"Looking for Bobby Jack Billings," Remo said.
"How'd you get in here?" she asked.
Td tell you the truth that I walked up the outside wall, but you wouldn't believe it anyway, so why not just let it slide. Let's stay with my question. Where is he?"
"Who is Bobby whatever-his-name-is?" she asked.
"Sorry, honey, that won't wash. It's Bobby Jack, he's the president's brother-in-law, and I've been looking for him just like you've been. So where is he?"
"Who are you working for?" she asked.
'The government," Remo answered casually, "and I've been one step behind you ever since I started."
"I don't know what you mean but you've got a lot of nerve barging in here and—"
"I didn't barge. I climbed."
"Coming in here and crawling into my bed. I've got a good mind to call the manager."
"Why not?" Remo said. "While you're at it, call
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the FBI so we can have you hauled off for spying."
Her left hand was now comfortably curled around the grip of the revolver and the feeling of the cold metal in the palm of her hand gave her a renewed sense of confidence. It wouldn't hurt, she realized, to talk to this Remo and find out what he knew. If he alone knew about her, that was one thing; but if there were a massive number of U.S. agents on her trail, that might require rethinking her position.
"I don't usually conduct interviews in my bed," she said.
"Break a rule just this once," Remo said. He stretched out his right hand and touched her neck just under the jawline. Her flesh tingled where he touched it and she pulled her head back away from him.
"No hands," she said.
"Whatever you like," Remo said. He pulled his hand away and folded both his arms across his stomach. He was unarmed, Jessica saw.
She lay back down on her pillow, moving her gun hand under Remo's pillow. Her pistol barrel was now only several inches from his skull. An error and he was a dead man.
"How much do you know about me?" she asked.
"Enough," Remo said. "Your name's Jessica Lester and you used to be with British Secret Service before you went private. You're working for the Libyans. You're looking for Bobby Jack but I don't really know why. Why?"
"How'd you know I was working for the Libyans?" she asked.
"I should have known right away because you
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didn't interview them like you did the Secret Service men. That should have been a tip, but it didn't register. If you hadn't spoken to them, it had to mean that you had already gotten all the information they had and that could only come if you were working for them."
"I should have remembered to tell them to say I had interviewed them," she said.
She saw Remo shake his head in the darkened room. "It wouldn't have mattered. I would have known if they lied to me. Anyway, I went back there tonight and they 'fessed up that you were one of theirs. What are they paying you?"
"A hundred thousand dollars if I find Bobby Jack before you people do. Another hundred thousand if I can deliver him to them."
"Why the hell would anybody want him?" Remo asked.
"I don't know. I didn't ask, but I guess that they figure if they have him, they can use him to get some concessions from the president. I know they're trying to buy plutonium."
"Could be," Remo said. "You know, you're very good."
"Thank you. I think I am."
"You fooled me when I met you at PLOTZ," Remo said. "The bandanna around your head broke the train of my thought. I was looking for a tall blonde with long braided hair and you didn't register."
"That's what I figured. I wasn't taking any chances." She noticed that Remo's right hand had moved out now and was touching her knee. It felt good and she no longer felt threatened because she
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had the gun under his pillow. He touched the inside of her left knee and she fought an impulse to squirm.
"How'd you find out about PLOTZ?" he asked. "How'd you learn about the note from Bobby Jack?"
"The president must have mentioned it to his press secretary. And the secretary was in a cocktail lounge that night, drinking more than was good for him, and he happened to mention it to a person I know who passed it along to me."
"That simple?"
"This kind of work usually is," Jessica said. Remo did not agree. He found the work unbearably complicated and hard but he did not want to let her know that.
The feeling along her left leg was pleasure and pain commingled, the feeling of a limb that had fallen asleep and was now tingling back to Me, a sensation of total awareness of that part of her body. Jessica Lester had already made up her mind to kill him but there was no point in hurrying, she decided. If he had something else on his mind, his death could be postponed for a few moments.
"It wasn't just any woman in any cocktail lounge," Jessica said. "The woman works for me. She makes it a habit to stay close to everybody in Washington who's got a big mouth and who drinks too much."
"I see," Remo said.
"And who are you?" Jessica asked.
"Not yet," Remo said. "So where'd it lead after PLOTZ?"
She stretched her leg slightly as if to encourage
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Remo's hand to move more along the length of her leg. Remo lay back and changed from his left hand to his right hand.
"I pilfered the files while you were out with that dip Zentz," she said. "I found out the money source was Earl Slimone and so I came up here to go to his headquarters."
"Earl who?" Remo asked.
"Earl Slimone. He's a banker. I was going to see him in the morning."
"What's he got to do with anything?"
"I don't know. I know he put up the money for PLOTZ. And he gave them word that they should be as public as they could be. What happened to that Zentz, by the way?"
"He died in a fire."
"Too bad."
"Yes, wasn't it?" Remo's hand was now on her upper thigh.
"So what do you want from me?" she asked.
"What do you think?" Remo said.
Jessica rolled over and onto Remo. She pressed her body tight to his. Her hands, between them, busied themselves with his clothing, and then there was a magical, moist time during which Jessica momentarily lost hold of the pistol under the pillow and Remo said, "What I want is for you to leave town."
Jessica rolled back to her side of the bed. The French called orgasm "le petit mort"—the little death—and she lay limply for a moment in the throes of the little death, and then remembered another kind of death. The large death.
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She closed her hand around the pistol, and brought the weapon out from under Remo's pillow.
*Tm sorry," she said.
"Are yout^ Remo asked. He lifted his body up on his arms to look into her face. "Sorry for what?"
"For having to kill you."
"Oh, that," Remo said.
She put tibe muzzle of the gun to Remo's temple.
"Goodbye," she said.
"So long," Remo replied.
She squeezed the trigger. The click was loud and metallic in the silent bedroom, but there was no explosion. Frantically, she squeezed the trigger again. Another click.
"Don't bother," Remo said. "Do you think I'd leave a gun with bullets in it under your pillow?"
Anger surged in Jessica.
"There's more than one way to use a gun," she hissed. She pulled her gun hand away from Remo's temple, then swung the pistol back to smash it into hisskulL
"And more than one way to protect against it," Remo said. She felt his hand close over the gun which stopped as if she had slammed it against a wall. She felt the pistol removed from her hand. She felt cold metal drop onto her bare stomach: one piece, then another. She looked down and saw the gun broken into pieces.
Remo hopped up out of bed. "Well," he said airily, "if I spend any more time here, I'm going to be late for the rest of my calls."