"Listen to your nasal honking. 'Hah.' You would think I never taught you to speak, to listen to you."
"Don't correct my speech. Tell me about cockroaches."
"Cockroaches are always with us. They abound. In the pyramids, in the storied temples of Solomon, in the castles of the French Louis, they abound."
"And we don't have them here?"
"Of course, there are none here. Do you hear them?"
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"No," Remo admitted.
"Well?"
"You mean you can hear cockroaches?" Remo asked.
"I refuse to believe that a Master of Sinanju has been reduced to this," Chiun said. "Standing here in the hallowed halls of your watchamacall-it..."
"Capitol. The Congress building." ,
"Yes. That. That I am standing here in these hallowed halls talking about cockroaches to someone no better than a cockroach himself. My ancestors will judge me harshly for having let Sinanju be dragged down into the mud like this."
"If I'm a cockroach, and we're co-equal partners, what does that make you?"
"A trainer of cockroaches. Oh, woe is Sinanju."
Osgood Harley scratched himself awake, trying to dig his stubby bitten fingernails into his pale white belly. The flesh was wrinkled from the tight waistband of the jeans he had slept in. He would pay dearly for having drunk two bottles of wine and passing out in his clothes, because sleeping in his clothes made his groin sweat, and an unpowdered sweaty groin gave him jock itch, the most persistent and incurable of all mankind's diseases.
There hadn't been jock itch in the old days. And there hadn't been drinking alone in a shabby walkup.
There had been action. Committees to protest this or that, and coalitions to promote this or that, and there had been television coverage, and newspaper interviews, and there had been a lot of money, and chicks. Oh, had there been chicks, and
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he had slept his way from bed to bed from Los Angeles to New York, from Boston to Selma.
And then the revolutionary fervor had vanished. The Vietnam war had pumped billions of dollars into America's economy. Almost everybody was working and every paycheck was fat and the money drifted down from the workers to their children, giving them the freedom to spend their time protesting-even against the war which made the protests possible. But as the war dried up, the economy dried up, and would-be revolutionaries found out it wasn't so much fun when there wasn't a check in the mailbox from Daddy, and so they cut their hair and swapped their sandals for shoes and went to college to study accounting or law, and with luck, wound up with a Wall Street firm and a steady paycheck.
The "leaders" of the revolution got caught in the switches. Suddenly, the money to support their free-living style had dried up. Some of them adjusted quickly. They peddled drugs; they joined religious movements; used to the fast buck, they went wherever they could find the fast buck.
Osgood Harley didn't, because unlike the majority of others, he really believed in a revolution, really wanted the overthrow of capitalist society. And so when the tall man with the black hair and the manicured nails and the beautiful even teeth had looked him up and offered him five thousand dollars if he would participate in a plan to embarrass the new American President, Harley gobbled at the chance.
Of course, it could have been better. Harley could have worked in public-with mimeographed press releases, and headquarters, and picketers, and sign-carriers-the way he had always
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worked in the past. But this time, he was told firmly "no." Any publicity and Harley could forget the five thousand dollars. With forty-nine cents in his pocket and a hole in the bottom of his Adidas sneakers, Harley found the choice easy. He would be as silent as smoke.
Even if the instructions about buying 200 cameras in 200 stores were stupid.
Harley had just stopped scratching when the doorbell rang. The young man standing in the hall wore a peaked cap with Jensen's Delivery Service embroidered across the front. In his arms he held a large cardboard carton.
"Mr. Harley?"
"One and the same."
"I've got some cameras here for you."
"Thirty-six to be exact. Come on in." He held the door back and let the younger man enter.
"Want them any special place?"
"Not there. Over there near the closet. That's where I've got the rest of them."
"Rest of them? You've got more?"
"Sure. Doesn't everybody?" Harley said casually.
"You must be opening a store," the youth said as he carefully set the box on the floor.
"Naah. Actually I'm a secret agent for the CIA and this is my newest mission." He grinned the kind of grin designed to impart the feeling that there was more truth than humor in what he had just said. The young man looked at his face with a reciprocal smile, but with narrowed eyes, as if memorizing Harley's face in case they asked questions later.
"There you go," he said.
"Good. Thanks. You saved me a lot of trouble."
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Harley took a roll of bills from his pocket and flashed the wad of fifties, before digging down into the center of it to find a ten-dollar bill.
"Here. For you. Thanks again."
"Okay, Mr. Harley. Really appreciate it."
After the delivery boy left, Harley gave the big carton of Instamatics, purchased at individual list price from a large camera store in the heart of the city, a healthy kick. He was beginning to think this was all kind of stupid. So he had his 200 cameras. So what? Wait for more instructions.
The more he thought about it, the more stupid it became. So he gave the carton another kick. The sound was answered, as if by a sportive echo, by the ringing of the doorbell.
Harley recoiled slightly before going to the door. It was the delivery boy again.
"I found this downstairs on the hall radiator. It's got your name on it." He handed forward a plain white envelope with "Osgood Harley" neatly lettered on it.
"Thanks, kid," Harley said.
After the boy left, Harley opened the envelope. There was a simple hand-printed note inside: Bring pencil and paper to the telephone booth at 16th and K Streets at 2:10 P.M. exactly.
The note was unsigned.
Harley got to the telephone booth at 2:12 P.M., delayed because he had to stop and have an Italian ice. The telephone did not ring until 2:15 P.M.
"Hello, Harley here," said Harley when he picked up the telephone.
"Clever," said the caller.
"I mean, hello," said Harley, who suspected
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from the sarcasm that he had made a mistake but couldn't be sure what it was.
"Do you have pencil and paper?"
"Right here," Harley said.
"Since you have already obtained the cameras, it is time to move on. You need one dozen cap pistols, the kind children use. Write it down. One dozen cap pistols. Get good ones. The loudest you can get. Don't, however, be an idiot and test them in the store.
"Have you got that?"
"Got it," Harley said. "A dozen cap pistols. Loud ones."
"Before you repeat anything else, please close the door of the telephone booth," the caller said. He waited until Harley pulled the door click-closed.
"All right. You also need four cassette tape players. Be sure they are battery operated and run at 1% inches per second. The smaller the size you can buy the better. Be sure to buy the necessary batteries to operate all of them. Good batteries. Not dead ones. Do you have that?"
"Got it," Harley said.
"Repeat it."
"Four cassette tape recorders..."
"Players. They need not be recorders."
"Okay," Harley said. "Got it. Players. Battery operated. Get fresh batteries. Small size players. Make sure they run at 1% inches per second."
"That's fine. Now. Underneath the telephone at which you're standing, you will find a key. It's taped to the underside of the shelf. Take it off and hang on to it. You will use it for your final instructions and for the next installment of your payment. Did you find the key?"