"I should have remembered to tell them to say I had interviewed them," she said.

  She saw Remo shake his head in the darkened room. "It wouldn't have mattered. I would have known if they lied to me. Anyway, I went back there tonight and they 'fessed up that you were one of theirs. What are they paying you?"

  "A hundred thousand dollars if I find Bobby Jack before you people do. Another hundred thousand if I can deliver him to them."

  "Why the hell would anybody want him?" Remo asked.

  "I don't know. I didn't ask, but I guess that they figure if they have him, they can use him to get some concessions from the president. I know they're trying to buy plutonium."

  "Could be," Remo said. "You know, you're very good."

  "Thank you. I think I am."

  "You fooled me when I met you at PLOTZ," Remo said. "The bandanna around your head broke the train of my thought. I was looking for a tall blonde with long braided hair and you didn't register."

  "That's what I figured. I wasn't taking any chances." She noticed that Remo's right hand had moved out now and was touching her knee. It felt good and she no longer felt threatened because she

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  had the gun under his pillow. He touched the inside of her left knee and she fought an impulse to squirm.

  "How'd you find out about PLOTZ?" he asked. "How'd you learn about the note from Bobby Jack?"

  "The president must have mentioned it to his press secretary. And the secretary was in a cocktail lounge that night, drinking more than was good for him, and he happened to mention it to a person I know who passed it along to me."

  "That simple?"

  "This kind of work usually is," Jessica said. Remo did not agree. He found the work unbearably complicated and hard but he did not want to let her know that.

  The feeling along her left leg was pleasure and pain commingled, the feeling of a limb that had fallen asleep and was now tingling back to Me, a sensation of total awareness of that part of her body. Jessica Lester had already made up her mind to kill him but there was no point in hurrying, she decided. If he had something else on his mind, his death could be postponed for a few moments.

  "It wasn't just any woman in any cocktail lounge," Jessica said. "The woman works for me. She makes it a habit to stay close to everybody in Washington who's got a big mouth and who drinks too much."

  "I see," Remo said.

  "And who are you?" Jessica asked.

  "Not yet," Remo said. "So where'd it lead after PLOTZ?"

  She stretched her leg slightly as if to encourage

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  Remo's hand to move more along the length of her leg. Remo lay back and changed from his left hand to his right hand.

  "I pilfered the files while you were out with that dip Zentz," she said. "I found out the money source was Earl Slimone and so I came up here to go to his headquarters."

  "Earl who?" Remo asked.

  "Earl Slimone. He's a banker. I was going to see him in the morning."

  "What's he got to do with anything?"

  "I don't know. I know he put up the money for PLOTZ. And he gave them word that they should be as public as they could be. What happened to that Zentz, by the way?"

  "He died in a fire."

  "Too bad."

  "Yes, wasn't it?" Remo's hand was now on her upper thigh.

  "So what do you want from me?" she asked.

  "What do you think?" Remo said.

  Jessica rolled over and onto Remo. She pressed her body tight to his. Her hands, between them, busied themselves with his clothing, and then there was a magical, moist time during which Jessica momentarily lost hold of the pistol under the pillow and Remo said, "What I want is for you to leave town."

  Jessica rolled back to her side of the bed. The French called orgasm "le petit mort"—the little death—and she lay limply for a moment in the throes of the little death, and then remembered another kind of death. The large death.

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  She closed her hand around the pistol, and brought the weapon out from under Remo's pillow.

  *Tm sorry," she said.

  "Are yout^ Remo asked. He lifted his body up on his arms to look into her face. "Sorry for what?"

  "For having to kill you."

  "Oh, that," Remo said.

  She put tibe muzzle of the gun to Remo's temple.

  "Goodbye," she said.

  "So long," Remo replied.

  She squeezed the trigger. The click was loud and metallic in the silent bedroom, but there was no explosion. Frantically, she squeezed the trigger again. Another click.

  "Don't bother," Remo said. "Do you think I'd leave a gun with bullets in it under your pillow?"

  Anger surged in Jessica.

  "There's more than one way to use a gun," she hissed. She pulled her gun hand away from Remo's temple, then swung the pistol back to smash it into hisskulL

  "And more than one way to protect against it," Remo said. She felt his hand close over the gun which stopped as if she had slammed it against a wall. She felt the pistol removed from her hand. She felt cold metal drop onto her bare stomach: one piece, then another. She looked down and saw the gun broken into pieces.

  Remo hopped up out of bed. "Well," he said airily, "if I spend any more time here, I'm going to be late for the rest of my calls."

  He walked toward the window that looked out over Copley Square. He opened the window high and then turned to her again.

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  Í

  "Jessica," he said, "I'm serious. You're done with this case. Pack up and leave. The next time, I might have to do something I don't want to do."

  "All right," she said. "I understand." She realized that Remo was serious about going out the window, and she looked again at the two halves of the gun on her stomach and suddenly believed that he could do it.

  "I've got one question," she said.

  "Shoot."

  "Why'd you come in through the window instead of the door?"

  "My manager," Remo said. "He wants me to start getting in shape for the Olympics."

