"And I said you're not," Remo said.
"Then I'll call the papers and tell them everything that's going on. Would you like that?"
"You wouldn't do that," Remo said.
"How are you going to stop me? Kill me?"
"It's a thought," Remo admitted.
"How will your superiors like that?" she asked.
"After the initial furor dies down, they'll raise the price of stamps. That's what they always do."
"You said you worked for the phone company, not the post office."
"I meant the price of a telephone call," Remo said.
"All right," she said. "You go. I don't need you. I can get a lift and go by myself."
Remo sighed. Why was everybody so intractable these days? Whatever happened to women who said yes and did what you wanted?"
"Okay. You can tag along. I guess that's the only way to keep you out of trouble."
"And you drive carefully," Pamela said.
"I will. I promise," Remo said. He also promised himself that when the appropriate time came, and he had Buell nailed, he would just leave Pamela on the side of the road somewhere and never see her again. As they left Malibu, going north along the coast highway, Pamela said, "Why'd you change your mind?"
"You've got a nice ass," Remo said.
"That's a dumb reason."
"Not if you're an ass man," Remo said.
"Who was that you called?" Pamela asked.
"My mother," Remo said. "She worries when I'm out of town too long. She worries about rain and snow and gloom of night keeping me from the swift completion of my appointed rounds."
"That's the post office again," she said.
"Don't nitpick," Remo said.
Mr. Hamuta was alone in the Carmel house, built overlooking the ocean on the town's fourteen-mile-long scenic coast drive. The entrance to the house was down a long winding pathway that began at the home's heavily locked front gates.
When Buell and Marcia had left, the redhead had asked, "Should we leave the front gate open?"
"No," Buell said.
"Why not?"
"Because the gate won't stop him whether it's locked or unlocked. But if we leave it unlocked, he might suspect a trap. Don't you agree, Mr. Hamuta?"
"Most wholeheartedly," Hamuta said. He was in an upstairs bedroom. The large windows had been opened and, sitting back from the glare of daylight, he was hidden from sight but commanded a total view of the walk and the gate and the roadway beyond.
"Suppose he comes from the ocean side?" Marcia asked.
"Mr. Hamuta has a television monitor," Buell said. "He can watch the ocean side." He pointed to the small television set which he had hooked up in the room, which showed a continuous panning shot of the Pacific.
"It is all quite adequate," Hamuta said. He was wearing a three-piece suit. His vest was tightly buttoned, his tie immaculately knotted and held in place by a collar pin on his expensive white-on-white shirt. "You choose not to remain for the entertainment?"
"Where we're going is hooked up to the house monitors here. We'll watch it on television."
"Very good. Will you tape it for me?" Hamuta said. "I would like to look at it when I return to Britain."
"You just love blood, don't you, Mr. Hamuta?" Buell said.
Hamuta did not answer. The truth was that he regarded the young American as too crass and too vulgar for words. Blood. What did he know about blood? Or about death? The young Yank designed games in which mechanical creatures died by the tens of thousands. What could he have experienced that would bear any resemblance to the feeling of exhilaration that came when a perfectly placed bullet brought down a human target so that other bullets, perfectly placed also, could carve him like a Christmas goose?
Had Buell ever held his index finger on a trigger and looked down the length of a perfect weapon and for the moment it took to apply the fractional ounce of pressure to the trigger, experienced the knowledge that one was not, at that moment, a mortal anymore but a god, infused with the power of life and death? What did this insignificant creature know about such things, he with his childish visions of fantasy games?
Mr. Hamuta thought these things but said nothing and watched silently as Buell and the woman-- a strange one, that, and much brighter than she appeared to be-- walked up the long curving walkway toward the road where a parked car waited.
