He glanced around the machine shop. There were more tools and instruments here than in most defense laboratories. The fluorescent lights glittered on the shiny instrument panels. Robert Dastrow felt his mouth go dry. He could think of only one thing seeing these figures, a poem by an Englishman.
"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
Was that what William Blake was talking about? Dastrow had always thought the poet was talking about the basic force of the universe. Did life follow art?
They certainly didn't understand mechanical things. Where did their power come from? From this symmetry? Would they at last use it against Palmer, Rizzuto and in so doing inevitably reach Dastrow himself? And what had kept them from using this force against Rizzuto, the dramatic mouthpiece of the firm?
Was there something in these men that Dastrow had discovered in the workings of nature, and only dimly perceived in his calculations?
He looked at the numbers again. There was no question. As much as he would like to study them, he could no longer afford any such luxury. The numbers meant they had to die. But of course, killing them would pose a special problem. One just didn't plan on collapsing a roof, because these two might well walk away from it. They might walk away from anything. And when they walked away they would walk more quickly to their ultimate destination, which had to be Robert Dastrow himself. Why else would they have been making inquiries in Gupta? Inquiries not as reporters, not as insurance men, not as factory personnel.
But inquiries about Palmer, Rizzuto The two tigers in the night were coming for them, they were coming for all of them. The question was, as it had been from the beginning: Who were they, and how were they going to die? The difference was that now, after reading these reports on how they responded physically, Robert Dastrow had a very good idea.
Remo was on his way back to his hotel room when he saw a car pull up on the dark Chicago street. He could tell from the tense body positions of the men in the backseat of the car that they were going to fire something at him.
He moved fluidly in a lateral motion, and with their normally slow reflexes, the men in the backseat finally caught up with what was going on and jerked toward the direction Remo had been heading. By the time they completed their jerk, Remo was on line with the car and moving toward it, getting there by the time their guns rose.
He rammed them in their solar plexi and then let the two men recover while he chatted with the driver. "Good night for killing, isn't it?" said Remo. The driver swallowed. He started to explain how he really didn't know the men in the backseat. He was just driving along and they happened to climb in. Why, were there guns in there? My goodness, there were indeed. The driver said he was leaving right now. He hated guns.
"Fine," said Remo. "You can go. But I'll keep your kneecaps here on the seat to make sure you'll return."
"Thanks, I guess I'll stay," said the driver.
"Who sent you?"
"You wouldn't believe it."
"I believe," said Remo, repeating an absolutely silly line from a movie he had seen. Some trainer was trying to teach a pupil some physical tricks and he had said that all the person had to do was believe in himself. It was the wrong word. When doing something tricky, belief could get you killed. It was the knowing that a person had to have, not believing one could do something. One had to know it, deep down in the bones and in every little muscle and nerve. And one only knew it when it was so.
"A voice. The voice said there was some money in a bag in a garbage can. The voice said pick it up. It was a down payment. There would be more, when we finished the job."
"Where would there be more?"
"He didn't say. But there was ten grand in the fuckin' bag and that's good enough for a hit, you know. Nothing personal."
When the two gunmen regained their breath, they told the same story. "Nothing personal," they repeated.
"Nothing personal," said Remo, and removed three felons from the population of Chicago with three precise strokes through the skulls into the frontal lobes. When he was done, three foreheads had nice, neat dents in them.
The car smelled of pine deodorizer coming from a statue on the windshield. Remo wiped the knuckle of his right forefinger on the plaid car seat and left.
Before he got two blocks a street gang known as the El Righteous Kanks informed him he was going to die by the knife. There were four of them, each wearing a T-shirt with some absurd symbol. They all had stilettos as sharp as needles and as long as trowels. They were going to dig out his insides, they said. It seemed that they hadn't bathed in weeks. Remo moved upwind. One of the Kanks thought he was trying to escape and blocked his way. He stood upwind. He did not stand upwind long because before he knew what had happened his legs were flying downwind with him attached to them. He collided with a lamppost which did not yield, but his spine did. He fell to the concrete sidewalk like a duffel with the contents hanging out.
"Why do you announce what you're going to do?" asked Remo. The El Righteous Kanks were black. Remo imagined no white man had come into this neighborhood alone before.
"Hey, man. We gotta have some fun. Ain't no one bothered by bein' dead. He gotta know he gonna die. We gon' downput' upside yo head."
"You're going to try to kill me, right?"
"No try, whitey. We do."
"Would you tell me if this is just some ordinary run-of-the-mill mayhem which keeps this area unlivable? Or are you actually doing something constructive like getting paid to kill me?"
"You don' do nuthin', whitey, but stan' there and die. That's what whitey do. He here to die."
"I don't see any whites around here."
" 'Cause dey racists," said the leader of the El Righteous Kanks. "But if we nail one o' dem racists, we kill 'em all."
Remo took another line of reasoning. He applied the apparent leader gently to the lamppost while the other two attacked him. He pressed the other two neatly against the same lamppost until their spines cracked, and then suggested to the leader he would continue the pattern. On the other hand, he might not continue the pattern if he could establish a dialogue.
"Anyone tell you to make a hit on me?"
"A voice. Crazy voice. Tol' us where money was. Tol' us there'd be mo'."
"That's it then, a voice?"
"Ah swear."
"I believe you," said Remo, and dropped the El Righteous Kank leader on top of the pile unharmed. "By the way, where did you get the name Kank? Sounds like some sore."
"It be our black mystery, righteous Islamic."
"Somehow I doubt the accuracy of that," said Remo. And before the hotel he avoided a thrown grenade, and this time he didn't even bother to ask who was behind it. It was, of course, a voice.
At the hotel, Remo found out that Debbie Pattie had found new bodyguards and this time Remo only moved through them so as not to injure them. He didn't want to have to carry her electronic gear anymore.
"Little father, something strange is happening. I am being- "
"Attacked by the gun and the knife and the bomb," said Chiun.
"Yeah. How did you know?"
"Look in the other room," said Chiun. "We are fools, I think. Here we are in this insanity called detective investigation, and you await our death."
"They didn't get us."
"They will," said Chiun.
"How can you say that? You know who we are."