"It did not seem an unreasonable request," Smith said.
"It does to me," Remo retorted. "I thought we could hang around here at least until that guy downstairs comes to. And I'm a little bit anxious to pay a visit to the goon squad that torched our house." At this, Chiun harrumphed.
"And I've had it up to here with you, too," Remo snapped at him. "It was my house just as much as it was yours. You don't own the copyright on indignation this time, Little Father. And you sure as hell didn't get the promise from some ghost of a truckload of crap getting dumped on you for the next decade, so why don't you just back off?"
The flash of injured anger in his pupil's tone caught the old man off guard. The harsh lines of Chiun's face tightened for an instant before relaxing somewhat.
"I sympathize with you for your loss," Smith said reasonably. "And I'm just as interested as you in the identity of your masked assailants, but at the moment we are in a holding pattern for both. Right now, it might be best for us all if you kept busy. At least until something new comes up with either situation."
On the floor, Remo closed his eyes, forcing calm. "Why don't I just stick a broom up my ass so I can sweep the streets while I'm traipsing all over the country?"
"There isn't room," Chiun said, his eyes hooded. "For your head would get in the way. We will go, Emperor Smith," he told the CURE director. "If only to give you the solitude you need to find those Sinanju seeks."
"Thank you, Master Chiun," Smith nodded. "I will print out a list of Raffair's national offices." He focused his attention on his computer.
"Thanks a heap, Chiun," Remo complained quietly as the old Korean swept around the big desk.
"For once the lunatic is right," the tiny Asian said, his voice pitched low enough that only Remo could hear. "Retribution will come in its time. If this distraction satisfies Smith's need to placate the departing billhilly he serves, then we will serve our emperor in this task."
Remo didn't answer. Scowling deeply, he crossed his arms.
Chiun said nothing more. As Smith worked, the aged Korean sank to the floor next to his pupil. He offered but one more glance at Remo. When he saw that the look of brooding had not yet fled, a new expression formed on the older man's weathered face. With an air of sad understanding, Chiun focused all his attention back on his mad employer.
THE PRESIDENT SAT On the edge of the bed. At his feet was the red phone used to contact Smith. The nightstand in which the telephone was supposed to be secreted had vanished the previous day.
With a heavy sigh, he dragged himself to his feet. The living room was empty as he trudged by. He had no idea how she'd managed that. It was as if all the furniture had been swallowed up by a black hole while he'd slept.
There were a few half-chewed photographs on the floor. On the scraps he saw his own thoughtful puffy eyes, earnest protruding chin and thoughtful bitten lip.
At least he didn't have to run from the First Menagerie anymore. The dog and the cat were in exile, locked across the street at Blair House. It was one of his last official acts as President. Probably ever. Thanks to her, he might never get the third term he so desperately wanted.
Past the living room, he entered the small study. The boxes containing billing records and personal files were gone, as were all the shredders. Relocated to New York.
He found a phone that his wife hadn't taken and stabbed out the number by memory.
"iHola!" said the female voice that answered.
"It's me," the President said glumly.
The woman's voice grew cold. "Oh. Ju hab news?"
Her Spanish accent was awkward. In the background, the same man's voice that the President had been hearing for more than a year continued to drone Spanish in soft, modulated tones.
"They're on their way," the President said. "I don't know which office they'll hit first, if that makes a difference to you, but they're goin' after them all."
"Eet duz not," the woman replied. "We will be ready for them. They stand in the way of my ascension to the throne and must therefore be crushed by my royal guard."
"Yeah," the President grumbled. "If that's all you need, I've got some stuff I've gotta do."
At this, the woman laughed. "For ju there is no more work. Ju are, as my people say, El Lamo Ducko."
He was pretty sure this wasn't real Spanish. He didn't have time to speak before the woman-still laughing that groin-injuring laugh of hers-slammed the phone in his ear.
He dropped his own receiver to its cradle. Since the coffee table had vanished, this phone was on the floor, too.
