Oil Slick td-16

by Warren Murphy

  "One of your professors has been killed, hasn't he?"

  "Yes. He had tenure," said the dean of students. Rather than ask what that meant, Remo moved on to the reporter in the gray suit.

  "All right," he said. "This is a backgrounder. You can't quote me directly. All we lost were a few bodies. The project is in tip-top shape. Jeezus, we were lucky."

  "The name of the project? How do you spell it?"

  "That's classified. The name is classified. Just say it was a project of maximum high significance."

  "That doesn't mean a frigging thing," said the reporter. Remo winked broadly.

  "I'm going to quote a source saying that all we lost were lives. Do you want that?" asked the reporter.

  "Fine," said Remo.

  Going into the building, Remo was stopped by a fire inspector. But Remo pointed to the police chief, the chief waved back, and the fire inspector said, "You'll need a mask."

  "I won't breathe," said Remo.

  The inspector blinked in surprise and Remo went into the building. Firemen moved in the jerky manner of those accustomed to having to turn their masked faces to be able to see what was beside them. They wore their rubber coats which protected them from water but couldn't stop the heavy smoke from getting into their clothes. Remo turned into the first room and looked around in the dun gray smoke. He saw a desk at the front of the room and examined it for drawers. It had none.

  All he needed was a box or a drawer or a file folder. Any one of those would do, but he couldn't find anything suitable. Nor was there anything in the next room or the next. Schools were not the same as he had remembered them, but as he passed a room marked "men," he knew something had to stay the same. People had to dry their hands, and towels or blowers had boxes.

  The University of California at Berkeley, Remo discovered, used towels with the ancient admonition of "rub, don't blot." The box was painted white. Remo ripped it off the wall and chipped paint off it by twisting the metal, until the box was almost shiny. Then he took out the towels, held the empty box in his arms as if it were a baby, and left the building, pushing aside a stumbling nurse who was escorting a burn victim from the scene.

  "Excuse me," said Remo.

  He went through the crowd, past the fire inspector and the chief of police and the dean of students and the reporter, saying over and over again, "Not a scratch on it. Not a scratch on it. Beautiful. Not a scratch on it."

  "Not a scratch on what?" asked the reporter, trying to get a glimpse of the cargo which Remo shielded with his arms. But Remo only winked and hurried across campus to the administration building, where he grandly announced he was going to "stay with it for the night because maybe the next explosion won't leave us all so lucky."

  "Lucky?" asked a secretary, amazed to Jaw-gaping disbelief. "Five people were killed, including a tenured professor."

  "Yeah. Next time it could be serious," said Remo, and ordered the secretaries to show identification. When a man in a vest with a gold key dangling from it came into the office to ask what was going on, Remo demanded his identification too, and said he didn't like the idea of everyone hanging around this office without clearance and people casually coming in and out. He didn't know what others might do but he was going to stay here all night with it.

  "With what?" asked the man with the gold key.

  "You're a little bit too nosy for your own good. Out All of you. Out. Goddamned petty bureaucrats. We luck out of this thing and you damned administrators have to go around screwing it up again. Five men are dead. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't five dead enough for you? Get the hell out of this office, all of you."

  In a burst of generosity, Remo let the secretaries find their handbags and take them with them. But not their coats. Five persons dead already, you know. It was about time the University of California had some security.

  By 5:30 P.M., as the sun began its red descent over the Pacific and Remo sat with the altered towel box in his lap in the administration building, the FBI came to check out what had been removed from the science building. The two men showed their shiny metal badges.

  "Ah, Mobley and Philbin," said Remo. "You don't look like FBI men. You're odd-sized. And how come you have badges? The FBI uses ID cards."

  "Special branch," said Mobley.

  "Is that the thing the radio station was talking about?" asked the one named Philbin.

  Remo nodded. "Made it myself," he said.

  "You're not a scientist, are you?"

