The room was a dark forest of stacked chrome-and-leather chairs and great round folding tables. The bellboy led Remo to a dim corner.
"This was a smart place to hide them," the bellboy was saying. "All the damaged chairs and broken tables are stashed in this corner. Here."
He stepped aside for Remo to get a good look.
The maids were seated on the floor, their legs straight out, facing one another as if posed in a game of pat-a-cake. Their heads lolled drunkenly off the shoulders of their starched blue uniforms and their arms hung down off their drooping shoulders, elbows and wrists folded stiffly.
Their faces were almost-not quite-the same delicate blue as their starched uniforms. A few stared glassily at nothing.
Each maid was marked by a purplish bruise at the throat. Something had been tied around their necks very, very tightly. Tight enough to seemingly force their tongues from their open mouths. Tight enough to cause at least one of them to defecate into her underwear.
Remo went among them, kneeling at each body, making certain they were gone. They were. He stood up, his high-cheekboned face grim.
"What do you think, sir?" the bellboy asked, getting the idea that the skinny guy was not a dangerous maniac, but something much, much more.
"I don't like that yellow scarf upstairs," he muttered.
The cryptic comment called for no response, so the bellboy offered none. He stood there feeling angry and helpless and wondering if there was something he should have seen or done or heard that might have averted this tragedy.
Then it struck him.
"You know," he said slowly, "I saw a girl walking around the hotel yesterday who wore a scarf like the one we saw."
"Yellow scarves are pretty common," the man said, regarding the bodies dispassionately.
"She also wore a yellow dress. And yellow fingernail polish."
The skinny guy looked up suddenly.
"Did she look like a hooker?" he asked.
"I got that impression, yeah. More like a call girl, though. This is a classy place. The manager doesn't let streetwalkers in."
"If he lets the Iraiti ambassador frolic in the afternoons," the skinny guy said, walking off, "you shouldn't feel so damn proud of this fleabag."
"Should I call the police?" the bellboy called after him.
"No," the skinny guy said. "Wait here."
And even though he never returned, the bellboy obeyed.
He was still standing watch over the bodies when the FBI came in en masse and sealed off the hotel.
The bellboy didn't get a chance to see his mother that night, but he was allowed to call her to say that he'd be home after the debriefing. He made it sound important. It was. Before it was all over, the world would edge toward the brink of a sinkhole of sand from which there was no return.
Chapter 9
Harold Smith accepted Remo Williams' telephone report without any expression of regret. The loss of the Iraiti ambassador was not exactly an affront to humanity. But the political fallout could be significant.
"If it wasn't for all the strangled maids," Remo was saying grimly, "I'd say it was a kinky lovers' tryst gone bizarre."
"The ambassador was quite a ladies' man," Smith was saying in a half-audible voice that usually meant his attention was divided between his conversation and his computer.
"Who do you think this girl in yellow is?" Remo wondered.
"The possibilities are endless. A Kurani spy out to avenge her homeland. An Isreali Mossad agent out to send a message to Abominadad. Even the U.S. CIA is a possibility, but highly unlikely. If this were sanctioned, I would know about it."
"The bellboy had her pegged as a call girl."
"That is my thought as well. I am checking my file on Ambassador Abaatira even as we speak. Yes, here it is. He is known to prefer the services of the Diplomatic Escort Service."
"Good name," Remo quipped. "You know, you might have mentioned this before."
"I hadn't thought the ambassador's sexual appetites would play a role in this."
"Believe me, Smitty," Remo said airily, "sex was uppermost in the guy's mind when he cashed out. He had a ringside seat to his last hard-on. In fact, if you get to see the morgue photos, you'll notice he had his eye on the ball right to the bitter end."
Harold Smith cleared his throat with the low, throaty rumble of a distant thundercloud. "Yes . . . er, well, those details are unimportant. Listen carefully, Remo. The FBI is going to suppress this entire matter. For the moment, the Iraiti ambassador is still on the missing-persons list. His death would cause who-knows-what reaction in Abominadad. We cannot afford that."
"Screw Abominadad," Remo snapped. "After all the hostages they've taken, how much of a stink can they raise over one flagrante delicto diplomat?"
"The stink I am thinking of," Smith said levelly, "is not diplomatic. The stink I fear is the stink of nerve gas in the lungs of our servicemen stationed in Hamidi Arabia."
"Point taken," Remo said. "I still say you should let me cash out Mad Ass. I'm sick of seeing his face every time I turn on the TV."
"Then do not turn on the TV," Smith countered. "Investigate the Diplomatic Escort Service and report on what you find. "
"Could be an interesting investigation," Remo said with relish. "I'm glad I brought my credit cards."
"Remo, under no circumstances are you to procure the services of-"
The line clicked dead.
Harold Smith returned the receiver to its cradle and leaned back in his ancient executive's chair. This was worrisome. This was very, very worrisome. It would be better-although not good-if the Iraiti ambassador had fallen victim to a common criminal, or even a serial killer. If this had an intelligence connection, no matter what nation was involved, the unstable Middle East was about to become even more precarious.
Remo Williams found a yellow police-barrier tape in front of the office building that was the base for the Diplomatic Escort Service. It was the same yellow as the silk scarf around the late Ambassador Abaatira's neck, he noticed without pleasure.
"What's going on?" Remo asked the uniformed cop who stood by the main entrance.
"Just a little matter for the D.C. detectives," the cop returned without rancor. "Watch the evening news."
"Thanks," Remo said. "I will." He continued on his way, slipped around the corner, and looked up at the dingy facade.
The side of the building wasn't exactly sheer. But it wasn't a ziggurat of brick and gingerbread, either.
Remo walked up to the facade, placing his toes to the building's base as Chiun had taught him so long ago. Raising his arms, he laid his palms flat against the gritty wall.
Then, somehow, he began ascending. He had forgotten the involved theory, the complicated movements, just as he had his old fear of heights. He had mastered ascents long, long ago.
So he ascended. His slightly cupped palm created an impossible but natural tension that enabled him to cling and pause while he shifted his footholds and used his steelstrong fingers to obtain increasingly higher purchase.
Remo wasn't climbing. Exactly. He was using the vertical force of the building to conquer it. There was no sensation of going up. It felt to Remo as if he were pulling the building down, step by step, foot by foot. Of course, the building wasn't sinking into its foundations under Remo's practiced manipulations. He was going up it.
Somehow, it worked. Somehow, he found himself on the eighth-floor ledge. He peered into a window. Dark. He walked around the six-inch-wide ledge with a casual grace, pausing at each grimy window-sometimes scouring pollution particles from the glass the better to see inside-until he found the office window he wanted.
The medical examiner was still shooting pictures. He was shooting into a closet. Remo could smell, even through the glass, the odors of death, sudden perspiration, now stale, bodily wastes, both liquid and not. But no blood.