He should have known. If Willie Mandobar were the true architect, he would never have been able to leave his country at such an important time.
Nunzio was amazed at the coy act L. Vas Deferens had been playing all this time. The minister had led Nunzio to believe that the beloved former East African politician was playing an active role behind the scenes. Pulling the strings of this great plan. But now it was clear. It was entirely her plan.
The plastic-fruit hat was nearly thrown from Nellie Mandobar's head by the downdraft from the big rotor blades. The chopper settled to its skids in the wide landing area.
Servants rushed over to open the doors.
Don Giovani and Nunzio Spumoni were helped out onto the helipad. Behind them, the Seasonings hopped out.
"Find me a loo, pronto!" Slut Seasoning screeched to one of Nellie's men. "Either that or me and baby're gonna break yellow water all over your roof!"
"Girl domination over the johnny closet!" agreed Ho.
The singers were ushered quickly away. Grateful for the relative silence of the pounding rotor blades, Nunzio Spumoni escorted the Don to the former first lady and ex-wife of Willie Mandobar.
"Mrs. Mandobar, Don Giovani," Nunzio shouted over the helicopter noise.
Nellie Mandobar smiled broadly. "Welcome to the new East Africa, Don Giovani," she shouted. Still holding her fruit hat in place, she leaned forward, kissing the old Italian lightly on the cheek.
"I must get back!" Spumoni called.
Nellie Mandobar nodded. "Thank you for giving our first guest a ride. It was most kind of you. How soon will your Don Vincenzo be arriving?"
"I'll get him now," Nunzio replied. He tried not to show his reluctance. He was thinking of the bombs under Bachsburg, and of what his Don would do to him if this expensive plan failed.
Bowing a polite goodbye, Nunzio hurried on long legs back to the helicopter. As soon as he climbed aboard, it ascended, roaring back across the savannah toward Bachsburg.
The landing pad grew blessedly quiet.
"Forgive the arrangements, Don Giovani," Nellie Mandobar apologized, taking the Mafia man by the arm. "My man in Bachsburg has taken a few hours off before the event for personal reasons. When I learned the Camorra helicopter was available, I assumed you would not mind."
Don Giovani allowed the plump woman to lead him across the roof. "Is one of those mine?" Giovani asked. As he shuffled along, he pointed to the row of helicopters already at the edge of the broad airfield.
"Yes," Nellie Mandobar replied. Her broad smile had not yet left her fleshy face.
Giovani's tan face was humorless. "Make certain it is ready to leave at a moment's notice," he ordered. "I am not staying here one second longer than is absolutely necessary."
"Both of our helicopters will be ready long before tonight's festivities-" she smiled broadly "-wind down."
And Nellie laughed the laugh of a woman for whom death was an old friend.
The Mafia man's hand rested in the crook of her arm. Clapping her own fat mitt atop it, she ushered the old Don into the chilly interior of the huge auditorium.
Her joyful laugh echoed hollowly up from below.
Chapter 29
Pedestrians cut a wide swath around Remo. It was as if his dark inner mood projected an invisible charged field around his body. As he prowled, unmolested, through the streets of Bachsburg, he was a thing to fear and avoid.
After leaving the hotel, Remo hadn't gone to the airport for tickets out of East Africa. Wandering alone, he was deep in thought, wrestling with an inner conflict he thought he'd already put to rest.
There shouldn't have been any turmoil. He had made up his mind. But both Smith and Chiun with their carping and calls to duty had chipped away at the rock of his certainty. Now, though he would never admit it to either the CURE director or the Master of Sinanju, Remo did not know.
He wandered aimlessly.
With the discovery of gold in the late 1800s, Bachsburg had become a boomtown. Peeking out through the present-day city were remnants of its nouveau riche past, evidence of the frontier town that had made good.
Many of the hotels Remo passed were of a variety of different styles. Baroque, Gothic and Byzantine architecture were interspersed in a matter of two city blocks. Remo's own hotel, which dated back to just after the turn of the century, looked like a cross between the Pantheon and a New York skyscraper. Somehow, the sharp contrast of styles worked.
In spite of himself, Remo had begun to look at Bachsburg as a city where actual people lived and not as an abstract model in which an untold number of faceless criminals would die.
His face growing hard, Remo started walking with more purpose, as if by hurrying he could outpace his own doubts.
Although it was barely midafternoon, midnight had begun to loom large and real as Remo headed from the hotel district. As he crossed one street after another, his mind could not but go to the bombs beneath his feet.
Just outside the modern business district, the largely played out and abandoned gold mines of Bachsburg's past had become tourist attractions. There were men and women there now, dressed in vacation clothes, cameras slung around their sweating necks.
On the sidewalk in front of an information center, Remo had to avoid a busload of chattering tourists who were crowding excitedly down to street level.
Even though the East Africa they were in wasn't the one from their glossy tourist brochures, these people were oblivious. They were insulated, hiding in hotel rooms and restaurants, only venturing out by bus to whatever local sites their package tour had picked for the day. It was very likely they had no idea at all what kind of city they had come to. Remo kept his eyes locked on the sidewalk as he walked past the happy band of tourists.
He would not be blamed for their bad timing. Was it his fault they'd picked now to come to East Africa? And anyway, if they wandered into the wrong part of town, they'd likely end up shot or stabbed. By the end of the day, they'd wind up just as dead.
And it wasn't as if it would be painful. The bombs would incinerate them in an instant. Boom, flash, gone. And as the radioactive dust settled on the twisted ruins of Bachsburg, the world of their families would have become a better place. If anything, the whole planet should be thanking him after tonight. He had seen an opportunity to do good and had seized it. He alone had it in his power to cleanse the earth of an infectious disease. How many criminal generations were represented in Bachsburg right now? Men from twenty to eighty. Three generations, gone.
Behind him, several tourists started laughing at some private joke. The sound was a dagger in Remo's back.
He skulked quickly around a corner.
Sure, the innocent people in Bachsburg probably wouldn't thank him if they knew. But if they could just step back and see the big picture like he did-if they only knew the sheer number of people he'd killed in order to make their lives a little better then they'd understand. He was making a better world for their kids.
It popped into his head before he could stop it. Children. He instantly regretted thinking it.
How many children would be without parents after tonight? How many parents would lose sons and daughters?
According to Smith, there were a hundred and fifty thousand people in and around Bachsburg. The blast would claim them in an instant. Beyond that, no one but L. Vas Deferens could say for sure. He was the only one who knew how many bombs there were, and the yield of each.
As he walked, Remo gauged the direction of the wind. At the moment, it was blowing from west to east. If it shifted direction after midnight, Luzuland would be swept by the radiation cloud. All of the people Remo had seen there would die-from Chief Batubizee to Bubu to the women and children who sat in the bone-dry dust. All dead.
And the deaths of the Luzus wouldn't be painless. For the people of Luzuland, there would be sores and radiation poisoning and cancers of every kind. A slow, painful process that would take years to finish.
But it was worth it, wasn't it?
Wandering from one street to the next, Remo hadn't been paying attention to the sounds around him. Vaguely, he became aware of a noise coming from somewhere up ahead. It had filtered up from his unconscious into his conscious mind as he crossed from yet another strip of black asphalt over to an area of well-tended lawn.
Still walking, he looked up. And blinked.