"He does?" Faith's voice dropped like a stone.
"Absolutely," Remo went on, warming to the subject. "He hates white people. Especially women."
"Oh," Faith said, taking an extra long sip from her drink. Then, deep in thought, she drained it and went back to the wet bar.
She returned with the tumbler filled almost to sloshing over. Her eyebrows knit into one slim unhappy eyebrow.
Son of a gun, Remo thought. She has a crush on Chiun.
The food came while Remo was attempting to revive the conversation.
Faith let the deliveryman in, paid him by credit card, and set the Styrofoam package on the dining-nook table. Her face was pouty as she set plates.
"Help yourself," she called to Remo as she gathered together silverware.
Remo opened the package, and his sad expression turned to revulsion.
"I think they made a mistake," he said. "Unless you ordered squid over rice."
"It's supposed to be octopus. And it's yours."
"Yeah," Remo said, looking again, "the eyes do kinda look octopussy."
"You did say fish," Faith reminded him as she sat down.
"I said fish, not octopus. Octopus is something else."
"Octopus is very chic this season."
"Fine," Remo said, pushing his plate away. "Give mine to the sheiks. I don't eat octopus."
"Must be terrible to be allergic to food," Faith said unconcernedly. " I don't know what I'd do without good food and drink-and excellent sex."
Remo looked up from the mess on his plate, his face hopeful. But Faith was looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline, not at him.
He decided to take a shot at salvaging the night. "Excellent sex is my specialty," he said through his best smile.
"Mmm? What's that?" Faith asked, her eyes refocusing as they swept back toward him.
"I said excellent sex is my specialty."
"Is that so?" Mild interest came to her face. "What kind of visualizations do you use?"
"None," Remo said, surprised at the question.
" I think of money," Faith said dreamily. "Actually, power really makes me horny-but how do you visualize power? I mean, it's an abstract, right?"
"Not to me," Remo said in a sincere voice. "To me, power is very, very concrete."
"What do you mean?" Real interest showed in Faith Davenport's expression this time.
"I could show you, say, after you're finished eating," Remo suggested.
"Show me now," Faith insisted. "If it gets cold, I can nuke it in the microwave."
Remo shrugged and got up. "Give me your wrist," he said, putting out his hand.
Faith lifted her hand. Remo took it in one of his own. With the other, he found her wrist pulse with the tip of his forefinger.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to show you the power of my forefinger."
And Remo began tapping. Faith frowned in perplexity. But as the tapping finger found a rhythm, her features smoothed. Her eyes got dreamier, and she licked her lips at the corners. Her mouth grew redder and delectable once more.
"What . . . what are you doing?" she asked nervously. But she didn't attempt to pull her wrist away.
"When I'm done," Remo promised her, "you'll never look at a forefinger without getting incredibly aroused."
"Honestly?"
"After I'm done, a forefinger will represent power. You can visualize it and get instant results."
"I love instant results," Faith said, beginning to squirm in her seat. Her breathing picked up. Her eyes squinched shut. She moaned. It was a tortured but pleased moan. It told Remo that she was ready for him.
He stopped tapping.
"No! Don't stop!" she cried. "Not now."
Grinning, Remo resumed his tapping. And Faith resumed her tormented squirming. Her eyes closed completely now. Her free hand clutched the table edge.
In the years since Remo had learned Sinanju-learned it fully-he had found that the techniques through which he could master the physical universe could also tap into female sexuality. Unfortunately, the full power of Sinanju was too much for most women. Remo had to hold back. Right now, he was just giving Faith a taste. When he was through, she would, as Remo had promised, never be able to look at a male forefinger without becoming violently aroused. What he didn't tell her was that it would be his own finger that would never fail to arouse her.
Then it happened. Faith Davenport began to shiver uncontrollably.
"Oh," she cried. "No!" she cried. "Oh, no," she added. "No No No. Yes Yes Yes!" And when her shivering subsided, her smile was dreamily goofy.
She began to slide off the chair and under the table. Remo pulled her back by her flutter-pulsed wrist.
"How was that?" he asked, grinning.
Faith Davenport didn't reply. She didn't hear the question. She had orgasmed into blissful unconsciousness, a frequent but not always inevitable side effect of Remo's technique.
"Damn!" Remo said bitterly. "I thought I had that passing-out stuff under control."
Sighing, Remo lifted her up in his arms and carried her into an immaculate white bedroom. He set her on the shiny brass bed and wondered what she would say if she woke up with him lying patiently beside her.
Then he got a sudden whiff of Scotch on her breath and had to suppress the gag reflex.
Remo decided the effort wouldn't be worth it.
He left the apartment, his face dejected. He could bring a woman to orgasm simply by touching her wrists. But keeping her conscious after foreplay was something he had yet to learn.
Down in the lobby, the guard smirked. "That was quick."
"Quicker than you think," Remo returned darkly, and stepped out into the cold night. As he stood on a street corner trying to remember where he had parked his car, a matronly woman in a floor-length mink coat offered him a dollar from her purse.
"Here, you poor homeless thing," she said. "It must be terrible to be without decent clothes on a cold night like this."
Remo stuffed the dollar back into the surprised woman's purse. "Keep it, lady," he snarled. "I happen to be a Wall Street tycoon. And I've got a fur that makes yours look sick. "
The matron walked off in a huff.
Chapter 14
Harold W. Smith arrived at his Folcroft office at six o'clock on the Sunday evening following Dark Friday. He laid his well-worn briefcase beside the desk and, settling into his cracked leather chair, pressed a concealed stud under the desk edge. Up from the left corner of the desktop a nondescript computer terminal rose like a glass-orbed Cyclops.
Smith logged on. He scanned domestic-news digests that were automatically culled from satellite newsfeeds and processed for him by the huge CURE mainframes concealed behind a false wall in the Folcroft basement. The country was awash in speculation about the coming trading day. Already the Israeli stock market-the only one in the world that operated on Sunday-was trading. It was down ten percentage points-significant, but not telling.
In another hour or so, at eight o'clock, the Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong stock markets would open. They would give the first warning of a replay of the Friday financial air pocket and a foretaste-if it was to be-of another Black Monday.
Smith paged through the digests carefully. Already there was a flurry of rumors about planned mergers and acquisitions, now that stock prices had dropped so sharply. There would be a lot of bargain hunting available to investors brave enough to take the chance. And excellent opportunities for the few surviving corporate raiders who could muster financing.
He looked for any news concerning the elusive Crown Acquisitions, Limited. There was nothing. Whoever they were, they eschewed publicity.
Smith was deep in thought when the phone rang in the outer reception area. Smith dismissed it as a wrong number, but it kept ringing. He picked up his desk phone and answered, sharp-voiced.