Then Remo moved. His hand seemed to brush across the guard's arrogant face. It was not a fast move, but fast enough so that Kathy only noticed it leaving the face. The laughter on the guard's face disappeared. It was impossible to laugh without lips or teeth. The guard couldn't even do anything with his hands but try to stanch the flow of blood. He also quickly indicated the Generalissimo was in the top floor by pointing. There was another guard nearby. He pulled the trigger on a machine pistol. But the pistol didn't fire. The finger pulled again. The pistol did nothing but jerk with a little gush of red. The gush came from the hand. Even on the ground the finger was still pulling. Remo walked right on through with Kathy. The guards back at the machine-gun nests didn't even notice. She knew that because they were still looking at her and blowing kisses.
The guards back at the gate were trying to patch themselves as Kathy tugged at Remo's shirt.
"Aren't you going to finish them off?"
"No. I wouldn't even have touched them if I could have gotten in with a letter."
"But you started something with them. I mean, how can you get something going and then not finish? You know break a neck or something."
"I didn't want to kill them unnecessarily."
"Why the hell did you get everyone so excited, and ther just leave? Wham, bam, not even a thank you ma'am."
"You want to finish them, lady, you finish them."
"I don't know how to kill," she said. "I hate that. I hate that in men. You know, a touch here, a touch there, and then nothing."
"Shhh," said Remo.
"What?"
"I'm thinking."
"Well, don't strain."
"Where did he meet you when you came here?"
"Remo, everything was so strange. So reeking with ... the strangeness, I guess, that I couldn't tell. They may have done this on purpose. I don't know."
"Sometimes they do that. I am asking because if people have something they really treasure, they don't go far from it. Not really far."
"Has that been your experience?"
"No," Said Remo. "A lesson."
"From that man?"
"Will you lay off that subject?" snapped Remo. "Just lay off. There must be something you don't want to talk about." He looked around the palatial hallways with their cool polished marble floors and tinted glass windows two stories high. Rich wood polished to a warm luster. Highbacked chairs. Gold in the chandeliers.
He heard laughter on the second story, and headed toward it.
"Does laughter tell you where the lord of this manor is?" asked Kathy.
"Nah. Maybe. I hate places like this. You know. A bit of Spanish, which means a bit of Arab because they were the real architects of Spanish styles. A little Mayan. A little Aztec and some California American. The place is a mess. You can't get a read on where the owner is. I hate it when they mix styles on you."
He went up the stairs with Kathy running to keep pace.
Outside there was some noise from the guards. An alarm sounded somewhere. Remo seemed to ignore it all. And then he saw an officer running into a room, locking the door behind him. Remo followed, springing the lock like a stone from a slingshot. Panting, Kathy caught up with him. It was safe to stay behind him. Perhaps the only safe place. That is, if he knew it was you.
"It's me," she said.
"I know," said Remo.
"How did you know?"
"I know. C'mon. I'm working."
Work was disarming two bemedaled officers who were aiming pistols at them. When Remo disarmed, he did it at the shoulders. Again he did not finish them. He didn't even touch the two brutes who dropped their weapons when they saw the horror of the officers losing their arms. He was even pleasant as he walked into the next room, where an officer was excitedly telling Generalissimo Eckman-Ramirez about the dangers of a single man who had come here to threaten His Excellency.
Remo, Kathy realized, could be a tease. And she also realized that she needed him to finish one of these men, or she would go crazy with want.
"Get on with it," she said.
Remo nodded her way. The Generalissimo, it turned out, spoke English. He spoke English rather well, in fact, and quite rapidly when it was pointed out to him that the man who had gone through his guards like tissue paper was now standing there.
"What can my humble house offer you, friend?" asked the Generalissimo. He had fine features: a thin small nose, sort of blondish hair, and dark eyes. He also sported a glistening yellow tooth right up front. When one had gold, one apparently flaunted it in this country.
He kept looking at Remo's wrists. "I want your fluorocarbon thing."
"But, sir, I have no such thing. But if I did, you, sir, would be the first to have it."
"Oh what a liar," gasped Kathy. "These butchers are such liars. "
"Who is your beautiful friend who calls me a liar?"
"You mean to say you didn't stand right there and tell me to measure oxidation and liquid refraction of ultraviolet intensity on a transatlantic angle?"
"Senora?" said the Generalissimo helplessly.
"Malden. In Malden, you bastard," said Kathy.
"Malden. I don't know of a Malden."
"You don't know of little dead animals? You don't know of the ozone layer? What else don't you know?"
"I don't know what you are talking about, lady."
"He's the one," said Kathy.
What happened next posed an immediate problem for her. She had been planning on Remo's killing off the Generalissimo and leaving her free to her own devices.
Unfortunately Remo could do things with bodies that she hadn't even suspected. Like run just two fingers along a spinal cord, creating pain, turning the general's fierce eyes to watery tears, and his pallid face to red pain. What if the Generalissimo denied any knowledge of the machine to his death? Would Remo find out she had tied to him? "They usually tell the truth under this," said Remo.
"Apparently he's more afraid of the person he works for than you. Look at his face. He's in pain."
"That's why they tell the truth. To stop the pain." Kathy saw the face flush red, ease, then flush red again; it was as though this man had gotten control of the Generalissimo's entire nervous system.
"It was the North Vietnamese, wasn't it? You showed them it could work didn't you? That's how you used me, wasn't it? To develop a weapon for Hanoi," said Kathy. She felt her body alive with his pain.
The Generalissimo, who would have admitted to murdering Adam and Eve at that point, let out a resounding yes. Especially when the pain eased. So delicious was this lack of pain that with Kathy's help he embroidered on the sale to North Vietnam. He even confessed guilt and asked forgiveness.
"But Hanoi isn't west of Great Britain."
"It is if you go far enough," said Kathy.
"I did it. I did sell this horrible ... thing?"
"Fluorocarbon generator," added Kathy helpfully.
"Yes, fluoro ... thing. I did. I confess."
"Where in Hanoi?" said Remo.
"I don't know. They just came and put it in a car and drove off," said the Generalissimo.
Remo looked at Kathy. She was shaking her head. "You're a scientist," said Remo. "Does that sound right to you?"
"Could be. Could be," she said. What they would do in Hanoi, she did not know. What she would do, she was not certain. But she needed a climax to all this excitement.
"Are you going to let him live? Maybe he'll warn the others."
"Sometimes it's a help," said Remo. "Then they all run to protect what they don't want you to have."
"I'd feel safer if you killed him. I can't go with you knowing this butcher and his officer would be phoning a warning ahead. It's been so hard on me, Remo. I couldn't."
And then she cried. She was good at tears. She had found out just how good she was at them when, at five, she had strangled her own hamster and had the house looking for the killer who had done that bad thing to Kathy's Poopsie Woo, her pet name for the little rodent who had squirmed his furry last in her hands.