Kathy O'Donnell saw all of this. She knew they wanted something from her. But she wanted more from them. The experiment could wait. Life was too delicious at the moment. She did not care about planning. She only cared about this very moment.
She was left in a stone room with a large bed and a bear rug. It had to be at least fifteen degrees colder in here than it had been outside. Dimitri returned in a bathrobe with a bottle of brandy.
Immediately she realized that his questions were really a psychological test. He didn't know it but she did. His other questions had to do with the experiment. On the psychological test she told the truth. She wondered if people were watching. She wondered if they would watch her make love. She wondered if she would make them want her, if they would suffer for not having her. She made up stories about the test, leading this Russian fellow on. And the gist of her response was that if he wanted more information, he had better entertain her. He took off his pants. She laughed. That was not what she wanted.
"What do you want, beautiful lady?"
"What you do best," she said. It was night. They had been there a long time. She was sure now that people were hidden somewhere in the walls.
"Kill one of them," she said, nodding to the walls. "If you want me."
At that point Dimitri might have killed the head of the KGB for this woman. But there was still that discipline wrought by years of living in a regime that depended on fear. He did not know that outside the very walls at this moment was Remo-the answer to everyone's fondest wishes. Remo did not care that the Tower of London was closed for the night or that it had been closed at this time for the last four centuries.
"I'm coming in," said Remo. His carload of British security and military people was parked just behind him. Lord Philliston was clearly blowing kisses. His words were heard as distinctly as he was seen by a command center. A console copied from American football games showed screens to video cameras set all around this old Norman structure. The American was on screen seven, set above an old Plantagenet standard of gold-and-crimson cloth, lion rampant. Lord Philliston was on screen one.
"Our orders are to put him down now," said someone standing behind the men at the monitors. He had just gotten word back from KGB Moscow. He wore a headset.
He also got other orders, these from the room where Anne Boleyn had awaited Henry VIII's royal divorce, which separated king from mate, queen from head.
"We'll have Dimitri kill him, giving the sociopath her bloodshed, and then we'll get our information," came the voice through the headset to the man behind the monitors.
"Let him find her in the Queen's House. And get Lord Philliston the hell out of there. It would take us years to replace him."
"He doesn't seem to want to leave the American," said the man on the monitor.
"I don't care. He'll leave when the American is sausage. The American goes down now," said the KGB security chief to the man on the monitor.
Outside the gate, with precise British rectitude, an employee of Her Majesty informed Remo that his presence would be perfectly acceptable inside the Tower at this late hour.
"I've got friends," said Remo, glancing back at the car. "Can they come too?"
"I'm sorry," said the woman ticket seller. "I'm afraid they can't."
"That's all right," said Remo just as pleasantly, "they are."
"I am terribly sorry, but they will have to stay." The woman smiled. She was polite. She politely asked the yeoman warders in red tunics with Her Majesty's seal upon their breasts to escort Remo inside the Tower of London. They wore squarish black hats and were called Beefeaters. Remo didn't quite know why these men in particular got that name because everyone on this island seemed to smell of beef-eating.
"And I am even sorrier," said Remo, "but I've got to keep one of these guys." He looked back at Lord Philliston. Britain's top secret agent blew him a kiss.
"Well, sir, I am terribly, terribly sorry but you can't keep anyone. Not in the Tower. These are special instructions I have received from the administration to allow in only you." Remo liked the way the British were always incredibly, cheerfully polite.
Unfortunately, he pointed out that he had found Lord Philliston and that he was his, and he wasn't going to the Tower complex without him, and he certainly was going in the Tower complex.
Lord Philliston rolled down his window.
"I love it when you talk so butch," said Britain's prime intelligence defense. Remo nodded him out of the car and Lord Philliston swished from the rear of the limousine, right to Remo's side.
"Not so close," said Remo.
For the first time in three hundred years, the Beefeaters, yeoman warders of the Tower of London, were called into action. Their orders: Keep the American from bringing the Briton inside. In brief, rescue the Briton, who apparently did not want to be rescued.
The yeoman warders advanced with pike, pick, ax, and bare hand in square formation. Afterward they would all swear the American was a mirage. He had to be. He not only moved through them as though they were air, but dragged the man they were supposed to rescue with him.
Remo had Lord Philliston by the sleeve. Lord Philiiston was giggling and laughing and trying to skip. Remo did not feel comfortable with Lord Philliston skipping, so he kept him off balance.
Lord Philliston pointed out each turn. Dark ravens as large as eagles cawed menacingly. A few lights of the keepers shone soft and yellow, little dots of warmth in a cold stone fortress.
Remo sensed that they were in someone's sights. It could have been a spear or a rifle. The sensation was the same. It was not alarm. Alarm was a function of fear, and that tightened the muscles. It was a quietness about the place. Anyone could feel it, but few would listen to it. Often people would remember how sudden and surprising an attack was, when in reality it should never have been that surprising. Humans were equipped to know these things, unless they were trained to respect their senses, they would never perceive them.
Now, entering the Tudor-style Queen's House, Remo felt that quietness close in on him.
Guy Philliston showed Remo the door that led to the absolute safest safe house in all England. The special dungeon of Henry VIII.
A broadsword came down first, clanging into rock at Remo's side. But he was soon beneath it and beyond it, smoothly, even while he wondered why the large man was using a sword instead of a gun. A second man dropped from a concealed loft just above Remo's head. He dropped, kicking with steel-tipped shoes and stabbing with a sharp dirk, a nasty little dagger good for infighting in tavern and alley.
Lord Philliston stepped back. He was hoping this wasn't going to be messy. Someone behind him was trying to drag him away. When he saw one of the attackers lose an arm in a gusher of blood, he realized that this was going to make a rather untidy mess. He scampered into a stone doorway adjacent to the passage as another four men came hurtling down into the attactive American.
Lord Philliston's contact was motioning for him. Quickly, he stepped inside, and closed the door quietly behind him as the battle went on down the steps toward the room where they had the American woman.
"You almost got killed, Lord Philliston," said a short dark man, squat as a bale of hay. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
"I suppose it would be useless to ask you to let him live."
"I am afraid we cannot do that," said the contact. "You must get out of here quickly and let us take care of this."
"You really are becoming quite British. Do whatever you want and then say you're sorry about that."