"Don't," Remo said. "You'll have me in tears. And let me warn you. If you kill anybody this trip, you clean up the bodies yourself."
"You are without feeling, without soul, without heart."
They were both now in the corridor, and could hear Maggie's fault sobbing from behind the closed door of her cell. The door had no lock, and Remo pushed it open softly.
Maggie was there as she had been left. But the dress that had ridden up on her buttocks, was now slung up over her hips. The ferret-faced guard stood behind her, his back toward Remo. His right hand moved rhythmically, back and forth between Maggie's legs, and Remo saw he held a gun in his right hand. He was giggling and still talking to himself. "There's more for the little lady where that came from. Stay with poppa and poppa will give the little lady all she wants."
Remo cleared his throat. The guard partially turned and saw Remo there. Chiun was in the shadow of the corridor and was unseen. The guard grinned at Remo and giggled again. "She likes you, PJ but she likes this better. Don't you, little lady?" Then his left hand reached over and joined his right between Maggie's legs, working the gun in and out.
Remo spoke, and his voice was edged ice.
"I like your style kid. You're being promoted."
The guard turned to look at Remo. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Right upstairs." Then there was a knuckle in the windpipe. It hurt too much to cough and he was dying too fast to choke, so the guard fell onto the damp floor.
"Or downstairs, as the case may be," Remo said.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder, as far as she could in her position, and saw Remo. At first her face showed relief, and then it turned again into a mask of hatred.
Remo moved around in front of her and Chiun joined him, quietly lowering her dress over her flanks.
"You," she said to Remo. "Leave me alone. I don't want any help from you."
"Maggie, honey. I can't explain now, but trust me. We're on the same side."
She started to speak, to spit out her distrust, her hatred, but then Chiun stood alongside Remo and the look in his eyes told her somehow that everything was now all right.
She watched as Chiun and Remo knelt on the floor next to the iron ring. Then they each launched a hand slash at the ring. The two blows landed only a fraction of a second after each other. The vibrations that Chiun started in the metal, Remo interrupted; the metal swallowed its own vibrations, and the inch-thick-ring screeched in pain, then splintered into fragments.
Then, as if the locks were not there, the iron bands on her wrists and ankles were broken, and the chains fell heavily to the floor.
Maggie straightened up, painfully, rubbing her wrists which had been chafed raw by her writhing movements on the point of the guard's gun. She stared disbelievingly at the broken shards of steel on the floor, the remnants of the manacles that had held her so tightly.
Then, Remo had her by the elbow and said, "Come. Nemeroff is waiting for us."
She followed Remo and Chiun out of the cell, then stopped, and went back in. The guard's gun lay at his fingertips. It was a .45 automatic. She picked it up.
"I may need this," she said to Remo.
"Don't get in our way. It'll be safer."
"For whom, Mr. Kenny?" she asked.
"For all of us. And I'm not Mr. Kenny."
They moved quickly up the stairs leading to the main floor, Chiun leading the way. By the time Remo and Maggie had reached the first floor, Chiun was pressing the secret button for the elevator. Remo asked him: "How did you find that?"
"It gives off vibrations. One must listen for them."
"I didn't hear a thing," Remo said.
"Of course not. The perpetually open mouth impedes the efficiency of the sometimes-opened ear," Chiun said and led them into the elevator.
Remo pressed the button marked V.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Every seat at Baron Nemeroff's conference table had been filled.
From all over the world they had come, white men, black men, yellow men. They wore the costumes of their native countries: dashikis from Africa, cotton suits from Asia, dark blue mohair from the United States.
Among them, the thirty-odd men present had accounted for thousands of deaths on a one-by-one basis; they had sent thousands of girls to the brothels; through them, tens of thousands of adults and children had fallen prey to the perils of the needle.
They thought of themselves as indispensable businessmen in an indispensable business. And across all the lines of all their businesses ran the influence of Baron Isaac Nemeroff and when he called, they all came.
Now they all listened.
Overhead, the helicopters flew with their slow flapping sound, occasionally shrouding the room in a flash of shadow as one passed over the multi-coloured, glass dome set over the conference table.
Angelo Fabio, the biggest man in the United States was toying with a pencil between his fingertips. Nemeroff's idea seemed to make good sense to him. Occasionally, he would look up and his eyes would meet those of Fiavorante
Pubescio who had come from California or Pietro Scubisci who had come from New York, wearing his dirty suit and carrying his omnipresent bag of peppers. He would nod and they would nod in agreement.
Still something nagged at Fabio; he wished he could pinpoint it.
Nemeroff stood at the head of the table, towering over the seated men, his blotchy face flushed with excitement as he spoke to them.
"Consider, gentlemen. Our own nation. Under crime's flag. Where no laws will be enforced that we do not want enforced. Where poppies will grow freely in the fields. Where hunted men from anywhere on the face of the earth can find shelter and refuge."
He looked around the table, from man to man, to murmurs of approvals. One man spoke. He was short and thin; his skin was yellow; his white suit was wrinkle-free; but Dong Hee, crime's undisputed king in the Far East, ran a finger down the crease in his sleeve as he spoke:
"How do we insure this Asiphar's loyalty?"
Nemeroff noted the "we," and with a faint smile turned to the tiny Korean.
"If you will look at the screen up over the elevator door, gentlemen. Behind you, Mr. Hee." Nemeroff leaned forward, pressed a control button imbedded hi the wood of the table, causing a plywood section of the wall over the elevator door to slide back revealing a six-foot-square television screen.
Men pushed their chairs back from the table, so they could swing their bodies around and look at the screen.
Nemeroff pressed another button. Immediately, the sound of a voice was heard. "Oh, do it. Do it some more." It was a man's voice, thick and guttural, and it was pleading. Then the screen lightened into a picture of
Asiphar, his fat body a study in black against the white sheets, his body being violated by a fair-skinned blonde girl armed with a hand vibrator. They were naked.
Nemeroff let it run for thirty seconds, then turned down the sound, but let the picture continue.
He cleared his throat and eyes turned back to him.
"That is your soon-to-be-President Asiphar," he said coldly. "He is a swine. He will do anything for the promise of a woman."
Dong Hee spoke again. His English was precise and delicate, as were his features. "That is so, Baron, I am sure. But when he is president, what guarantee will we have that… satisfying his aberrations will still be enough?" As he spoke, his right side and shoulder flickered with the bluish colour from the TV screen. "After all, as president, he should be able to make his choice of women. He will have wealth, position. Will he really need us to be his pimps?"
The others had been watching Hee with interest. Now they turned to Nemeroff for his answer.
"You make a very good point, Mr. Hee." As he looked around the room, he saw a puzzled look on Fabio's face. "True enough, as president of Scambia, Asiphar would have certain power. But as for wealth? Whatever his dreams are, they will not be realized.