"Oh, brother," Remo groaned.
Smith said, "From what you tell me, Remo, this is being sanctioned and directed by Don Fiavorante Pubescio, out of New York City. If we simply annihilate the Boston Mafia, Don Fiavorante will move the LANSCII pilot program elsewhere or rebuild in Massachusetts." Smith made a thoughtful face. "No, we must first so discredit the LANSCII system in Pubescio's eyes that he abandons it completely. Then we can swoop down on the Boston mob."
"I vote first a preemptive sweep," said Remo.
"I vote against," said Chiun.
"What's eating you anyway, Chiun?" Remo demanded.
"You never called me."
"Your freaking phone was busy! You were cooking up that plastic-surgery scheme with Smith, remember?"
"You obviously misdialed," sniffed the Master of Sinanju.
"Repeatedly?"
"Deliberately."
"Have it your way, then," Remo said disgustedly. He stood up. "By the way, Smitty, you were right. This flashy suit did the trick. Wendy thought I was a hood."
"The woman was obviously a canny judge of character," Chiun sniffed.
"You know," Remo said, lifting a silk sleeve to the light, "it's been so long since I've worn one of these, I'd forgotten what it feels like. These things are hot."
"Then remove the absurd attire," said Chiun.
"Please do not, Remo," Smith said sharply. "I am sorry, Master Chiun. But Remo's new face-"
"You mean my old face," inserted Remo, winking at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju flounced around in annoyance.
"-means that he is unrecognizable at IDC and in Boston," Smith resumed. "The suit will conceal his large wrists, making identification virtually impossible. He will need that when we begin to break into the inner circle.
"And how are you going to do that?" asked Remo, interested.
"Brilliantly," said Chiun.
"I see our campaign as having three prongs," explained Smith thoughtfully. "Infiltration. Confusion. And destruction."
"I'll take destruction," said Remo.
"Confusion is more appropriate for Remo," Chiun said quickly. "Let me have destruction, O Emperor."
Harold Smith raised a placating hand. "Please, please. We can sow confusion only if we can gain access to the LANSCII system."
"Any ideas?" Remo asked.
"Yes," Smith said. "I believe I do." He looked toward the Master of Sinanju. "And Master Chiun will be our Trojan Horse."
"That I'd like to see," Remo said.
"Of course I will be pleased to do my emperor's bidding," said Chiun, bowing formally. His slitted eyes flicked in Remo's direction. "If for no other reason than to show certain persons the true value of experience and wisdom."
"Here we go," said Remo. "I'm not old and everyone else can go on a guilt trip to Mars."
"How do you propose that I strike at these Roman thieves?" Chiun asked, straightening.
"By employing their own methods against them."
Remo and Chiun looked to Harold Smith for enlightenment.
"Beginning with extortion," said Smith.
Chapter 22
Walter Weld Hill, of the Wellesley Hills, sat at the top of a real-estate empire only slightly less shaky than thirty-seven soggy Styrofoam cups stacked one on top of the other.
For Walter Weld Hill had bought into the Massachusetts Miracle. True, he was an old-line Republican, and the previous governor had been a glowering troll of a Democrat, but business was business. And who could argue with roaring success?
As the Massachusetts state economy exploded like a hydrogen bomb detonating greed, money, and expansion in equal measures, driven by soaring real-estate values, runaway fiscal irresponsibility, and an economy fueled by the futuristic computer buildings that sprouted along Route 128 like radiation-bloated spores, Walter Weld Hill had plunged in with all twenty fingers and toes.
Hill Associates put up office parks, skyscrapers, and condos wherever there was a bare patch of dirt. Not that the lack of a patch ever got in their way. Perfectly sound skyscrapers were imploded to rubble in the middle of Boston's sprawling downtown, to be replaced with new structures whose chief advantage was that they were twice as tall and rented for five times the square footage of their predecessors.
Hill Associates had almost single-handedly plugged the gaps in the Boston skyline throughout the 1980's.
Now, early in the 1990's, Hill Associates teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in a state where employment was in double digits, the computer industry had gone west, and revenues had dried up like a tangerine in the Gobi.
From his office high in the Wachusett Building, not far from South Station, Walter Weld Hill, whose ancestors had come to the land of opportunity on the ship directly behind the Mayflower, watched, day by day, week by week, as the family fortune was sucked into the economic black hole that was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Hill was going over bankruptcy papers when his secretary buzzed him.
"Yes?" he said tightly. It galled him to resort to the cheap dodge of bankruptcy. It was so . . . common.
"Mr. Marderosian on line two."
"Is it important?" asked Walter Weld Hill, who, while he had rebuilt Boston, did not sully his manicured hands with day-to-day building management. That was why he hired people like Marderosian to run Mattapoisett Managing. The Hills built. They did not manage. Other people managed.
"He says that it is."
"Very well," said Walter Weld Hill, depressing the linetwo button as he picked up the receiver.
"Mr. Hill, we seem to have a problem."
"Tell me about it," Hill said aridly, pinching the bridge of his nose. It helped relieve his sinus headaches, which were growing more bothersome by the week.
"I drove by the Manet Building this morning," he said, his voice odd.
"Which is that one?" asked Hill, who seldom bothered keeping a mental inventory of his properties when times were good, and could not care less now that they were not.
"The new one. Down in Ouincy."
"Oh, yes," said Hill, wincing. It was coming back to him. There had been a stretch of salt marsh along the Quincy side of the Neponset River, overlooking Boston. For a decade other builders had erected office buildings there that filled up within a week of the ribbon cutting. He had developed the last remaining plot at the tail end of the boom. But only after the other buildings had not sunk into the marshy soil, as he expected they might.
Now, three years after the ribbon cutting, not a single office suite had been rented and Hill Associates was paying a monthly maintenance fee in excess of forty thousand dollars.
Hill's voice lifted. "I don't suppose it has burnt to the ground, by chance?"
"No, Mr. Hill. But it's occupied."
Walter Weld Hill's bloodless fingers came away from his long nose. His blueblood-shot eyes narrowed in confusion.
"Occupied. When did this happen?"
"It never happened. We haven't shown the place to a potential leasee in over a year. But when I cruised by, there were lights on, people coming and going. Parking slots filled. From what I understand, this has been going on for over a week. "
"Squatters?" blurted Walter Weld Hill, to whom nothing that happened north of Rhode Island and south of New Hampshire was a surprise anymore.
"I don't know how else to explain it."
"You confronted them, of course."
"I was rebuffed, Mr. Hill. In fact, I was forcibly ejected."
"But you manage Manet!"
"That fact did not seem to carry any weight with the security staff of LCN. "
"Never heard of them."
"Neither have I. New England Telephone doesn't have a listing for them either. I checked."
"This is absurd. Have you been drinking, Marderosian? One cannot conduct business without telephones. Not even in this third-world joke of a state."