'That's just a touch," Remo said. "You understand. Now I've got approval, right?"
"Right," said nine voices.
Thank you."
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Remo went back to Chiun. The patrolman moved aside.
"We've got approval," Remo said.
The patrolman winked.
Inside the room, the mayor sat with his head resting on his hands, as if trying to wring a headache out of it.
"Another string of fires, up along York Avenue," his aide called to him.
The mayor shook his head. "Call the firemen. Tell them to go back to work."
The aide said, "You can't do that. It'll kill you politically."
"And if I don't, there are going to be bodies stacked up all over this city," the mayor said. "Tell them they can have deer season off. They can have duck season. They can have frigging mongoose season. I'm gonna get their asses later, but they've got to go back."
The aide started to protest, but the mayor barked, "Do it." Then he looked up and saw Remo.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"What's the ransom demand on the World Trade Center?" Remo asked.
"Ten million dollars."
"You going to pay it?" Remo asked.
"No. I'm waiting for them to lower their demand to deer season off. That I can give them."
"Is the Trade Center agency going to give them the money?"
"No," the mayor said. "Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm from Washington," Remo said. "This is my assistant." He nodded toward Chiun. Chiun glared at him.
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"I am his teacher," Chiun corrected. "Everything he knows I taught him. Except how to be ugly. He came by that naturally."
"You sound like my mother," said the mayor.
"I bet you never write her," Chiun said.
"Will you two stop?" Remo said. "We've got business. The arsonists are going to call back?"
"Yes," the mayor said.
"When those firemen go back to work, you're still going to have a problem."
"What's that?"
"Those arsonists. They really can bum down the World Trade Center. They can burn down this whole city."
"What's left of it, you mean," said the mayor.
"Right. What's left of it. Anyway, if you don't stop them, this city is in bad trouble and going to stay in bad trouble."
"As opposed to?" the mayor asked.
"When are the arsonists calling back?"
The mayor looked at the wall clock. "Five minutes," he said.
The aide interrupted him. "Mayor, I just talked to the firemen."
'Tes?"
They want St. Swithin's Day off, too."
"What the hell is St. Swithin's Day?" the mayor asked.
"I don't know, something about a groundhog, I think," the aide said.
"No," the mayor said. "It's rain. Groundhog is winter or something." He groaned again. "Give it to them. Give them anything. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna have all those bastards thrown off the frig-
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T
ging department if it's the last thing I do."
The aide nodded and went back to the phone. Remo said, "All right, Mayor, when the arsonists call, here's what you do."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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The Trade Center police still ringed the block, but all of them had been pulled out from inside the twin tower complex when Remo and Chiun arrived. The lights had been turned out in the lobby, but as the two men walked down the store-lined corridor connecting the two towers, a flashlight beam shone from one end into their faces. "Who are you?" a voice called. "I can't hear you," Remo said. Tve got a flashlight in my face."
The light went out. "One man only," Chiun hissed to Remo. "Now who are you?"
Tve got your money," Remo said. He swung the attaché case he was carrying into the air above his head before realizing that his questioner couldn't see it in the dark. Remo made out the man. Early thirties, flashily dressed, wearing two gold rings. He had seen him before behind the wheel of a car in St. Louis. Solly Martin. Remo was disappointed. He had hoped that the kid Sparky would be here, too.
Remo and Chiun walked toward him. Solly's voice was crisp. "That's far enough," he said.
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"We're twenty feet apart," Remo said. "How do I get you your money unless we get closer than that? Mail it?"
"What's the money in?"
"A briefcase," Remo said.
"Okay. Put it down on the floor, then back up."
The light flashed on. Remo put down the attaché case and then motioned for Chiun to back away. So did Remo.
They saw the flashlight click on, zero in on the attaché case, and then come closer. It waved up to them.
"Back farther," Solly called. "No funny stuff. I've got a gun on you."
"No gun," Chiun whispered to Remo.
"How do you know?"
"His balance when he walks. He is just one flashlight off in balance. Not a flashlight and a gun," Chiun said.
Remo had made the same judgment. "Maybe he's dragging the gun on a rope behind him," he said sullenly.
"No," Chiun said thoughtfully. "I don't hear
that."
The flashlight was at the attaché case. Solly bent down to flip it open.
Remo said, "Where's Santa's little helper?" "Sparky? He's upstairs ready to put this building away if there's any funny stuff." Suddenly, he realized that no one should have known about his young accomplice. He looked up at Remo as he fumbled with the locks. "What do you know about . . ."
Remo interrupted. "You set many fires?" "Enough to know what we're doing," Solly said.
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"Who are you?"
"You set that one in Newark? At the tenement? For Reverend Witherspool?"
"Yeah. That was ours. Good fire."
In the dark, Remo nodded. "A friend of ours died in that fire."
"Sorry to hear it," Solly Martin said. 'That's life."
Tm glad you're taking that attitude," Remo said.
Solly had forgotten the question he asked Remo in his hurry to get the case of money open. He Lifted the top, glanced at the money, then raised his light toward Remo, catching him full in the eyes. Remo saw the swing of the light and contracted the pupils of his eyes before the light hit him, and when the light was on him, the pupils of his eyes were only little pinpricks of black.
"I know you from somewhere?" Solly asked. He rotated the light around Remo's face.
"We never met," Remo said. "But we almost did in St. Louis. At the sporting goods store."
"That was you?"
''Yeah."
"You spooked the kid."
"Nothing compared to what I'm going to do," said Remo.
"What do you mean?" ,
"I mean, you're first and then him. That's phoney money there. It's just cut-up newspaper, under a few bills. Phoney stacks."
The light swung down toward the attaché case, but before Solly Martin could even glance at the money, Remo was on him, his right hand like a claw around the back of Martin's neck.
"Where's the kid?" Remo asked.
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"I don't know. Owwwww. I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"He's upstairs somewhere. In this building."
"And how's he going to know you've got the money?" Remo asked.
"He's going to call me on that phone over there." Solly tried, ineffectively, to point to a pay phone on the wall.
"Is that the truth?" Remo asked, even though he knew it was. Pain in judicious doses, judiciously applied, always brought the truth, and Remo was a master at the measured dose of pain.
"Yeah, it's the truth," Solly said. "This is a shit deal."
"Maybe you're in the wrong business," Remo said.
"I was always in the wrong business. And here, finally, I thought I had it. And now . . . goddamn jail."
Remo shook his head. In the glow from the flashlight, forgotten on the floor, Solly could see Remo's face, the dark, deep-set eyes, the high cheekbones, and a shiver went through the man's body.