"New Year's resolution number one," the President muttered to himself. "I gona start bein' more picky about who I sleep with."
Chapter 26
Don Anselmo Scubisci felt the faint kiss of fear as he carefully pressed out the eleven-digit number. He'd used the redial button the first twenty times, but the last five he had entered the number manually, each time thinking he'd misdialed the previous times.
All the lines into the Neighborhood Improvement Association were busy, including Sol Sweet's private line. Something was wrong.
Other men were waiting to use the prison phone. Not that it mattered. For the head of the Manhattan Mafia, they'd wait.
When he finished dialing the twenty-fifth time, the familiar buzzing assaulted his ears.
He slammed down the phone.
Scubisci fished out the coin from the return slot and shoved it back in the phone. He quickly stabbed out a different number. After hearing nothing but the relentless staccato buzz of a busy signal, it was jarring when the phone started ringing at the other end.
As he waited anxiously for someone to pick up, he drummed his fingers impatiently against the graffiti-covered wall. His nails were shabby. It had been some time since he'd had a decent manicure.
The phone was answered on the ninth ring. "Mott Street Community Home," a woman's nasal voice announced.
"Angela Scubisci," Anselmo barked. The frantic sharpness in his voice stung his throat, reminding him of the too-recent brush with cancer and the nodes that had been removed from his vocal cords.
There were no phones in the nursing-home rooms. Standing at the prison phone, he prayed they'd wheel his mother into the hallway fast. After fifteen minutes, the prison phone would automatically hang up.
After nearly eight agonizing minutes, the familiar angry old voice came onto the line.
"Who's this?" Angela Scubisci demanded. Though he hadn't seen her since he'd been sent to prison nearly two years ago, he could still picture the withered old crow. Her scowling, toothless face haunted him in his dreams.
"It's Anselmo, Mama."
"You still alive?" She sounded disappointed.
"Of course I'm alive, Mama," Anselmo said. For an instant, he felt sorry for her. Such tragedy had been visited on her in recent years she had to have thought her elder son dead, as well. "I'm in jail, remember?"
"I know where you are," his mother snarled. "This notta the crazy house you lock me in."
"Then why'd you think I was dead?"
"'Cause they killa you Jew lawyer. You should see, Anselmo. Ambulance and police all over the road. I see fromma the window. It look like the day you poor sainted father pass on, God rest hissa soul."
At the mention of her dead husband, she sobbed a few obligatory times. Anselmo Scubisci hardly heard her. His mind was reeling.
"How do you know Sol's dead?" he croaked.
"They tella me."
"Maybe they were wrong. Who told you?"
"The men who killa your kike. One was a nice young man. The other I don't know. Some Chinaman or something."
Panic. Sweet had told him about the men who had visited the Boston Raffair office.
"They were there? What did you tell them?"
"Just the truth. Thatta you a no-good son. Thatta you insult the memory offa you father by lying down with them Napoli fritto di pesce."
He couldn't wrap his brain around all this. Don Anselmo had to lean aga
inst the grimy prison wall for support.
"You didn't tell them that?" he gasped.
"About you new friends, Anselmo? Is that whatta you worried about?" She suddenly spoke in soothing, almost motherly tones.
She'd been joking. Anselmo felt a wash of relief flow over his thin frame.
The grating harpy's voice flashed angry. "Of course I tella them, you no-good Judas. I give them one of you letters from the Naples scum. They gonna come for you for whatta you done to your poor dead father's memory. They gonna come to that prison and they gonna cut that black heart outta you body. They gonna killa you, Anselmo. They gonna-"
Don Scubisci hung up the phone.
His mother's words echoed in his brain. He stood near the pay phone for a long time, his ears ringing madly.
They gonna come for you.
Who was going to come? Could they possibly get to him? In prison? Wasn't he safe in here, of all places?
He tried to focus his thoughts even as he attempted to dispel the image Sweet had painted of Louis DiGrotti's decapitation at the hands of the old one.