  "No. I'm the man who's going to kill you," said Remo pleasantly. Mobley and Philbin quickly unholstered their guns. Philbin pointed the barrel of his at the wise guy's temple and strangely enough the guy watched only Philbin's trigger finger. As if he could dodge a bullet if he saw the finger begin to move. Philbin had never seen anything like that before. He had seen guys so close the brains had gone splooey out of their crushed skulls as the bullets set off little compression explosions until the temple popped, but never had he seen anyone whose eyes focused on the finger. They always looked at the barrel before they died. Not the finger. This close, no one had ever looked at Philbin's finger before.

  Mobley searched the adjacent offices. Philbin kept the barrel pressed to the wise guy's temple.

  Remo hummed a bar from "Whistle While you Work."

  "No one here," said Mobley.

  "He's just a wise guy," said Philbin.

  "You're not FBI men," said Remo.

  "We have the guns. We'll do the talking," said Mobley. "First of all, who are you?"

  "I told you. The man who's going to kill you. Now if you're pleasant and polite, you'll have a nice departure. But if you're going to be nasty, it's going to hurt. Truly, I recommend the nice departure. It's like, now you're here and now you're not. Probably better than any death you could manage on your own. Even a fast heart attack isn't any pleasure."

  "I find it hard to believe that my partner and I have guns pointed at your head and you're threatening us with death."

  "But you've got to believe," said Remo earnestly. The very calmness of his voice had a rhythm that made people feel more at ease. Philbin saw the wise guy's head turn away, and suddenly felt a tearing burn at his trigger finger. He saw the automatic pop out of Mobley's large limp hand and he decided, as he had decided with Dr. Ravelstein, that he was not going to dally with death. He squeezed the trigger finger despite the pain and then he realized in screaming agony that from the joint of his thumb to his middle finger there were only a few dangling strands of flesh and the hand then didn't hurt anymore, and then it was dark. Forever.

  Remo held up Mobley's head so he could watch Philbin's eyes roll to the back of his head in death.

  "Who sent you?" asked Remo.

  "I never saw him."

  "Nonsense," said Remo.

  "No. We never saw him. He was always in a shadow."

  "How could he be in a shadow today? He had to send you back here."

  "Yeah, yeah. He sent us. He sent us."

  "And you didn't see him?"

  "No. Never."

  "Pretty dangerous making hits for someone you don't see."

  "He paid well."

  "Why didn't you rob him, or would that be against the law?"

  "On him, no. He was crazy as hell."

  "Where are you supposed to meet him next?"

  "You're going to think this is crazy, buddy. But he said if anybody asked us that question, we should just tell him that he would have to wait. That's all he told us. That and he made us drink that funny sounding juice."

  "Juice?" asked Remo.

  "Yeah. It sounded something like tangerine juice."

  Remo ignored that puzzle. "Why were you hitting the scientists?"

  "I don't know."

  "Which oil company were you working for?"

  "You gotta ask the man. I don't know."

  "Do you know the FBI doesn't use metal badges?" Remo asked.

  "I know that. The crazy guy told us to use them."

  "He's not so cr
azy. He told you to use them so I'd know you weren't FBI men. I'll tell you what. Get me to him and I'll give you your life. Your life for his."

  Mobley laughed and the laughter became tears and the tears became a sigh and suddenly Mobley was losing body heat. He was dying. Remo felt the life slipping away under his hand.

  Mobley's eyes began to glaze over.

  Remo watched, then remembered. "That juice?" he said to Mobley. "Tangerine juice?"

  "Sounded like that," said Mobley faintly.

  "Could he have said 'Sinanju'?" Remo asked.

  "Yeah. That was it. Sinanju," said Mobley, and then he fell from Remo's grip and died on the floor.

  Remo looked down at the dead body. He took the useless gun from the man's disabled hand and put it back in the shoulder holster. He did not know why he did this, but it somehow seemed appropriate.

  Then he walked out into the California sun. The two fake FBI men had been poisoned by the drink. They had been supposed to stay alive long enough so Remo would know who he was facing this time.

