"As I was saying," Abaatira continued smoothly, "when in Abominadad, one should respect the great traditions of the Arab people. In my country, there is a law stipulating that all men should emulate our President in all ways, especially in regard to facial adornment. If we expect this of our own people, should we not also ask it of our honored guests?"
"Hostages."
"Such an overused term," Abaatira said, stuffing his handkerchief back into his coat pocket. "So like calling everyone who disagrees with you a latter-day Hitler. Really, sir. You ought to change your record. I believe it is skipping."
The undersecretary of state stood over the Iraiti ambassador, clenched fists trembling.
He exhaled a slow, dangerous breath. Words came out with it.
"Get the hell out of here," he hissed. "And communicate our extreme displeasure to your President."
"I shall be delighted," Abaatira, said, rising. At the door, he paused. "He finds my cables outlining your outbursts hugely entertaining."
Returning to his limousine, Ambassador Abaatira picked up the speaking tube.
"Never mind the consulate," he told the driver. "Take me to the Embassy Row Hotel."
Then, getting on the car phone, he made two calls. The first was to reserve a room at the Hotel Potomac.
"Just for the afternoon," he told the front desk.
Next he put in a call to the Diplomatic Escort Service.
"Hellooo, Corinne?" he asked cheerfully. "This is Turqi. How are you, my dear?"
An unfamiliar voice said, "Corinne is indisposed. May I assist you in some way?"
"I truly hope so. Is Pamela available for a few hours?"
"I'm sorry, but she is indisposed."
"Hmmm. I see. How about Rachel?"
"Rachel is out of town."
Abaatira frowned. They were passing the White House. A protest group was assembled outside the east lawn, shouting, "Food, not bombs! No blood for oil!" They waved placards: "U.S. OUT OF HAMIDI ARABIA." His frown melted. His heart gave a little leap of joy. Such a civilized country.
"I will tell you what," he said magnanimously. "I am feeling adventurous today. Why not send over a selection of your choosing? Hotel Potomac. Room 1045."
"Kimberly is available. You'll like her. She's a fresh face. Very, very good with her hands. And blond."
"Yes, I like the sound of that. Kimberly will do nicely."
Ambassador Abaatira replaced the receiver. He leaned back in the tooled leather seat, folding his hands on his stomach and closing his eyes. He thought pleasant thoughts. Of blond-as-daffodils Kimberly.
"Ah," he murmured, "Washington is so restful in the summer. "
At the office of the Diplomatic Escort Service, Kimberly Baynes put down the phone.
She stood up her yellow silk dress shifting in the light. It was a sheer ankle-length dress cut in the Chinese pattern. A slit showed most of one shapely leg. Above the waist, it thickened and billowed around her ample bosom.
Taking her purse from the desk, she went to a door and opened it a crack, revealing a bare closet.
On the floor, Corinne D'Angelo, founder of the Diplomatic Escort Service, lay in a heap, a yellow silk scarf twisted around her neck. Her tongue lolled out like a black snail extruding from its shell. Her eyes were open, but only the whites showed.
Because she was still quivering. Kimberly knelt down-careful not to split her dress seams-and wrapped spiderlike fingers around the ends of the tight scarf.
She gave a hard, fast jerk. The quivering stopped. A faint gurgle escaped past the swollen black tongue. Another came from deep within her, and the sudden stink of released bowels filled the closet's narrow confines.
"Oh, yuk," Kimberly said recoiling. She hated it when they let go like that. She slammed the door sharply on her way out of the office suite.
On her way to the elevator, she bumped into a redhead wearing a white knit dress through which her black lace brassiere and panties showed like playful black cats in a heavy fog.
"Oh!" the redhead said. Stepping back, she looked Kimberly up and down frankly. "You're new, I suppose." Her tone was appraising, a little cool. "I'm Rachel."
"Corinne's expecting you," Kimberly said quickly.
"Good. I could use a few bucks. Catch you later."
Rachel brushed past. Kimberly tugged a long yellow silk scarf from her neck while the redhead rattled the office doorknob with growing annoyance.
She was knocking on the panel when Kimberly came up behind her, holding the yellow scarf in both hands.
