"Another religious nut, like Willingham and his rock. Why do I always meet them?" asked Valerie. She sat down on the pedestal of the great stone. Remo sat down next to her.
"Look. All your life you've been trapped. Everyone is."
She shook her head. "Not buying," she said.
"If you're poor, you can't afford to travel, so you're trapped in your home town. If you're rich, you're trapped on earth unless you're an astronaut. And even they are trapped by the air they have to bring with them. They can't leave their suits or their ship. But even more than that, every human being is trapped by his life. We're surrounded on one end by our birth and the other by our death. We can't get out of our lives. These walls are just a small period in our trapped lives anyhow, see?"
"I need a way out of here, and you're giving me a pep talk."
"I could get you out of anything but your ignorance," Remo said, and it surprised him how much like Chiun he was sounding.
"Get me out of here."
"I will after I'm finished with it," said Remo.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm the one who's got Willingham and his friends trapped."
"Oh, Jesus," said Valerie. "Now not only are we trapped, Willingham is too."
"Exactly," said Remo. "He's trapped by his devotion to this ugly hunk of stone back here. I've got him."
"I'd rather be him," said Valerie, and she lowered her head into her hands and moaned about how she always met them. From the man in Paterson, New Jersey, who had to strap on a five foot medieval sword before he could get it up, to the Brooklyn dishwasher who had to lather her up with foaming Liquicare before he would do it. And now, the worst. Locked in a disguised safe with a guy who thinks the outside world is trapped because they have a rock inside with them.
"Why do I always meet them?" screamed Valerie, and she knew her screams would not be heard because the whole freaking room was lined with lead. They had even sealed off the beautiful north windows. Willingham had muttered something about protection from the north wind as though the ugly box of a rock was going to catch a headcold.
"Why me, Lord?" cried Valerie Gardner. "Why me?"
"Why not you?" asked Remo just as logically, and when he tried to comfort her with his hands, she shrugged away, saying she would rather do it with a walrus in aspic than with Remo.
Her anger turned to boredom and she started yawning. She asked Remo what time it was.
"Late," he said. "We've been here about five hours and forty-three minutes. It's eight-thirty-two and fourteen seconds."
"I didn't see you look at a watch," Valerie said.
"I'm the best watch there is," said Remo.
"Oh, great," said Valerie, and she curled up in front of the stone and dozed off. An hour later, the square metal slab locking them in raised with a whirring sound. Valerie woke up. Remo smiled.
"Mr. Willingham, thank god," said Valerie, and then she shook her head. Mr. Willingham was nude except for a loincloth and a draping of yellow feathers in a robe around his body. He carried a stone knife in front of him. Six men followed him. Two ran to Valerie, throwing her to the floor and pinning her arms. The other four rushed to Remo, two grabbing one foot each and the other two going for his wrists.
"Hi, fellas," Remo said. He let himself be lifted. They brought him to the very top of the stone called Uctut. Willingham approached, the knife held high. He spoke in a language Remo couldn't recognize. It sounded like stone clicking against stone, popping sounds with the tongue of a language kept in secret over the centuries.
"Your heart will not recompense your foul deed for it is not enough for the desecration you have performed," said Willingham in English.
"I thought I improved the stone," Remo said.
"No, Mr. Willingham, no," cried Valerie. The two men stuffed part of their robes in her mouth.
"You may save yourself pain if you tell us the truth," said Willingham.
"I like pain," Remo said.
The man on his right wrist was gripping too tightly and would lose control of his strength shortly. The one on the left was too loose, and the men at Remo's feet had no protection from his yanking his legs back and driving their ribcages into their intestines if he wished. He did not wish-yet.
"If you do not give me the information I seek, we will kill the girl," said Willingham.
"That's even better than giving me pain. I can live with that," said Remo.
"We will kill her horribly," said Willingham.
"What will be will be," said Remo philosophically.
He glanced down over the stone edge to the floor, where Valerie tried desperately to shake loose. Her face turned purple in fear and rage and hysteria.
"Let her go," said Remo, "and I'll tell you everything you want to know."
"Why you did this awful thing and everything?" asked Willingham.
"And even where you can reach Joey 172," said Remo.
"We know where we can reach Joey 172. We've known since the day after he did his horror. It is for the American people to make restitution, not us. Uctut wants proper restitution, not for his priests to soil their hands with unclean blood, but for the people of the offender to offer up to us the offender. To make the sacrifice through our hands but not by our hands."
"Why didn't you say so?" said Remo, feigning an air of enlightenment. "Through your hands but not by your hands. Now everything is crystal as cement. Through, not by. Why are we even arguing? Why didn't I see this before? And here I was thinking it was simple revenge."
"We have restored the sacrifices and will continue to do so until America acts properly," said Willingham.
"Would you like the Attorney General to hold down Joey 172 while the Secretary of State rips out his heart? Like you did to the congressman and Mrs. Delpheen?"
"They were in charge of monuments here at the museum. They refused my request to station guards in this room. And thus the desecration followed. It was their failure."
"Just who the hell do you expect to take this revenge for the writing on the stone?" Remo asked. "The FBI, the CIA? The Jersey City Police Department?"
"You have secret agencies. It could be done. We know it could be done. But your government has to realize what it has allowed to happen and then set about making amends. We would have allowed your government to do this quietly. Your government has done this before, many times and secretly. But your government has not acted to avenge the insult upon Uctut."
Remo noticed that Willingham held the stone knife in a strange grip. The back of the thumbnail drove the handle tight against the inside pads of the other fingers. From Orient to Western Europe, there was no grip like it. Not the Mecs in Paris or the stiletto in Naples. Even the many variations of tuck fist grip so prevalent in the American west, never used the thumb as the compressor. And yet this was a highly logical grip for a blade, allowing a good downward stroke.
Remo saw it coming from Willingham's flabby stomach, the slight twitch that meant he was getting his back into the thrust. And then he stopped at the top of the stroke as if generating power, which would be logical because a stone knife needed tremendous force to crack a chestbone.
"Now," said Willingham, his body tightened like a spring on the flicker of explosion. "Who sent you?"
"Snow White and the seven dwarfs. Or is it dwarves?"
"We will mutilate Valerie."