"What white man?"
"What have we been talking about? The white man and the Oriental."
"Oh, dat white man."
Spesk looked up as Ingrid returned.
"I just saw his car. He's on his way up," she said.
"Fine. You know what to do."
Though the wood parquet floor was hard under Reverend Wadson's butt he didn't think it would be wise to move. That black box was still too close to Spesk's hand. He sat still as Ingrid went back into the other room and came out with another black box. She gave it to Spesk. She was also carrying a hoop, a round white ring of metal, the size of a hoop from a child's ring-toss game.
Spesk held the black box in his hands and nodded to Ingrid who walked to the door of the apartment and stood behind the door.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and a small man with a graying crew cut splashed into the room. He came at top speed as if he had just remembered where he had misplaced his wallet. He looked up and saw Spesk and smiled.
The man paused a moment, as if psychically recharging himself for another frenzied bolt across the floor toward Spesk, when Ingrid stepped from behind the door and with one quick practiced motion opened the white ring and snapped it around the man's neck.
The man recoiled and spun toward her, his right hand slipping immediately into the jacket of his plaid sports jacket.
"Breslau," Spesk said. His voice, uttering one word, was a harsh command demanding obedience. Breslau turned. He put his hands to the ring on his neck and tried to pull it off. When it did not come loose, he looked at Spesk and his smile was gone. His face was all questions.
"Leave that alone and come here," Spesk said.
The small man looked at Ingrid once more as if filing her perfidy for a future accounting date, then came toward Spesk. He finally saw Reverend Wadson on the floor and looked at him, unsure whether to smile in welcome or to sneer in victory. Instead he just looked blankly at Wadson, and then again at Spesk.
"Colonel Speskaya," Breslau said. "I heard you were in the city. I could not wait to talk to you." His hands again went to the ring at his neck. "But what is this? Most strange." He smiled at Spesk as if they alone in the world shared a secret knowledge of the earth's grossest stupidities.
He glanced at Wadson to see if the black man had a similar ring around his neck. Wadson wanted to shout, "Honkey, I gots one worse than that."
"Breslau," Spesk said coldly. "You know a house on Walton Avenue?"
The small smile of secret sharing left Breslau's face but only for an instant before he recovered. "But of course, Colonel. That is why I was most anxious to see you. To discuss this with you."
"And that is why you and your superiors saw fit not to notify us of what you were doing and what you were looking for?"
"It might have been a fruitless search," Breslau said. "It was, in fact. I would not want to bother you with trivia."
Spesk looked down at the small black box in his hands.
"I will give you some trivia," he said. "You did not notify us because your agency was freelancing again and trying to capture this device for yourself. East Germany has always had such ambitions." He raised a hand to silence Breslau's protest. "You were awkward and inept. There would have been ways to move into that building, to search for something of value. We could simply have bought the building through a front. But, no, that would have been too simple. So you had to blunder around and finally bring in the American CIA and the American FBI and they took the operation away from you."
Breslau did not know yet if it was the right time to protest. His face seemed frozen.
"Ineptitude is bad enough," Spesk said. "Ineptitude that results in failure is even worse. It is intolerable. You may speak now."
"You are right, Comrade. We should have advised you earlier. But as I say, the device was only a rumor among some of those in the German Democratic Republic who were active during the war. It could well have been only a figment of someone's imagination. As in fact it was. There is no such device."
"Wrong. There is."
"There is?" Breslau's suprise had overtones of sadness.
"Yes. This creature has it. He is going to give it to me."
Breslau looked at Wadson again. "Well, that's wonderful. Marvelous."
"Isn't it?" Spesk said drily, rejecting the partnership that Breslau had tried to construct with his tone of voice.
"And this device, is it of value? Will we be able to use it in the future in the battle against the imperialists?"
"I have not seen it," Spesk said. "But it is a device. There are devices and devices." Finally Wadson saw him smile. "Like the thing around your neck."
"Is this it?" Breslau said. His hands went to the ring around his throat.
"No. That is something new we have just invented. I will show you how it works."
As Wadson watched, Spesk pushed forward the red toggle switch on the small black box. Breslau gagged. His eyes bulged.
"Aaaaggghhh." His hands clawed at the ring.
"You are being removed, Comrade," said Spesk, "not because you have been deceitful but because you have been caught at it. Too bad."
He pushed the switch forward farther, a mere fraction of an inch. Breslau dropped to his knees. His fingertips dug into his neck in an effort to make room for his fingers behind the tightening white ring. Where his fingernails dug, they left trails of blood on his throat as they gouged out skin and flesh. Wadson felt a sympathetic pain in his groin.
Breslau's mouth opened. His eyes bulged out farther, like a man who spent a year on a diet of thyroid extract.
"Enjoy, enjoy," Spesk said. He pushed the switch all the way forward. There was a crack that sounded like a wooden pencil being broken. Breslau fell face forward onto the floor with a final hiss of air from his lungs, that turned into a small red bubbly froth leaking out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared at Reverend Wadson and already, the black man could see them begin to haze over.
Wadson grimaced.
"You," Spesk said. He put down the one black box and picked up the other. "You know now what I want you to do."
"Yassuh," said Wadson.
"Repeat it."
"Yo' wants me to find dis white man and dis yellow man and den brings dem here." He rolled his eyes, and smiled a big pancake. "Dat it, boss?"
"Yes. There will be no mistakes?"
"No 'stakes. Nossuh, Missah Tony."
"Good. You may leave now. Ingrid will go with you to keep an eye on you and to examine this device that came from the Mueller apartment. I warn you. Do not be foolish and try to attack Ingrid. She is a very good agent."
Wadson got to his feet slowly and quietly, lest a heavily placed heel infuriate Spesk and he begin playing with that red toggle switch. The reverend turned to look for Ingrid. She was standing behind him, looking down at the dead body of East German agent Breslau.
And her nipples were hard again, Wadson noticed. And he wished they weren't.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two bath towels were bunched up at one end of the tub but the newspapers Remo had spread on the floor were still dry and he felt like patting Tyrone's head when he unlocked the bathroom door and let him out.
Tyrone ran immediately for the front door of the hotel suite. His hand was on the doorknob when he felt himself being jerked backward, up into the air, and plummeting down onto a couch which exhaled air with an asthmatic whoosh when Tyrone's 147 pounds landed on it.
"What's the big hurry?" Remo said.
"Ah wants get outta here."
"You see," Chiun said, standing near the window and looking out toward Central Park. "He wants. Therefore it must be done now. Instant gratification. How typical of the young."
"Except for the way it's piled, this garbage isn't typical of anything, Little Father."
"Yo' better lets me go now. Ah gotta go," Tyrone said. "Ah wants to be leavin'."