He didn't see al Khobar anywhere.
Remo wondered briefly how Chiun was doing. The Master of Sinanju had secured a promise from Remo that he would shepherd Chiun's script through Bindle and Marmelstein's offices. Otherwise he would not go. Remo had agreed.
For now, Remo had a long wait before he had to worry about his own end of the mission.
At one point while he was waiting he glanced out the window. He saw Susan Saranrap and a very obvious Tom Roberts dressed in Arab garb down in the parking lot. They were on the back of a bizarre-looking mechanical creature that moved with all the elegance of a broken can opener. The massive artificial animal squeaked and smoked its way toward the Taurus Studios main gate.
"I can't wait to get out of this town," Remo complained.
He sank into a chair to watch the workmen rebuild the office.
Chapter 24
Reggio "Lips" Cagliari had made his bones at the ripe old age of eighteen. He became a made man in California's Pubescio crime family at twenty-five. He had a great future in the West Coast Mafia until the mysterious disappearance of Don Fiavorante Pubescio back in 1992.
At twenty-six Reggio became a man without a family.
Once Don Fiavorante was gone, the Pubescio territory had been up for grabs. Mafiosi swooped in like ravenous jackals ripping at the carcass of the once mighty Pubescio empire.
When the feeding frenzy was over, Reggio was one of the few goodfellas left out in the cold. He was still alive. But none of the California families wanted to take him in. It took a while, but he finally found a lowly position with the Vaggliosi Family of Los Angeles.
The Vaggliosis worked the Teamsters for most of the big Hollywood studios. Reggio was put in place as a small-time union organizer.
He knew he'd never move any further up the Mafia chain. When he was with the Pubescio Family he had been on an inside track. Murder, extortion, explosives, arson, prostitution. Here he'd languish in his minor union post until he retired or dropped dead of a heart attack. Considering the way he had taken to eating pasta to drown his sorrows, the latter would claim him first. Reggio had ballooned up from a slim 182 pounds to more than 300 since switching allegiances.
After sitting at the same desk and gorging himself on the same cuisine for a number of wasted years, an opportunity to earn a few extra dollars had presented itself to Reggio Cagliari. He was approached by Jimmy Fitzsimmons, a minor figure from Rhode Island's Patriconne Family. "Fits" Fitzsimmons wanted Reggio to help out with a video-distribution business the East Coast family was setting up. He'd also help funnel drugs back to the film capital.
Of course Reggio knew there were rumors that an East Coast family-possibly the Scubiscis or Patriconnes-had been responsible for Don Fiavorante Pubescio's death. But money was money. He'd gotten in bed with the Patriconnes, using his Hollywood connections to set up the pirated-video scheme between the Rhode Island syndicate and Taurus Studios.
The deal earned Reggio a nice, neat and, above all, quiet little paycheck. He wanted to keep it that way. He didn't need someone blabbing to the Vaggliosis that he had his own little profit-skimming business going on under their crooked Sicilian noses. The scheme had been set up specifically to minimize Reggio's own personal risks. Therefore, "Lips" Cagliari was surprised when the threat to this cozy little arrangement came from the least-likely quarter.
Reggio was eating Italian takeout behind the desk of his small Culver City office when there came a timid knock at his door. He looked up, noodles hanging from his mouth. He was puzzled to see the Taurus management team of Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein framed in the open doorway.
"Hello, Reg," Bruce Marmelstein said. He was clearly a man attempting to keep his disdain in check. It wasn't just the gooey cheese sauce of Reggio's fettucine Alfredo that was off-putting to him, but the office decor, as well. It was a motif Bruce liked to call "larval seventies plastic dreadful."
Marmelstein entered the office, followed by a more timid Hank Bindle.
Reggio knew that it wasn't an easy thing to safely negotiate the streets of the motion-picture capital of the world these days. But then, as friends of Ebla's invading army, Bindle and Marmelstein would surely have a special dispensation.
"May we come in?" Marmelstein asked.
"You're already in," Reggio mumbled, his mouth full. He bit down on his cheesy pasta. Fat strips dropped back to the desk beside his greasy paper plate. He'd get them later. Nothing was wasted when it came to feeding his great bulk.
