"Orderly!" the doctor shouted.
"No," Smith whispered. "You don't understand."
"Orderly!"
Smith was only vaguely aware of another form rushing forward. "Please," he said. "You can't—"
And then the doctor was lying on the floor in the empty corridor, and Smith felt himself being lifted into the air and carried outside in a manner so gentle that it felt as though he was riding a cloud.
The yellow shape of a taxi loomed in front of him, and the next moment, it seemed, he was inside, being jostled into the white uniform he recognized as belonging to the doctor who had stopped him.
"It is not an attractive garment, but it does close in the back, o Emperor," Chiun said, visibly embarrassed.
"How did you find—"
Chiun held up a hand. "Conserve your strength. Suffice it to say you are not the only man who rests this night in a hospital."
Smith smiled. "Folcroft," he said.
The vision of the gray-gloved hand came back to him, weaving, distorted, as if seen from underwater. The smallest hand...
And then he permitted the painless blackness of unconsciousness to take over.
?Chapter Eleven
Remo made it up the almost sheer cliff face leading to the Peruvina mansion in twenty minutes. It would have taken a mountain climber in full gear an hour to make the journey; a normal man, three times that. Obviously the owner of the plantation didn't welcome drop-in visitors.
The view from the top, at the front of the house, was breathtaking. Nearly 1200 feet below, the army of laborers, prodded on by a half-dozen field bosses, stooped over the acres of coffee plants. The air was rarified and clean.
West of the cliff, Remo could make out the copse of trees where he had left Thompson. The pilot would most likely never regain consciousness before he died. But if he did, Remo thought, he would at least be aware of spending his last moments in a beautiful place with good air and the sound of birds singing.
He walked into the house through an open side door. It was magnificent, the home of a king. One wall, made of curved sheet glass, looked directly over the cliff, so that from the inside the house appeared to be floating, baseless, in the sky. The enormous room he was standing in was richly appointed with fine, tasteful furniture and works of art of a quality and antiquity usually reserved for museums.
Remo followed the long corridor leading into the interior of the house. The place seemed empty. He saw room after room of magnificent tapestries, priceless collections of English and Chinese porcelains, ancient scrolls glittering with gold leaf painted by the Japanese masters of the eleventh century. Peruvina was a far cry from Amfat Hassam's gaudy finery. Whoever owned the plantation evidently was accustomed to wealth.
The corridor led him into a dimly lit room redolent of old leather. The walls were lined with first-edition volumes and scholarly works in both Spanish and English.
Who lived here? Remo wondered as his hand brushed against the polished, rust-colored wood of an enormous Cuban mahogany desk. His footfalls were silent on the deep gray carpet. Who was the master of Peruvina?
"You are looking for someone, señor?" a woman's throaty voice whispered from the doorway. In the deep silence, it sounded to Remo like the din of cannon. He caught his breath.
She was beautiful, one of those women you only see in ads for liquor. Five-foot-seven or so, every inch of it perfect, with thick curly black hair and green-blue eyes that got hotter as she narrowed them. Beneath the eyes there was a nose straight and aristocratic enough to have been the masterpiece of some Latin plastic surgeon, but somehow Remo didn't think so. There was something in the ripe mouth, in the carriage of her breasts, that suggested she'd never been less than perfect, and knew it.
In her manicured hands was a pistol, a chrome and mother of pearl Rohm RG-7 .22 caliber.
"If I were you, I'd get a better gun," Remo said.
"Oh, jes?" She fired. Straight into the Shakespeare first folio Remo had been standing in front of.
"Jes indeed," Remo said.
She smiled. "You are a man of humor, señor. I like that," she said. "Although you are very quick. I do not know if I like that so much in a man." Watching Remo, she slowly laid down the weapon on a small table. She folded her arms across her chest and caressed herself languidly. The movement made her breasts swell over the low neckline of her dress.
"I am Esmeralda," she said in a way that made Remo's mouth feel as though he hadn't swallowed in days. "Why are you here?"
He tried to clear his head. She was wearing perfume. Or something. Spanish Fly, maybe, Remo thought stupidly. Digitalis. Something that made standing seem like the wrong position for them both to be in.
"I want to see the owner of this place."
The impossibly rich mouth curved more deeply. "Well?" She spread her arms. "How much more do you wish to see?"
"You run Peruvina?"
"You expected maybe Juan Valdez?"
He looked at the splendor around them. "Alone?"
"This was my father's house before he died," she said. "Peruvina has belonged to my family for centuries. But I am its last descendant."
She. Belloc had taken orders from a woman. But hell, Remo thought as Esmeralda shimmied out of the loose garment she was wearing, did it have to be this woman?
"The beans," he said, averting his eyes. It was difficult. Her breasts were high and full, the nipples erect. The skin of her belly was taut and tan, and the place above her long legs glistened with anticipation.
"There's a drug in the coffee beans that comes from Peruvina and nowhere else. It's heroin. I want to know how you get it into the coffee."
She moved closer to him. With each slow step her flanks rippled like a leopard's. He had never seen any woman so unself-conscious about her nakedness.
"When I tell you— and I will," she purred, "you will understand many things." She nuzzled his ear. "Perhaps you will be angry. Perhaps only indifferent. You will tell your government, whomever you work for, or else you will steal the secret of the beans for your own profit. I do not know which." She ran her soothing, hypnotic hands through his hair and down his back as she continued to tease him softly with her words. "What I do know is that things will be forever changed between us. We will no longer be strangers. The fire here, in our bodies, will be cooler, because we will have spoken too much. It will be like the marriage, yes? With friendship but not the magic of first love."
She pulled off his shirt and rubbed herself on him like a cat. Hot, she was. Silky. Unknown. Dangerous. "Let us enjoy each other once, when the magic is strong."
It was wrong. Remo knew that. There was a dying man in a grove of trees outside, Remo was on assignment, and Esmeralda had probably ordered the deaths of nearly a score of people, including his own. Dead wrong. All of his discipline fought against it.
And lost. They sank together to the plush carpet. The fire inside them both burnt into incandescent, uncontrollable flame. Her mouth opened for him.
A door slammed, bringing Esmeralda gasping to attention, followed by the sound of heavy footfalls.
"Caramba, my husband," she squeaked.
"Come on," Remo grumbled. "This is like a rotten movie." He struggled into his clothes. "You said you were alone," he complained.
"No," she whispered excitedly. "I said I was the last descendant of my family. My husband, he is of another family."
"Terrific," Remo said. "Fine time for a semantics lesson."
"He'll kill you."