Remo gave the man his full attention. “Let me give you a hand.” He slipped the cases out of the man’s hands faster than the man could see, but he was happy for the relief. Remo strolled along with him.
“He’s staging a sort of surprise grand prix demonstration. Wants to launch a real grand prix here next year. Wants it to be early in the year, the first grand prix of the season.”
Remo considered that. “Why make the demonstration a surprise?” he asked.
“Generates more excitement among the locals,” the pudgy one explained, rolling his shoulders. “How do you carry those things so easy?”
Remo was toting the heavy cases as if they were filled with lacy lingerie, not steel camera and light mounts. “But he won’t get the coverage he wants, right, by making it a surprise? I mean, you guys will be here but none of the big networks will come, will they? No offense.”
“Ha!” The woman in the overalls laughed. “When Michele Rilli calls, they’ll come. He’s huge.”
Remo nodded and placed the cases back in the hands of the pudgy man, who wasn’t expecting them and felt his shoulders get yanked out of their sockets.
“Makes sense to me, Little Father,” Remo said as he returned to Chiun, standing impatiently still and silent in the middle of the terminal. “I think this really is just a big PR stunt.”
“You are usually wrong,” Chiun pointed out.
“I’m sometimes right,” Remo added.
Calling in a few favors, the customs officer managed to have the wharf cleared within sight of the French cargo ship as it off-loaded its herd of grand prix racers.
“I cannot contain any excitement at seeing this famous collection of cars, sir.” Getting no answer, the customs officer turned and found himself alone. Sir Rilli was hustling back up the ramp and shouting orders.
Men began emerging from the deckhouse in racing gear, and the officer grew concerned when he saw that they were wearing heavy, padded race suits of a type most unsuitable for the high temperatures of the Ayounde capital city of Ayounde. More men streamed out behind them. The customs officer blinked and looked again. Certainly they were not toting grand prix car maintenance tools of any kinds; those could only be automatic rifles.
“Sir Rilli, what is the meaning of the guns, sir?” The customs officer was running up the ramp. “Why was I not informed that there were guns aboard, sir?”
“Because it is none of your business,” Rilli replied. He was relieved that now he could drop the charade of French friendliness and fall back on his more comfortable French obstinance. Most people did not realize that the French could be downright contrary when they set their minds to it. This was the side of the French personality that the tourists never saw.
But the customs agent was given the rare privilege of seeing just how ornery a British-born Frenchman by blood could be.
“This is inexcusable, sir! I will require you to keep those men on the vessel. I am afraid a more thorough inspection will now be needed.”
“Uh, well, now yuh become quite the inspector,” Rilli snarled in a French-Cockney accent that would have shattered a sparkling-wine glass. “You are unfit to work for the next governor of this colony!”
The inspector was stopped short by this confusing statement “Pardon?”
“No pardon!” Rilli cried, and backhanded the unwitting inspector. The sucker slap sent the inspector reeling off balance on the steep ramp while Rilli danced in a circle and shook his smarting hand. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”
“Are you hurt, Governor Rilli?” asked a worried assistant.
“Oui! Oui! Oui!”
Just as the customs inspector was about to regain his balance, one of the silent gunmen placed his foot on the ramp and gave it a quick, soundless shove. The inspector yelped. Rill turned just in time to see him vanish. There was a thud. Rilli stepped to the rail and found the man flattened on the wharf, limbs akimbo.
“Did I do that?” he asked.
“Yes, of course, Governor,” said his assistant, trying to wrap gauze around Rilli’s hurt hand.
“Auspicious start to the takeover, innit, killing a guy?” He was back at full-strength Cockney.
“Indeed, Governor.” The assistant was mummifying the bruised knuckles in bandages.
“Forget that!” Rilli shook his hand until the gauze unfurled. “Let’s begin. Deploy!” He marched down the ramp, yanking his car keys out of his pocket, and hit the master unlock button on his remote. The cargo containers chirped electronically, and their locking bolts shot open with hundreds of angry metallic snaps. The walls on the front and sides fell flat, while the back wall stayed up and held in place the top of the container.
Revealed inside each container was a very dangerous racing car, its engine coming to life as the crates opened. The cars looked at first glance to be the latest, state-of- the-art models, like the ones Rilli drove to victory time and again the previous season. In Bahrain and San Marino. In Hungary and Italy. In Belgium and China and Japan and Brazil and in every other bleeding grand prix race of the season last year except bleeding Spain.
These cars had a few extras not to be found on the average twenty-first-century grand prix machine. Offensive hardware.
“Let’s ride,” he called excitedly, and because it sounded like a good line. He jumped into the McGaren-Yhuihobi Special and stepped on the gas pedal. The machine rumbled like a waking carnivore.
The gasoline-powered McGaren-Yhuihobi Special was the prototype of the Grand Prix-Type Offensive Attack Race Car, designed for more reliability, better street performance and greater flexibility in offensive maneuvers. Still, they had the aggressive power and handling of a true grand prix racer.
Assembly of a full two dozen such vehicles, with their special accessories and custom cargo containers, hadn’t been cheap. But then, that’s why professional racing had sponsors.
Bernie Saward was practically crooning on the telephone. “It’s happening, Mr. Hammerstone. Michele Rilli’s promotions coordinator just called me from his offices in Paris. Sir Rilli is on the ground—he’s in Africa!”
“Africa?” Hammerstone repeated groggily. He’d been dozing in his desk chair in his spacious top-floor office. “What the hell for in Africa?”
“Ayounde. They actually have a consuming economy in Ayounde. Doesn’t matter—what matters is that the surprise grand prix is about to begin.”
Bemie Saward was meeting the members of the board of directors at the door of the conference hall, beaming and greeting each one of them like the happy bride just after the ceremony. The directors were slow to respond—it was three o’clock in the morning in Connecticut. None of them wanted to miss the big Ayounde Grand Prix—with their corporate logos plastered on the cowlings of half the cars in the event.
The large plasma screen at one end of the boardroom table was showing CNN, but it was muted. CNN was running a segment on the latest film box-office results.
“Check it out,” sang Bernie Saward, and he clicked the sound on as a pair of big oblong shapes appeared on the television, transforming each into the broad grins of two happy youngsters holding their gigantic soft-serve ice-cream cones.
“Mine’s dipped in pure milk chocolate!” exclaimed the girl.
“Mine’s sprinkled with sprinkles!” cried the boy.
“Thanks, Milkie Queen!” they shouted together, and the camera pulled back as the animated, well-endowed Milkie Queen waved back to her ecstatic young customers from the walk-up window at a neighborhood Milkie Queen stand.
“Good work,” Bernie Saward said. “How did you get us on the same night as the Ayounde Grand Prix?”
“Easy, Mr. Saward. I bought time on every news network on every overnight this week. Cut us some great bargains, too, I don’t mind saying. And about an hour from now, our viewership is gonna go through the roof.”