The union man continued eating while Bindle and Marmelstein found metal folding-chairs before his desk. Hank Bindle put down a handkerchief before sitting.
"Have you heard from back east yet, Reggio?" Bruce Marmelstein asked, knowing full well that he hadn't.
Reggio chewed languidly as he stared at the men. "I ain't heard nothin' yet," he replied.
"Ian read in the paper that there was trouble with Mr. Fitzsimmons," Marmelstein noted. "He said the police have kind of connected him to Bernardo Patriconne."
"Ian's a faggot," Reggio mumbled. But the look in the back of his eyes registered his concern.
"Yes, but be that as it may," Marmelstein continued. "If they make the West Coast connection, the person on this end most likely to be damaged is you. Everything filters through you. Mr. Vaggliosi will be pretty upset when he finds out you've been freelancing. Especially after taking you in from the Pubescio Family. I'd say you're looking at a .45-caliber enema."
Reggio's eyes narrowed. "How do you know so much about the business?" he asked.
Marmelstein shrugged. "I'm a movie executive." Reggio accepted the explanation. He settled farther down in his chair. His great bulk shifted out over the arms.
"Yeah, well, you guys ain't all rosy in this," he countered.
"We're safe," Hank Bindle boasted proudly. He withered visibly from the instant dirty looks of both Bruce Marmelstein and Reggio Cagliari.
"Let's just say we're protected," Marmelstein said, pulling his annoyed eyes away from his partner.
"What, you set someone else up to take the fall for you again?" Reggio snarled.
"Insurance is important, Reggio," Marmelstein replied noncommittally. "It could be for you, too," he added with sudden earnestness.
Reggio was still eating. He chewed for a full twenty seconds before speaking. "What do you got?"
Bruce Marmelstein knew in that instant that he had Cagliari. The fish was on the line. All he had to do was haul him in and whack him with the oar.
Marmelstein reached in his pocket and removed a small square of folded paper. He placed it on the desk between them, near a pastel-pink box of cannoli Reggio was planning to have for dessert. The paper blossomed of its own accord into a familiar rectangular shape.
"This is a check for 750,000 dollars," Marmelstein said. He licked his lips in nervous excitement. "We'd like you to perform a service for us."
"What kind of service?" Reggio asked. He poked at the check with his fork, making sure all the numbers were there. They were. Leaving the check, he returned to his plate.
"Have you seen what they call the 'news' on TV?" Marmelstein asked, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "It's usually on sometime between Ricki Lake and prime time."
"The news," Reggio said evenly, as if talking to an idiot. "Of course I seen the news."
"Excellent," Marmelstein said. "Then you know about what's going on out there." He pointed over his shoulder to where, presumably, "there" was. "All those Arabs and stuff?"
"Of course I do," Reggio said, now certain that he was talking to an idiot.
"They've got a leader. A fellow named Mr. Koala. He's our liaison with Sultan Omay, the new head of the studio."
"That's the guy what's threatenin' to invade Israel and kill our secretary of state." Reggio nodded.
"Could be," Marmelstein said with a shrug. "If it doesn't have to do with the Industry, I don't pay much attention. Sorry." He tapped the check with a tan index finger. "Hank and I were h
oping you could have a little talk with our Mr. Koala. We need him to sign a few papers-legal nonsense. You know."
"Yeah, I know." Reggio stabbed the check with his plastic fork, dragging it toward him. He lifted it in his pudgy hand, scanning it carefully. "Hey, there ain't no signature on this check," Reggio accused.
Bruce Marmelstein's face grew uncomfortable. "That's where it gets a little complicated," he admitted.
"Complicated," Hank Bindle agreed.
"Yeah?" Reggio asked. He dropped his fork back into the remains of his fettucine. "Uncomplicate it."
"The Taurus coffers are our proprietary domain," Marmelstein explained. "Of course they are. We're cochairmen of the studio. We can legally sign the checks, no problem."
"No problem." Hank Bindle nodded.
"Shut up," Reggio snapped at Bindle.
"Absolutely," Bindle agreed. The eternal yes man, he wasn't even sure what Reggio had said. He got a pretty good idea when he had to duck out of the way of a hurled plate of cheese-drenched pasta.