"You have to lean into it," Kimberly said. "It's stuck."
Rachel's long-lashed eyes flickered in her direction. Taking in the scarf, she said. "You should get another color to go with that dress. Yellow on yellow is so tacky. Try white or black."
"That's a good idea," Kimberly said. "Maybe you should take this one."
"No, thanks," Rachel said, rapping on the door. "Yellow isn't my color."
"Oh, no," Kimberly said sweetly, lowering the scarf around the redhead's neck. "I insist."
"Hey!" Rachel said, flailing. Then: "Ugh! Ukk Ukk Ukkkkk."
"She loves it!" Kimberly cried. "Can't you tell?"
Rachel's knees buckled. Face bluing, she slowly collapsed into a heap of warm white knit flesh.
Holding Rachel's head off the floor by the yellow scarf, Kimberly Baynes unlocked the door. She dragged Rachel by the neck. Rachel protested not a bit as she was hauled into the well of the reception-room desk. When Kimberly let go of the scarf, Rachel's head went boink! She jammed her cooling limbs in.
Kimberly left her to decompose in private.
Ambassador Turqi Abaatira changed into a dressing gown in the privacy of his hotel room. As he waited patiently, he watched CNN, his eyes going often to his gold wristwatch, which he had set on the nightstand by the bed.
A reporter was engaged in a carefully worded report of U.S. troop deployment m faraway Hamidi Arabia.
"Since we are forbidden by military censors to report our location," the reporter was saying, "I can only say that I am reporting from a place near the Hamidi Arabia-Kuran border, where forward units of the Twenty-fourth Mechanized Infantry Division are dug into the shifting sands. Rumor has it that only a few kilometers north of here, Hamidi frontline troops are busily erecting a top-secret weapon, described only as a kind of modern Maginot Line they say will neutralize any gas attack the Iraitis dare launch. Operation Sand Blast commanders have so far refused all comment on the exact nature of this breakthrough . . . ."
Abaatira smiled. Let the Americans have their spy satellites, which cost billions of dollars and could read a license plate from orbit. The Iraiti Revolting Command Council had a superior tool. The American media. Under the banner of freedom of the press, they were daily feeding all sorts of valuable intelligence directly to Abominadad. And all for the price of a satellite dish. Who needed spies?
The knock at the door was sudden and inviting.
Abaatira hit the remote unit and bounced off the bed in one motion.
He padded to the door, his spirits soaring. With a grand flourish, he flung the door open.
She was, if anything, lovelier that Abaatira had expected.
"Ah, and you could only be the unrivaled Kimberly," he said, eyeing her yellow silk gown. A flash of thigh showed like a tantalizing dream.
"May I come in?" Kimberly asked demurely.
"Of course." She entered with a languid grace. Abaatira closed the door after her.
She stepped around the room, casually placing a small yellow purse on the nightstand by the bed. She turned. Her smile was red and inviting.
"And what would you like today?"
"I have been under a certain tension," Abaatira said. "I seek relaxation. And relief."
Kimberly perched on the edge of the bed. She patted it.
"Come. Join me."
Abaatira obeyed with alacrity. He rolled onto the bed.
"Lie back," Kimberly purred, leaning over to whisper in
to his ear. "Let Kimberly soothe you."
"Yes, soothing," Abaatira sighed. "I need soothing. Very much."
"I have brought love oil with me. Would you like me to use it?"
"Yes, that would be fine," Abaatira said, feeling his loins stir in response.
"Close your eyes, please."
Abaatira did as he was told. His ears were alert. Something else was coming to attention too. As he waited, delicate fingers tugged at the sash of his robe.
He felt himself being exposed. The coolness of the air conditioner passed over his stiffening member. He folded his hands on his bare stomach, swallowing with anticipation.
A hand took firm hold of his root, steadying his quivering tool. The sound of a small cap being unscrewed made his heart beat faster. He hoped this Kimberly would take her time. Abaatira preferred thoroughness in these matters, something he had stressed to Corinne D'Angelo when he had first explained his needs, many Kimberlys ago.
The cap was set down. There was a tantalizing drawn-out moment. Then the warm thick liquid began to pour. It slid over the tip of his Arab maleness, running down the shaft like warm, gooey syrup. A delicious scent tickled his nostrils. He sniffed curiously.
