauling jet engines? Remo did.

  He returned to his magazine, trying to concentrate, but the voice and the gestures with the cigarette kept intruding on his mind. Where? When? A few minutes later, the blonde stewardess appeared again in the aisle, walking toward the rear of the plane.

  Remo beckoned to her.

  “Yes sir,” she said, leaning over him, smiling.

  Remo smiled back. “That loudmouth. With the cigarette before. What’s his name?”

  She started to protest, to protect the good name of her passengers, and then Remo’s smile made her think better of it.

  “Oh, that’s Mr. Johnson,” she said.

  “Johnson? He have a first name?”

  She looked at the clipboard in her hands.

  “As a matter of fact, he doesn’t,” she said. “Just initials. P.K. Johnson.”

  “Oh,” Remo said. “Too bad. I thought he was someone I knew. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” She kept leaning forward, close now to the man with the wonderful smile. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all to make you comfortable?”

  “Yes. Join me in prayer that the wings don’t fall off.”

  She stood straight up, not sure if he was joking or not, but he smiled again, deliciously warm, she thought, and she walked away contentedly. Remo sat back deep into the cushion.

  P.K. Johnson. It meant nothing. Now what had CURE taught him? When people adopted fake names, they generally kept their own initials? All right. P.K.J. John P. something. P.K. Remo detested intellectual exercise. P.J.K.

  P.J.! P.J. Kenny.

  Of course. He had seen that cigarette-holding number once before, when he was arresting P.J. Kenny on a gambling charge.

  Remo had been a rookie patrolman, walking a beat in the Ironbound section of Newark. He was walking past the storefront headquarters of somebody’s Social and Athletic Club—the kind that proliferated every mayoral election year—and when he glanced inside the brightly lighted room, he saw men, sitting at a table, playing cards, with mounds of bills and silver stacked on the table.