Amid the unhappy murmurs from the FBI director and the postmaster general, Tamayo Tanaka's miserable voice said, "Thank you for hosting my network debut."
"Told you so," said Remo, hitting the remote's Off button.
At Folcroft, Harold Smith blinked. Was Tamayo Tanaka's left eye deformed? It looked positively swollen next to the slim, dark almond that was her right.
Chapter 27
Abeer Ghula woke up in a luxury suite of the Marriot Marquis Hotel in the heart of Manhattan's theater district and kicked the sleeping woman in the bed beside her.
"Get me breakfast."
The woman—Abeer could not recall her name- awoke with a start. She looked about, saw her clothes on the floor and her NOW button on the end table with her watch and slowly remembered who she was and how she had gotten here.
"What did you say?" she asked sleepily.
"I said, 'Get me breakfast, wench.'"
"I'm not your wench."
"You were given to me by NOW to serve my every need. I have had you in bed, and now I would like breakfast in bed."
"I'm strictly security. Call room service."
"You call them."
"I'm not your slave!"
"Yes, you are. You were given to me."
A pungent personal characterization and an oversize pillow came flying in Abeer Ghula's sharp-nosed face.
Whipping it away, she reached over and smacked her erstwhile bed partner in the face.
"That's for your insolence, woman."
The woman grabbed her stung cheek. "I—I thought you loved me."
"I did love you. Last night. Now I am hungry. I love food. You will bring me all I ask, or I will find another who worships my womanly wisdom."
Her lower lip quivering, the woman whimpered, "What do you want?"
"For breakfast, pork. All kinds of pork. Pork is forbidden by Allah, but Um Allaha has decreed it halam not haram. I will have pork and endless cups of black Turkish coffee. And if you give me these things before my stomach growls, I may allow you to lavish your caresses upon the perfection that is my back. For it aches."
Meekly the white woman left the bed.
"And for lunch, I would like a man," Abeer Ghula called after her.
The woman started. "A man!"
"I like men—when I am not in the mood for women. I had two husbands until they discovered each other."
"I can't love a woman who loves men!"
"You will love who I tell you to, or Allaha will turn her scornful back upon you," said Abeer Ghula, turning her own scornful back on the angry, hurt face of the white woman whose name was unimportant because she was only the first white woman Abeer Ghula intended to despoil on the path Um Allaha had chosen for her.
"I would like pork for breakfast and Turkish coffee."
"Will that be all?"
"Yes. Have it delivered by a blond-haired man with very broad shoulders. We do not have blond-haired men in my homeland. I would like to taste one. Blue eyes are my preference."
But the man who delivered the breakfast tray was neither blond nor blue eyed, and at first Abeer Ghula's eagle eyes flashed in her anger. Then she took another look at him.
"You are not what I asked for."
"I didn't exactly beg for this job, either," he said, wheeling the gleaming service cart to a stop and reaching into his pocket. He had deep-set dark eyes and wrists as thick around as bedposts.
"Remo Clear. FBI."
"I do not understand," said Abeer Ghula, sitting up in bed so that the royal blue covers fell from one dark- nippled breast.
"I'm your bodyguard until further notice."
"Do your duties include pleasing me?"
"Within reason."
"Excellent," said Abeer Ghula, who let the lustrous black cloud of her disheveled hair fall back into the pillows. She whipped the bed clothes away and said, "Pleasure me, my dark infidel."
"Thought you wanted breakfast," said Remo Clear, lifting the trays. He recoiled from the hot, pungent smells.
"What is this stuff?"
"What does it look like?" "Sausage links, sausage patties, bacon and pork chops smothered in apple sauce. I thought Muslims were forbidden pork."
"Old, outdated Muslims. I am of the new wave of Muslims who will dominate the universe. And I have selected you to be my first male infidel conquest."
"This place smells like you've already worn out that track."
"You are very insolent for a mere Western male. Have you not read that you are soon to be extinct?"