"Raspberry," Kimberly whispered naughtily.
"Ah, raspberry," Abaatira breathed. "Allah is just." He trusted that meant she would use her mouth. There was no rush. Eventually.
Then the other hand joined the first, and together they began kneading and manipulating him in clever, surprising ways ....
When Turqi Abaatira woke up, the first thing he noticed was that his erection was as proud as ever.
He blinked. This was unusual. He could distinctly recall climaxing. In fact, under the discreet manipulations of the girl named Kimberly, he had experienced the most nerve-satisfying climax of his life. It was also, oddly, the last thing he could recall.
He must have fallen asleep. It sometimes happened after he spent himself.
But there it was, proud and undaunted by its recent exercise.
Abaatira blinked again. There was something strange about his tool. It wasn't the yellow scarf that seemed wound rather loosely around the root of his intromittent organ. It was the color of the column of upright flesh towering above.
It looked rather . . blackish. Or was it green? No, greenish-black, he decided. He had never before seen himself turn that unlovely color. It must have been quite an orgasm to cause him to turn such a remarkable hue.
"Kimberly?" he called.
No answer. He tried to sit up. Then it was he noticed that his feet were lashed to the baseboard. By two yellow scarves identical to the one coiled on his belly.
"I did not ask for this," he muttered darkly.
He again attempted to sit up. His arms refused to move. He looked up. His wrists, too, were lashed to the bedposts.
"I definitely did not ask for this," he said aloud. Raising his voice, he called, "Kimberly, where are you, my apricot?"
Then he noticed his watch sitting on the nightstand. It said four o'clock. Much later than he had thought.
His eyes happened to alight on the tiny window that displayed the day of the week. They went wide. The red letters said: "THURSDAY."
"Thursday?" he gulped. "But this is Tuesday." Then the cold, mouth-drying realization sank in. His hot, dark eyes went to his defiantly inexhaustible manhood.
Ambassador Turqi Abaatira did the only thing he could do under the circumstances.
He screamed for his mother.
Chapter 6
The Master of Sinanju was dead.
Remo stared up at the cold stars wheeling overhead and tried to make sense of it all.
He could not. Nor had he been able to make sense of it in all the bitter months since the tragedy.
It had been, after all, a nothing assignment. Well, maybe not nothing exactly, but not as important as some. Looking back on it, Remo decided that he simply had underestimated what he and Chiun had gotten into.
It had started with a poison-gas attack on a failing northeast Missouri farm town. Remo had already forgotten its name. La Plume or something. Overnight, the town had been wiped out. Remo and Chiun had been out of the country when it had happened. No sooner had they returned to the States than Harold Smith had put them on the trail of the unknown culprits.
In Missouri they had collided with a strange group of characters, including a bankrupt condominium developer, a college girl with a no-nukes message, plus a working neutron bomb and an environmentalist group known as Dirt First!! The bomb had been stolen and, jumping to the conclusion that it had been the work of the Dirt Firsters, Remo and Chiun had gone after them. A mistake.
The neutron bomb had been stolen by the condo developer, Connors Swindell, whose grandiose visions of reversing his slumping business caused him to gas one town and plan on nuking another so that after the bodies were hauled off, he could scoop up the distressed real estate on the cheap.
"A frigging real-estate scam," Remo reflected bitterly. He lay in the coarse gravel of the Newark high-rise roof. He had lived here in the days after he had left St. Theresa's Orphanage. The day when, as a young Newark cop, he had opened up his draft notice, he had taken a bottle of beer up to this roof and lain back on the biting gravel to count the stars as he daydreamed of what Vietnam would be like.
Tonight, Vietnam seemed a thousand years distant. Tonight, his cop days were a receding memory, as were the cruel months he'd spent on death row, framed for the murder of a drug pusher he had never even laid eyes on. It had all been a gigantic scam engineered by Harold Smith and Conrad MacCleary, the one-armed ex-CIA agent who had seen Remo Williams in action in some forgotten rice paddy. MacCleary had mentally filed Remo away for possible future use. And when CURE had been sanctioned to kill, MacCleary had told Smith about a former Marine sharpshooter whom the Twenty-first Marines had nicknamed "The Rifleman."