Hamuta was glad to be alone, to savor the pleasure of the upcoming moments in silence, thinking to himself how he would place the bullets and where. The man was the important target so he would take the man first. He would put a shot in the knee. No, the hip. A hip shot caused more pain and would immobilize the man. Then he would simply remove the woman with one shot and then go back to the man and carve him up with bullets. It was so much more fun that way. Buell was wrong. Hamuta was not interested in death for death's sake. He was interested in killing for killing's sake. The act of the kill was pure and worthy.
When the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Hamuta took a telescope from a velvet-lined box and carefully mounted it atop his rifle. Using a magnifying glass, he lined up a series of marks atop the scope with matching marks on the rifle frame itself, locking the telescope into the correct firing focus. The scope was a light-gathering instrument of a highly complicated personal design but it was able to render objects seen in dim light as highly illuminated, as if they were being viewed at high noon under a bright sun.
Then, telescope in place, again he sat, the rifle cradled in his arms like an infant, and waited.
The man first. It would definitely be the man first.
Three thousand miles away, Harold W. Smith looked at the printed report that his computers had spewed out on Abner Buell.
Brilliant. Unquestionably brilliant.
But unstable. Unquestionably unstable.
The computer issued a list of properties held by Buell and companies in which he was an investor. The dry tedium that makes up a person's life, Smith thought.
There was one small item buried at the end of the report. It said that a British computer had malfunctioned and almost resulted in Great Britain announcing it was leaving NATO and signing a friendship pact with Russia. Access to the British computers was by satellite signal from the United States, the computer report stated. Probability of Buell's involvement: sixty-three percent.
A wacko, Smith thought. A wacko tired of playing game-games and now ready to start World War III, the biggest game of all.
He hoped Remo would be in time to stop him.
Remo had tried to dump her by the side of the road when he stopped at a gas station and said he had to use the bathroom. As he expected, she said she did too. He went into the men's room, then darted right back out, jumped in the car and drove away. But something didn't feel right and he figured out what it was just before Pamela stuck her head up from the back seat, where she had been hiding on the floor, and said, "If you try that again, Yank, I'll plug you."
So now they were standing in front of the locked gate of Buell's Carmel mansion and Remo snapped open the lock and pushed the gate open. It swung soundlessly, well-oiled, no squeak.
"You shouldn't come in," he said.
"Why not?"
"It might be dangerous."
"This is California. You think it's not dangerous for me to sit in a car by the side of the road? I'm coming in," she said.
"All right. But you be careful."
"I have my gun."
"That's what I want you to be careful of. I don't want you to go shooting me by accident."
"If I shoot you, it won't be by accident," Pamela Thrushwell sniffed, then followed him down the short flight of steps that led to the twisting flagstone path.
* * *
It was perfect.
The two were off the steps now, onto the path, and Hamuta raised the rifle to his shoulder. The telescope intensified the dim light and brightened the images of the two people walking toward the house.
Perfect.
First t
he man. A bullet in the hip to drop and immobilize him. Then the woman. Then return to the man.
Perfect.
"Don't look now," Remo said, "but there's somebody in that upstairs window."
Pamela started to look up and Remo pulled her toward him by the wrist. "I said, don't look up."
"I didn't see anybody up there," she said.
"You're not supposed to. Just walk naturally."
He let go of her wrist. They walked a few more steps. Remo stopped and grabbed her arm again.
"What--?"
"Shh," he said. He felt the pressure waves increasing on his body. He did not know what he sensed or how he sensed it, but there was a faint pressure, circling in on him, invisibly touching him, a caress of danger.
"There's a weapon on us," he said softly.
"How do you know?"
"I know is all. Upstairs window. Wait. Wait. Now!"
He pushed her aside as a shot cracked. She hit the soft grassy earth and rolled behind a large stone that decorated the home's flower-bedecked front garden.
Remo had spun into a double spiral. The shot had been meant for his right hip. He knew it without knowing it and he went heavily down onto the stone path.
"Remo," Pamela called. She started for her feet.
He lay heavily on the stone path. "Just shut up and stay there," he hissed. "No matter what happens."