  Before she could ask another question, Remo had jumped feet first through the open window. She expected to hear the scream of a falling man, but there was no scream, only silence. And something prevented her from going to the window to look out.

  Instead, she got up out of the bed quickly, turned on a light and began to toss her few clothes into her overnight bag. She had given up the name of Earl Slimone, but she was still far ahead of Remo. She could clean the assignment up and be gone, before he ever caught up to her again.

  She stopped for a moment in the middle of her packing. There was something else she could do that would buy time too.

  She looked up a number in the Boston telephone directory and dialed it.

  "Hello, is this Mr. Slimone's home? You don't know me, but I just want you to know that some-

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  one is planning to attack Mr. Slimone tonight at his home."

  She paused and listened.

  "That's right," she said. "His home in Boston. The man will be there soon. His name is Remo."

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Remo called Smith from an outside phone booth in Copley Square.

  "Have you found the woman?" Smith asked.

  "Yes," Remo said. "Don't worry about her. Who is Earl Slimone?"

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. "What about Earl Slimone?" Smith asked.

  "That's who she was on her way up here to see," Remo said.

  Chiun appeared outside the booth. He motioned to Remo that he should jog up and down while talking to Smith. Remo shook his head. Chiun jogged up and down in place, to demonstrate.

  "I'm damned if I'm going to be hopping up and down in a telephone booth," Remo said. Chiun shrugged. Smith said, "Who asked you to hop up and down in a phone booth?"

  "Forget it," Remo said. "What about Slimone?"

  'That complicates everything," Smith said. "Slimone is a banker with mob connections. A federal grand jury was getting ready to investigate his role

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  in financing the last presidential campaign. And . . . oh, no."

  "What?" Remo asked.

  "Another grand jury was looking into Billings and what he might have had to do with financing his brother-in-law's campaign."

  "Then there's our connection," Remo said.

  "It's worse than that," Smith said.

  "Why?"

  "Suppose that Billings was the conduit for mob money into the presidential campaign. And now Billings turns up missing. You see what it might mean?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "It might be the thing we feared. Maybe the president himself is behind the disappearance. Maybe Slimone didn't just kidnap Billings so he wouldn't talk—maybe the president ordered the kidnapping."

  "Well, you worry about things hice that," Remo said. "All I want to do is track the guy down. Where's Slimone's place up here?"

  He waited while Smith consulted CURE's computers, and then the agency head was back on the telephone with an address in the Back Bay section of Boston.

  "Thanks, Smitty. I'll keep you posted."

  Remo hung up and stepped outside the booth. Chiun said, "You will never amount to anything if you do not practice."

  "Can it, Chiun. I've got other things on my mind."

  "This Bobby Jobby Billings?" Chiun asked.

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  "Bobby Jack. Yeah."

  "Does he pay us our wages? Does he pay the small tribute that goes to my village?"

  "No."

  "Then who cares about him?" Chiun asked. "Really, Remo, you have to talk to Smith about the assignments he gives you. Using you to gallivant around the countryside looking for some noisy fat person is like using a surgeon's scalpel to cut firewood."

  "A job's a job," Remo said. "It keeps me busy."

  "And so does cutting firewood keep a scalpel busy. But when you need the scalpel for surgery, it does not perform well anymore."

  "Are you saying I could be losing my edge?"

  "You might be," Chiun said. "Now if you were to undergo a vigorous program of training and exercise, I could probably keep you in some kind of reasonable condition. It would be an effort, but I might be able to."

  "Forget it."

  "You could start with running in place," Chiun said.

  "Never."

  "Think about running in place," Chiun said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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  T

  "Where is his apartment?" Chiun asked as they stood across the street from the fourteen-story apartment building that housed Earl Slimone.

  "Top floor, of course," Remo said.

  "Of course," Chiun said. It was an oddity, he thought, that people believed that height gave them security. "We should go in through the top."

  "I've been up and down a building already tonight," Remo said. "You're not going to wear down my tired body just so you can get your hands on my gold medals. Well go in the front door."

  Inside the front door, they were met by a doorman. Remo noticed that he had a scar over his right eye and that he needed a shave.

  "Can I help youse guys?" he said.

  "Yes. We're calling on Earl Slimone," Remo said.

  "At this hour?" the doorman said. He rubbed his bristly face with his hand.

  "Well, obviously at this hour," Remo said. "Who do you think you're talking to? The ghosts of Christmas Past?"

  "They expecting you?"

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  "No, but I'm sure you'll straighten all that out," Remo said. .

  The doorman seemed to think for a moment. "All right. You can go up. Use the center elevator." He pointed to a bank of elevators twenty feet down the hall.

  Remo pressed the up button. The right elevator door opened. He and Chiun started to step inside but were halted by a shout from the doorman.

  "I said use the middle one. That one don't go all the way upstairs."

  "Okay," Remo said. He and Chiun waited, with the doorman standing behind them, for a full minute before the center elevator arrived.

  The door opened and the doorman pushed them from behind. They allowed themselves to stumble into the elevator where they were faced by two more men, needing shaves but not needing guns. Each man carried a heavy .45 automatic in his hand.

