Midnight Man

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“HE WAS WHAT?”

Smith repeated it. “I said, he was a federal agent until last week, when he quit.”

“What’s an agent—an ex-agent—doing trying to kill me?” Remo asked.

“I don’t know. I hope you can find out,” Smith said.

“All right. By the way, did Chiun speak to you?”

“No,” Smith said. “Why?”

“Because he wasn’t here when I got back,” Remo said.

“He did not talk to me,” Smith said.

After he hung up, Remo looked out over the city. An ex-agent. Was he, really? There wasn’t anything simpler than having a guy quit first so that if he was caught trying to perform the job his bosses had sent him to do, they could always wash their hands of him. He quit. He wasn’t working for us.

But for that to be the case, it meant that the United States government might be involved in trying to kill the Emir. It wouldn’t surprise Remo. The country had had a solid tradition over the last five years of turning its back on its friends. Washington was known around the world as Hand-ups-ville. Nothing coming out of Washington anymore would surprise him, including trying to eliminate the Emir just to solve the publicity problem of keeping him alive inside the United States.

Why not? It made as much sense as anything else.

And where was Chiun anyway?

The taxi driver had not wanted to go all the way to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, particularly not for that creepy, old, Oriental guy that he just knew wasn’t going to tip worth spit.

In his own nice, New York way, he had tried to hint this to the old Oriental.

“Naaah, ain’t no fucking way I’m going to Sandy Hook, ’cause when I get there, you’ll tip me shit, and I’ll be bringing back an empty cab, so fuck off, buddy.”

He had tried to drive off, just as he had driven off hundreds of other times from other potential passengers, particularly in the rain, when they were getting soaked but refused to pay double the meter price for their ride. The driver put the cab in drive gear and gave it gas.

And nothing happened.

The wheels were turning. He could swear they were turning because he could hear them spinning and he could even smell the scent of burning rubber. But the cab was not going anywhere, and there was the little gook, still standing next to the cab, his hand on the front passenger’s door handle, his head inside the window, promising to tip the driver a whole dollar if he took him to Sandy Hook.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Frigging cab won’t go.”

“I will fix it,” the old Oriental in the blue robe said.

“Yeah? How?”

Chiun slid into the front seat next to the driver, and now when the driver gave it gas, the cab just drove off neatly, as sweet as you please. The driver looked at the old man. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the old man was holding onto the cab and stopping it from moving. But, no. That couldn’t be.

Chiun saw the driver look at him and he smiled over at him. “It will not be necessary for you to talk to me while you drive to Sandy Hook. I will even pay you the extra dollar if you do not make conversation. In fact, be silent and I will make it a dollar and twenty-five cents. I know this is a lot but I have been in America a long time and I understand the native customs.”

The cabdriver started to say something about probably having to stop for gas on his way to Sandy Hook, but Chiun shushed him with a long-nailed finger pressed across the front of the driver’s lips.

“No talk,” Chiun said. “I have to think.”

There was no more talk.

The fare to Sandy Hook was eighty-eight dollars and seventy cents. Insisting that the driver should think nothing of it, Chiun paid him with ninety dollars in American money which he took from an old, leather purse, secreted somewhere deep in the folds of his silken kimono. Chiun insisted that the driver keep the entire remaining dollar and thirty cents as his tip, even though only a dollar and a quarter had been promised.

“This is because I am the most generous of men,” Chiun had explained. The driver had nodded. All he wanted to do was to go back home.

The owner of the small fishing boat did not want to go out to the island off the Jersey coast. As he explained to the little Oriental man in the silken kimono, he had already made his final party run of the day, the fish weren’t biting anyway, and it was a good day for him to go home, lie alongside his backyard pool, and drink beer.

He had not realized how weak, how defective, how really dishonorable this goal was until the old Oriental had taken one of his heavy-duty, deep-sea fishing rods, suitable for catching anything from shark and marlin to small whale, from its holder alongside the railing of the boat. The old man held the inch-thick rod in both hands.

And then snapped it, as if it were a bread stick.

He smiled again at the fishing boat captain.

The captain decided a run out to the island would be nice on a day like today, and five dollars… he was going to get a whole five dollars for himself?… oh, joy. He would be glad to wait at the island dock until the old Oriental gentleman was done and ready to come back.

When the boat docked at the island, Chiun put down the two broken pieces of fishing rod he had held all the way across the water on the trip and cautioned the captain not to leave until Chiun returned. “No matter how long it takes,” he said.

The captain had looked at Chiun, then at the broken fishing pole, and agreed to wait.

As he stepped lightly off onto the dock, Chiun wondered why Remo was always complaining about how difficult it was to get around using public transportation. Chiun never had any trouble.

The two guards at the front door were a different matter, but they were functionaries and that was the role of functionaries in the world, to stop busy people from doing the things that must be done.

They explained to Chiun that no one was allowed inside the house without proper identification; Chiun explained to them that it was necessary for him to talk to the Emir; and they explained that this was impossible. Clearly impossible.

Chiun left them lying by the side of the porch. If he had not been so delighted at the ease of finding a cab and a boat, and not in such a good mood, he might have hurt them seriously, but instead, he just put them to sleep temporarily.

As he did the guard outside the door to the Emir’s bedroom.

When Chiun went in, the Emir was sitting up in bed. His face lit up as he saw the old Oriental.

“Ahh, my friend, you have not forgotten to come back and visit me.”

“It is my pleasure, Your Highness,” Chiun said.

“I am surprised my men did not tell me you were on the way up.”

“They will tell you all about it when they awaken,” Chiun said.

The Emir laughed. “They are not hurt?”

Chiun shook his head.

“They are good men,” the Emir said.

Chiun corrected him. “Perhaps they are good-intentioned men. It is not the same thing, Your Highness.”

The Emir nodded, seeming to think about Chiun’s statement for a few moments.

“Is your companion, Remo, with you on this visit?” he said. He turned toward the left window in the room, and the slowly sinking sun splashed his face with orange light, erasing the pallor that approaching death had laid upon his features.

“No. And it is not a visit. I am here on a mission,” Chiun said.

“Yes?”

“Do you trust the people around you?” Chiun asked.

“As much as I must,” The Emir said.

“Your assistant?”

“Pakir? He’s been with me for many years. Yes, I trust him.”

“Your sister, the Princess?”

“She loves me. I think she would give her life to save mine,” the Emir said.

Chiun looked at the dying monarch. How much, he wondered, should he tell him?

“There have been attempts on our lives in the last several days,” Chiun said. “By people of your country.”

“Did you get their names?”

“No. They had no identification,” Chiun said.

“But you were sure they were of my country? You know, many nationalities look alike,” the Emir said.

“That is true,” said Chiun. “But few of them eat alike. The mouths of these men exuded the smell of parindor, the spice that is used in cooking your national dishes.”

The Emir nodded. “Why would they try to kill you and not me? Assuming that I am the eventual target?” he asked.

“Perhaps they are waiting for the price to reach its highest level,” Chiun said. “After we were attacked by these men, the Princess arrived. And later so did Pakir.”

“Master Chiun, I appreciate your good intentions. But I trust those people wholeheartedly. If they were there, as you say and I have no doubt, then they were trying to save me from murderers and assassins so I can wait for my natural death. Oh yes, I know I am going to die. I am prepared for it. You saw it in your examination, did you not?”

Chiun nodded.

“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.”