Midnight Man

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ELMO WIMPLER SAT HUDDLED under a blanket in the rear of the twenty-foot-long speedboat that was anchored 700 yards off the ocean side of the Emir’s New Jersey coastal island.

He looked forward to the next couple of hours.

He had money in the bank now, courtesy of that dead advertising man, and now he had a mission: to take care of the Emir and the two men, the American and the Oriental, who had almost captured him in Central Park.

They were associated with the Emir somehow; he was sure of that. So he would be most likely to find them here on the Emir’s island hideaway. Elmo Wimpler had to repay them. It was that simple because while they lived, there was always the threat that there was someone in the world who was not afraid of Wimpler’s power.

He sipped warm tea from a thermos and thought about the Emir of Bislami. The man had once had a whole country in the palm of his hand and now Wimpler had that man’s life in his own hands. Just the thought sent chills through him. And, anyway, when he had killed the Emir, he was sure he would find somebody willing to pay their fair share of the cost. That magazine had said there was a bounty of as much as twenty million on the Emir’s head. Some of that he would collect; he was sure of it.

· · ·

In a third floor office in the island mansion, Perce Pakir put some notebooks into a wall safe, then locked the safe with a flourish. The time had come.

The Emir’s health was failing. If Pakir did not move soon, he would miss out on the contracts he had agreed to accept.

The money was important, but it had been more than money, too. For years the Emir had treated Pakir as a loyal aide-de-camp, but that was all. Never as an equal. Never as a member of the royal family. Never as a friend. Always as a subject.

Enough of that. The monarchy of Bislami was dead. Done forever. It was time to scratch something from the ruins. Pakir was going to scratch out ten million dollars for guaranteeing that the holder of the throne never went back to his country to reclaim his ancient monarchy.

He had hatched the plan on the very day that he and the Emir and the Princess Sarra had fled the country, ahead of the onrushing revolutionary troops. Once they had gotten to this United States island, he had been able to convince the Emir that he should personally supervise security arrangements, coordinating with the United States government’s agents. He had insisted that the U.S. agents live on the island as a security measure. Then, with the Emir’s own Royal Guard securely under his command, Pakir had met each U.S. agent as he arrived, disposed of each one of them, and substituted his own men by bringing them in by boat, at night, when the Emir slept.

There were twenty men on the island now, Royal Guard and U.S. agents. But the U.S. agents weren’t really U.S. agents, the Royal Guard was loyal to Pakir, and it was time for him to dispose of the Emir.

The only person who was not included on his side was the Princess Sarra. He hoped he wouldn’t have to have her killed, too. He had plans for her.

It would have all been done before this, but it had taken time for Pakir to make his arrangements with the new revolutionary government of Bislami.

And then that idiot magazine had run those advertisements seeking people to kill the Emir, and those two real U.S. agents had come to the island. These were the only loose ends.

He had tried to dispose of those agents, the American and the Oriental, and had failed. And he had tried to get rid of whoever it was who would take the contract to kill the Emir. He couldn’t afford to have anyone else running around, charging their island, taking credit for assassinating the Emir. But he had not been able to contact that man to put him away.

So there was no more time to waste. Tonight was the night the job had to be done.

Once it was over, the fake U.S. agents would just simply disappear. The United States would have to talk to the world about the murder of the Emir and the disappearance of almost a dozen U.S. agents. The world wouldn’t buy it. It would simply look to the world as if the United States had killed the Emir and then killed the men who actually pulled the trigger.

It would serve everybody’s purposes. Pakir could collect for the assassination from the new revolutionary government of Bislami and from the Russians for both the death and the embarrassment of the United States.

And he… and perhaps the Princess Sarra if she decided to be reasonable… would live the lives of the very wealthy. Perhaps in South America. Or Switzerland. Or anywhere. There were very few doors, national or otherwise, that were not open to a man with ten million dollars.

It was time.

The Emir stirred in bed. He opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again, trying to drift back into sleep. Sleep was all he had left. And then death. He was helpless now to affect his own fate. If the many groups with a price on his head did not get him, the cancer would.

It was probably best this way. Sarra could go on to live her life. His friends in the United States, even though they had abandoned him in his hour of need, would be rid of a national embarrassment.

And the Emir would be removed from pain.

It was probably best.