"What we need is for you to get him to sign everything and then sort of disappear. That includes your check."
"Hey, genius," Reggio said. "If he signs the check, it will be a direct link back to me."
"Gee, I didn't think of that, Bruce," Hank Bindle said, his expression clouding.
Marmelstein shot him another dirty look. "Taurus will make the funds immediately available to you," Marmelstein promised Reggio. "A smart man would be out of the country long before anything, um, turned up here." He smiled uncomfortably.
Reggio looked at the check. The tiny stars of the Taurus symbol were embossed on the blue paper. They sparkled when angled to the light properly.
The union man moved much more quickly than his bulk would have indicated. With a gush of cheese-filled air from his great lungs, the check vanished into his pocket. He folded his huge hands on his desk.
"Where's these papers what you need the A-rab to sign?" Reggio "Lips" Cagliari asked.
Chapter 25
The end was very near. Omay sin-Khalam did not need a doctor to tell him. Yet he awaited the news. The Eblan doctor frowned as he removed the stethoscope from the ghastly gray flesh of Omay's chest. The short, yellowed chest hair was brittle to the touch.
"How long?" the sultan asked, recognizing the somber look of hopelessness on the man's face.
"Anytime, Sultan," the doctor said sadly. "We should return you to the palace at once."
"I am not some book from a lending library," Sultan Omay retorted hotly. His small fit of pique was not without cost. He coughed long and deeply, at last spitting a gob of deep mucus onto the sandy floor of the tent.
"Sama 'an wa ta'atan, O Sultan," said the doctor, bowing deferentially. He left the bedouin tent quickly, lest he inspire the wrath of the increasingly irritable monarch.
Attendants hurried over. Hastily they dressed the sultan in fine robes of flowing silk. The mantle of the sin-Khalam sultanate was placed atop his head.
A body-length mirror had been brought from the palace. Although it was frowned upon in the more strict corners of the Muslim world, a sultan had to have some privileges.
Omay admired his reflection in the long mirror. It was good to wear proper dress again. For too long he had been bound by the garb of the West. All was as it should be now. He only wished that he had not wasted so much time.
"We are ready. Get me the Saudi," he ordered a soldier. The man hurried to collect the cellular phone, which routed their calls through Akkadad to Hollywood. It would take him a few minutes to raise Assola al Khobar.
Leaving the breezeless heat of the large tent, Sultan Omay shuffled out into the scorching hot sun of the vast Eblan desert. He placed his hands on his wasted hips, surveying the wasteland that was his domain.
The fierce Mideast sun was directly above and impossible to gaze upon at this time of day. So brightly pervasive was it, it seemed as if the entire sky had been engulfed in white-hot flame. The heavenly fire washed down onto the land, turning the sand into a blanket of blistering crystalline granules.
Omay left the mouth of the tent. His silk slippers kicked puffs of hot powder into the oppressive desert air as he shuffled around the side of his tent.
He found the hostages where they had been left. More than three dozen of them.
The stakes had been driven deep into the hardpacked earth beneath the shifting surface sand. Their hands and legs had been stretched out by ropes-each limb to one of four corner stakes. Individually they looked like large Xs traced into the burning sand.
The entire U.S. diplomatic delegation, along with its support personnel, lay baking in the unforgiving desert sun. The Ebla Arab Army colonel who was Sultan Omay's personal aide stood watch over them.
The secretary of state was nearest the edge of the tent. Her makeup faded, Helena Eckert's face was blistered with bright red lesions. Her sunburned eyelids were closed tightly, and her head lolled to one side, jowly cheek pressed into the sand.
Pathetic moans rose up from the surrounding field. Omay thrilled to the sound as he stood over the dying form of the American secretary of state.
"Our friend al Khobar is ready by now." Omay smiled down at Helena. "Today will see the end of Israel and the beginning of the end of your nation." The secretary of state only groaned.
Omay turned to his attending Eblan colonel. "Give the female water," Omay barked, weak eyes flashing anger.
The colonel quickly knelt beside the prone form of the American diplomat. He poured a little warm water from a canteen onto the secretary's cracked lips and mouth. She coughed at first, throat rebelling at the liquid, but then greedily accepted the meager gift.
