Fool's Gold (15 page)

From a list alongside the instrument, she started calling her neighbors.

"Yes. The bagpipes. He's started up again."

"Yes. He's started. Stay inside."

She even called that terrible woman who said her name was Mrs. Wilson, but God knew, she was probably an Italian or worse, a dark thing she was and hairy, but even hairy and dark, she deserved a warning.

Still, Mrs. Montague had trouble keeping the chill out of her voice.

"I know this is the first time for you, so stay inside. I'll let you know when it's safe to come out. You can light a candle or do whatever it is your type of person does."

Soon, the quiet, dead-ended little mews was still. Only the sound of bagpipes hovered overhead. The houses looked as if they had been designed to keep out all light and air. Every door was bolted shut and every window tightly closed. Shades, Venetian blinds, drapes were pulled tight, as if the sun were a deadly bacteria-carrying enemy. Within moments, the neighborhood resembled one of those everybody-dead-by-occult-intervention neighborhoods from a Hollywood horror movie— still and unmoving as death, with only the eerie sound of the bagpipes hanging over all.

The bagpipe music came from inside a small house at the very end of the immaculate little street. Inside, playing on a stereo system, was a record of the British Black Watch Regiment. Atop that record, awaiting their turns, were a stack of records including Wagner, military music from the Boer War, military music from the Indian campaigns, and songs of the Empire.

Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer, O. G., K. L. M., D. S.C., sat finishing his Stolichnaya vodka neat. He could feel the throbbing in his temples, the throbbing that always signaled that he would soon kill again.

He finished off his drink, strode to a bookcase in a corner of the living room, and reached behind a slim copy of Italian War Heroes to press a button. Noiselessly, the bookcase slid into the room, opening like a door to display another small room. Its walls were lined with weapons, handguns and rifles and automatic pistols. There were hand grenades and small one-man rockets, all neatly labeled and stored for immediate use.

Commander Spencer decided he would take a lot of equipment with him and give those two bloody bodyguards a really rousing sendoff.

His temples kept throbbing and he knew the pain would not subside until he was packed and ready to go on his mission. Until that time, he hoped he met no one. He hoped no neighbors were on the street and he hoped no mailmen or deliverymen came to the front door, because while the temples pounded, he was not in control of himself. And he didn't want to kill anybody right now. Not yet. Not until he had met these two bodyguards.

Chapter Twelve

At least at Kennedy Airport in New York, they had predictable hookers and muggers. But here, in the Bombay Airport, they had beggars and cows milling around the main passenger terminal.

"Ridiculous," Remo said. "This country's never going to make it into the twentieth century. Hell, it might not even make the nineteenth."

"You just don't understand spirituality," Terri Pomfret said.

"I understand cowshit," Remo said. "You're standing in it."

Terri looked down, saw she indeed was and tried to shake it from her shoe.

"Pray it off," Remo said. "Flash a buck and you'll have a thousand gurus over here to help you."

"You're back to being nasty," Terri said.

"Something about this country brings out the beast in me," Remo said.

He strolled off, picking his way through the cowchips, toward a bank of telephone booths on the far side of the terminal.

The first seven phones had dial tones but no sign of sentient life on the other end of the line. When Remo picked up the receiver on the eighth phone, an operator answered him instantly.

He gave her the 800-area-code number in the United States.

"That is wonderful," the operator said.

"What is?"

"That you're calling America. I've never placed a call to America. Are you American?"

"Will it help me get my call through if I tell you yes?" Remo asked.

"You don't have to be sarcastic. No wonder you Americans are hated around the world."

Remo began to sing:

"In the good old colony days,

when we lived under the king,

lived a butcher and a baker

and a little tailor... bring back

the British."

"Vietnam," the operator yelled. "El Salvador."

"Cowshit. Dirt," Remo yelled back.

"Racism. Colonialism," the operator yelled.

"Please," Remo said, surrendering. "Just get my number."

