“I am a worthless piece of human trash,” he informed them over his video feed. He spoke in English for some reason. He was broadcasting from the luxury, high-security apartment from which the government had operated. “I am a coward and a bully. I’m not a man. I’m just a slime-wall.”
A hand came into the shot and dragged the emperor out of the camera’s view. There was whispering off-screen as the camera’s automatic lens adjusted to bring the background into focus. It was a slaughterhouse. The government of the don had clearly been eviscerated.
“Excuse me,” the don said as he was thrust back in front of the camera. “Slimeball. I am a slimeball, not a wall. I will now release the 120 political prisoners …”
He was yanked out of the shot and shoved back in.
“The 120 innocent hostages will now be released. I, and the cowards who grovel at my feet like filthy dogs, should be arrested and charged with mass murder. Also, we are morons.”
The emperor looked off-camera and raised his eyebrows. “Anything else?” the world heard him ask.
Remo yanked the power cord to the camera and its lights went out. “That ought to do it.” He nodded at the wide-screen TV on the wall. “Look, you’re on CNN Europe already.”
Remo was thrilled at the instant success of the don’s nifty video hard-link to the local news station. The don had used it for the past few days to make proclamations to his new subjects. Now the don proclaimed to the world that he was an imbecile and a coward. He was worse than finished—he was emasculated.
“Kill me,” he pleaded.
“Sure thing,” said Remo Williams.
Chapter 5
Sir James Wylings had been born a leech. He had lived a leech. Being a leech on society was what Wylings knew. He was good at it.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t remake himself into something better. He was convinced that all his famous, noble forebears had earned their royal status. So had Sir James Wylings, as far as the world was concerned. But Wylings himself knew the shameful truth. His knighthood had come about through the manipulation of events and, frankly, a little mass murder. You couldn’t arrange to save a starving camp full of refugees without allowing a good number of them to actually starve first. Wylings tried not to think about that part of the scheme. After all, it was only inland Africans who did the starving. His great-grandfather had a term for such people: “ignorant savages.” It was such a quaint old-England turn of phrase.
Sir James imagined the old duke saying, “They’re just ignorant savages, my boy. Any token of civilization you can give them makes them worlds better off than they were before. Aren’t those ignorant savages better off because of the blessings you provided?” The old man wouldn’t have allowed anybody to answer that before concluding, “Of course they are! You touched their lives with the magic fairy dust of English culture! If they weren’t ignorant savages, they’d understand that it was well worth the lives of a few ignorant savages.”
That mind-set was totally lacking in the modern world of the twenty-first century. It really wasn’t so long ago, the time of the British Empire, when England ruled the world.
Bloody England today was nothing more than America’s manservant, and every time the Americans got mud on their face, England was right there getting spattered, too.
Not that Wylings wanted the U.K. to be popular. What was the value in that? He wanted the U.K. to be powerful. He wanted his great-grandfather’s British Empire back. A leech such as himself could find a real niche in a nation intent on good old-fashioned colonialism.
He’d been drawing up plans for years, but they all looked like crazy schemes in the end. He had been wielding his influence conservatively, creating the perfect image. He held roles in the British government and was perceived as competent and loyal. The competence took some back-room game-playing to create, but he was genuinely loyal to the British crown—although to a crown that did not necessarily still exist …
But maybe, one day, his version of England would be reborn. Maybe, just maybe, he would cause it to happen himself. Maybe all the craziness in the world this week would give him a leg up—if he only worked it just right.
Chapter 6
Being in Palermo when the crowds came into the streets was a big ego boost for a guy who was already feeling pretty good about himself.
Any other man would have been relieved to escape with his life. Remo Williams had gone into the don’s penthouse without concern. He had faced truly dangerous enemies in the past, but the don’s thug club wasn’t one of them. Actually, it was kind of a fun outing.
Now it was even more fun. There was laughing and cheering and kissing going on. Every house was awake and celebrating. The Sicilians knew how to throw a party, and the ouster of the don was the best reason of all. The man had slaughtered an amazing number of civilians. Lord knew how many more people would have died if the don had held on to control for another month, or even another week. Hell, just one more day. All the thanks, Remo thought happily, goes to me.
“First you go to the United Kingdom. Then you can go to Sicily and France.”
This was the directive given by Harold W. Smith, Remo’s boss.
Remo stood in the dingy office and carefully made his decision. “Not this time, Smitty. I’m calling for a change in priority. I go to Sicily first.”
The old man Smith considered it and nodded. “Understood. We’ll change your flights to get you to the island soonest.”
“Really?” Remo almost couldn’t believe it was that easy. “Then Basque.”
Smith considered this. Remo felt the need to defend his decision. “See, there are people dying in Sicily and there are people dying in the Basque region. In England, nobody’s dying yet and you don’t even know if there’s a real danger.”
The younger man at the second desk nodded as if he agreed with Remo.
“I see. You called it. You get it,” Smith said. He added, “I fully intend to honor our new agreement, Remo. Arguing at this point would accomplish nothing for either of us.”
The old man was suspiciously agreeable, but Remo took him at his word. Smith’s, word was good. Remo went to Palermo first.
He was glad he did. A twelve-hour stop in England would have given the bloodthirsty don time to butcher another hundred “traitorous” men, women and children.
Instead, they were dancing in the streets, shooting off fireworks, whooping and honking their car horns at three in the morning. Nobody paid attention to the American in the T-shirt, and none of them knew he was the one who had freed them from the bloodthirsty don. It didn’t matter. Remo Williams felt like the man of the hour.
He didn’t need a parade or accolades, but he did need to know he was doing some good. He had worked long and hard to get the right to make at least some of his own decisions, and this was his first taste of it.
The taxi crawled to the airport, but Remo told the cabbie to stop apologizing—the streets were full of music, dancing and impromptu anti-Mafia demonstrations. It was gratifying just to be there in the middle of it. It was okay that he wasn’t out dancing in the ring of Sicilian lovelies with the long, flying black hair. He wasn’t a party kind of guy.
Remo Williams was a totally different kind of guy.
Right now, there was only one human being on the planet who was anything like Remo Williams. That man was an elderly Korean who had remained back in New York, interrogating a parrot.
Remo and the old Korean were the only two living Masters of Sinanju. Sinanju was the name of their art, and Sinanju was the name of a tiny Korean fishing village. For five millennia, the muddy little village had spawned the greatest assassins the world had ever known.