"I'm not the one eating my way to an early coronary."
"I am merely going through a pork phase. Would you like to pork me? Is that not the Western slang?"
"Am I going to have to satisfy you in order to get you off my back?"
"Yes. And I am willing to let you get on my back," said Abeer Ghula, turning over on her back.
"If I don't have a choice," sighed the FBI agent.
Remo Williams had been briefed that Abeer Ghula was going to be a problem and decided the sooner he got the obligatory sex out of the way, the better.
"Put it anywhere you wish to start," she said casually. "I will allow this. After you have climaxed, I will tell you where to put it so that I receive the maximum enjoyment."
"I know exactly where to put it," growled Remo as he ignored the long, arching back and tensed buttocks that were laid out before him and found Abeer Ghula's left wrist. Turning it over, he began tapping.
"What are you doing?" she asked doubtfully.
"Foreplay."
"You are tapping my wrist as if you are bored and you are calling it foreplay?"
"Wait for it," said Remo in a bored tone.
In the middle of this, a knock came at the door,
"Who is it?" asked Remo.
A squeaky voice asked, "You do not recognize my knock? Allow me in."
"Can you wait?"
"Why should I wait?" demanded the Master of Sinanju.
"Because Abeer and I are having sex."
"If you impregnate her, see that it is a boy."
"I don't think she has the stamina to get that far."
"I will never have your child," Abeer Ghula spat into the pillow. "I want your hard maleness, not your seed. I spit your foul-tasting seed back in your unblessed face."
"Let's get past the foreplay before we break out in a cold sweat over the rest," said Remo.
"If I were to become pregnant by you, I would abort the baby."
"No surprise there."
"I would abort the baby and send the dead thing to you in a box to show my contempt for your seed, which had the temerity to grow within my belly."
"Forget my seed. Concentrate on my finger."
"It is in the wrong place. You should be using it to plumb my warm, liquid depths."
"Here it comes," said Remo, varying the rhythm and concentrating on the sensitive nerve in Abeer Ghula's left wrist, very near to her pulse. Remo was tapping in time with the pulse, which was accelerating. That was his cue to switch to a dissynchronous tapping, as the Master of Sinanju had taught him so long ago. It was step one in the thirty-seven steps to bringing a woman to sexual fulfillment. Remo once got a woman to step two before she turned to contented but untouchable jelly.
She taps in, Abeer Ghula gave a low animal moan and arched her back so sharply the gully over her spine filled with a sudden musky moisture.
"What are you—?"
"Almost finished," said Remo as Abeer's buttocks clenched as if touched by an electric prod and her cloudy black hair began shaking back and forth and back and forth sharply, in the involuntary torment of her approaching ecstasy.
"What is happening?" she screamed.
"It usually helps to take a mouthful of pillow and bite down hard," Remo suggested casually.
"Uhh," said Abeer Ghula, her face contorting in a pure orgasmic rictus.
Then, thrusting her face into the pillow, she vented her sexual pleasure as her body writhed and twiste
d in the exquisite sexual release caused by the monotonously tapping finger.
A final gasp, and she collapsed as if her bones had melted under her relaxing muscles and skin.
Remo lifted her face from the pillow and turned her head to one side so she wouldn't suffocate by accident and went to the door to let the Master of Sinanju in.
"You are done?" asked Chiun, his wrinkled face tight. He wore stealth black, with thin, deep red piping that would disappear under night conditions.
"Covered her up and everything."
Chiun walked over to the bed and peered at the sleepy face. "Her lips are tight."
"She's a little high-strung."
Chiun regarded Remo with stern disappointment. "I taught you the proper first steps to pleasuring a woman. If you did it correctly, her lips would be parted, her mouth open and her breathing just so. Instead, I see thin lips that are not parted."
"Sue me for malpractice. At least you won't have to hear about how she's going to sweep across America like a flood."
Changing the subject, Chiun said, "I have checked this floor and those above and below."
"Any mailmen?"