Hamuta smiled. The white man lay on the ground, still, his right hip jutting out from his body at a harsh, unreal angle. Hamuta knew he had hit the ball joint just the way he wanted to.
But the damned woman. She had slipped behind the rock, out of his sight.
He waited a moment, rifle still raised to his shoulder, then shook his head. He did not like changes in his program but he was going to have to make one. He would dispose of the man first and then take care of the woman.
He looked again at Remo.
Perhaps this time, the left hip.
Remo felt the second shot before he heard the sound.
In the fraction of a fraction of a second before the bullet reached him, he sensed its direction, its velocity, its intended target and, at the last moment, jerked his body off the ground. The bullet hit the flagstone below his left hip and he could feel shards of stone spray upward against his side. He settled back, twitched and groaned. Behind him, he could hear the rebounding slug whistling off across the road.
Pamela groaned. "Oh, no."
Remo twitched.
For a moment, Hamuta thought about removing the man's earlobes but he decided against it. There was no fun in it, a simple bullet in the heart would be best and fastest. Then go downstairs, find the woman and dispose of her too. She might prove to be more fun.
He lined up the sight with Remo's chest and squeezed the trigger.
Pamela Thrushwell was looking toward the house when she saw the flash from a gun's muzzle just inside the second-floor window. Then she heard the crack. She spun to the left, just in time to see Remo's body crumple, as if folding itself around something. It jerked back, three feet, rolled once and then lay facedown, arms sprawled out.
Hamuta did not like physical movement but not even his favorite weapon could fire through the rock behind which the young woman was hiding. He came out of the house and glanced up the slight incline to where Remo's body lay still. He was disappointed; he had wanted to have more sport with the man. Three shots, two hips and a heart, were not even enough to whet his appetite. It had been a very unspectacular, unsatisfying kill, and he would be glad to leave this barbarian country and return to a civilized land where even dying had rules and gentlemen observed them.
He walked up the path, rifle held loosely at his right side. The woman might be armed, he thought randomly. Well, it didn't matter. Women were just simply hopeless with firearms. She would be no threat; it would be no contest.
Before he reached the young white man's body, he stepped off the path and headed on a straight line for the large stone. He moved silently over the well-trimmed grass and when he reached the rock, he stopped and listened. Clearly, he heard her breathing and he smiled slightly to himself.
He bent over and picked up a small stone, made moist by the Pacific air. He moved silently to the right side of the stone, nearest the walkway, then tossed the pebble over the stone's other end.
It hit with a small sound, rippling through a flowering azalea bush. Without waiting, Hamuta moved around the right side of the rock.
He was confronted by Pamela Thrushwell's back. She stood in firing position, looking away from him, toward where the sound had come from, and before she could move, Hamuta had stepped toward her and knocked the pistol from her hand.
She wheeled to see the elegantly dressed little man, holding a rifle at his side, and smiling at her.
"Who the sod are you?" she demanded.
Hamuta smiled at her coarse British accent. The woman might be a battler and that was good. It might redeem what had so far been a very dull day.
"I am going to give you a chance to escape," Hamuta said. "You may run."
"So you can shoot me in the back?"
"I will not shoot until you are least twenty-five yards away," he said. "A twenty-five-yard head start." He smiled. "Because we are both British."
"No."
"Then I will shoot you here," Hamuta said.
Pamela's eyes strayed toward the ground where her pistol had fallen.
"You will not be able to reach it before I fire," he said. He had backed up so he was five feet away from the woman, far enough so that no sudden lunge of hers could reach the rifle before his bullet reached her brain.
A sudden jolt of fear surged in Pamela. For a moment, she seemed undecided whether to run or to take a chance on diving for the gun, hoping that a lucky shot would get the man before he got her. He seemed able to read her mind. He said, "Run and you have a chance. A small chance but a chance. Move for that pistol and you have none. Now run."
