“We will do our best to see that you are allowed to die in your own way, with dignity,” the Korean said.
“I have faith that you will,” the Emir said. He paused a moment, then said, “Tell me. Why is it I have this feeling that you and I have met? Or that there is some feeling between us that goes back many years?”
“We have not met,” Chiun said. “But our ancestors did many years ago.”
“On a battlefield?” the Emir said.
“No. The House of Sinanju was retained to work for your royal house. The Master at that time did his task, but was not paid. If I could only keep you alive, I would send you a bill for the amount.”
“And if I could stay alive, I would pay it gladly,” the Emir said. “The House of Sinanju,” he said softly. “Of course, I have heard of it, in the archives of our land. I thought it was just a myth, a legend.”
“A legend,” Chiun said. “But not a myth. I will leave now.”
As he was at the bedroom door, the Emir called his name softly. When Chiun turned, the deposed ruler said, “I trust not the Americans. They were once my friends, but now I think I am an embarrassment to them. I think they would like it better if I were dead. Once it was not like this,” he said but his voice trailed off into the mists of memory, and sleep came over his tired body.
“You will not come to harm while I live,” Chiun said. “Or there will be many who pay the debt of your death.” But the Emir was not listening; he had lapsed into sleep.
“Where’ve you been?” Remo asked when Chiun returned to their hotel room.
“I must account for my whereabouts now like a school child?” Chiun said.
“No, I guess you don’t,” Remo said.
“I went to see the Emir.”
“And?”
“I wanted to hear what he thought about his sister,” Chiun said.
“What does he think about her?” Remo asked.
“He trusts her.”
“And you don’t?” Remo said.
“I only know that the lady is clever and strong-willed, and that she has blinded you so you fail to see beyond her skin.”
“Well, maybe not after tonight,” Remo said. Quickly, he told Chiun about the attempt on him as he was leaving Sarra’s apartment building.
“That woman is always close when death arrives,” Chiun said.
The telephone rang. It was Smith.
“Remo,” he said, “I’ve been doing some thinking.”
“So have I,” Remo said. “If that guy who tried to hit me tonight was a federal agent, it might just mean that our government is involved in an attempt to put away the Emir. Now if you still want us to protect him, we will. But we might wind up killing a lot of our own. Do you want to chance it?”
“That’s just what I was thinking about,” Smith said. “So I checked it out again. The man who tried to kill you tonight, well, his identification was that of an FBI agent. But he wasn’t the man. I had the fingerprints checked. He wasn’t the real agent.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know, but he wasn’t an FBI agent.”
Something was nipping at Remo’s mind and memory. “Listen,” he said. “The real agent. Was he assigned to guard the Emir?”
“Yes. He had been before he quit,” Smith said.
“All right. Now the guy who’s in charge of that detail… what’s his name… Randisi. What does he look like?” Remo asked.
“You saw him,” Smith said. “You tell me.”
“No. You check your files and find out what his description is. I’ll wait.”
Remo heard the telephone being laid down and he could hear the desktop computer screen slide open. He could hear typewriter keys being depressed, and then a faint whir. A few moments later, Smith was back on the line.
“He’s thirty-five, salt and pepper hair, brown eyes, six-foot-two, two-hundred pounds. A small scar alongside the right corner of his mouth.”
Remo shook his head as he listened to the rest of the description.
“Swell,” he said. “That’s not the guy, Smitty.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not the man Chiun and I saw on the island. Somebody’s brought in a ringer. For all we know, the real Randisi might be dead. Maybe the guy who tried to kill me tonight too.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
Then Smith said, “That means…”
“That means that every agent we have on that island could be a phony. They could be members of a hit squad to kill the Emir.”
“But why haven’t they done it by now?” Smith said.
Chiun called from across the room. “Perhaps they are waiting for the price to get high enough.”
“They’re probably waiting for the price to get high enough,” Remo said, with a thank-you nod to Chiun.
“It could be,” Smith said.
“It is,” Remo said. “And it’s that Pakir.”
“Why him?”
“He’s in charge of security on the island,” Remo said. “He’d know if he was working with phony agents. He would have checked them out.”
“I’ll send a helicopter for you,” Smith said. “It will be the fastest way to get there.”
“Why don’t you call the island?” Remo suggested.
“And talk to whom?” Smith said.
Remo thought a moment. “Try the Princess. Maybe she’s there by now.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“We’re on our way,” Remo said. “And Smitty…”
“What?”
“If he’s dead when we get there, don’t try to pin this one on me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ELMO WIMPLER SAT HUDDLED under a blanket in the rear of the twenty-foot-long speedboat that was anchored 700 yards off the ocean side of the Emir’s New Jersey coastal island.
He looked forward to the next couple of hours.
He had money in the bank now, courtesy of that dead advertising man, and now he had a mission: to take care of the Emir and the two men, the American and the Oriental, who had almost captured him in Central Park.
They were associated with the Emir somehow; he was sure of that. So he would be most likely to find them here on the Emir’s island hideaway. Elmo Wimpler had to repay them. It was that simple because while they lived, there was always the threat that there was someone in the world who was not afraid of Wimpler’s power.
He sipped warm tea from a thermos and thought about the Emir of Bislami. The man had once had a whole country in the palm of his hand and now Wimpler had that man’s life in his own hands. Just the thought sent chills through him. And, anyway, when he had killed the Emir, he was sure he would find somebody willing to pay their fair share of the cost. That magazine had said there was a bounty of as much as twenty million on the Emir’s head. Some of that he would collect; he was sure of it.
· · ·
In a third floor office in the island mansion, Perce Pakir put some notebooks into a wall safe, then locked the safe with a flourish. The time had come.
The Emir’s health was failing. If Pakir did not move soon, he would miss out on the contracts he had agreed to accept.
The money was important, but it had been more than money, too. For years the Emir had treated Pakir as a loyal aide-de-camp, but that was all. Never as an equal. Never as a member of the royal family. Never as a friend. Always as a subject.
Enough of that. The monarchy of Bislami was dead. Done forever. It was time to scratch something from the ruins. Pakir was going to scratch out ten million dollars for guaranteeing that the holder of the throne never went back to his country to reclaim his ancient monarchy.
He had hatched the plan on the very day that he and the Emir and the Princess Sarra had fled the country, ahead of the onrushing revolutionary troops. Once they had gotten to this United States island, he had been able to convince the Emir that he should personally supervise security arrangements, coordinating with the United States government’s agents. He had insisted that the U.S. agents live on the island as a security measure. Then, with the Emir’s own Royal Guard securely under his command, Pakir had met each U.S. agent as he arrived, disposed of each one of them, and substituted his own men by bringing them in by boat, at night, when the Emir slept.