When he was sitting upright, he saw the same old Chinaman, smiling at him in exactly the same way.
“Good afternoon, Sir Mutha.”
“Who are you devils?” shrieked Sissy Muh. “Who are you?” She cut savagely at the arm of the younger white man, who was holding her off the ground by her long French braids. Sissy wasn’t short, and the white man wasn’t extra tall; still, he managed to keep his arms out of the reach of Sissy’s mean-looking hunting knife.
“Come on, let me cut you!”
“No, thanks, sweetheart.” The white man pinched the blade with two fingers and flicked it out of Sissy’s grasp. It buried itself in the plastic interior walls—ten feet away.
“Devil!” She kicked and clawed but she contacted nothing but air, every time, until she was as furious and wild as a hooked eel landed in a rowboat.
The white man sighed and snatched at Sissy’s neck as if he were flicking a switch. Sissy stopped, as if she had been turned off, and she slumped into one of the console chairs.
“Did you kill ’er?” Mutha asked.
“Naw, she’s still alive and kicking on the inside. See?”
Sir Mutha observed that his security chief’s eyes were flickering around the room like a wild animal’s, but her body was absolutely limp.
“You paralyzed her!”
“Not permanently. The peace and quiet is nice, though, isn’t it? And now to restore some peace and quiet to Kingston town. Would you call off your coup, Sir Mutha, please?”
Sir Muffa Muh Mutha careened to his feet, overtaken by the urge to self-defend. Joining his hands into a club, he walloped the little Chinaman with all his body weight, but the Chinaman was gone. Sir Mutha felt himself carom off the plastic wall and descend onto his knighted backside once more.
And the Chinaman was right back where he had been, and he was giving Sir Mutha the same Chinaman smile.
“Sissy’s right—you be devils! Demons!”
“Not I, Sir Mutha,” the Chinaman said cheerily. “He is another story.”
“Don’t go there,” the white man said. “Time to call off the dogs, you Mutha.”
“Never!”
Never lasted for all of ten seconds. By then, Mutha had endured all the earlobe pinching a human being could ever expect to endure. The agony was unbearable.
“Fall back. Retreat. This is Mother. I’m calling off the holiday. Repeat. I am calling off the holiday.”
“Get them out of Jamaica,” Remo added. “And tell them not to come back.”
Sir Mutha urged his soldiers to evacuate, then Remo sat the British pop star down for a chat.
“Even you are not a Reagan,” Chiun pointed out. He was still smiling, and the smile had Sir Mutha’s flesh crawling…
“Iya, dunno…a what?”
“A Reagan. You are not. She is not, although she has one long hair thong, at least.”
Sir Mutha couldn’t make sense of it. “As in reggae music?” Remo asked, seeing the light. “Don’t think they call them Reagans, Chiun. Some are Rastafarians. Some are just Jamaicans. This mutha, I have no idea. What are you?”
“I’m an artist.”
“’Course you are. You go right on believing it. Me, I like to pretend I’m master of my own destiny. Now, here’s the important question. Who put you up to this?”
“Nobody. I’m my own man.”
“Your turn, bad cop.” Remo nodded at Chiun, who intensified his smile and took Sir Mutha by the elbow again. Seconds later, Mutha was begging them to let him speak.
“Even I’m getting creeped out by you looking so happy,” Remo said. “Now, Mutha, spill it.”
Mutha stopped screaming from the agony. “Okay! I’ll talk! What was the question?”
“Who put you up to it?” Remo asked impatiently.
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody is behind this. Somebody got you on board. Who is that somebody?”
“Oh. Easy. It was Sissy.”
“Convenient scapegoat, her being right here with us.”
“No, it was her, really. She’s my go-between with the Royals. That’s what she always called them. The Royals.”
Remo nodded. “You hush now.” He turned to Sissy Muh and adjusted her spine with a touch.
“Now, young lady,” was as far as Remo got.
When she had her voice back she began screeching at them. “You don’t scare me, freaks!”
Remo shrugged. “I can be bad cop, too. See?” He touched her on the elbow. She stopped screaming and started singing.
Remo thought that any self-respecting revolutionary with his or her own mobile command center ought to have a telephone. Chiun pointed out that there were various devices that could be used to communicate with the outside world. Sissy was eager to help them place their call.
‘To a delicatessen?”
“Not just a delicatessen—Oppheim’s is the delicatessen in all of Sioux City.” Herschel Oppheim himself— or the computer-generated equivalent of an Iowan deli owner—was on the line now.
“Yeah, we’re the best. Now what do you want?”
“What’s good today, Mr. Oppheim?”
‘It’s all good. You name it, it’s good. Now name it, bud.”
“My mouth’s watering for com beef on rye,” Remo said. “Extra, extra mustard. Chiun?”
“Fah!”
“Let’s have the usual for my dad. Pastrami on white bread. Pile it on high.”
“Pile what high?” Mark Howard asked.
“I think you know. Where’s Smitty?”
“He’s monitoring another situation. He asked me to get your report.”
Remo heard the hesitancy in the voice of the young assistant director of CURE. Remo was almost starting to like Mark, and he had come to respect the man’s capabilities. But Mark Howard wasn’t a good liar, even when it was a lie of omission.
Remo played along for the time being. “We managed to stop the recolonization of Jamaica,” he said.
“We’ve heard,” Howard said. “The Jamaicans are arresting mercenaries all over the island.”
“Quite a rainbow coalition,” Remo said. “He got Colombians, Haitians, Americans, you name it. But no Jamaicans. You wouldn’t believe this guy. Says his name is Mutha.”
“That would be Sir Muffa Muh Mutha,” Mark Howard said. “He was at the top of our list of possible ringleaders of the Jamaican coup attempt. Did he survive?”
“Oh, sure, he’s here with me now. Funny thing is, Jamaicans hate this guy, from what he says. I guess he’s some sort of hack reggae imitator who steals everybody else’s good bits and repackages them as his own. Says he was run out of the country when he tried to stage a show. Now he’s back to take over the place and exact a little revenge.”
Howard sounded impatient. “Yes, but what about the organizers? Who put him up to it? Who organized it?”
Remo reported the interrogation of Sissy Muh, who was the real brains behind the operation. It was she who recruited mercenaries from throughout the Americas, who purchased intelligence, who equipped the forces. Her instructions and her funding always came anonymously. “She calls them the Royals. Says her contact has an accent like a rich British type.”
“Have you questioned her thoroughly?” Howard asked, sounding impatient.
“Yeah. Thoroughly,” Remo replied, feeling a little annoyed. “We also thoroughly stopped the takeover of the government of Jamaica. Isn’t that a good thing? Didn’t we buy you some time?”
“Yes. Well, not really.” Mark Howard was flustered. “Another former colony is being taken over even as we speak.”
Remo looked at Chiun. Both of them heard the strange discomfort in Mark Howard’s voice.
“Which former colony?” Remo asked pleasantly.
“Nowhere near you. You’d never get there in time. It’ll be over within the hour.”