"Why?"
"Barney Daniels is a dinosaur at the CIA, an old-fashioned agent. He didn't use weapons, even at the peak of his career. You won't have any kind of interference. And he's an alcoholic. He'll be defenseless."
"That's a terrific incentive, Smitty. You really know how to make your employees enthusiastic about their work."
Smith shrugged. "Somebody's got to do it."
That was the reason Remo usually got when he was sent out to kill. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to look into a dying man's eyes and think: "That's the biz, sweetheart."
And Smith wasn't often wrong in picking Remo's targets. Usually they were vermin that Remo was glad to get rid of. On several occasions, those vermin had been deadly enough to obliterate the country, if they had been allowed to live, and on those occasions, Remo felt that he was somebody after all, that he had some purpose in life besides eliminating strangers who were someone else's enemy.
But sometimes it hurt to kill. And that was why Remo was not yet the perfect assassin, although he was the best white man there was, and why he still had 80-year-old Chiun as his teacher, and why he would kill Bernard C. Daniels very quickly and with no pain, but would think about it later.
"What happens when I get too old to work for CURE, Smitty?" Remo asked as he eased the little rowboat next to the docking platform.
"I don't know," Smith answered honestly.
"Don't plan on being a gardener if you can't even remember to bring home dirt," Chiun said.
Chapter Three
The phone rang twenty times. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
When he was certain it would ring until he either answered it or succumbed to massive brain damage from the noise, Barney Daniels stumbled over an obstacle course of empty tequila bottles to pick up the receiver.
"What do you want," he growled.
A woman's voice, laced with southern honey, answered. "You didn't call."
"I don't love you any more," Daniels said automatically. That one usually worked with unidentifiable women.
"You don't even know me."
"Maybe that's why I don't love you."
He hung up, satisfied with a romance ended well. He should drink a toast to that romance, whoever it was with. It had probably been a glorious night. It might even have been worth remembering, but there was no chance of that now. He would give that romance a proper posthumous tribute with a drink of tequila.
Barney rooted through the mountain of empty bottles. Not a drop.
Booze-guzzling bitch, he thought. No doubt the unrememberable woman, selfish wretch that she was, had sucked up the last ounce of his Jose Macho, callously unconcerned about his morning cocktail. The whore. He was glad he was rid of her. Now he would drink a toast to having gotten rid of her. If he could only find a drink.
His eagle eye spotted an upright bottle in the corner of the room with a good half-inch left inside. Ah, the queen, he said to himself as he lumbered toward it, arms outstretched. A woman among women. He raised the bottle to his lips and accepted its soul-restoring contents.
The phone rang again. "Yes," he answered cheerfully.
"The CIA is going to kill you," the woman said.
"Was it wonderful for you, too?" Barney crooned.
"What are you talking about?"
"Last night."
"I've never met you, Mr. Daniels," the woman said sharply. "I called you last week, but you said you were too busy drinking to talk. You said you'd call me back."
"Call... me... unreliable," Barney sang in a shaky baritone, snapping his fingers.
"I am trying to tell you, Mr. Daniels," the woman shouted, "that you have been marked for death by the Central Intelligence Agency, your former employer."
Barney rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "You woke me up to tell me that?"
"I am calling to offer you sanctuary."
"Do you have a bar?"
"Yes."
"I'll be right over."
"In return for that sanctuary, I would like you to perform a small task for me."
"Shit," Barney said. The world was right. There was no such thing as a free lunch. He was about to hang up when the woman added, "I will pay you a thousand dollars."
"Well, well," he said, suddenly interested. There was still the better part of a month to go before his next Calchex pension check. All that remained of Snodgrass's last payment to Barney were the empty bottles on the floor.
"For one day's work," the woman continued tantalizingly.
"Provided it is very legal and above board and does not involve politics or espionage," Barney said.
Who knew that the woman wasn't a secretary in Snodgrass's office? Sneaky Snodgrass wouldn't be above doing that.
"I will discuss your work when you get here."
She gave him detailed instructions on how to reach a large brownstone building on the northern end of Park Avenue, a building just across the socially acceptable line that separates the very poor from the very rich in Fun City.
"You will arrive between midnight and one A.M. by taxi. When you get out of the taxi you will place a white handkerchief over your mouth three times. Pretend to cough. Then lower the handkerchief and walk up the stairs and stand at the door. I warn you. Don't try to approach the house any other way."
"I'm just glad we're not involved in anything illegal," Daniels said.
The woman ignored him. "Do you understand everything I've said?"
"Certainly," Barney answered. "There's only one problem."
"You'll be paid very well for your problems," the woman said.
"This problem requires money. You see, I've invested very heavily in American Peace Bonds and I am without liquid capital."
"That will be straightened out when you get here."
"That's the problem. If it's not straightened out first, I won't get there."
"You're broke?"
"Said brilliantly."
"I'll have a boy at your home in two hours."
He was the biggest boy Barney had ever seen, six-and-a-half feet tall with a shaved black head shaped like a dum-dum bullet without a crease. He was muscular and the muscles apparently did not stop until they reached his toes, which were encased in golden slippers with toes curling up to a metallic point.
In the lapel button hole of his black suit he wore a gold crescent with the title Grand Vizier stamped on it in ersatz Arabic lettering.
"I am to escort you," said the giant.
"Where are you from?"
"The woman."
"I was supposed to receive money, not an escort," Barney said.
"I have my orders."
"Well, I don't move without cash, Ali Baba, so just hop back on your flying carpet and go tell her that."
"Will you come with me if I give you money?" The giant's eyes dripped hatred at the thought of negotiating with the white devil.
"Of course. That will indicate your good faith. That's all I'm interested in. It's not the money, naturally."
The Grand Vizier of the Afro-Muslim Brotherhood took from his jacket pocket a hundred-dollar bill. He offered it to Daniels coldly.
"One hundred dollars?" Daniels screamed, edging back into his foyer. "One hundred dollars to go all the way from Weehawken to New York? You must be out of your mind. What if I have to stop for something to eat?"
The Grand Vizier's eyes kept hating. "One hundred dollar too much for a little ride across the river. It only cost you thirty cent on the bus and another sixty cent for the subway. Maybe six buck by cab."
"That's for peasants," Daniels said and shut the door.
The gentle knocking almost shook the timbers of the large house. Daniels opened the door.
"I give you two hundred dollar."
Daniels shrugged. A man had to earn a living, and anyhow everybody cribbed on their expenses.