"You're broke?"
"Said brilliantly."
"I'll have a boy at your home in two hours."
He was the biggest boy Barney had ever seen, six-and-a-half feet tall with a shaved black head shaped
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like a dum-dum bullet without a crease. He was muscular and the muscles apparently did not stop until they reached his toes, which were encased in golden slippers with toes curling up to a metallic point.
In the lapel button hole of his black suit he wore a gold crescent with the title Grand Vizier stamped on it in ersatz Arabic lettering.
"I am to escort you," said the giant. "Where are you from?" "The woman."
"I was supposed to receive money, not an escort," Barney said.
"I have my orders."
"Well, I don't move without cash, All Baba, so just hop back on your flying carpet and go tell her that."
"Will you come with me if I give you money?" The giant's eyes dripped hatred at the thought of negotiating with the white devil.
"Of course. That will indicate your good faith. That's all I'm interested in. It's not the money, naturally."
The Grand Vizier of the Afro-Muslim Brotherhood took from his jacket pocket a hundred-dollar bill. He offered it to Daniels coldly.
"One hundred dollars?" Daniels screamed, edging back into his foyer. "One hundred dollars to go , all the way from Weehawken to New York? You must be out of your mind. What if I have to stop for something to eat?"
The Grand Vizier's eyes kept hating. "One hundred dollar too much for a little ride across the river. It only cost you thirty cent on the bus and another sixty cent for the subway. Maybe six buck by cab."
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"That's for peasants," Daniels said and shut the door.
The gentle knocking almost shook the timbers of the large house. Daniels opened the door.
"I give you two hundred dollar."
Daniels shrugged. A man had to earn a living, and anyhow everybody cribbed on their expenses.
The Grand Vizier handed over another hundred-dollar bill. "Here," he said, and the tone of his voice made it clear that he felt Barney had come cheap, that he was just another piece of chattel whose price the Grand Vizier carried as pocket money.
Catching the implication in the Grand Vizier's voice, Barney looked into his fierce eyes and then tore the second hundred-dollar bill in half with the finesse of a courtier.
"That's what I think of your money," Barney said. He made a mental note to buy Scotch tape on the way back. Two little strips, and the bill would be good as new. "I just wanted to see how bad you needed me." When the Grand Vizier wasn't looking, Barney stuffed the two halves of the bill into his pocket. One never knew.
Their co-equal relationship established, Barney opened the door to leave with the Grand Vizier. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a shiny object inadequately concealed in the shrubbery. Sunlight glinted off the object, which Barney recognized as a microphone. Only one man, Barney knew, would be stupid enough to place metal equipment in the one spot of shrubbery accessible to morning sunlight. Max Snodgrass undoubtedly found the best reception there, and the CIA surveillance manual, which Snodgrass wrote, insisted that equipment be placed in a area of maximum reception.
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"Meet me in Mickey's Pub," Barney said quietly. "Two blocks east, turn left. The right hand side."
"I permit no alcohol to enter my body," the Grand Vizier said disdainfully.
"Mickey's Pub, or I keep the two bills and don't show," Barney whispered. "And you can tell the Avon company that men's cosmetics are for faggots," he yelled for Max Snodgrass's benefit.
America, thy name is perfidy, Barney lamented as he hoisted his bulky frame through the back bedroom window and dropped fifteen feet into the overgrown tomato garden below. He landed crouched on his feet, then rolled into an easy somersault to absorb the shock. Casting off your unwanted veterans, he thought bitterly, forcing them to ply their trade for a pittance to the highest bidder. Only the vision of the woman's well-stocked bar kept him going as he crawled through the jungle of his back yard into the woods behind.
While relieving himself behind a tree, he noticed a car with two men parked near his house. One was a thin, youngish man. The other was a tiny, ancient Oriental. Max's henchmen, he thought, with no particular emotion. He would doubtless see them again.
He ambled off into the woods to take the scenic route to Mickey's Pub.
"This thing must be Emperor Smith's informant," Chiun said as Max Snodgrass, hair plastered tightly to his head, tiptoed into view from behind the shrubbery. Snodgrass looked toward the car and nodded crisply.
"Dipshit," Remo said, nodding back. "He ought to be the target instead of that poor used-up drunk inside. Anybody who combs his hair like that deserves to work for the CIA."
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"It is not your duty to criticize our Emperor's commands, incompetent one," Chiun said, his papery face bland.
"Lay off, Little Father," Remo said irritably. Together they watched Snodgrass swagger up the steps to Daniels's door and ring the bell. "I hope Daniels shoots this nincompoop."
Chiun whirled around in his seat to face him. "Remo, you are indulging yourself in a dangerous game. There is nothing more deadly to an assassin than his own emotions."
"All right. Then you teU me. Why should I kill this guy?" Remo asked, his voice rising. "All he ever did was to expose the CIA as the clowns they are. Look at that cretin." Max was tapping his foot on the doormat impatiently, his hands on his hips.
"Yes. I can hear his breathing from here." Chiun clucked dispiritedly. "Nevertheless, it is not your place to ask why. You must perform the task you have been trained for, so that Emperor Smith will continue to send his yearly tribute of gold to Si-nanju. Otherwise, the poor people of my village will starve and be forced to send their babies back to the sea."
"Sinanju has got to be the richest village in Korea by now," Remo said. "How many submarines full of gold does it take to keep those beanbags in your hometown from tossing their kids into the ocean, anyway? Why don't they just use the Pill?"
"Do not make light of the plight of my village," Chiun said. "Were it not for the Master of Sinanju, they would be destitute. We will do our work without complaint, difficult as that must be to one whose fat white being is marbled with willfulness and discontent." He snapped his jaws shut and was still.
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Max Snodgrass shrugged after ten minutes in front of the door and headed toward the car. Remo revved up the engine.
"I suppose James Bond is going to come over for a little chat now," Remo said. "He probably wants to let us in on the top secret information that Daniels isn't home." Remo waited. He wanted to peel away just as Snodgrass approached the car, so that the wake of gravel and dust would splatter over Sriodgrass's expensive suit.
But Snodgrass stopped halfway, looking intently at Daniels's mailbox. He opened it. There was a letter inside, a big thick one in a chartreuse-colored envelope. Gingerly he whisked it out. From the car, Remo could see a name in the upper left corner.
A look of shock came over Snodgrass's face as he stared at the name. His face seemed to say it couldn't be. It couldn't be.
The name on the envelope was important to Max Snodgrass, because it was to be the last thought he ever had. At the very moment when the synapses in Max Snodgrass's brain were vibrating the language code for that name, the green envelope in his hand was exploding with the force of two sticks of dynamite and sprinkling the flesh of Max Snodgrass across the lawn like pieces of shish kebab.
"Daniels, you old rummy, you did it," Remo said. He turned on his windshield wipers to clean the red debris off the window.