He had believed that some day he might have a family, a home, and maybe even a nine-to-five job somewhere. And if he watched himself carefully, perhaps, although this was doubtful, just perhaps he would have ten or fifteen years before someone from the organization would knock on his door and put a bullet in his face. (If it were a successor, it would be a hand in the face.)
Ten or fifteen years of belonging, of existing, of having people need you in their lives, and of you needing them. The only person he cared about now would kill him on orders—because that was the business. And what bothered Remo now was that he knew he, too, on orders, would kill Chiun—because that was the business. He would do it and, incidentally, find out if he could take the Master of Sinanju, his teacher.
And for knowing that he would do this, he hated himself to his very guts. He was no different from the other assassins of Sinanju except for the color of his skin, and that, he knew, was no difference at all.
The delegates vented their spontaneous joy to the full twenty minutes, as scheduled, and returned, yelling and screaming, to their seats. The New York delegation brushed past Remo and he hardly noticed them. Bludner sat down next to him and handed him the placard. Remo took it without looking.
"You okay, kid?" asked Bludner.
But Remo did not answer. He looked up at the big banner stretched across the roof of the arena, and he automatically thought of the wind currents and the months of becoming attuned to air as a cushion, as a force, as an obstacle and an ally. This thinking was so automatic that he detested it. His mind was no longer his own. Why should he be surprised that his body reacted so independently of his wishes? Why should he be surprised that eating a hamburger containing monosodium glutamate, something a child could do, would be impossible for him? He knew now why he had yelled at Smith, why he had yelled that he was a human being. He had to yell it. Lies always require more energy.
Remo watched the air currents work on the banner. Maybe a beam falling on the speaker's platform, provided it could be guided to strike one end first… He stood up to check the rows of seats on the platform. If it hit right, just right, it could take the first two rows. That would leave the third row free.
"Abe, give me an agenda," Remo said.
"How come you're suddenly interested in this thing, kid?"
"I am. I am. Give me an agenda."
"Hey, Tony. Give the kid an agenda," Bludner called out.
A folder with the brotherhood's emblem was passed down the row.
"Thanks," said Remo not taking his eyes off the platform. He opened the agenda and went through the program for Wednesday: acceptance speech, proposed amendment to the bylaws, an address by a senator from Missouri. No good. Thursday: a tribute to drivers' wives, a speech by the president of the American Legion, a vote on the proposed amendment. No good.
Friday: speeches by the president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen, president of the International Stevedores Association, president of the Airline Pilots Association, and the final address—by the secretary of labor. Beautiful.
"Hey, Abe, when people are scheduled to speak, do they come on just when they speak or do they sit there through the whole thing?"
"They gotta sit through the whole thing, kid," said Bludner. "Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. It just seems boring, you know."
"Kid, I didn't like beg you to come to this thing."
"I know. I know. But just sitting there in the third row, behind two rows of heads, waiting to give your speech, sounds boring."
"They don't sit in the third row, kid. They sit up front. The speechmakers are always some kind of guest of honour. I thought I'd get someone with smarts, kid. You're pretty, well, I don't mean to be insulting, pretty thick."
"Yeah, I guess so," said Remo, sitting down. The banner flapped, then ruffled, then dropped and remained still for a moment before flapping again. The beam undoubtedly was bolted, and since the lights were dropped from the ceiling, a person manoeuvring along the lattice of the ceiling might not be seen. If the secretary of labour were making his speech, the worst he would suffer would be a broken back.
On Friday, before the final meeting, Remo would work his way to that beam. He would loosen it in such a way that vibrations against the supporting beams would loosen it, like a balanced matchstick, only this matchstick weighed thousands of pounds.
Remo gauged the wind currents. While they could not affect so heavy an object to a great degree, they could affect it enough. No. He could not count on it swinging from its other joining. He would have to take off one end and leave the other by a thread of a rivet. Now would the currents working on this Goliath of a beam set vibrations to loosen it before its time? Remo peered at the banner and watched a balloon float up to the ceiling. No. Not enough currents. That would be workable.
He looked again at the platform on which the union leaders would sit, the key man in turning off America's vital arteries. Well, if Bludner weren't right about the seating, he would have to rearrange himself.
It was an extreme move, this mass killing, and Remo deemed it risky, both in the purpose of the organization and the execution of it. The news of it would be just too big. There would be too strong an investigation. The investigation might even uncover the organization. But more than that it was the way Smith had explained the operation.
For anyone to get control of transportation, as this projected superunion planned to do, would mean a total rupture of the American economy and ultimately the American way of life. The rising cost of transportation would be passed on where it was always passed on. To the little consumer. Meat, vegetables, and milk, already too high, would rise beyond—way beyond—the pockets of the once best-fed people on earth. Welfare recipients and people on fixed incomes would be reduced to the diet of a poverty-stricken nation. In response to these rising prices, due in large part to the rising costs of transportation, wages would have to rise. An inflation such as the nation had never before known would ensue. People would bring their American dollars to the supermarket in shopping carts and carry their food home in their purses. During a strike of this superunion, unemployment would be worse than it was in the depression of the thirties. This superunion would kill the nation, if the nation did not enact laws killing the union first. But if that were to happen, then the union movement in America, which had helped give the worker respect as a human being, would also be doomed.
Weighed in the balance against this were the lives of four union leaders. Unless another plan were evolved, they must die. Remo focused on the beam.
"Hey, Abe," he said.
"Yeah, kid."
"Why don't you think Jethro is going to win? Who's going to stop him?"
"New England, for one. They got a whole bloc. And this guy McCulloch who leads it is anti-Jethro. Hates his guts. Tried to lean on me to switch. I wouldn't. But McCulloch is gonna swing it against Jethro. Whoever seems to be winning other than Jethro is gonna get McCulloch and New England. Too much to stop."
Remo looked around the convention hall.
"Point him out to me."
Without getting up, Bludner pointed, forward right, ostensibly through the wide, white-shirted back of the man just in front.
"About twenty rows that way, in the Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont sections. They're all lumped together. You won't be able to see his head, but you'll see guys going in and out of the aisles towards one spot, leaning down to talk and stuff. In that spot will be a guy six-foot-four, red hair, a good 280, maybe 300 pounds. That's McCulloch."