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 tinge that, for years, he had thought was beyond feeling.
The sunlight pouring into the room competed with her smile for the honour 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 feelt he 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.