"Knock, Father, when you're done," he said, and pulled the door tight behind him. Remo heard the lock snap shut
He put a finger to his lips and walked softly to the door, squatting down to peer through the keyhole. He could see O'Brien's back, again seated at his desk.
Only then did Remo sit down and address Devlin:
"All right. Let's have it," he said.
He tried to concentrate while Devlin talked, but found it difficult. All he could think of was the penitentiary and how he wanted to be out of it. Even more, perhaps, than ten years ago, when he had been saved from the electric chair by a secret governmental organization with a Presidential crime-fighting mission, so he could be trained to be its killer arm. Code name: Destroyer.
Bits and pieces of Devlin's talk broke through his reverie. The African nation of Scambia. A plan to turn it into an international refuge for criminals from all over the world. The president to be assassinated; the vice president to take his place.
Bored, because information-gathering was not his specialty. Remo tried to think of questions to ask.
Who's behind it all?
I don't know.
The vice president? This Asiphar?
No. I don't think so.
How did you find out about it?
I work for a man in this country who has an interest in this sort of thing. That's how I know. I did some legal research for him on extradition laws.
I know your reputation as the big Mafia lawyer, getting thugs out of jail on technicalities.
Everybody's entitled to a defence.
And now you're spilling, so you get a break? Remo was disgusted with him.
Yes. I'm spilling so I get out of here and I get safe conduct some place. "And I'll tell you the truth, Father," he said, sneering the title, "I'm getting tired of telling my story to every nit the government sends through the door."
"Well, I'll be the last one," Remo said. He got up and went to the door again, peering through the keyhole.
O'Brien still sat at his desk, now reading a newspaper, his broad back rising slowly with his breathing. A radio played softly alongside O'Brien's desk.
"Okay, then," Devlin said. "How do I get out of here? Do I call a press conference or what?"
"No, that's not necessary," Remo said. "We've got it all worked out."
Remo knew what he had to do. His hand shook slightly as he pulled the wooden crucifix from a pocket in the billowing robe and showed it to Devlin. "See here," he said, pointing with his left hand. "That black pill at the bottom of the feet. When the guard comes in, kiss the cross, and nip the pill off with your teeth. When you're back in your cell, bite into it and swallow it. It'll knock you out. Our men are in the prison hospital now. When they bring you in, they'll decide you need special treatment. Put you in an ambulance and send you to a private hospital. The ambulance will never get there. Neither will you."
"Sounds too easy," Devlin said. "I don't think it'll work."
"Man, it's worked a hundred times for me," Remo said. "Think this is the first time I've done this? You're going to live for a thousand years."
He stood up. "I'm going to call the guard now," Remo said. "We've been here too long."
He went to the wooden door and pounded on it with the side of his hand. The loud thump echoed and reverberated through the small room. The door opened and O'Brien stood there.
"Thank you," Remo said. He turned to Devlin who sat still on his seat. He extended the crucifix to him and shielded O'Brien's view with his body. "God bless you, my son," he said.
Devlin didn't move. Bite it off, goddam you, Remo thought. Otherwise, I'll have to kill you right here. And O'Brien, too.
He shoved the crucifix closer to Devlin's face.
"The Lord will protect you," he said. If you don't take that pill, you're going to need the Lord. He waved the crucifix in front of Devlin, who looked at him, doubt on his finely-featured face, and then shrugged imperceptibly and reached out both hands, taking the crucifix, carrying it to his mouth, and kissing the feet of the statue.
"Eternal life will be yours," Remo said, and winked at Devlin, who did not know that for him, eternity would end in fifteen minutes.
"Can you find your way out, Father?" O'Brien asked.
"Yes," Remo answered.
"Then I'll take the prisoner back," O'Brien said. "Good day, Father."
"Good day. Good day, Mr. Devlin." Remo turned to the door, glancing down at the crucifix, noting with relief that the black pill had gone. Devlin was a dead man. Good.
He could not resist the challenge. At the top of the stairs, he waited until the guard downstairs had looked up into the reflecting mirror to check the staircase. Then, hitching up his robe, Remo moved into the narrow stairwell, his body skittering from side to side, his feet moving noiselessly down the steps. The guard looked, unconcerned, into the staircase mirror again, and Remo broke his rhythm, melting into a vague shadow-shape on the wall. The guard looked down again at his papers.
Remo coughed. The guard looked up, startled to see someone there.
"Oh, Father? I didn't see you come down."
"No," Remo agreed pleasantly. It took three more minutes for him to get through the penitentiary's infallible security system.
He was soaked with perspiration by the time he reentered the bright sunshine of the day, and he was in such a hurry to get distance between himself and the prison that he did not bother to notice the two men across the street, who matched their pace to his and followed him at a leisurely gait.
CHAPTER THREE
Remo pushed through the revolving door of the Palazzo Hotel, then stepped quickly across the marble lobby, toward a bank of elevators in the corner.
A bellhop leaned against a small counter, watching him. As Remo stood by the elevators, he came up alongside.
"Sorry, Father," he said briskly, "no panhandling."
Remo smiled gently. "I've come, my son, to perform last rites."
"Oh," the pimply-faced bellhop said, disappointed that his show of power had failed. "Who's dead?"
"You will be if you don't get your ugly, bugging face out of my way," Remo said. The bellhop looked at him, this time carefully, and the monk was no longer smiling gently. The face was hard and angular; the expression would have shattered crystal. The bellhop got his face out of there.
Remo rode the elevator to the eleventh floor, giving a blessing to an old woman who entered on the seventh floor and got out on the eighth. Then he was in the hallway on the eleventh floor, heading for one of the expensive suites on the left side of the corridor.
He paused outside the door, heard the usual melange of voices from inside, and with a small sigh unlocked the door and stepped in.
At the end of a small hallway was a living room. From the doorway, Remo could see the back of an aged Oriental, seated in a lotus position on the floor, his eyes riveted to a television set whose picture was pale and washed out in the bright noontime sun.
The man did not move as Remo entered the room. He did not speak.
Remo walked up behind him until he was only a foot away. He leaned over, close to the man's head, and then shouted at the top of his voice:
"Hello, Chiun."
Not a muscle moved; not a nerve reacted. Then- slowly-the Oriental's head lifted and in the mirror over the television, his eyes met Remo's. He lowered his eyes to Remo's brown robes, then said, "You will find the Salvation Army mission in the next street." He returned his eyes to the television set, playing forth its daytime drama of tragedy and suffering.
Remo shrugged and went into his bedroom to change. He was worried about Chiun. He had known the deadly little Korean for ten years now, ever since Chiun had been given the assignment by CURE to make Remo Williams the perfect human weapon. In those years, he had seen Chiun do things that defied belief. He had seen him smash his hand through walls, walk up the sides of buildings, destroy death machines, wipe out platoons of men, all by the strange harnessing of power in that frail eighty-year-old body.