He leaned against the wall and waited. He noticed a slight dark man, wearing a diaper around his midsection and a terrycloth turban, standing against the wall near the telephones, trying very hard not to be involved with Remo, trying very hard not to look in Remo's direction, trying very hard not to be noticed. He had a small bale of cotton alongside him. He picked it up and placed it on his head, moved a few steps along the wall, closer to Remo, then put the bale down on the floor again.

After a lot of clicking, Smith's voice came on the phone. The operator said, "Imperialist pig calling you."

She clicked the phone loudly in Remo's ear as she got off the line.

"It's Remo. We're going to Spain. Right, Smitty, Spain. Don't ask me. She says Spain, we go to Spain. You're the one who told me to do this. I know. The world depends on it. Right, right, right, right, right."

After Remo hung up, he walked over to the man in the turban and diaper who had just replaced the cotton bale on his head. Remo rearranged it even more with a quick stroke of his hand, slamming the bale down around the man's ears so he looked like a walking sofa cushion.

"We're going to Spain," Remo said. "Just ask. It's not polite to eavesdrop."

They were the only people in the plane's first-class section and Chiun took his usual seat by the window so that he could concentrate on the wing and make sure it wasn't falling off.

While the plane was taxiing, he said, "You did well, Remo."

Remo and Terri were sitting across the aisle.

"Oh, how's that?" asked Remo.

"By not getting us on an Air India plane. I would not fly anything manipulated by these savages," Chiun said.

"My honor," Remo said.

Chiun nodded and turned back to the wing.

"How can he be so nice sometimes and so mean other times?" Terri asked Remo.

"You think he's bad now?" said Remo. "Wait until you learn street Korean and find out what he's been saying behind your back."

When the plane was airborne, a stewardess came from behind the galley wall and looked over the first-class section.

When she saw Remo, she reached a hand up and opened two more buttons on her blouse. She was a tall brunette, long-legged and slim, and her candy-striped blouse was pulled tight over a full bosom.

"That stewardess is looking at you." Terri sniffed at Remo.

"Probably she's just trying to see to the end of her chest. Quite a set of chest, actually," Remo said.

"If you like cows," Terri said.

"For two days, you've been telling me to love cows. Now, all of a sudden, something's wrong with cows?"

"You're disgusting," Terri said.

The stewardess came to their seat and leaned forward over Remo's aisle seat so he could see into the dark valley of her cleavage.

"Can I get you anything, sir? Anything at all?"

"I'll have tea," Terri said.

The stewardess ignored her. "Sir? Anything?" she asked Remo again.

"No thank you," Remo said.

"Tea," said Terri.

"Oh, come on," the stewardess told Remo. "There must be something you want. Maybe you'd like to see the galley where we fix meals. It's just up there. Come on. I'll show it to you." She took Remo's hand but he extricated himself from her grip.

"No, that's all right," he said, smiling at her.

"The washroom," she said. "You'd like to inspect the washroom. Come on." She took his hand again. "I'll show the washroom to you. Show you how the door locks."

"No, thank you," said Remo.

"Tea," said Terri.

"Come on," the stewardess said. "There's got to be something you want." She leaned over farther, exposing more of her bosom. Terri turned away and looked out the window in disgust.

"Something. Anything. I'll get you a pillow."

The stewardess reached into the overhead compartment, standing on tiptoe and pressing her belly against the side of Remo's face as she rooted around in the overhead luggage section. Remo turned to Terri and shrugged helplessly. Terri stuck out her tongue.

The stewardess slipped the pillow behind Remo's head.

"It's a nice pillow. Not as nice as the ones I have in my apartment, but all right. You should try the ones in my apartment. It's all right. My roommate's out of town."

Remo said, "Thank you. Maybe some other time."

Terri said, "Tea."

The stewardess said, "Here, let me brush those crumbs off your lap."

"I don't have any crumbs on my lap."

"I'm sure I saw some. Right there."

The stewardess brushed Remo's lap.

Remo sighed and reached behind the young brunette, placing his hand on her back, feeling the vertebrae of her spine.

"It think it's the fifth," he mumbled to himself. "Fifth or sixth. Chiun. Is it fifth or sixth?" he called out, as the stewardess continued brushing his lap.