Remo took a swig on a bottle of mineral water. His beer-drinking days were long behind him. So were his meateating days. So was the simple life of Remo Williams of Newark, New Jersey. These days his highly refined metabolism subsisted on rice, fish, and duck.
He had been electrocuted up at Trenton State Prison. They had strapped him in, sweating, frightened but outwardly cool. Zap! And he was gone.
The swimming darkness of oblivion gave way to the applegreen sterility of Folcroft Sanitarium and CURE.
Officially dead, his face recut into unrecognizable lines by plastic surgery, Remo found himself pressed into service for his country. As CURE's one-man killer arm. And he had taken the job-just as MacCleary and Smith had known he would. Remo Williams was, after all, a patriot. Besides, the cold bastards were ready to dump him into a shallow grave if he told them no.
In the spacious Folcroft gym, they had introduced him to the eighty-year-old Master of Sinanju, Chiun.
That meeting, Remo recalled as if it had happened last Friday.
MacCleary-a bluff, hard-drinking Irishman-had entered the Folcroft gym and engaged Remo in a seemingly pointless conversation. Remo was anxious to get out into the field. He had been well-trained in weapons handling, codes, disguise, poisons, infiltration-all things that soon became irrelevant. MacCleary had told him he wasn't yet ready, making his point with hand gestures that set his stainlesssteel hook flashing under the shaky fluorescent lights.
The big double doors opened. Conn MacCleary turned.
"Ah, here he comes now," MacCleary had said.
Remo's suspicious face went to the door. They separated as if actuated by a photoelectric beam. And framed in the open door, his hands tucked into the wide sleeves of a white kimono so that Remo had wondered who had opened the heavy doors for him, stood a tiny, pathetic figure.
He was approximately five feet tall from his whispering black sandals to the crown of his bald yellow head. Straggly wisps of pale hair floated over each ear. Like a bleached tendril of seaweed clinging to a rock, more ancient hair clung to his chin: His face was a calm mask of papier-mache wrinkles.
> As he padded toward him, Remo saw that the slanted eyes were an unexpected clear hazel color. They were the only thing about him that did not look old, frail, and weak.
MacCleary had explained to Remo that the old Korean was called Chiun and he was going to be Remo's teacher.
Chiun had bowed formally.
Remo had stared blankly, saying, "What's he going to teach me?"
"To kill," MacCleary had replied twenty long years ago. "To be an indestructible, unstoppable, nearly invincible killing machine."
Remo had laughed, causing a dark shadow of anger to cross Chiun's eyes like stop-motion storm clouds scudding by.
Suppressing his amusement, MacCleary had offered Remo a night away from Folcroft if he could tag the Korean called Chiun. MacCleary then handed him a hair-trigger .38.
Sighting coolly, Remo lifted the sights to the Korean's sunken chest. It was easy. All he had to do was pretend the old gook was a Vietcong. Inwardly he decided that this was a test of his ability to kill on command.
Remo fired. Twice. A faint smile seemed to gild the old Korean's face. It was still there when the reverberations of the shots ceased echoing. Holes popped into the padded tumble mats.
But the frail little man flashed, unscathed, through the gym. He slid sideways with nervous, geometrically angular motions. He faded here. He danced there. Annoyed, Remo continued trying to nail him as the sweat came to his forehead.
And when the last chamber contained only a spent, smoking cartridge, Remo angrily threw the weapon at the older man's head. Missing completely.
The Oriental came up on Remo so cleverly that he never saw him. Remo was thrown to the hard floor with such force it blew all pain and air from his surprised lungs.
Impassively the old Oriental had stared down into Remo's face. Remo glared up at him.
"I like him," Chiun had said in a high, squeaky voice. "He does not kill for immature or foolish reasons."
Remo later learned he was the Master of Sinanju, a martial-arts form old when Egypt's sands were new.
And on that day Remo started down the difficult path to becoming a Master of Sinanju himself, Chiun's heir, and now, Reigning Master. The first white man in a five-thousand-year chain of consummate assassins.
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