"You have taken other skins, too, to survive?" Willingham hissed.
"No," said Remo.
"Eeeeek," cried Willingham. "We are doomed."
"Hopefully," said Remo. "Now where is your headquarters?"
And then Willingham smiled his death smile. "We are not doomed. Thank you for telling me so."
Willingham went down in a mess of blood and feathers as though he were a goose caught at close range by double barrels of birdshot. Valerie spat the last feather out of her mouth.
"You were going to let them mutilate me, weren't you?"
"Only your mouth," said Remo.
"Men are turds," yelled Valerie.
"Shhh," said Remo. "We've got to get out of here."
"You're damned right. I'm calling the police."
"I'm afraid you're not," said Remo and touched a spot on the left side of her throat. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry gurgle.
Remo led her from the room. Under a painting on the wall outside he found the switch that lowered the steel door. He heard it thump and click into place, then he closed the wooden outside doors. On the door he hung a sign he took from a nearby men's room: CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.
Then Remo led Valerie from the darkened, closed-for-the-night museum and delivered her to the hotel where Chiun and he were staying at Fifty-ninth Street and Columbus Circle. Then he massaged her throat in such a way that her voice came back.
Chiun sat in the middle of the living room of the suite. Bobbi Delpheen practiced her new forehand stroke, allowing the racket to float into an imaginary ball.
"You here for tennis lessons, too?" Bobbi asked Valerie.
"The world is mad," shrieked Valerie.
"Shut up or your voice goes again," said Remo.
"They've got a great system," Bobbi reassured the worried Valerie. "You don't hit the ball. The racket hits it."
Quietly, Valerie began to cry. She would have preferred screaming, but she did not like being voiceless.
Remo spoke softly to Chiun. He told him of the stone. He told him of the new grip on the knife. He told him of Willingham's sudden last joy when he had asked for the location of the Actatl headquarters.
Chiun thought a moment.
"That lunatic Smith has led us into ruin," he said.
"You saying we should run?"
"The time to run has passed. The time to attack has begun. Except we cannot attack. He smiled when you asked about his headquarters because I am sure he does not have one. We are set against the worst of all enemies, the formless unknown."
"But if they are unknown to us, we are unknown to them, Little Father," said Remo.
"Perhaps," said Chiun. "Once, many of what you call your centuries ago, there was a Master, and he did disappear for many years, and the stories were told that he had gone to a new world, but he was not believed because he was much given to exaggeration."
"So?"
"I must search my memory," said Chiun, "and see if something there may help us." And he was quiet. Very quiet.
"Can I talk now?" said Valerie.
"No," said Remo. Valerie started crying again.
Remo looked out over the night lights of Central Park. His plan had worked so well until Willingham. When you grabbed hold of an organization, you planned on working your way to the top. You didn't expect someone to kill himself along the way and break the chain.
Remo walked away from the window. Chiun had often warned him against thinking too much, lest his greater senses be dulled to the subtleties of the moment.
And in this way Remo did not see the binoculars trained on the window of his hotel suite. He did not see the man raise a rifle, then lower it.
"I can't miss," said the man to another person in the room across the street from Remo's.
"Wait until you're inside the room. We want his heart," said the other man.
"Willingham probably couldn't miss either. But this guy came out of the museum and Willingham didn't," the second man said.
"I still can't miss."
"Wait until you're inside his room. We want his heart," said the second man. "When we get the word."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The spectacular failure at the Museum of Natural History was outlined in detail to a senior vice-president of a computer company branch office, Paris, Rue St. Germain.
Monsieur Jean Louis Raispal deJuin, vice-president for corporate development of international data and research, nodded with all the feigned interest his finely etched patrician face could muster. Uncle Carl, from the German side of the family, had always been rather peculiar and one had to be patient with him. Jean Louis reacted instinctively with the politeness beaten into him by his governess and ordered by his mother, who had always said one could not choose one's family, but one could certainly choose one's manners.
So Jean Louis listened on about all sorts of mayhem and two formidable Americans, except one was an Oriental, and all the while his mind worked at an adjustment he would make in a research team that was stymied by a computer problem.
Occasionally he glanced out at Rue St. Germain with its bookshops and restaurants. He had always considered his university days his happiest, and since his work was entirely cerebral and could be done anywhere, the firm had allowed him to select the office site and furnishings, which were largely Napoleonic period combined with Chinese. The ornate gilded forms mixed so well. Robust, mother had called them.
Uncle Carl sat on a chair, ignoring the center extended portion of the seat, which allowed men to sit sideways so that their sword pommels could hang conveniently across their laps. Uncle Carl sweated like a stuffed red sausage this fine autumnal day, and Jean Louis wished he would suggest a walk, perhaps in the direction of Invalides, where Napoleon was buried, along with all those who had directed la belle France in one disastrous war after another. Uncle Carl liked those things. Even though he often railed about things European and often trailed off into some South American nonsense. This was surprising because Uncle Carl was an ardent Nazi, and it had taken awesome family pull to get him off unindicted by the War Crimes panels. Fortunately Cousin Geoffrey was a lieutenant general on Field Marshal Montgomery's staff and Uncle Bill was in the American OSS.
Jean Louis deJuin had been a teenager at the time, during the German occupation of Paris, and even though Cousin Michel was on the most wanted list as a leader in the Maquis resistance movement, Jean Louis' family had lived quite well during the occupation, by some order from within the German general staff.
As mother had said, one did not choose one's family, and Jean Louis had thought little about it until now, when Uncle Carl said those strange words.
"So now it is up to you, Jean Louis Raispal deJuin."
"What is up to me, dear Uncle?" asked Jean Louis.
"Our hopes, our fortunes, our honor, and our very survival."
"Ah well, very good," said Jean Louis. "Would you care for coffee?"
"Have you been listening?"
"Yes, but of course," said Jean Louis. "Terrible happenings. Life can be so cruel.''
"Willingham is gone now."
"The pale fellow who worked in the museum?"
"He was the foremost priest," said Uncle Carl.
"Of what?" asked Jean Louis.
Uncle Carl's face burst crimson. He slammed a large fat fist down on the pressed leather of an eighteenth century desk. Jean Louis blinked. Uncle Carl was getting violent.
"Don't you know who you are? What your family is? Where you came from? Your roots?"
"We share some great, great, great uncle who was in South America for a while. Is that what you mean? Please don't be violent. Perhaps some anisette, Uncle?"
"Jean Louis, tell me now, for this answer must be truthful…"