"You finished with that?" a voice rumbled. Anselmo looked numbly to his left.
A man nearby. Large. Pointing at the phone. "Yes. Yes, I am. Sorry."
Don Anselmo stepped woodenly aside.
No. Whoever they were, they wouldn't be able to get in here. Ogdenburg was a fortress. He'd be safe. Still, he had to make plans. Just in case.
Anselmo reached for the phone. He was startled to find someone already there. He had no idea how the huge man had gotten past him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Don Anselmo snarled. "Get off that phone."
The man hesitated for a moment. He was a hulking thing with rippling muscles. He could have broken Anselmo Scubisci's neck with a snap of his huge fingers.
It seemed as if he were actually considering disobeying the Manhattan Don. But the moment quickly passed. Scowling, he replaced the phone and skulked away.
Scubisci scooped up the receiver.
Sol might be gone, but there were still people on the outside he could call. He didn't trust his mother. The old bat was crazy. He'd find out what was going on first.
Then he'd start worrying.
THE SHADES Of his Maryland apartment were tightly drawn. Mark Howard sat in the corner of his living room in front of his glowing PC screen.
He'd been on-line ever since he'd called in sick that morning.
The Boston Raffair office was closed. Two bodies had been discovered there. With the counterfeiter Petito, that made a total of three in Massachusetts. The New York headquarters had burned to the ground a few hours before.
Things were happening. Thanks to him.
Mark knew he was the reason for all this. Why was still unclear, but thanks to the data he'd sent along to the White House, the blood of the dead was on his hands.
Mark's night had been a sleepless one. The dreams of death were vivid. All the premonitions, insights and instincts of a lifetime seemed to be clicking into place.
There was a puzzle in himself. Something that he now realized he'd always known about but had pushed aside. His life was larger than he understood.
It was odd that this sense should strike him now. The mere knowledge that there was some secret force prowling across America automatically made him a security risk to that force. It was as if he were beginning to understand something important about himself at the same time that his life was at most risk.
But the picture was only half-formed. He couldn't bear the thought that he might never know who he truly was or what he was destined to become. Yet the same unseen thing that threatened him-Smith and his agents-was the thing that had brought him to this crossroads.
Fear, adrenaline, a risk to his very life. All combined were firing synapses in a brain that now seemed to have been dormant for the past twenty-nine years.
The mug that sat next to his mousepad was full. He'd poured the coffee hours ago, thinking he'd need the caffeine after so little sleep. He hadn't drunk a sip.
Mark was searching the news Web sites. Every once in a while, he'd do a keyword search for "Raffair," as well as a few other buzzwords like "crime," "bodies," "dead" and "Mafia." For some reason, early on his fingers had gone on automatic and typed the word "destroyer." Mark didn't know why, yet the feeling told him it was right. He left it in the search.
Nothing had happened since Raffair's world headquarters in New York was burned down. The past several hours had been chillingly quiet.
He ordinarily would have felt cramped or fatigued sitting so long at his computer, but for some reason he wasn't feeling any discomfort this day. It was as if he were born to sit in a chair and stare at a monitor. Even his eyes were alert. All this was good for Mark, for he dared not leave his computer for a minute.
Studying the screen, he used his mouse to highlight a news article from the online Boston Blade. A blaze in Quincy had destroyed a condominium complex. Although the building had been occupied, the tenants had vanished. It was being said that the two men who lived there had to have been squatters, for there was no record of ownership. It was apparently a surprise to city officials that the place was abandoned property.
A boring little item, and Mark had no idea why it should interest him. Yet he found himself clicking and saving it to his hard drive.
As he did so, a muted electronic beep issued from his computer. His mailbox popped open.
He'd subscribed to a couple of news services earlier in the day, so he quickly clicked on the mailbox icon.
One of the services had flagged a report out of Chicago. When he read the simple lines of text, his mouth went dry.
