The phone clicked off in Lithia Forrester’s ear. She slowly replaced the receiver on the stand. Then she leaned back in her glove-leather chair and looked up at the dome, out at the night sky, the free night sky of America… the sky which, if they had their way, would not be free much longer.
Only three more days, she thought, until the bidding was held. It must be important to be required on such short notice.
Something with the Navy. Something big and fast. But what?
And what of her other problem? Remo Donaldson.
Perhaps something to take care of two birds with one stone?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DR. LITHIA FORRESTER DID NOT attend the next morning’s encounter session.
And while Remo Williams sat there, enduring the baleful looks of the black behemoth, Dr. Lawrence Garrand, and tried to tune out his ears to the verbal assaults dictated by Florissa’s sexual insecurity, he made a decision.
Chiun and he had been at the Human Awareness Laboratories for thirty-six hours and nothing had happened. Remo had laid it out to Lithia Forrester in that first interview, telling her he was going to kill her, inviting her to move against him. But she had done nothing and he could wait no longer. This day, he would get to Lithia Forrester, and he would break her. And if need be, he would kill her.
That prospect disquieted him. He told himself he was only being professional. There was too much he did not know about the scheme; too many things to find out first. He could not kill her until he found out.
But the picture of Lithia Forrester kept edging into his mind, the tall, elegant, beautiful blondness of her. And he realized his decision not to kill her had nothing to do with being professional.
All right, he would kill her. But first he would make love to her.
As a professional, Remo feared, he was a zero. He had found out nothing, had seen nothing suspicious. He had not learned anything that would tie in to Bannon or to the Special Forces colonel or to the pilot that bombed St. Louis or to the CIA man, Barrett.
He felt a discontent rising in him—not at himself for ineptitude, but at Smith for sending him here on a detective’s mission. If they needed information, why not send Gray, that new guy at the FBI, or Henry Kissinger or, even, bore Jack Anderson? Why Remo? It didn’t matter; the others might be already compromised.
Remo was deep in his thoughts when he felt the movement of the group and realized they were rising from their cushions, the session over. Then they headed to the door, Chiun leading the group, gesticulating with his hands on the need to bury one’s aggressions and to learn to accept the world for what it was.
The group jammed into the hall doorway, Remo slowly trailing behind, still thinking. And then he heard it again. That song. Someone in the group was humming and he realized it was that song that Bannon had hummed, the same one that had been hummed in Remo’s face by the colonel he had killed on the golf course. Remo snapped to full alertness; his eyes searched the encounter group’s members, looking for the musician.
But then the sound stopped, and as hard as Remo looked, he could find no trace of whom it had come from.
· · ·
Lithia Forrester had missed the encounter session that morning because she was not at the Human Awareness Laboratories. She was in a Washington hotel room, explaining something very important to Admiral James Benton Crust.
Admiral Crust had not forgotten the woman he had met several nights before at the party in the French ambassador’s home. If the truth be told, he had thought of little else but her in the four days since, for a strange stirring that he had not felt for years had awakened his loins.
So when she had phoned him that morning in his office at the Pentagon, he had, of course, remembered her. And he had been only too happy to meet her, any place she suggested, and when she suggested a room in an out-of-the-way hotel because of “the nature” of their meeting, he had agreed very formally and then, after hanging up the telephone, had done a very uncharacteristic war whoop in his office.
On the way to the hotel, Admiral Crust did another uncharacteristic thing. He had his chauffeur stop at a liquor store and buy a fifth of bourbon—the best bourbon—and he felt somehow wicked and school-boyish as he carefully placed the bottle into his large leather attaché case.
When the admiral entered the hotel room, Lithia Forrester was already there. She stood at the window, looking out over the busy noon-time streets of Washington, D.C. She wore a thin, silk paisley dress; the daylight pouring through the window silhouetted her body under the clothes as if she were naked. Crust could see she wore no undergarments; when she turned to greet him her breasts bobbed under the thin fabric, and he again felt that tingle that, for years, he had thought was beyond feeling.
The sunlight pouring into the room competed with her smile for the honor of lighting up the room. The sunlight lost. She smiled with her mouth, with her eyes and with her body, and she came forward to greet him with her arms extended.
“Jim, I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said.
Suddenly, Admiral Crust felt foolish at the thought of the bottle of bourbon in the attaché case and he set it down beside the door. For a moment, he was afraid to meet her eyes, lest she read in his what he had been thinking about in the car on the way over. Then he said, gruffly, “Lithia. How are you, my dear?”
She took his elbows in her hands, kissed him on the cheek, then took his hand and led him to the sofa, steering him gently to sit on it. She pulled a fabric covered chair over close to the couch and sat facing him across a formica topped coffee table.
“Jim. I know how busy you must be and I’m sorry to disturb you.” He waved away any idea of disturbance and he noticed how the sunlight still shone through her dress as she changed position in the chair and how golden her hair was in the clear rays coming into the room. She smelled of rare jasmine. She went on, “but I think your life’s in danger.”
Admiral James Benton Crust laughed. “My life in danger? From whom? Or from what?”