  Well, they had, and he did.

  He had been challenged again by Nuihc, the evil offspring of Sinanju and its mysterious arts.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the Grand Islamic Council of the Revolutionary People's Free Arab Republic, formerly Lobynia, Col. Muammar Baraka listened to the endless reports that had been typed in triplicate by British typists on German typewriters with electricity supplied by American generators run by Belgian mechanics.

  The council met in the old king's palace, a building constructed by an Italian nobleman, designed by a Japanese architect, with American air conditioning, British wiring, Danish furniture, and East German flooring.

  Lobynia's green and orange flag with the yellow crescent and star sometimes fluttered, but more often drooped in the windless heat. It had been made, designed, and manufactured in Lobynia by Lobynian technicians and was perfectly good except that it had to be replaced each week since the grommets through which the flag rope passed regularly fell out every seven days.

  Baraka listened. Near his right hand was a Texas Instruments pocket calculator. Since he had become president four years before, he had written down on a little pad how much oil his country had in estimated reserves. On another pad, he estimated how much money was leaving the country. The amount of money leaving grew and grew, and soon needed electronic calculation. Estimated oil reserves shrank at a steady rate and remained on the same pad on which he had first written them down when he deposed King Adras. For the last four years, he thought about the difference every day. He thought about it when he watched the wing fall off a hangared Mirage jet because it had just rusted off. The hangar was too near the sea. A plane that never flew should not be hangared near the sea. He thought about the difference when the Russian-built office complex collapsed because of a combination of poor building materials and no maintenance. And he thought about it very strongly when he heard an Italian engineer explain to a Russian that anything built in Lobynia should need no more skill to operate than an oasis.

  "But an oasis is just there," said the Russian.

  "Ahhh," said the Italian. "Now you know how to build for the Lobynians. Unless you plan to have Russians in the country on permanent maintenance duty."

  Colonel Baraka remembered this conversation as he watched his country's wealth being pumped from its sands, never to return again, and buildings crumbled and planes fell apart in their hangars and everyone wanted to sell him something because they were "friends of the Arabs."

  "So when he heard even such a small expense as two hundred fifty thousand dollars American, he questioned it.

  "What are the Lobynian people getting for this two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

  "Colonel?" asked the Minister of Intelligence. He was almost as young as the Colonel, but his face had gotten fat and he had started to wear uniforms of expensive cloth from Britain. He had taken a promotion to lieutenant general after the revolution. It had been he who delivered the crucial armored corps at the crucial moment, namely the jeep that worked and could get Colonel Baraka to the radio station. In Baraka's voice, the people found a memory of strength and trust. It was his voice that was the revolution and his spirit was the light of the people. And all the officers sitting at the conference table in the palace knew it. They knew that they held their ranks by his word and by nothing else. Even the soldiers had to be told from time to time that it was the colonel's orders, before they did something. Now Lieutenant General Jaafar Ali Amin looked up from the long list of monthly intelligence expenses, amazement wrinkling his face and blanching a long white scar that ran down his left cheek.

  "Colonel, I don't understand."

  "I am asking," said Baraka, "what did we get for that two hundred fifty thousand dollars American? That's what I asked. What did the Lobynian people get that they can say this is what our leaders got for us with the fruits of our land?"

  "Well, it's under the heading of American projects which is roughly twenty million dollars this month. That includes, I might add, financing student organizations in which we are picking up broad support far beyond investments, growing favor for our cause among minority groups in America, payments to friends and to that United States senator who on public television ..."

  "Wait. Hold it. Hold it. Spare me the list of your successes. Just tell me, specifically and unalterably and finally, what did we get for that two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars, eh?"

  The colonel's sharp, Italian-looking features tightened in frustration as he spoke. His neck reddened.

  "Incidentals. Two," said Lt. General Jaafar Ali Amin in an almost inaudible voice. He did not look up from the typed papers.

