She had plenty of time to think about it in Hamidi Arabia because no mullah would speak to her in the clothes she was wearing. She had also been told to read the Koran, but she thought it was boring. And one thing the world was not allowed to do was to bore a Wakefield.
"Melody, I am waiting for an important call," said Bradford.
"You mean I'm not important, Grandpapa?"
"Not as important as this call I'm waiting for."
"Grandpapa, I am in the greatest revolution of all time, where the wealth of the West has been transferred to a Third World country. Now, that is important," she said.
Bradford understood what she meant by a transfer of wealth. That meant little old ladies in Maine keeping their homes at 60 degrees in the dead of winter and paying ten times as much for their heat anyway. When a Wakefield referred to the wealth of the West that had to be shared with developing countries, it was not Wakefield wealth but the single homes of middle-class families, the long summer vacations by car, people's color television sets, and inexpensive and abundant food. This was the transfer of wealth they were talking
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about. OPEC profits just made the Wakefield fortune larger.
"Melody, I regret that the transfer of wealth from the West might be our own wealth if you don't hang up."
The phone clicked as dead as if it had been cut by a razor blade. Melody was a good girl, her grandfather thought. She was only trying to do for the Arabs what her earlier book had done for the Vietnamese and Cambodians, when she proved beyond argument that the only thing wrong with those countries was American's presence in them.
When America had left and the Cambodian communists engaged in a population slaughter unseen since Adolf Hitler, The Blade, through Melody Wakefield's typewriter, proved that it was not the communists' fault for the killing, but America's because America had bombed that country years before.
When the Vietnamese took to the boats to escape their "liberators" from the north, The Blade proved that boat people weren't really Vietnamese at all, but Chinese money lenders. Melody's poisoned pen led the attack.
Melody loved revolutionary discipline for the masses and sometimes, Bradford knew, she only went to these countries to watch revolutionary discipline in action. She had her own whip for revolutionary discipline. She carried it in her traveling bags or sometimes stuffed into her high leather boots.
Bradford looked at his watch. It was four P.M. and still no call. He went to his stone patio to look out over his own rocky shoreline of Mamtasket. He paced until four-thirty p.m., when his stomach started heaving.
The paper had been trying to reach him for an hour, but that wasn't the phone call he wanted. The paper phoned again. And when Bradford ordered his butler to tell his newspaper not to bother him anymore, the butler said it was about a killing.
"What?" said Wakefield. "Give me the phone."
The managing editor told him there had been a 73
racial killing near MUT, across the river from Boston. Two blacks had been found murdered, stuffed into a trash cart and left along Memorial Drive.
"Did one of them ... did one of them . . ." said Bradford, his voice choking, his legs becoming weak. "Did one of them have very large hands?"
"Yes. He was identified as the civil rights activist who only wanted freedom for his people—Bubba. We helped get him out of the racist oppressor jail."
Bradford felt weak. He hadn't felt so weak since a Jew and Catholic and somebody from Ohio had tried to move into Mamtasket.
He hadn't minded the Jew. He was quiet and could be ignored. The Catholic was in industrialist who was called "the rapacious beast of Wall Street," so he and Bradford had something in common. But the family from Ohio laughed loudly and sang songs. Right out in the open. One of them ate a hot dog on a bun, and the father had been raised on a farm where they grew things. They went to football games. And none of the games was Harvard. Their youngest daughter had those big Midwest things on her chest called breasts. No Wakefields had them. They had decent old line New England breasts. Egg size. Fried egg.
Bradford hung op on his editor and shakily made his way into his study and phoned the one person he hated to give bad news to.
"Hello," said Friend at the other end of the line.
"The initial attempt on the two new scientists failed," said Wakefield.
"Fine," said Friend cheerily.
"You're not bothered?"
"No."
"But I thought you didn't allow failure."
"Not at all. How foolish I would be if I insisted on perfection. Do you know how unreal that is?"
"Then you have a contingency plan for a second attempt?"
"Of course," said Friend.
That was the beautiful thing about Friend. He never 74
panicked. And he always had answers and orders immediately.
"First, you will find out everything about the way your two workers died. Then you will head north on your boat until you are outside Kennebunkport, Maine. And you will wait there."
"We aren't going to get those two now?"
"We are going to follow directions, Bradford."
"Yes, Friend," said Bradford Wakefield HI.
The reports from his newspaper on the black men's deaths weakened Bradford's stomach even more. He was so upset, he had to drink enriched baby formula and mush.
The two men found in the refuse cart could not have been killed by human means, the coroner said. The killings were just too precise for human hands. The large one was strangled, and while that required inhuman strength, it was not nearly so much as the strength that would have been required just to hold the big one in place for strangling.
The conclusion—he had been killed with something that worked like an extra-strong forklift and baling machine.
The smaller one was killed with a blow so precise, it would make a surgeon jealous. No human killer could have been that accurate.
The conclusion—death by forces unknown.
Bradford Wakefield had been anchored off the coast of Maine for two days when a small fishing trawler approached his yacht.
A man barely over five feet tall came aboard the yacht. He wore a three-piece summer suit and wire-rimmed glasses, and he did not smile. He did not offer his right hand to shake, either.
His name was Merton, and he did not give his last name. He spoke in a British accent and seemed to know everything there was to know about Bradford Wakefield III, his physical health and, more importantly, some of his relationship with Friend.
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"You know Friend?" asked Wakefield. "Yes, I do."
Merton seemed to be able to sit on the frail wooden deck chair with hardly any pressure. For a moment, Bradford thought he was entertaining a robot. Passing Merton's chair to go to the railing, Wakefield touched the Englishman. But the flesh was warm and human. No robot.
Merton smiled inwardly. People often did that to him. They would sense a lack of human response and then try to touch him, It did not bother him on occasions like this, but it did bother him in his personal life. His son had once said to him, "Are you my natural father, sir?"
"Yes, I am," Merton had said. "Why did you ask?" "Because, sir, I have read in biology that during copulation, people emit sounds of joy and secrete bodily fluids." "That is correct."
"I cannot imagine you, sir, doing those things." "Quite," said Merton, trying to remember the time he had copulated with his wife, Lady Wissex. He tried to remember if he perspired. He didn't think he had. But one didn't think about those things at a time like that.
Instead, Lord Wissex had thought about completing his orgasm and removing himself from Lady Wissex. When he found out she had indeed conceived, he sent her a little silver garden bucket with a note reading: "Good show. You've done your duty and I've done mine. We'll never have to go through that again."