“From whom,” she said. “From one of my patients. A Remo Donaldson. He’s threatened to kill you.”
“Remo Donaldson? I’ve never heard of him. Why should he want to kill me?”
“I don’t know. That’s what terrifies me,” she said. As she slid forward in her seat, her dress rode up above her knees and the golden hairs on her thighs glinted yellow and white in the sunlight. “But I think he’s in the employ of an enemy power.”
Crust smiled, as if to dismiss any threat to his person that could come from a Remo Donaldson, but Lithia Forrester went on quickly: “Jim, this is no laughing matter. Do you realize that I’ve violated a sacred doctor patient relationship to come here and tell you this?”
She rose from her chair and walked around to sit down beside him on the couch. Through the shiny blue gabardine of his uniform trousers, he could feel the warmth and pressure of her thigh, raising the hairs on his leg.
“I appreciate that, Lithia. Suppose you tell me about it from the beginning.”
“He came to me only a few days ago. He lied to me on his admissions form but frankly that’s not unusual. We have so many government personnel and they often use false identities to join our groups. But under hypnosis last night, I succeeded in breaking through this Remo Donaldson.” She looked into the admiral’s face. She was, he thought, only a kiss away. “Jim, he’s a professional assassin. And his next target is you Admiral Crust. He told me.”
“Did he say why? Why me?” Crust asked.
“No. And he was slipping back to the conscious level, so I couldn’t press him. So I don’t know why, I don’t know where and I don’t know when. But I do know, Jim, he plans to kill you.”
“Well, there’s one sure way to deal with this,” Crust said. “Call the FBI. Have him picked up. Find out just what the hell’s on his mind.”
He began to get to his feet, but Lithia caught his arm and pulled him back down to her. She turned on the sofa slightly so she was facing him, but
all he realized was that his left knee was pressed between both her knees.
“You can’t do that, Jim,” she said. “He’s a professional. I don’t think picking him up would accomplish anything and besides, it would compromise me and my work. The thing to do is to let me keep working on him. But in the meantime, you must take steps to guard your own safety.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to find out what he’s after?” Crust asked.
“We have another session tonight. With luck, I’ll know then what his plan is.” She smiled. “I’m really very good about getting information. Especially from men.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Crust said, smiling back.
“Particularly men with problems. The kind of problems I can solve.”
She smiled at him again and her eyes melted into his. They were the bluest eyes he had ever seen, a brilliant, piercing blue, the kind of blue generally reserved for a child’s glass marble. Softly, she placed a hand on his knee. He could smell her perfume now, the rich powerful jasmine that made his breathing alive again.
They talked more. It was agreed that Admiral James Benton Crust would, that day, sign orders assigning himself as captain of the battleship
Alabama that lay at anchor in Chesapeake Bay. His rank and position as chief of operations allowed him to do that. And he would move aboard the ship for the next few days, and he would assign a crew of frogmen to serve as his personal bodyguards, with orders to intercept Remo Donaldson should he try to reach the admiral, using any force that might be necessary. Including deadly force.
Admiral Crust agreed to all this because it was impossible to refuse anything to the golden beauty who sat next to him on the sofa. But, frankly, he thought the precautions were foolish.
“I still don’t understand why anyone would want to attack an empty old wreck like me.”
“Oh, Jim. You’re not empty, you’re not old and you’re not a wreck. You’re a vibrant, warm human being. It’s my business to know,” she said. “Just as it’s my business to understand that you’ve got some kind of serious problem on your mind.”
“Problem?” Crust waved away any problem, but when he turned his face back, her eyes were still searching into his and he knew those blue eyes knew just what his problem was.
“Why don’t you rest a few minutes, Jim., and tell me about it? I’m really a good listener,” Lithia Forrester said. She took his head in her hands and slowly pulled it down until he was resting in her lap. Admiral Crust stretched his legs out along the length of the couch and looked up at the ceiling, trying to avoid her eyes.
“It’s really embarrassing,” he said.
“I’m a doctor, Jim. I don’t embarrass easily. And there aren’t many things I haven’t heard,” she said, placing a hand alongside his head, a finger casually touching the center of his ear. He could feel the warmth of her body now through the thin silk and his senses felt flooded with the womanly smell of her.
Finally, he blurted it out.
“I haven’t been a man for five years.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’m impotent. Just worthless. When I talk about an empty wreck, I’m not joking. I am an empty wreck.”
“Have you tried?” she asked.
“Yes. Or at least I used to. And then I stopped trying. I had no desire; not to fail again.”
“Maybe it was the woman?”
“Women,” he corrected. “And who it was didn’t matter. It was the same with every one of them. I felt no desire. And I haven’t felt any for five years… until.”
“Until?” she said, the tone of her voice teasing him.
He was silent for a moment, “Until I saw you at that party,” he blurted out. Admiral Crust closed his eyes so he would not have to suffer the laughter on her face when he said, “Lithia, I think I’m in love with you.”
His eyes were still closed as she leaned forward, her face almost touching his. Softly, she said, “I didn’t hear you say that at the party, Jim. But I did overhear you say something else. If memory serves me right, what you said was ‘a tit is a tit.’” His eyes were still closed tightly and then he heard the sound of a zipper slowly opening.