When she spoke, her words were barely audible.
"You don't know America at all," Helena Eckert breathed. She didn't open her swollen eyes.
Omay smiled. He looked approvingly at his colonel.
"And you, woman, do not know what I have in store for your country," he said. "By this time tomorrow the place that produces the filth that is your culture will lay in ruins. Your nation will not recover. And the man who engineered it all will return to Ebla. A hero to Islam."
"Al Khobar will never get out alive," Helena Eckert said weakly. She'd heard this madman's scheme before.
"Though only a Saudi, he is as cunning as a fox. Assola al Khobar will have his hero's welcome. Perhaps when he returns I will introduce you to him." A wicked grin. "That is, if you are still alive."
"You'll die first, you cancerous old bastard," the secretary of state hissed, abandoning the final vestiges of her diplomatic self.
Above Helena, Sultan Omay bristled at the remark. Scowling, the old man stood more erect. He wanted to spit on the American secretary but found to his intense displeasure that his mouth could form no more saliva.
Tasting the sandy dryness of his tongue, Sultan Omay turned to his attending soldier.
"Spit in this cursed female's face," he commanded
Snapping to attention, the colonel drew up a thick wad of sand-fueled saliva. He expelled it dutifully onto the face of the secretary of state.
It had no effect whatsoever. Helena Eckert was delirious.
"You're going to die, you cancerous bastard," she uttered in a distant, rasping whisper. It was as if she were in a world all her own. "You're going to die and rot in hell. Rot, rot, rot..."
The saliva rolled down her cheek, dripping onto the scorching desert sand.
"Die and rot in hell," Helena continued, oblivious to all that was around her. "Eaten by cancer and maggots."
The meager drops of water had returned her voice. It grew stronger, more mocking as the words flowed out. She perspired madly through the heat, through the pain. The groans in the field of torment where she lay dying grew louder. Others joined the derisive chorus.
"Cancer and maggots ...cancer and maggots... cancer and maggots..."
Sultan Omay's eyes grew wild as they swept the area. The Americans continued their scornful wail. Furious, t
he sultan was on the verge of ordering violence against the insolent Americans, but before the order could be given, the young communications soldier raced up bearing the sultan's small cellular phone.
"Sultan," the soldier cried, "the Saudi, al Khobar, is not available."
Rage distracted, Omay wheeled away from the murmuring Americans. His wrinkled hand clasped the hilt of his dagger threateningly.
"What! Why?"
The Eblan soldier swallowed nervously.
"They say he is 'taking a meeting,'" the soldier replied fearfully.
Omay's hand left the dagger.
The chorus of defiant groans from behind him had begun to subside. Some of the men were losing consciousness.
The sultan's brow pulled gravely over his watery dark eyes.
"That is not one of our arranged signals," he said.
"Do you wish me to try again?" the soldier volunteered. He held up the phone, finger poised on Redial.
"No," the Sultan said somberly. "Brave Assola is dead. The Americans have bloodied their infidel hands on yet another hero of Islam."
And privately Sultan Omay knew that his great hope for destroying Hollywood had died with al Khobar. The Americans had been stronger than he thought. He was certain they would have waited for a diplomatic solution, giving Omay time to spring both ends of his trap. And he had come so close. Al Khobar had been nearly ready.
Now there was nothing to wait for.
"Colonel, ready your army," Omay intoned ominously. Legs wobbling, he turned back to his tent. "Yes, 0 great Sultan," the colonel replied crisply.
"But what of these vermin?" He spread a hand out over the numerous sun-tortured bodies.
Omay looked down at the prone forms of Secretary of State Helena Eckert and her entourage. "Leave them to the desert sun," he sneered. "If any are left alive after today's glorious battle, tell them that they lived to see the end of Israel. Then kill them."
And with that the Great Peacemaker shuffled away from the vast field of torture.
Chapter 26
Bindle and Marmelstein nearly danced into their office. The workmen were on their latest coffee break, so the room was almost empty. Almost but not quite. However, even the sight of Remo sitting on their couch was not enough to put a damper on their joyful mood.
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