Remo sighed loudly. “You and me both. Pops.”
Senator Herbert Whiteslaw never wanted to go belowground again, but now was not the time to allow his personal preferences to get in the way of his maniacal obsessions.
“Why do I have to meet you in a fucking cave, Jacob?” Whiteslaw said.
“It is just a small cave,” Jacob Fastbinder said with a sniffle.
“Something the matter, Jacob?”
For a moment Fastbinder said nothing, then he spoke tenuously. “My son is dead. He was killed when zee assassins came into my city.”
“Holy mother of crap! How’d they find it?”
“They followed in one of Jack’s transport pods. Jack destroyed them, but he was destroyed himself in zee cataclysm.”
“Yeah, well, that’s really awful and all—but you did it, just like you said you would. You killed them within twenty-four hours.”
“Before he died, one of the assassins gave me much intelligence.”
Herbert Whiteslaw gripped the phone hard. “How much?”
“The conspiracy is vaster than we expected. You will wield great mastery over zee political parties.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“I wish I could share in your delight.”
Herbert Whiteslaw took a shower. The shower hadn’t been hot once during his extended stay at the Comforts of Home Motel in Wheeless, Oklahoma, but this time the chill was invigorating. He checked out and drove happily into New Mexico for the rendezvous with Fastbinder.
“Gimme a P,” he sang. “Gimme an R.” Gimme an E, S, I, D, E N, T! What does it spell?”
The Goose Creek Cave was on private property, outside the boundaries of the Kiowa National Grassland, unmarked and forgotten by almost everybody. While most cavern entrances across the nation were being watched by tanks and soldiers, the Goose Creek Cave sat alone in a small copse of trees a few miles off a country road.
The interior was no bigger than a living room in a trailer home, but Whiteslaw found the fresh opening in the rocks near the back. He crawled inside, stood up and flipped on the flashlight.
Somebody took the flashlight away from him. “Jacob, is that you?”
“Yes, it is me, Senator.”
“What’d you take the flashlight for?”
“That was me.” The flashlight came on in the hands of a dark-haired man.
“I know you!”
“And I know you.”
“You’re one of the assassins!”
“And you’re—wait, don’t tell me.”
The second assassin, the freaky little old Chinaman in the party dress, materialized out of the glimmering darkness of the crystal tunnel. “I believe you referred to him as a loser.”
Remo Williams snapped his fingers. “That’s right, yeah, loser. That’s you.”
“Jacob?” Whiteslaw called out. “You said they were killed.”
“I told him to say that, Senator Coleslaw. Had to get our hands on you. You’re as slippery as rotten cabbage. But now, well, here we all are at last!”
“Let go of me!” Whiteslaw pounded the hand that was holding his shoulder, but the hand felt like tempered steel.
“My God, are you one of Jacob’s robots?”
“No way.” Remo said. “I’m sick to death of robots and mechanized marvels and whatnot. Guess what else I’m sick to death of?”
“Jacob, we can make a deal!” Whiteslaw cried.
“The mad German scientist is not in the position to negotiate,” explained Chiun in a merry, singsong voice. “Observe.”
Whiteslaw found the great German industrialist Jacob Fastbinder III lying on his back with his limp wrists held up over him, like a dog lounging on its back, but his wide, rolling eyes spoiled the similarity.
“Fastbinder, what’s the matter with you?”
“Coleslaw, what’s the matter with you?” Remo asked as he paralyzed the senator with a quick love squeeze, tipped him over on his back and chained one ankle to the rear end of the earth drill alongside Fastbinder. “Everybody ready to go?”
“Not I,” Chiun said. “I don’t understand this pointless and messy display.”
“Easy dyin’ is way too good for this pair,” Remo insisted. “Coleslaw’s been a prickle in my posterior for months, and Fastbinder put me in the freaking hospital. Besides, this is kind of poetic justice, don’t you think?”
Chiun sniffed. “What you know of poetry would fill the back of a postcard. Get this outrageous display over with so we may leave.”
“One outrageous display coming up!” Remo gave the thumbs-up to the paralyzed pair and stepped into the open hatch at the rear of the earth drill. It started up. He stepped out again as the drill began to crawl away. There were no lightning displays—it was returning into the crystal cavern it had created already.
It left a glistening red trail in its wake.
“Ouch. The floor must be really sharp, huh. Little Father?” Remo said. “I bet that hurts something awful.”
Chiun rolled his eyes. “Amid your immature antics you forgot something important.”
“What did I forget? Oh, shit.” Remo bounded down the tunnel and soon found himself stepping through a grisly obstacle course before catching up to the creeping earth drill.
“Hey, Mr. Loser, you’re not gonna be needing that rental car anymore, are you? Mind if I take it?”
The flopping torso of Herbert Whiteslaw didn’t answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Remo gingerly fished the keys out of the pants pocket and jogged back to Chiun. “Shredded like coleslaw,” he announced cheerfully. Chiun could not have been more disgusted.
Chapter 47
Smith could not have been angrier.
“We did not want Whiteslaw assassinated.”
“Smitty, no way in hell was I letting Whiteslaw be not dead. He should have been taken out of the picture months ago, along with Orville Flicker. Instead we ignored him and look what trouble he caused.”
“The President, in particular, requested that he be captured alive,” Smith said sourly.
‘Why take the chance? That slippery little weasel would come back to haunt us, guaranteed. Now he never will. Fastbinder, same solution: Even his freakazoid kid couldn’t put him back together again.”
“There is also the matter of the earth drill. The DOD could have put it to good use.”
Remo looked over both shoulders. “Smitty, where’s the dingbat you’re talking to? Because nobody in this room is stupid enough to believe the DOD would do good with any Jack Fast invention.”
“Remo, hold your tongue!” Chiun ordered harshly. “Emperor, please forgive his impertinence. He is still recovering from his period of extended unconsciousness. It causes him to experience seizures of irritability and idiocy.”
“What’s the status of the survivors. Junior?” Remo asked. “How many made it out?”
Mark Howard felt as if he were getting quite skilled at operating in this environment of flaring anger. These days it was the normal state of things when Remo was around. “They rendezvoused with the rescue teams this morning at a subsurface depth of 10,031 feet. They rescued the bunch you tied up in the transport pod. They claimed that there were no surviving topsiders in Fastbinder’s city, which was reverting to the anarchy of albino control. Apparently, the albinos were so busy gorging in the Fastbinder food stores they didn’t lift a finger to stop the topsiders escaping.”
“Remo—” Smith started.
“Smitty,” Remo interjected, “tell me the U.S. of A. has enough sense to leave well enough alone in Fastbinder’s city.”
“Don’t interrupt!” Chiun snapped.