"You don't sound like you like him much," Remo said. "I thought you guys were supposed to develop emotional attachments to the people you guard."
"Not to Bobby Jack Billings," said Derle.
"All right." Remo stood up. "Where's your partner?"
"He went up to Atlanta for a couple of days to do some work out of the office there. Is that all the questions you have?"
"Yeah."
"You guys are getting easier. The chick today had a lot of questions."
"What chick today?" Remo asked.
"From the State Department too. You must know her. A big six-foot blonde with pigtails and violet eyes. Miss ... er, Miss Lester."
"Oh, yeah," Remo said. "Her."
"You must have people falling all over yourself," Derle said.
Remo shrugged. "You know how it is," he said.
"Yeah."
"I guess they'll figure maybe 111 find out something she didn't. Two heads are better than one, you know," Remo said.
"Even if one of them's yours?" Derle asked.
"Especially if one of them's mine," Remo said.
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He looked at Derle, and his dark eyes burned into the Secret Service agent's, and the agent seemed about to say something, but then he saw deep into the eyes, and what he saw there was something he couldn't put his finger on, so he said nothing, and it was only later that he realized what he had seen. In Remo's eyes, he had had a glimpse of death.
Agent Gavone in Atlanta was no more help to Remo than Derle had been. He didn't think anything was wrong with Billings, had no idea where he might have gone, but he didn't mind talking about Miss Lester who was a lot better looking than Remo.
"Big blonde," he said. "Came up here and asked me a lot of questions. Better questions than you ask."
"Listen," Remo said. He was getting annoyed with comments about his inadequacy. "She just does all my easy advance work. Then I come in to ask about the really important stuff."
"Like what?" Gavone said. "Ask me a really important question."
Remo couldn't think of one. Finally he said, "What kind of beer does Bobby Jack drink?"
"That's important?" Gavone asked.
"You bet it is. It's the key to this whole case," Remo said. "What kind?"
"Any kind."
"He must have a favorite."
"Sure. Whatever's coldest."
"You're not much help," Remo said.
"Ask better questions," said Gavone.
53
Mustafa Kaffir was in an upstairs office of the Libyan mission, located in an old mansion in the East Sixties of Manhattan. He listened to a voice coming over a telephone and nodded a lot, but the look on his face was sour and bitter.
He glanced through the second floor window at the New York City police in the street below. It was with wry amusement that he often considered that Libya, whose foreign policy consisted primarily of the slogan "Death to Jews," should have its mission guarded around the clock by police paid for by taxpayers of New York, the city with the largest Jewish population of any city in the world.
He hung up the telephone with a softly muttered "Yes, Colonel," and looked across the office at his assistant. Like Kaffir, he wore traditional Arab robes.
"Trouble, Excellency?" he asked. He was a slim man and he spoke with the casual intimacy common to close friends or lovers, both of which he and Kaffir were.
"It is the lunatic," Kaffir said. "He wishes to mount an armed invasion of Uganda to reinstall Amin on the throne there. Apparently, he has been convinced that the Ugandan people will rise up as one to greet the return of the clown."
His assistant shook his head and pursed his lips.
Kaffir chuckled. "It would be comical if it were not tragic. Can you not see the buffoon now, massing his soldier on the borders of Uganda?" He laughed. "Massing his soldier. Get it?"
"Very funny, Excellency," his assistant said. He
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had dark eyes and long oiled eyelashes. His skin was light and he looked like an overpainted plaster doll.
"Yeah, very funny," came a voice from the doorway. Kaffir spun in his chair, and saw an American, wearing black trousers and a tee shirt, standing in the door.
"Who ... ?"
"My name's Remo. I won't need but a couple of minutes of your time. Is it all right to talk in front of this wimp?" He nodded to Kaffir's assistant.
"Who let you up here?" Kaffir said. His assistant reached for the telephone. Remo's hand closed on his, before his hand could close on the phone. The assistant yanked his hand away and massaged it to relieve the pain. It felt as if he had pressed it against a red-hot stove.
"Don't hurt him," Kaffir barked. Remo looked at Kaffir, then at the delicate young man. He understood and nodded.
"I won't hurt him if you cooperate. This will be very quick."
Kaffir hesitated and Remo took a step toward the young assistant, who sank down in his chair, cowering before the American.
"What do you wish to know?" Kaffir said hastily. "Who are you?"
"Who I am isn't important," Remo said. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. "When Robby Jack Rulings wandered away from you the other day, it showed my government that security around the president's family wasn't as good as it could be. Even though we found Robby Jack and every-
55
thing's all right, he could just as easily have been kidnapped or harmed. You understand?^'
Kaffir nodded. Remo looked to the young assistant who nodded too.
"It's my job to make sure that the security arrangements are improved. So I need your help on that," Remo said. "I have just a few questions."
The questions took only a couple of minutes. Kaffir had seen no one loitering around the train station. He had seen no one drop the medals in the dirt where Bobby Jack Billings had been standing. He had not noticed any unusual behavior on the part of the Secret Service agents.
He finished by saying, "If someone wants to wander off by himself, I guess there is very little way to stop him." He wished, to himself, that Libya's president would wander off by himself. It was certain that no one would stop him.
"All right," Remo said. "That's all I needed." He turned back toward the door, but stopped before leaving. "One thing more. Have you been interviewed by an American girl? Tall blonde, hair in braids? Miss Lester?"
"No. I have seen no such woman," Kaffir said.
"You?" Remo asked the assistant.
The young man shook his head.
"Goodbye," Remo said.
They waited long seconds after the door had closed behind Remo before they spoke.
Kaffir said, "They have not yet found the president's brother."
"Apparently not," his assistant said.
"Good," said Kaffir. He reached for the telephone.
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"Who are you calling?" his assistant asked. "Our agent. A warning must be issued," said.
Kaffir
57
CHAPTER FIVE
r
The president of the United States sat in the Oval Office. He glanced first at his watch, then at his press secretary, who had arrived to brief him for the afternoon press conference that was to begin in fifteen minutes. So that it would not appear wrinkled on television, the suit jacket the president would wear at the conference was hanging on a coat rack, along withthe fresh, light-blue shirt and dark tie he would put on at the last moment.
The press secretary was worried. The world had gone from bad to worse. War was ready to break out in the Middle East. Iran, fully anti-American now, had prohibited all shipments of oil to the United States. Gas prices were at an all time high. Inflation was churning along in double figures, while the economy was turning down and joblessness was soaring. In southern Africa, nationalist guerrillas of liberation, who were supported by the United States against a legally elected government, had just killed and mutilated a bus load of missionaries and children.