Suppose Smith decided to reprogram Remo? The cold bastard had tried it once before. Only Chiun had rescued Remo's sorry ass that time.
"What the hell do I do with the rest of my life?" he asked the stars. "Where do I belong? Who do I turn to?"
The stars poured down cold twinkling light that had no answer.
Remo sat up. Draining the last of his water, he tossed the empty bottle straight up. It ascended seventy feet, poised as if frozen by a snapshot, then began its tumbling return to earth.
Remo leapt up and snapped out with the heel of his foot. Pop! The glass shattered into a thousand gritlike pieces that sprinkled the roof with no more sound than hail falling.
Remo walked to the roof's edge, thinking how he always seemed to be drawn back to his old neighborhood in times like these. There was nothing for him here anymore. St. Theresa's Orphanage had been razed long ago. The neighborhood had fallen victim to the junkies and the pushers and the inexorable eroding of the American inner city. It was a lawless wasteland-the very thing Remo Williams had been erased from all records to prevent.
Now, lower Broad Street looked like Inner City Nowhere. A tight-skirted hooker lounged against a dirty brick wall. The needle tracks on her arms were like a connect-the-dots Amazon River. Two men passed sandwich-bag packets between them. Drugs. A battered pickup drew up to a red light. A man came out of an alley carrying a VCR still in its cardboard box. He dropped it into the bed of the truck and accepted a roll of bills from the driver. The transaction was accomplished without a word spoken.
"Ah, the hell with it," Remo growled.
He had made his decision. He stepped off the parapet edge.
Using the bricks for steps, Remo walked down the side of the building. His heels stepped from brick to brick, taking tiny jerking steps. Upright, his balance perfect, his bleak dark eyes looking out over the Newark skyline, he might have been descending a steep art-deco staircase.
No one noticed his impossible descent. And no one accosted him as he stepped onto the sidewalk and made his way out of the place he had sprung from and which was now as alien to him as the mud flats and fishing shacks of Sinanju, half a planet away.
Harold Smith picked up the dialless red desk telephone on the first ring.
"Yes, Mr. President?" he said crisply, no trace of fear in his voice. In fact, he was quite scared.
"The FBI aren't cutting it," the President said in a careworn voice that muted his vaguely New England twang. "I am turning to you."
"I presume you are referring to the missing Iraiti ambassador?" Harold Smith asked.
"Abominadad is claiming we've taken him hostage," the President snapped, "and we can't prove otherwise. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the smug son of a gun were found floating facedown in the Potomac, but I'm trying to avoid a war here. This kind of escalation could trigger it. I know you've lost the old one-what was his name?"
"Chiun," Smith said stiffly. "His name was Chiun."
"Right. But you still have your special guy, the Causcasian. Can he cut it alone?"
Harold Smith cleared his throat noisily as he mentally framed the news he had been keeping from the chief executive.
"Mr. President-" he began.
Then another phone rang. The blue one. It was the line through which Remo reported.
"One moment," Smith said quickly, cupping the mouthpiece to his gray vest. He grabbed the other phone like a life preserver. He spoke into it.
"Remo," Smith said harshly. "The President has a critical assignment for you. Will you take it? I must have your answer. Now."
"Assignment?" Remo asked in a taken-aback voice. "What kind?"
"The Iraiti ambassador is missing."
"Why should we care?" Remo demanded.
"Because the President does. Will you accept this assignment?"
The line was silent for nearly a minute.
"Why not?" Remo said breezily. "It should kill an afternoon."
"Hold, please," Smith said, no trace of the relief he felt sweetening his lemony voice. He switched phones, hugging the blue receiver to his chest.
"Mr. President," he said firmly, "I have our enforcement arm on the other line. He is prepared to enter the picture."
"Fast work, Smith," the President returned. "I'm pleased with your efficiency. Damn pleased. Go to it."
The line went dead. Smith hung up the red telephone and lifted the blue one from his vest.
"Remo, there is no time for details. Fly to Washington. Contact me once you get there. I hope to have operational details for you by then."
"On my way," Remo said. "Maybe Mad Ass had him assassinated," he added hopefully.
"I doubt that."
"I'd give anything for a crack at that Arabian nightmare."
"Official policy is hands-off. Now, please, go to Washington."
"Keep the line free. The next voice you hear will be yours truly."
Chapter 7
Turqi Abaatira listened with attentive straining ears as the gorgeous blond vixen he knew only as Kimberly sat on the edge of the bed and lectured him on the causes and pathological symptoms of gangrene.
"When blood flow is cut off," she explained in a breathy voice like a schoolgirl reciting from a book, "oxygen is also restricted. Without oxygen, the tissue becomes starved for nourishment. It begins to decay, to become corrupt."
Kimberly reached over and gave the bulging tip of his male organ a friendly pat. It quivered. Abaatira couldn't feel a thing. This alarmed him.
It fascinated Kimberly enough to deviate from her lecture.
"Do they always act rubbery like that? When they're not gangreny, I mean."
She removed the gag from his mouth.
"You do not know?" Abaatira gasped. "You, a professional call girl?"
"I'm new at this stuff," Kimberly said, gazing into her high-polished yellow fingernails. "Actually, you're my first customer."
"I refuse to pay you until you release me," Abaatira said hotly. The gag was replaced.
"Tissue death usually signals itself by a slow change in color," Kimberly went on absently. "Healthy pink skin turns green, then black. When it is completely black, it's dead. Amputation is usually the only remedial procedure." She paused. "I think this black goes very well with yellow, don't you?" she added, adjusting the yellow silk scarf that had strangled the blood flow from Abaatira's upright penis.
Ambassador Abaatira gave his head a violent shake. He tried to give vent to his anger, his rage, most of all to his fear, but an identical yellow silk scarf stuffed into his mouth prevented this. A third one held it in place.
Kimberly had stuffed the one into his mouth after he had first started to cry out, carefully tying the other at the back of his head.
"It's been two days," she went on pleasantly. "I would say that another, oh, twelve to fourteen hours from now, it's gotta go. Bye-bye, Black Peter. Of course, the surgeons might not have to cut it all off. Every last inch, I mean. Perhaps they can save some of it. The tip would definitely go. It's pretty black right now. But you might end up with a kind of stump."
"Mumph-mumph!" Abaatira squealed through the silk gag.
"It wouldn't come in very useful during an orgy," Kimberly went on, "but you could tinkle with it. Maybe enough could be salvaged that you could still point the stream where you wanted it to go. Otherwise, you'd have to sit down like us girls."
Abaatira shook his head violently. He strained at the yellow bonds.
"What's that?" Kimberly asked, leaning closer. "You say you don't want to sit like a girl when you tinkle?"
Ambassador Turqi Abaatira changed the direction of his madly shaking head. Up and down instead of side to side. He poured a great deal of enthusiasm into it. He wanted no ambiguity. None at all.