"None."
"Good. Because if the Messengers of Muhammad send their guys after her, they're probably going to be wearing letter-carrier blue."
Abruptly Chiun began sniffing the air. "That smell..."
"Pork. It was supposed to be breakfast."
"Dispose of it. For the stink of burned pig offends me above all other meat smells."
Because it offended Remo Williams's nostrils, too, he did as the Master of Sinanju bid. Neither of them ate meat except for duck and fish. Down the toilet went the breakfast fixings.
"What happens when she wakes up?" Remo asked, surveying the now-snoring Abeer Ghula.
"You will please her opposite wrist."
"Not me. I did my duty. You take the next trick."
Chiun made a distasteful face. "Let us hope the Messengers of Muhammad strike before then."
Chapter 28
Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca was whistling "Peace Train" as he stepped off the Greyhound bus at the Port Authority Terminal. He had been told to take the bus instead of flying, because while buses crashed as readily as aircraft, one could survive a bus accident. Few survived a falling airplane.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca, born Farouk Shazzam, took this as a sign that the Messengers' of Muhammad were soon to target American aircraft. He had no knowledge that of the original band of messengers, he was one of the few survivors. For he did not watch "Nightmirror" or any of that Western filth.
So when the e-mail summons to go to New York City came, he did not think it strange. New York City- had been targeted the day before. No doubt those True Believers who executed the New York operation were now lying on arabesqued couches, being fanned by houris beyond compare, happily deceased.
Now it was Farouk's turn.
He had been told to take his uniform leather bag and other equipment with him but not to wear it.
As he left the busy Port Authority terminal, he could understand why.
The police bomb squad was X-raying a blue collection box just outside the terminal. He himself had to walk around the yellow police tape that cordoned off the area.
Farther down Ninth Avenue, they had a wheeled robot circling an olive-drab relay box. The robot looked like a mechanical dog on wheels, but he understood how such devices worked. This one was sniffing for explosives. If any were found, it would be made to shoot a charge into the box while the bomb squad stood off at a safe distance behind steel body bunkers and other armor.
But there was no bomb in the relay box. Farouk knew this. He had been advised that as long as he was on his holy mission of murder, New York would not explode in whole or part.
It was a wonderful feeling, to be told that New York City was safe only as long as Farouk Shazzam had work to do in it.
Going to the Marriot Marquis Hotel near Times Square, he was confronted at the entrance door by an FBI agent who demanded his hotel-room confirmation number. In the lobby, an ugly woman in black leather and a red beret emblazoned with the letters NOW demanded the same information.
This accomplished, he checked in as Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca and was given a key. No one questioned him further, for he was neither dressed as a postal worker nor did he look Middle Eastern, although he was a Hashemite born in Jordan. His dark Moorish good looks struck many as quintessentially Black Irish.
The glass capsule elevator took him to the sixteenth floor. When he got off, the corridor was very ordinary, but when he left the area of the elevator bank it became very strange.
The hotel, he saw, was built about a great concrete cathedral-like atrium. The entire center was hollow. It seemed foolish to Farouk, especially with real-estate prices as they were, but many things were strange in the land of the infidel.
The rooms all faced outward, along the square concrete walkway. A low, fern-tipped concrete wall prevented one from tumbling over into the cavernous space through which thin light spilled down from great skylights.
Farouk found his room number and entered with a magnetic pass-card.
Unpacking his bag, he removed his letter-carrier uniforms, leather pouch, ear protectors and Uzi with spare clips. His red prayer rug he unrolled on the plain hotel carpet so that it faced Mecca.
Kneeling, he bowed his head and began to pray.
Into his mind came his favorite verse from the Koran: "No man knows the land in which he will die."
It was a favorite Koranic saying. And very poignant on this day, on which he was fated to die in the supreme act of annihilating the heretic Abeer Ghula.
Assuming, of course, that the call came.
At exactly noon, the room telephone began shivering.