  "You Remo?" one of them asked.

  "That's right."

  "Good. We been waiting for you.™

  Remo was surprised. Then he realized. Jessica Lester had blown the whistle on them. That was one he owed her.

  "You going to kill us here?" Remo asked.

  "No. We gonna talk to you upstairs and then kill you," one of the men said.

  "Is Slimone here?" Remo asked.

  "Naah, he ain't here."

  "Where is he?"

  "Hey, you ain't asking no questions around here. You're gonna be answering questions. You just

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  don't come in here and start asking questions like that."

  "Do you know where he is?" Remo said.

  "No. Nobody tells us nothing."

  Then we don't need you," Remo said. The elevator had risen" smoothly and quietly. It was slowing now as it reached the fourteenth floor penthouse. Without turning, Remo waved his hand behind him and the two automatics were knocked from the .men's hands and dropped onto the carpeted elevator floor. As the men scrambled down to pick them up, the elevator door opened. Chiun stepped outside and Remo hit the down button. He stepped out quickly. The two men had their guns in then-hands again and were raising them toward Remo. He kicked into the elevator with his right foot. Tap, tap. The guns were knocked loose again. Remo stepped outside and the elevator door closed behind him. The elevator started down.

  He and Chiun waited a moment for the elevator to clear the floor. Using his fingers as chisels, Remo drove his hands into the opening between the two doors. He pulled the doors apart and held them open.

  Chiun moved in alongside Remo and flashed out his left foot at the inch-thick steel cable on which the elevator rode. The cable shuddered, then threaded and snapped. Remo looked down at the roof of the elevator car as it began to plunge down the shaft. He heard the shouts of the men. He took his hands from the door and let them close quietly behind him.

  A few seconds later, there was a loud thump

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  down below, in the elevator shaft. The screams suddenly stopped, and all was silence.

  "All right," Remo said. "Lef s find out where Slimone is."

  They were in an anteroom that faced two doors. The center door was unlocked and they stepped into a large posh leather and wood living room.

  A young man sat on a sofa. He looked up at the door expectantly. His face clouded over when he saw Remo and Chiun enter, alone. The young man dove for a small table. His hand fished inside the drawer before Remo kicked the drawer shut, with the man's hand inside. He held the drawer closed with his foot.

  "We ask once," Remo said. "Where is he?"

  "His estate. Newport, Rhode Island."

  "How long's he been there?"

  "Almost a week. He's resting."

  "Who's there with him?"

  "Nobody."

  Remo pressed harder on the drawer.

  "Honest. Just usual security people is all."

  "Thank you," Remo said.

  He released the pressure of his foot on the drawer. The man came out with a gun, aimed at Remo. Before he could squeeze the trigger, Remo's heel was planted under his ¡aw, lifting, the pressure increasing, until the man's skull separated from his spinal column.

  "And thanks again," Remo said as the man fell into a heap. He looked at Chiun and shrugged. "I was wondering what I was going to do with him so he didn't call Newport."

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  Chiun looked at the body.1 "You seem to have found a solution," he said.

  At the airport, Remo went into the private pilot's lounge and found a pilot who would fly them immediately to Newport for four hundred dollars. As they were walking to the twin-engined Cessna, the pilot said, "Too bad."

  "What's too bad?" Remo asked.

  "If you were an hour earlier, you could've shared the ride. I had another passenger."

  "Blonde? Tall, good looking?" Remo asked.

  "That's her. Said she was running away from her husband. Hey, you're not her husband, are you?"

  "Would it matter?"

  "Not if you pay me in advance,' the pilot said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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  Two hundred thousand dollars.

  The amount reverberated through Jessica Lester's mind all through the short flight from Boston to Newport. And she kept mouthing the words to herself when she locked herself into a toilet booth in the small private airport and began to change her clothes.

  Two hundred thousand dollars.

  In the bottom of her small overnight bag she found a black shirt, black slacks and black walking shoes.

  As she dressed, she thought that Remo had told her very little but he had told her enough. He was from the United States government and was going to try to get back Bobby Jack Billings. In simplest terms, that meant Remo was trying to steal two hundred thousand dollars from her, the amount she had been promised by the Libyans if she could produce Bobby Jack for them.

  "No way," she said aloud. Two hundred thousand dollars added to her already substantial bank ac-

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  counts in Europe and Jessica could neatly retire from the business.

  It had been many years since she had first come from South Africa to become a field agent in Britain's MI-5. It had quickly become apparent to her that there was no room for a woman to move up in the British system, to take a position of prominence, no matter how much she might have deserved it. There was just too much male domination, too many old school ties, too much reliance on how many hyphens you had in your name, to permit a young and beautiful South African to reach her level. The Peter Principle, she had once observed to a friend, seemed to work only for those who had peters.

  She bided her time. She often requested transfers so she could get field duty in as much of Europe as possible, where she went out of her way to meet as many agents of other governments as she could. Then one day, after five years in the field, she typed out a neat resignation and dropped it on the desk of her station chief. That same day, she let all her acquaintances from other governments know that she was available for contract jobs.

 

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