Oscar Walker's telephone board lit up.
"Do you have a fix on that person yet?" asked a voice.
"No sir," said Oscar Walker.
"Number One wants it. He'll be needing it before midnight. Midnight is when he leaves the party. We want something before then."
"Yes sir," said Walker and he knew what the word "want" meant. It was not used often but when it was, it could be very important. It could mean life.
Walker ran several series through the facts and then he ran the facts back through the series, and tried juggling all available information in every pattern and every pattern came up going nowhere. No fix. There was no prediction of what biorhythmic clock ran these two men, Remo and Chiun. None.
Biorhythm. Walker remembered his early interest in the subject way back when, in his college days that now seemed so long ago and so safe. It was the word that first attracted him to the small employment advertisement. Biorhythm. He had majored in biology and with the economic disaster that had been Great Britain for the last decade, he did not even expect to get anything close to his major field of study at a living wage. He had majored in biology and computer science, and had hoped to be lucky enough to find work as an insurance clerk.
"I can't really believe there is someone in the United Kingdom willing to pay a living wage for work in biorhythm," Walker had said.
"We're not paying you for work in the United Kingdom."
"I thought it looked too good," said Walker. "Where? The South Pole? Underground somewhere where I go blind? Where do you expect me to work?"
"You're going to St. Martin."
"In the Dutch Antilles? The vacation resort?"
"Yes."
"I don't have money to pay you for a vacation. I've got to be paid, not pay you."
The employment officer smiled. When Oscar Walker found out what he would be earning, he tried very hard not to look startled. Because if he could keep calm, they might not realize they were offering him four times a normal starting salary,
He was flown first class to Christiana Airport which looked like a Liverpool bus station surrounded by slabs of sun-bleached concrete. A chauffered limousine took him to a resort near Mullet Bay. His suite was better than a hotel. He had a maid, a butler, a cook and a woman with very big breasts and willing thighs. The woman did not talk about liberation. She had no need to be communicated with. She did not require endless foreplay. She was there. For him.
And if she had neurotic worries, thank the Lord she shared them with someone else. She was a gem. She gave him a warm body and a closed mouth and Oscar Walker knew then that he would kill for the people who provided him this.
Shortly thereafter, he found out that this was just what they had in mind.
Everyone else he met was earning the same bloated salaries. But just in case money was not sufficient to earn loyalty, there were people who disappeared. Like the middle-aged action group leader who thought he could make a large bundle by selling the story of the secret luxury training grounds to Fleet Street. He was getting tired of the gross repetition of his attack moves.
"Worse than the bloody SAS," he said.
That day he did not return for classes and Walker was called in by his superior to explain why he had not reported the man's complaint to higher-ups.
So they knew everything he did.
Initiation was simple and frightening. He was kept awake two days without sleep and then at midnight in a small grove of trees, he was given a pill to swallow. The world moved in strange and luxurious shapes, in colors his eyes had never seen before. Oscar Walker assumed he was drugged. So he did not mind too much when someone handed him the head of the man who had planned to tell the Fleet Street press about the secret training center. The head fit in his palm.
He swore loyalty to Number One in this drugged state. Number One's face seemed familiar, white hair, royal bearing, a very handsome man. Oscar Walker thought the drug might have had something to do with this perception that warm insane evening with the strange colors and the small head that fit into his hand. He slipped off to a delightful sleep that had him dreaming while awake. He dreamed there was no greater love one could have than his love for Number One.
He had seen Number One's face before. He had seen it while at Cambridge. He had seen the face before Cambridge. He had seen that face in newspapers when he was a youngster, that silver hair. That face was always with a woman. But in that sleep on the night of the initiation, he did not know the name that came with it.
Waking up from that sleep was like waking up with more life and breath and sunlight than he had ever known. It was waking up to the brightest morning of his life. It was waking up on a soft pillow that stretched from sunlight to sunlight with a bath of salt air all over him and waves lapping against something very close. He was aboard a ship and the pillows were silk and the air was salty. He was alive and awake. He was on silk pillows on the deck of a yacht. Small islands were far off. He saw them between his bare feet. They got smaller as the day got hotter. He looked around finally, realizing the drug had not fully worn off. There were other men lying on pillows also. Their eyes looked funny as if they were blacker than they should be. The pupils were dilated.
Women with oiled bodies served fruits on silver trays. Oacar Walker saw his reflection in the bottom of the silver tray. His wide black pupils blocked out the blue of his eyes.
Later in the distance, he saw another yacht. Shakily he got to his feet. He could read the name on the other yacht. Ulysses. And then he realized who the man with silver hair would be. Aristotle Thebos.
He was Number One.
"Love Number One. Love Number One. Love Number One," he heard someone shout. And it was his voice. He was shouting. And then all the men on the deck were shouting "Love Number One."
And Number One appeared under lights on his great ship and told them he would feed them and protect them and lead them to power in the world.
Everyone was given something small to hold and throw overboard as an offering to Number One. Oscar Walker was throwing his offering when a hand stopped his and made him look at it. It was a head. A small dark head the size of an orange. He had not dreamed the head. Heavy white fibers cushioned the small dark eyeless ball. White hairs. It was the former SAS member who had complained and threatened to expose the training camp.
Someone grabbed Oscar Walker's hand and made him throw the head into the sea. From that day forth, he loved Number One with all his heart, so that when he had to do a biorhythm fix on this killer Remo who was an enemy of Number One, and he could not get a fix, it hurt him to have failed. He trembled and looked at the hand that held the head on the dragged night.
The telephone panel lit up again.
"Negative," Oscar Walker said softly.
And the words he feared came back over the speaker.
"Report to Number One."
Trembling, Oscar Walker took three tranquilizers and washed them down with a double martini before leaving his computer console. If he was lucky, he might pass out before looking into Number One's eyes and telling him of failure.
A sliding metal panel opened in one of the secret passageways and Oscar Walker stepped out onto a platform that was only a few feet above the level of the Atlantic Ocean. Behind him the panel slid shut. Two men ushered him onto a waiting launch. There was a small table on the launch set before a high throne-like chair. Oscar floated into a folding chair at the table. He felt the tranquilizers and the martinis begin to soften his body. His mouth seemed to want to operate without his knowledge. His lips moved from side to side without waiting for him to tell them to. He thought that was funny and laughed.