Princess Sarra stepped through the doorway into her brother’s room. He slept peacefully, and she sat by the side of the bed, in a chair, waiting… for what? For him to die? She felt helpless and wondered why she had come. Was it because she had pleasured her body with Remo earlier that day, and now felt guilty about disporting herself while her brother was the target of both killers and disease?

· · ·

The helicopter had landed them on the New Jersey shoreline and a power boat was waiting to speed them to the island.

As they alighted at the main dock, Remo observed: “No one around. They’re supposed to have somebody on this dock to check visitors.”

“Perhaps they were not expecting guests,” Chiun said.

“And perhaps they are discussing what to do about these guests,” Remo said.

Chiun nodded. They heard the sound simultaneously. Footsteps, someone running through the brush from the main house. When he broke out into the open, they saw who it was.

It was Randisi, the top federal agent on the island. Or the man who played the part of Randisi.

He ran up to them, apparently out of breath and somewhat wild-eyed. Remo ran through Smith’s description again in his mind. Randisi, Smith said, was 35, six-foot-two, two hundred pounds, with salt and pepper hair. This man was almost 50, five-foot-eight, fat, with red hair.

“They’ve taken over the house,” he gasped, grabbing Remo by the shoulders. “The Emir is in danger. You’d better hurry.”

“You’re Randisi?” Remo said.

“Yes.”

“You’re right,” Remo told him. “We shouldn’t waste any time. We should get right down to it.”

“Right.”

Remo reached out and touched the fake agent on the back of the neck, where the spinal column enters the skull and is the most vulnerable. It snapped and the man fell at his feet, dead.

Chiun was already moving to the house. Remo quickly got to his side. “If they sent him ahead with that phony warning, they’re waiting for us to come running right up to the front of the house,” he said.

Immediately, they circled off, through the brush, to come around to the rear of the large four-story mansion.

As they passed the side of the house, they saw three men with suits, armed with automatic rifles, crouched near the pathway leading to the front of the house.

“Quietly,” Chiun warned.

Remo nodded. If the Emir was still alive, any sign that Remo and Chiun were coming to his rescue might mean his immediate death.

They cut back in behind the three men. When they were only two feet away, Remo pursed his lips and hissed.

“Psssssst.”

The three men turned around. Remo and Chiun struck at the same time. Remo took the man on the right. Chiun handled the one in the middle and the one on the left. Without a sound, the life was crushed from their bodies.

“Four,” Chiun said.

“Smith said there were twelve federal agents on the island. And we saw eight Royal Guards. There’s at least twenty,” Remo said. He looked up, then hissed to Chiun: “There’s two up on the roof. I’ll go up and work my way down. You start down here and work up. One of us’ll get to the Emir before they have a chance to kill him.”

Remo went to the rear of the house. The building was brick and the thin indentation of mortar between the old, red bricks was enough for him to get finger and toe holds as he started up.

He went up the side of the building like an upside down film of a drop of rain running down a window. The secret was in the pressure; the body had to keep the pressure concentrated inward, into the center of the stone, and if the pressure were strong enough and concentrated enough, it overpowered the normal pull of gravity that would yank someone back down to the ground.

As Remo went over the top of the roof, he saw the two men, members of the Royal Guard, looking over the front brick wall toward the ground.

It would have been easy to throw them over.

Easy but noisy. And silence was everything now, if they were to keep the Emir alive.

When he was behind them, he tapped both men on their shoulders. They turned. In a blink of an eye, both dropped to the roof. Remo caught their rifles before they hit the rooftop with a clatter, and carefully laid them down.

Six down. Depending on what Chiun was doing below.

An unlocked trap door opened to the floor below. Remo dropped through it, right into the middle of two more guardsmen who were holding a ladder, getting ready to climb up to the roof.

The men looked at Remo for a split-second before reacting. It was a split-second too long.

Eight down. Remo caught the ladder before it hit.

Remo was alone on the fourth floor. Two floors down was the Emir’s bedroom. Remo wondered if Princess Sarra would be with her brother.

Chiun had started in the front door, just as four men had walked out of the house. Each of them carried an automatic rifle.

All any of them saw was the purple blur of Chiun’s nighttime robe. When he was done, the four rifles were propped together in a military tripod in one corner of the porch. On the other corner were propped the four men in the identical fashion. They looked like a singing group on a Philadelphia street corner.

