"Just your body, then?" said Reddington musingly. He excused himself for backing away from Valerie Gardner, and she was the first to see the .45 caliber automatic come out of Reddington's neat pinstriped jacket. She realized she was between the gun and the lunatic behind her and all she said was "To hell with it." A man from the Justice Department was making her a shield in a shooting gallery. Her, Valerie Gardner, she had to go and meet the only US Attorney who doubled as a hit man.
"Go ahead and shoot the damned thing," she yelled.
"Come on, fella. Is this any way to act?" Remo said.
"Right," Valerie shrieked, wheeling from Reddington to Remo and back. "Right. That's the way to act. Shoot the damned thing. Get this homicidal maniac before he gets us all."
"Quiet," said Remo. "I'm going to get to you later." He smiled at Reddington. "We should sit and reason together," he said hopefully.
Reddington backed off a step, beyond the reach of Remo's arm and leg, so he could not be disarmed by a sudden move.
"There is nothing to discuss," he said, "with one who has laid hands on the high priests of Uctut."
"What priests?" said Remo. "Those loonies who were trying to open my chest without a key?"
"Shoot," shrieked Valerie. "Shoot."
Reddington ignored her. His eyes seemed fixed on Remo with a cold stare, his lids too icy to blink.
"Through the ages. there has been Uctut," he said to Remo. "And there have been those of us who have defended him against the desecrators who would do our God evil."
"Wait a minute," Remo said. "You were the guy standing guard outside the congressman's office when he got it, weren't you?"
"Yes. And I lifted his heart from his chest myself," Reddington said.
Remo nodded. "I thought so. I wondered how a flock of two-hundred-pound canaries could have sneaked past a guard."
"And now it is your turn," Reddington said.
"Nixon made me do it," Remo said.
"It is past excuses."
"Bobby Kennedy?" Remo offered. "Jack Kennedy? J. Edgar Hoover?"
"It will not do," said Reddington.
"Don't say I didn't try," Remo said.
Reddington backed up another step.
"Shoot, will you?" yelled Valerie. "Off this violent lunatic."
Reddington held the gun professionally, near his right hip. This was the way taught by the Justice Department to prevent its men from being disarmed by someone just reaching out and slapping or kicking the gun away.
But for every counter there is a counter, and when Remo went into a sudden move to Reddington's left, Reddington found that the gun could not home in on Remo as it should because Reddington's own hip was in the way. He wheeled to his left to keep the gun on Remo, but when he turned, Remo was not there anymore. He turned - again, this time to the rear, and there he found Remo, but he had no chance to celebrate his discovery with a one-gun salute because the gun, still held properly against his hip, was pushed back above the hip, through his side, past his abdominal cavity, and into the center of Reddington's right kidney, where it came to rest.
Reddington fell, eyes still iced over.
"Killer! Killer!," Valerie shrieked.
"Quiet," Remo said. "You're going to get yours."
Bobbie looked up from the television set. "Do it now," she said, "Get rid of this twit and let's go out and hit a few. There's an all-night court over on the East Side. Clay court too. I don't like playing on hard surfaces. And you don't get a true bounce on grass. Unless you've got a big serve. If you've got a big serve, then I'd probably give you a better game on grass because it'd slow down your serve."
"I don't play tennis," Remo said.
"That's revolting," Bobbi said. "This one was right. He should have killed you."
"Quiet. Both of you," Remo said. "I'm trying to think."
"This should be good," Valerie said.
"Think about taking up tennis," Bobbi said.
Remo decided instead to think about how much he remembered the boy scout adviser who had come to the orphanage in Newark to start a scout troop. All the orphans over twelve, Remo included, had joined because the nuns had ordered them to. That had lasted only until the nuns found out that the scoutmaster was teaching the boys how to start fires with flint and steel, and three mattress fires in an old wooden building with a flash point somewhat lower than butane gas convinced the nuns to evict the boy scouts and think about affiliation with a 4-H club.
Remo had never learned how to build a fire with flint and steel. He hadn't been able to steal a lump of flint from any of the other boys, and the little pieces that came in cigarette lighters were too small to get a good grip on.
But Remo had learned knots. The scoutmaster had been a whiz on knots. Bowlines and sheepshanks and clove hitches. Square knots. Right over left and left over right. Remo thought about those knots. Bowlines were best, he decided. The knot was designed for tying together two different thicknesses of rope and this would come in very handy when he trussed up Bobbi and Valerie with the thick pieces of drapery rope and the thin cord from the Venetian blinds.
"We'll scream for help," Valerie threatened.
"You do that and I'll tie a sheepshank on you, too," said Remo.
He tied up Valerie with bowlines. He tied another drapery cord over her mouth in a gag and fastened it with a clove hitch. It came loose so he changed it to a square knot tied tightly behind her neck.
"You?" he said to Bobbi.
"Actually I was planning to be quiet," she said.
"Good," said Remo, tying her up but leaving off the gag. "The old gentleman is sleeping inside. If you're unlucky enough to wake him up before he chooses to rise, it's going to be game, set, and match point for you, kid."
"I understand," she said, but Remo wasn't listening. He was wondering what had gone wrong with the clove hitch he had tried to use to tie Valerie's mouth. He tried it again when he packaged Reddington for his Alaskan sabbatical and was pleased when the knots held very tightly.
It gave him a warm feeling of accomplishment that he kept all the way to the railway station, where he mailed Reddington to Alaska, and on a long all-night walk through Central Park, where he fed a mugger to the ducks, and all the way back to his hotel suite, when he found out that Bobbi was gone.
She had been kidnapped.
CHAPTER TEN
Chiun was sitting in the center of the floor watching television. Valerie was trussed in a corner of the room.
"Where's Bobbi?" Remo said.
Valerie mumbled through her gag. "Gree--grawkgra. Neargh, graw, graw."