And then there was another voice that rang out over the lawn. It came from behind Hamuta.
"Not so fast, butterball."
Hamuta wheeled. Remo stood on the walkway, fifteen feet away, looking at him. The young American's eyes were dark and cold and in the lengthening evening, shadows carved his face into harsh angular planes.
Hamuta's jaw dropped open in shock.
"How are you there?" he asked, almost to himself as much as Remo.
"I'm a fast healer. I always was. Pamela, is that the voice?"
She was unable to answer. Surprise and shock had frozen her tongue.
"I said is that the voice?" Remo repeated.
"No," she finally coughed.
"I didn't think so. Okay. Where's Buell?" Remo asked the man in the three-piece suit.
Hamuta had recovered. Somehow he must have missed. But not at this distance. He still would have some fun with the thin American.
"I'm talking to you, suethead," Remo said.
He stepped forward and Hamuta, smiling, raised the rifle slowly to his shoulder. He had forgotten Pamela behind him and she moved quietly toward her pistol. She heard Hamuta say, "Your right shoulder, first." She lunged for the pistol. Perhaps she could get the Englishman before he got Remo. But then she heard the rifle's whip-snap crack.
She looked up. Remo still stood there, smiling, his body twisted slightly so that his left shoulder was forward, toward Hamuta.
"What? What? What?" Hamuta was sputtering. He could not believe he had missed. Neither could Pamela.
Angrily this time, Hamuta squeezed the trigger again, aiming at Remo's midsection only a few feet away from him. As Pamela watched, Remo's body seemed to twist, then unravel. It was a rolling motion that had no discernible rhythm to it, no predictability, and Hamuta, with Remo now only eight feet away, fired another shot but Remo kept moving forward. The bullet must have missed. But Pamela knew that the Englishman could not miss forever at this distance so she aimed at his head, holding both hands on the butt of the pistol.
As she squee
zed the trigger, she heard Remo call out: "No."
But it was too late. The pistol barked and the back of Hamuta's head exploded and he dropped face-forward onto the grass. Blood ran down the sides of his head. The rifle lay under his body. Remo looked over at Pamela.
"What the hell did you go and do that for?" he said.
"He was going to kill you."
"If he was able to kill me, he would have done it a half a dozen shots ago," Remo grumbled. "Now he's dead and I don't know who he is or where Buell is or anything. And it's all your fault."
"Stop sniveling," she said.
"I knew it was a mistake to let you come along."
"I never got less thanks for trying to save someone's life," Pamela said.
"Save it for the Red Cross," Remo said. "I don't need it."
"You really are an ungrateful wretch," Pamela said. "I thought you were dead. If you weren't hurt, why'd you wait so long?"
"Because, bigmouth, I had to see if there were others. Because if I went after him, one of his partners, if he had any, might have gotten you. Because I was thinking about keeping you alive, even if only God knows why. Because if it's not one irritation, it's another."
Pamela thought for a moment and was about to say thank you, but the scowl on Remo's face soured her and she said, "You can stay here and complain if you want, but I'm going inside the house."
"Buell's not there," Remo said.
"How do you know?"
"Because the house is empty."
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"I just know."
"I'll look for myself," Pamela said.
The house was empty. Remo followed her inside and in the upstairs bedroom saw the television monitor which patrolled the ocean-side back of the house.
"I'll bet that bastard is monitoring what goes on here," Remo said.
"Maybe."
"Sure. He's the Abner Buell. I bet he's a big TV wizard or something. He's been watching. He knows that Tubby the Tuba out there is dead. He was probably watching the place at Malibu too. That's how he knew we were coming here."
"Maybe," she said.
"Look." Remo pointed toward the ceiling. "There. And there. Those are all television cameras." He walked out into the hallway. "Sure," he called back. "He's got them all over. Right now, he's someplace watching us."
The End of the Game td-60 Page 12