No one inside the house had heard a sound.

Remo eased his way down to the third floor. There were two men around the corner at the bottom of the steps. Remo heard them talking.

“I think Pakir’s dreaming,” said one, in a harsh American voice. “There’s nobody here.”

“Just you and me,” said another American voice.

“And me,” said Remo, stepping from around the corner.

The two Americans wheeled toward him, their hands reaching for the guns in holsters on their hips.

Ten. That he knew of.

Inside the front door of the house, Chiun had paused, listening. There were no voices, no footsteps. The steps to the second floor were a long, curved staircase, and from the bottom floor it was impossible to see the second landing. On the side of the wall was the light switch, and Chiun threw it, casting the downstairs floor and the stairway into darkness.

“Light went off,” he heard a voice from upstairs call.

“Check it out,” another said.

“Sure. Anything’s better than standing here.”

Chiun moved to the stairway, and raced half up, stopping halfway to the next floor. He could tell by the sounds of their feet that two men were coming down. As they turned the corner so their vision covered the first floor, Chiun stepped out from the shadow at the side of the stairs. His long-nailed hands shot forward from his kimono sleeves and fastened themselves around the throats of the two men. They struggled for a brief instant, trying first to free themselves, then to scream. They did neither. Slowly, Chiun let them drop to the soft, carpeted steps. He ran up the remaining steps to the second floor. Remo was coming down the steps from the third floor.

Perce Pakir was walking into the Emir’s room. He carried a pistol in his hand.

Both Remo and Chiun saw him enter the room as they reached the second floor landing.

Four men, two on Remo’s side, two on Chiun’s side, also watched Pakir enter the room.

It was their last view of life. Remo and Chiun each moved behind their two men and silently throttled them. They released the men’s bodies which sank softly to the Persian-carpeted hallway floor, then the two men, Master and disciple, ran down the hallway, meeting at the center door to the Emir’s room.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Remo said.

“At my age, one must avoid sudden movements,” Chiun said lightly. “Quiet.”

Remo was silent as Chiun listened at the door. He turned back to Remo.

“There are three of them. The Emir, the Princess, and Pakir. Pakir is nearest us,” Chiun whispered.

“Then we might as well go in,” Remo said.

Remo tossed himself at the door, just at the critical point where the heavy oak and the brass hinges were misbalanced, and as the door swung open and Pakir wheeled, gun in hand, Chiun came through the door over Remo’s body, and with an elegant motion of a slippered toe kicked the gun from Pakir’s hand. Before the bearded aide could go for it, Remo had him paralyzed, digging his fingers into the Bislamian’s shoulder muscle.

“He was going to kill my brother,” Princess Sarra said. She stood next to the Emir’s bed, leaning over, as if ready to shield her monarch with her own body.

“I know,” Remo said.

Chiun retrieved Pakir’s gun from the floor and put it on the table, next to the Emir.

The old monarch’s eyes were fiery with anger.

“Why, Pakir? Why?”

“Because you are going to die anyway. Because when you die I will still be hunted by your enemies. But if I kill you, they will no longer hunt me and I will be wealthy. Wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.”

“Ten million dollars,” Princess Sarra said to the Emir. “That is what is offered for you.”

The Emir looked at her, then back at his once-trusted aide. “Wealthy beyond your wildest dreams? Your trouble, Pakir, is that you always dreamed small,” the Emir said.

His hand darted out from his bed and picked up the pistol Chiun had put on the end table. He brought his arm around and squeezed off a shot at Pakir. Remo felt the man grow limp in his hands and dropped him to the floor where he lay motionless.

“Good shot,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t hit me.”

“I apologize.”

“That’s all right. I would have dodged,” Remo said.

“Not for that,” the Emir said. “For using the gun. There was a day when I would have strangled this traitor with my bare hands. But now… I cannot.” He looked toward Chiun.

The old Korean nodded. “Weapons take all the fun out of it,” he said. Something seemed to catch his attention and he went to the Emir’s large, bedroom window which looked out over the Atlantic Ocean.

He turned back to Remo.

“There is something out there,” he said.

“A boat,” Remo said.

Chiun nodded. “A black boat. Very black.”