Remo was suspicious. He’d never heard of Rowester. “Tell me about it.”
“Nice place. A bunch of old families with some money and they needed to keep out the undesirables, you understand? They set up their own sort of unofficial city, but they made it kind of official in all the ways they knew how to make it. They got their own phone codes and all that, and they managed to make it a gated community, you know, keep out the rabble. Just the kind of place our man would live, if he’s from one of the old families with old money.”
Remo considered that. “So maybe we know the city our man comes from. That’s not exactly narrowing it down.”
“Wrong, mate,” Sheldon said quickly. “Rowester’s big on property and money, but there’s damn few people actually living there. Just the uppermost crusts, so to speak. Maybe a thousand people. Maybe even less.”
Chapter 31
“Not much, but it’s the most he could give us,” Remo told Harold W. Smith.
“Remo, this could be enormous,” Smith answered.
“It could?”
“Mark’s already combed Mr. Jahn’s phone records for the past several months but without knowing what to look for. Now he’s zeroing in on the calls Mr. Jahn mentioned. Looks like he’s found them. Here we are. Sir James Wylings.”
Remo was suitably impressed at how fast the information was isolated. “Still, sounds like the kind of place where everybody is a knight or a prince or a duke of earl. We don’t know that Wylings is the guy.”
There was silence. Remo heard quick exchanges between Smitty and Mark Howard. Those two bounced data off each other like silver marbles bounding around in a pinball machine. “You want me to call back.”
“It’s him,” Smith breathed. “Sir James Wylings. He’s the one.”
“What? How could you find him guilty so fast?” Remo demanded.
Smith began rattling off bits of data. Parliamentary insider. Boyhood friends with Andrew Dolan and Geoffrey Sykes, both members of parliament and actively opposed to the parliamentary efforts to condemn the recolonization efforts. Wylings had friends in high places all over the government. Including—yes, he knew Professor Roland R. Gill. Was the last one to see him alive, in fact. Gill was the mastermind behind the nanotechnology project at Loch Tweed Castle. Got drunk and drove his car into the Thames.
“Or Wylings drove him in, after learning a thing or two about Loch Tweed Castle,” Remo remarked.
“This is vital. The man is a trusted parliamentary insider without actually holding any government positions. He’s a part of parliament’s International Terrorism Defense Support Initiative. They use classified information to identify weaknesses in the infrastructure of foreign countries—ways terrorists might get in and do serious damage,” Smith explained.
“How convenient,” Remo said.
“There’s more,” Smith added. “His travel schedule. He was in Sierra Leone two days ago on unspecified business. After landing in Africa he took another short-range helicopter transport to an unknown destination, returned shortly and headed directly for England again.”
“He planted the nanobots in the water in Ayounde,” Remo stated. “He’s the one.”
“He’s in New Jersey now. The nature of the trip is unknown. His private jet is scheduled to return to London within the hour.”
“We’ll be in London to meet it,” Remo said.
Smith was quiet. No key tapping. Just breathing. “I’ll call the President and have a state of emergency declared in New Jersey. Wylings may have planted nanobots there—more likely, he staged them to deploy remotely should more global arm-twisting be required.”
“Yeah,” Remo breathed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be in New Jersey?”
“No, thanks, Smitty. If Wylings is going to London, I’d like to go to London, too. London is one of my favorite places. Can we get there before he does?”
The answer was no. The plane chartered by Remo and Chiun was just as fast as the plane owned by Sir James Wylings, but they were farther away. “It all depends on when you leave and when Wylings leaves Newark. You still have to wrap up things with Sir Sheldon Jahn.”
“That’s—wait a sec—that’s wrapped up.”
The body of Sheldon Jahn fell heavily. Smitty heard the thump.
“We’re on our way.” Remo and Chiun hurried out of the secure communications hub, descended and emerged from the front of the building.
“Halt!” commanded an infuriated Chinese general.
“She’s all yours, Commies,” Remo announced. He and Chiun glided into the disordered attack formation of military vehicles and troops and vanished.
Chapter 32
Wylings was taking his leave of the colonial governor of New Jersey, posing for the camera so the reporters could see that this was a legitimate visit between two legitimate statesmen. Perception was everything, and it was imperative that the world understand fully that the newly reconquered colonies were now irrefutably a part of the British Empire.
The governor of New Jersey had welcomed him as a fellow knight, as a high, influential member of the British government and as a supporter of the empire movement. Maybe the governor even suspected that Wylings was the one behind it all—the mastermind— but they never discussed it openly. Their conversations were limited to organizing the new trade coalitions between New Jersey Colony and England.
As he entered his limo, Wylings turned on the news and received the shock of his life. In a matter of hours, two of his established colonies had been knocked over. Ayounde had fallen when, according to reporters, there was a rebellion by the mercenaries who had helped Sir Michele Rilli conquer Ayounde. A call for help had been overheard during the fighting. Later, the ministers and prime minister managed to break their way out of a holding cell in the basement of Government House and had only then learned of the devastation that had befallen their largest city.
Minutes ago, another catastrophe. Sir Sheldon Jahn was dead and the financial ministry in Hong Kong was back in the hands of the People’s Republic of China.
Devastating losses. Ayounde had petroleum resources worth billions. Hong Kong, serving as the financial powerhouse behind the People’s Republic of China, would have channeled billions more into the coffers of the British Empire.
Something was happening. The scheme was discovered. Maybe Wylings himself had been identified. It was time to accelerate the schedule and it was time to turn the screws on Her Majesty the queen. Wylings would force the British government to come to its senses.
James Wylings knew how to make that happen. As with everything else, his scheme was already mapped out. The tools he needed were in place. He held the power of life and death over the heart and soul of the British Empire. London. Soon the British Empire would be acting according to his wishes—or London would be a vast and silent graveyard, full of rotting corpses.
The main city of Ayounde was just three thousand people. London’s population was considerably larger.
Aboard his private aircraft, bound for London, Sir James Wylings placed a phone call to a very private number.
“Sir James Wylings calling. May I speak to Her Majesty at once, please? Oh, yes, the matter is quite important.”
Chapter 33
Mark Howard knew that royal marriages were often arranged for reasons that had nothing to do with love or romance, even in the enlightened twenty-first century. Still, this had to be one of the least-romantic marriage proposals ever.
“James Wylings is threatening to annihilate half the population of London if he doesn’t get what he wants,” he reported from his computer screen. The speakers, hidden in the desk, connected their conference call to the chartered Learjet, which was now transporting the Masters of Sinanju away from Hong Kong. “Wylings called the queen of England personally. Get this—his conditions are that she marries him, immediately.”