The Midwestern fire chief one fine day on the beach of Paradise Island, had mysteriously fallen asleep. He had slept in the hot summer sun for four hours and when he was awakened, the skin was already blistering. At Nassau General Hospital, they treated him for sun poisoning and severe burns, and cautioned him about staying out in the sun too long, then decided to hold him for treatment and observation, after he said that he had been knocked out by a touch on the shoulder from a husky young man with deep brown eyes.
Remo grinned as he passed over the empty chair and thought to himself that if the fire chief was a bad tipper, Smith was even worse. The waiters had gained nothing on the switch.
Remo padded silently across one of the steel crossbeams that held up the curved plastic roof of the swimming pool, then was back on the port side of the ship. He ran a few more steps, glided quickly around the barrier separating the public deck from his private verandah, and landed noiselessly on the deck outside his cabin.
He slid his feet back into his slippers and walked into the cabin through the sliding glass door.
Smith was sitting on the sofa and Chiun was kneeling behind him, pressing practiced fingers into clumps of nerves along the sides of Smith's neck.
"Thank you, Chiun," Smith said, pulling away as Remo came in.
"Seasick, huh?," Remo said.
"Never. I've spent more time at sea then you've spent sober," Smith sniffed. "Out for your evening stroll?"
"You might say that," Remo said, and then because he wanted to be cruel to this man who brought him dehumanizing missions and assignments, he said: "Hopkins knew it was you right away. As soon as I said cheap, he knew."
"Yes, yes. Well, that will do," Smith said. He rolled his eyes toward Chiun, who despite his deadly skills and despite his love for Remo did not really know what CURE was or what it did, and was content to know only that Remo was sent on killing missions and that it was his job to see that Remo was adequate to the task.
Chiun had sunk back on the sofa, slipping easily into a lotus position and closing his eyes. Smith stood up and opened his suitcase. He reached inside and brought out a shiny paper packet and held it toward Remo.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Sure, it's a fix. Heroin," Remo said, taking the packet in his hands.
"Do you know people would kill me for it?"
"Sweetheart, there are people who would kill you just for the fun of it," Remo said.
"Be serious, will you?" Smith said.
Ignoring Remo's faint protestation that he was being serious, Smith went on: "That's our problem right now. "Every year, illegal narcotics peddlers in the United States sell maybe eight tons of heroin. Most of the traffic's controlled by the Mafia. They grow the poppies in Turkey, process them in France or South America and smuggle them into the country. The Treasury Department slows them down. It harasses them. Occasionally, it makes a big arrest. But a big arrest is a suitcase full, maybe fifty pounds. And in the entire country, we use maybe sixteen thousand pounds a year. On the street, that's worth over a billion and a half dollars."
"So? Hire more men for the Treasury Department," Remo said.
"We tried that. It was all set up. And the Treasury men were killed. The stuff got in, Remo. We're not talking about suitcases full. We're talking about four truck loads. Maybe fifty tons. Enough heroin to supply the illegal market for six years. Ten billion dollars worth of heroin!
"And when the Mafia forces out the small dealers," Smith said, "it might be worth twice that much."
Remo looked again at the glassine envelope in his hand and then tossed it back into Smith's open suitcase.
"What do you want me to do?," he shrugged.
"You know where Hudson, New Jersey, is, don't you? You're from that neighbourhood, aren't you?," Smith asked.
"I'm from Newark. Newark makes Hudson look like Beverly Hills," Remo said.
"Well, the heroin's in Hudson somewhere. It was unloaded from a ship there. Treasury people were killed following the trucks that were carrying it. And now the trucks are someplace in the city with the heroin and we can't find them."
"How do you know they're still there? They could be in Pittsburgh, you know."
"The trucks are still in Hudson. We've been monitoring every vehicle that leaves the city for the last week. A special tuber detector developed by the agriculture department. One of our guys adapted it and now it works as a heroin sensor too. Nothing big has left the city."
"I never heard of a gadget like that," Remo said.
"Neither has our government. We've kept it secret. If we let them know about it, two weeks later the damn plans for it will be in Scientific American and the Mafia will have a defence for it, before we even get a chance to use it."
"Then why don't you just wait until your silly-ass tuber detector finds it?," Remo said.
"Because if we give them time, they can take it out by the cupful and we'll never be able to track it down. We want to find it before it gets into circulation in bits and pieces."
"Okay," Remo said, "who do you want me to hit?"
"I don't know. Maybe nobody."
"This isn't another one of those information things, is it?," Remo asked. "Every time I get involved in one of them, I nearly get killed."
"Not information," Smith said. "I want you to go in and start making noise. Get whoever's got the drugs to come after you. Then find out where the heroin is and destroy it. And if anybody gets in your way, destroy them. Destroy the whole damned city if you have to."
Remo had not seen Smith so worked up since the last time Remo had filed an expense voucher.
Smith went to the suitcase again. He took out a photograph. "This is an addict, Remo. This is what those bastards do to them."
Remo took the picture. It was a naked girl, maybe in her teens. But her eyes were blank and pained-looking, and her skin was swollen, ulcerated and black. In the upper-right-hand corner of the photo was a close-up inset of her arms and there was not a clear spot left in which a hypodermic syringe could be inserted.
"That girl's dead now," Smith said. "Some of them aren't so lucky."
He took the photograph back and put it back into his suitcase. He started talking again, calmer now. "Hudson's the chief port of entry. We have to think there's significant political leverage being used there to protect the heroin imports. The cops are crooked.
The politicians are crooked. The Mafia runs the town. But it's tight and we don't know much. The leader is a name named Verillio, we think. Or Gasso. Or Palumbo. We just don't know."
"What would be my cover?"
"You're Remo Barry. You've got an apartment with Chiun in New York. You're a staff writer for Intelligentsia Annual. Don't worry about it, we just bought the magazine. It was the cheapest one we could get. Go in as a journalist and poke around."
"Suppose I turn down the assignment?" Remo asked.
"Remo, please," Smith said. It was the first time in all the years that Smith had ever said please to him.
Remo just nodded. Smith reached again into the suitcase and pulled out a thick typewritten report. "All the data's in here, all the facts, all the names. Look it over. Memorize it. Then throw it away. You have a free hand to do whatever you want. Please, just do it fast."
It was the second please, and Remo did not try to think of anything smart-ass to say. He nodded again and Smith closed the suitcase and walked toward the door. Without a word, he left. He was glad he had not found it necessary to tell Remo that one of the addicts not yet lucky enough to be dead was Smith's own daughter.
CHAPTER FIVE
For Dominic Verillio, the good Italian restaurants would not do. Neither would his sprawling estate in Kensico, New York, nor his three-story English tudor home in Hudson, New Jersey. The Palm Beach home was out too. They were all being watched. Or bugged. Little electronic devices that so fitted the character of America. Neat. Clean. Technical. Unemotional. And you didn't know they didn't work until it was too late.