He could feel her breath on his face. “Isn’t that what you said, Jim? A tit is a tit,” she whispered.
He felt confused and apologetic. How could he tell her that all breasts were alike to the man who had no feeling for breasts? He opened his eyes to tell her that. She had unzipped her dress and slid it off her shoulders, baring her perfect, golden breasts to him. They hung over him, cantilevered over his face, and their hard points told a story all their own.
“Do you still believe that, Jim?” she asked, and beyond her breasts, he could see that vital, loving face smiling down at him. “Do you believe that? That all tits and all women are alike?”
Admiral James Benton Crust raised himself to a sitting position, and brought his lips heavily onto Lithia Forrester’s. It wasn’t just a vague remembered tingle he felt now. It was a roaring burst of growing passion, and she kissed him hotly but with tenderness, and reached her hand down to his trousers, then freed her mouth to say, “Another medical miracle performed.” She smiled and he crushed her smile again with his mouth.
For the first time in five years, Admiral James Benton Crust was a young man. He would have her. He would have this vibrant golden girl and the intensity of his ardor would make up for five lost years.
“Do you want me, Jim?” she asked huskily.
“I need you. I have to have you,” he said.
“You will,” she said and kissed him again, long and searchingly. Then she stood up and her silken dress dropped around her ankles. Provocatively lush, richly naked, she walked across the room to a table where her own briefcase lay. She opened it and took out a bottle of brandy and two glasses, then turned and faced him, openly, without embarrassment.
“You will have me, Jim,” she said, “But first we will have a drink. And then I want you to hum a little song with me.”
Admiral James Benton Crust no longer felt guilty about the bottle of bourbon in his own attaché case.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHIUN WAS OUT GAMBOLING IN THE FIELDS with the members of their encounter group when Remo slipped from the main building of the Human Awareness Laboratories and went to find a telephone.
It was high noon, but it was after 1 p.m. when Remo had finished walking the 6.3 miles of rolling road on the laboratory’s grounds and found himself out on the main highway in a public telephone booth.
He dialed the special no-toll number and it had not completed even one ring before it was picked up.
“Smith.”
“Remo.”
“Anything to report?”
“Not a damned thing. I did everything but mug the woman who runs the joint when I first got here. Then I sat back and waited. But nothing’s happened.”
“To keep you up to date,” Smith said, drily, “It looks as if France will be in the bidding. We’re trying to find out now when and where it will be held. There are other countries involved too. We can tell by the gold movements. But still nothing from Russia and England, as far as we can tell.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean anything to me,” Remo said. “Listen, I’m going to tackle this Dr. Forrester head-on and see if she cracks. I’d just put her away, but I don’t think I ought to do that until I find out how she does whatever it is she’s planning to do.”
“Stay with it,” Smith said. “Use your own judgment, but remember how important it is.”
“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s important. By the way, you know anything about music?”
Smith paused a moment, then asked: “What kind of music?”
“I don’t know. Music music. That FBI guy Bannon—I guess you read about him—he was humming some kind of song that seemed to turn him into a maniac. And that Special Forces colonel on the golf course, he was humming it too. And today, I heard it here. I think it’s all the same song. Mean anything to you?�
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“It might,” Smith said. “How’s the song go?”
“For Christ sake,” Remo said, “I’m not Alice Cooper. How the hell do I know how it goes? Da da da da da dum da dum… ”
“I think you’ve got it wrong,” Smith said. “How about da da da da dum da dum dum da da da da dum dum?”
“By George, I think you’ve got it,” Remo said. “Where’d you learn it?”
“General Dorfwill was humming it when he bombed St. Louis. Clovis Porter was whistling it before he decided to go swim in a stream of sewage. And we think the CIA man, Barrett, was humming it when he strangled himself in the library.”
“So what’s it mean?” Remo asked.
“I don’t know. It might be some kind of recognition signal. Or something else. I don’t know.”
“You’re a great help,” Remo said. “You ever think of a show business career? We could cut a demo of that song. Call ourselves the CURE-ALL. Chiun could play drums.”
“Afraid not,” Smith said. I’m tone deaf.”
“Since when has that had anything to do with making a record? You’ll hear from me,” Remo said, then added “Be careful. They know about me so they may know about you.”
“I’ve taken precautions,” Smith said, quietly surprised that Remo even cared.
“Okay,” Remo said and hung up.
Remo felt flat and he decided to do exercise road-work along the highway before returning to his room at the Human Awareness Laboratories. It was almost 3 p.m. before he found himself walking rapidly along the winding roads inside the gate, the ten-story main building rising in front of him. Remo heard a car coming along the road behind him, stopped and turned. Dr. Forrester’s gray chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce pulled alongside him and stopped.
The rear door on Remo’s side opened and Lithia Forrester’s voice called out: “Mr. Donaldson. Get in. I’ll drive you up.”
Remo slipped into the back seat, closed the door, and turned to look at Lithia as the heavy car began to move silently forward. Her golden blonde hair flowed loosely around her face and her silken dress was wrinkled.
Death Therapy Page 10