There had been another multiple homicide at a Raffair office, this one on East Sixteenth and Clark in Chicago.
Mark read this latest report with a growing combination of dread and disbelief.
According to the Chicago police report, four men were confirmed dead. In a surrealistic twist, one of them appeared to have been fed through an office paper shredder. Police theorized that it had taken the killers hours to perform this gruesome act, and that some special massive crushing implement had to have been employed first to flatten the body. Yet there were no marks from such a tool on the floor and no evidence of the residue that the crushed body would have made.
Alone in his apartment, Mark closed his eyes. Bodies were piling up all around the country, and they could all be traced to one source. Mark Howard.
He took a steeling breath. Opening his eyes, he attacked his keyboard. Fingers typing rapidly, he called up the list of Raffair offices and staff around the country. The same list he'd given the President. He looked down at the first electronic page.
Boston, New York and Chicago were gone. They weren't taking them out alphabetically. Geography was dictating their path. L.A. would most likely be last. It sat alone on the West Coast. That left only a handful of others.
Mark scanned the list, much shorter now than it had been twenty-four hours ago.
New Orleans and Miami. They'd pick off the Houston office on their way west.
Howard took several minutes to commit the remaining addresses to memory. When he was through, he deleted all files concerning Raffair from his system.
Shutting down his computer, Mark stood. No pain in his back or legs. No pain at all.
In his last days in office, the President had exposed Mark to something deeply dangerous. He could either hide and hope it all blew over or confront whatever mystery force was out there.
Fear told him to stay put, but the feeling told him to go. His subconscious had invaded his conscious mind and it was screaming one word to him, over and over and over again.
Destiny.
He'd get his plane tickets at the airport. Pulling open his top desk drawer, Mark took out something he'd bought after joining the CIA. Something he thought he'd never use.
Mark turned from the desk.
His overnight bag was in the hall closet. Gun clutched tightly
in his hand, he went to collect it.
Chapter 27
The Master of Sinanju had said next to nothing on the flight from New York to Chicago. He'd remained reticent as he and Remo dismantled Chicago's Raffair office, as well as its occupants. When they settled into their seats on the 727 out of Chicago-O'Hare, it didn't appear as if the old man had any intention of breaking his silence.
Chiun's hazel eyes were turned away from his pupil, set firmly on the plane's left wing, lest it have the audacity to drop off during takeoff with him aboard. Only once they were at a safe cruising altitude did he turn his attention inside. Still, he said not a word.
Remo wouldn't be goaded. If the old crank was giving him the silent treatment, he'd give it right back to him. No, siree, not a peep. Two could play at that game. He'd keep his mouth shut for ten damn years if he had to. He would absolutely not be the first one to snap. No way in hell-his lips were sealed, locked and the key had been tossed out the pressurized door at thirty-five thousand feet.
He folded his arms firmly across his chest and screwed his lips shut tight. Beside him, Chiun was oblivious to his decision. The old man remained lost in private thoughts.
Remo decided it was no good giving someone the silent treatment unless they knew they were being given the silent treatment.
"I'm not talking to you, either," he announced without turning his head.
Chiun didn't reply.
There was a sudden raucous sound from the rear of the plane. Someone had smuggled on a boom box. They'd just started playing a CD with a heavy Latin beat. A group of rowdy passengers cheered the sound.
"Just so you know," Remo continued. "I don't think I deserve it from you, 'cause I'm going through exactly what you're going through, and it's not my fault about our house no matter what you think, and I really don't think it's fair that you're taking it out on me. So if you're not talking to me, I'm not talking to you. How do you like them apples?" He hugged his arms further into himself.
In the back, the revelry had become more focused. The cheering turned to singing and clapping. A conga line danced up the aisle next to Remo, led by the copilot. The man's uniform shirt was open to his navel, revealing hairy chest and belly. His head and arms swayed with the music as he danced by, a group of college-age girls attached hands to hips behind him.
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