"Yes. Hello?" he said in his unaccented English.
A sweet voice said only, "It is the ordained hour."
"I understand."
The line went dead. Nothing more needed to be said. The Deaf Mullah had spoken. His pronouncements were absolute.
Reciting one final prayer—the afternoon prayer— Farouk donned the uncouth blue gray uniform with the eagle's head on blouse and shoulder patch, added the blue cap and, after checking the action of his Uzi, stowed it into the leather pouch, which he then shouldered. It was filled with junk mail he had neglected to deliver on his Washington route. These useless things concealed the Uzi.
Clapping the ear protectors over his head, he stepped out and took the elevator down to the tenth floor, where it was said that Abeer Ghula dwelt in imagined safety, but in truth cowered in terror.
The difficulty lay in that it wasn't said which room the hypocrite cowered.
This was easily discovered, Farouk thought. Starting with the first numbered room, he knocked on all doors and, when someone answered, he handed them a piece of gaudy junk mail addressed to Occupant.
Many were surprised by him. Some shrank from his smiling face. And why should he not smile? This was his last day on the unhappy earth.
At the room numbered 1013, his knock was answered by a querulous "Who is it?"
"I have mail."
"Leave it."
"I must give this to you personally, for otherwise it will not be considered delivered by the mighty postmaster general."
"For whom have you mail?"
"I must look. One moment," said Farouk, feigning ignorance. "Ah, yes, here it is. I have a special- delivery letter for Abeer Ghula. Is there an Abeer Ghula at this address?"
"I will look."
"Thank you," said Farouk, smiling broadly. They were checking. No doubt they were being careful.
When the door opened, it did so without warning. And a thick-wristed hand snapped out, took hold of his throat and withdrew with amazing speed.
Farouk could feel his shoe soles actually burn and smoke so swiftly was he carried inside.
His back was slammed against a wall, and the air exploded from
his stunned lungs.
At which point Farouk clawed for his well-hidden Uzi. Digging into the jumbled mail, he ignored the paper cuts and found the butt of the submachine gun. His fingers wrapped around it.
Then other unfamiliar fingers wrapped around his fingers. They squeezed. And the pain traveling up Farouk's right arm turned to crimson when it reached his eyeballs.
He screamed. The words were inarticulate. If they were even words.
The crushing hand withdrew, and Farouk whipped out his burning hand.
His eyes cleared of the red pain, and he stood stunned, looking at his gun hand.
It was not bleeding. This was very surprising. He associated the red haze before his eyes with the color of blood. His blood. But the hand was not bleeding. It was very black, actually. The fingers were bent in strange ways—as was the much more sturdy Uzi submachine gun.
Farouk was not absorbing the fact that his fingers and the Uzi were an inextricable lump of broken and fused matter when the face of his assailant loomed up in his line of sight.
It was a cold face, very pale and Western.
"Messengers of Muhammad?" he asked.
"I do not say yes and I do not say no," he said.
"That is a yes," a squeaky voice piped up.
And nearby, Farouk saw a little Asian, wrinkled features like a wise old monkey's, dressed for a funeral.
"My name is Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca," he said.
"He is a Moor," said the Asian.
"Truthfully I am Black Irish."
"His eyes do not smile," the Asian said.
"Before we punch out your lights," the other said, "who do you work for?"
"The postal service, of course. Do you not recognize my proud and honorable uniform?"
A hard hand backed by a thick wrist wrapped itself around the Uzi again and gave a forceful squeeze.
This time Farouk's eyeballs exploded into pin- wheels of colored light. The pain clutched at his stomach, and though he screamed, no words issued forth. It was that painful.
"Here we go again. Who sent you here to erase Abeer Ghula?"
"The Deaf One."
"The Deaf Mullah?"
"Yes, yes," he gasped. "None other."
"The Deaf Mullah's in solitary."
"The Deaf Mullah is wiser than infidels. He walks free, breathing clean air and eating halai food, which is denied him by his supposed captors."
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