"On a cow, it doesn't matter," Chiun snapped back, not turning away from the window.

"Hooray for common sense," Terri said.

"Fifth," Remo mumbled. "I'm sure it's fifth." He pressed his left index finger into the flight attendant's back. Her hands froze in position on his lap and a look of tranquillity came over her face.

Remo touched her cheek with his hand.

"Later," he said gently. Carefully, he turned her around and gave her a tiny push down the aisle toward the front of the plane.

As if she had no will of her own, she walked away, pausing to rest, leaning against a seat, then unsteadily lurching down the aisle.

"That was awful," Terri told Remo. She looked at the stewardess who was leaning against the bulkhead wall, her face wreathed in a smile. She seemed unable to move.

"What'd you do to her?" Terri asked.

"I just gave her something to remember me by. It was the only way to get her off me. You saw."

"How did you do it?"

"I don't know. I touched a nerve. You want one?" Remo asked.

"Keep your hands to yourself, you lecher."

"Just asking was all," Remo said.

Terri watched the stewardess. She had been leaning with her back against the wall, and slowly her feet slid out from under her. In a moment, she was sitting on the plane's floor.

"That's incredible," Terri said.

"It's a pain in the ass is what it is," Remo said. "Women sense it and they just won't leave me alone."

"I'll leave you alone. You know, you don't affect me at all. I don't even really like you."

"Oh?"

"That's right. Nothing. You do less than nothing for me. Zip code. My ideal man is cultured, noble, regal."

"And my ideal woman doesn't have a loose upper plate," Remo said.

Terri harrumphed, got up and stepped across Remo. She moved to the other side of the aisle and sat next to Chiun.

Chiun said, "I prefer to sit alone. Be gone, woman." He spun around and clamped his gaze on the wing again.

Terri rose and moved to a seat behind Remo.

He turned and smiled. "Welcome to the club. When he abuses you, he likes you."

"You must both love me then," she said.

"Only him," Remo said.

Smith regularly awoke at 5:29 A.M., one minute before his alarm was set to go off. Then he turned the clock off so that the ring would not disturb his wife.

By this day, he awoke at 5:24 A.M., a full five minutes early, and knew something was wrong. He must have been dreaming. But what was it about?

Then he remembered. It wasn't a dream. It had been a thought. The lunatic he had been talking to in the West somewhere had been talking about motion pictures.

Suddenly, it all made sense— his talking about gross points, his maundering about how everybody was stealing from him.

Somehow CURE's records had gotten into the information system of a moviemaker. No... a writer, as Smith recalled the conversation. Out there somewhere was a writer with CURE's records and now he was writing a screenplay based on the exploits of Remo and Chiun.

A small chill shuddered through Smith's body.

"Are you all right, dear?" his wife asked in the darkness of their bedroom in a little ranch house in Rye, New York.

"Yes. Why?"

"You're awake early," she said.

"Yes. I had an idea."

"How unusual," she said.

"Sorry to disturb you, dear," Smith said.

"Oh, you didn't disturb me."

"Go back to sleep, dear," Smith said.

"If you're sure everything's all right," she said.

"Everything's all right." Smith leaned over and pecked a kiss on his wife's cheek, then quickly left the bedroom to dress.

But Mrs. Smith knew something was wrong, two minutes later, when the alarm sounded. Smith had forgotten to turn it off, and that was something he hadn't done in twenty years.

Chapter Thirteen

His bags were flawless. The ammunition and auxiliary weapons were stashed neatly in lead-lined cavities on the inside of mock typewriters and dictating machines, so the airport's randomly used x-ray equipment would show only the familiar shape of those ordinary objects.

But most of Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer's arsenal was on his body, built into his suit, his shoes, his sleeves, his belts.

"How will you get past airport security?" Wissex had asked him.

"The same way I escaped from Moscow in 1964," Spencer had said. "Did I ever tell you? I was— —"

"Well, I really have to go now," Wissex said. "Good luck on your mission."