  "Was that one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars an incidental, or was one incidental two hundred thousand dollars and the other, being an even more incidental incidental, only fifty thousand dollars?" asked Baraka.

  "It doesn't say, Colonel."

  "Don't you know? Aren't intelligence operations in your department?"

  "But, Colonel," said General Ali Amin, looking up from the paper at last. "In my budget, that amount is less than one one-hundredth. Do you know where every hundredth of something you spent has gone?"

  "Yes," Baraka said. "Now you find out. I remember when outside this building there was not two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that belonged to the people of my tribe or my father's tribe or the tribe of his father's father."

  "Things are different today, oh, leader, especially since you have led the way in raising world prices of oil four times higher than they had been before."

  "Yes," said Baraka. His face broke into a sudden smile and his ministers smiled with him, largely in relief. "Now instead of a mere two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of incidentals we could for the same amount of oil leaving the land get one million dollars worth of incidentals." Baraka paused. The smiles disappeared around the table.

  "Four times as much, gentlemen," Baraka said. "Now I will tell you what we will all do. We will all wait here until General Ali Amin finds out what has been done with the people's two hundred and fifty thousand dollars American."

  "With exactitude," said the General. He saluted smartly and left, shutting the door behind him. Twenty minutes later, as the fingers drummed on a table surrounded by sheepish men and one man furious to the limits of his tether, General All Amin returned with a fat file folder in his hands and a confident smile on his face.

  "The two incidentals, sir, went for a Mobley and a Philbin with the European capital letter T on it. Exactly, Colonel," and he saluted again, put the paper back in the folder and sat down.

  "Capital T, you said?"

  "Yes, Colonel. A capital T exactly. Specifically. Just as exactly as the American shot to the moon."

  "And would you mind telling us what this capital T means?"

  "Sir?"

  "Get the Frenchman."

  "Sir?"

  "The civilian aide who runs your whole department whi
le you are out cornholing little boys in the streets of our capital. Yes, I know what you do."

  General Ali Amin shrugged. His attempt at self-respect had failed in the face of the onslaught of reality. He summoned the Frenchman.

  M. Alphonse Jaurin, a thin man with a dark ferretlike face and very precisely cut black hair, did not officially exist, although his services were rented from the French government for a sum that could have bought another Mirage jet to join the rusting fleet.

  Not existing, M. Jaurin did not have a title. Not existing, he did not wear a uniform, but a dark pin-striped suit with a vest. And not existing, he went where he wanted without being bothered, except when Colonel Baraka wanted to find out what was happening. Then a messenger would run frantically to M. Jaurin's palatial home on Gamal Abdal Nasser Avenue searching for the small Frenchman. But today was the day of the ministers and like all the other foreigners who worked in subordinate roles in Lobynian ministries, he sat outside the main conference room in the palace. He was chatting with the Russian who had done interesting work in Czechoslovakia and was now in Lobynia as part of his nation's buildup in the Middle East. He had confided that the Russians needed the Arabs about as much as Americans needed the South Vietnamese.

  M. Jaurin was surprised to see General Ali Amin return to the waiting room, anxious and flustered.

  "He wants to see you," said the general.

  "In person?" asked M. Jaurin.

  "Yes. In person."

  "But that's an official room. An official meeting. You know I am not supposed to be there. Never. It would be ... well, official."

  "The colonel ordered."

  "As he wishes, but you had better be right, Amin, or ... well, you had just better be right, or else."

  "I am right. I am definitely right, M. Jaurin."

  "We will see," he said and entered the main conference room as General Ali Amin opened the door for him and closed it behind him.

  Colonel Baraka examined the man whose yearly salary could not have been borne by the entire income of the colonel's tribe a generation before, but was now a sum routinely spent on acquiring information about what other countries were doing. Colonel Baraka often judged this to be misinformation. The Frenchman's eyes were black, his skin pocked, and the hair precisely combed. Men with precise hair tended to hide things well.