"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 ardour 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 gambolling 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 dialled 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?"
"It might," Smith said. "How's the song go?"