"C'mon, willya, Smitty, just talk for a minute."
And then a screeching interruption. And the voice of Harold W. Smith himself.
"Remo, hang up and reach me on another line."
"I don't have one."
"This is important."
"It's always important."
"There is a national emergency regarding Russia. Now will you get to another phone before someone gets a fix on us?"
"Can we get another line?" Remo called out to Diaz, who was, out of courtesy, standing away from the table, leaning against an elegant carved stone railing looking at his mountains.
"I think so," said Diaz. "Yes, I see the problem. They're picking up certain waves. Yes, I could have assured you there would be a problem."
"You did," said Remo.
"Who is that?" asked Smith. The voice was horrified.
"Diaz," said Remo, hanging up.
"I think your commander will not like the fact that I heard things."
"Yeah. He'll hate it," said Remo, smiling.
Diaz called an aide and was very specific about the type of telephone he wanted. This one would use a different transmission system, which Remo did not understand in the least.
He did understand Smith, however. Smitty's normal, taciturn, dry behavior had turned hysterical. He spent three minutes explaining the dangers of letting the organization be compromised. Even more important than the success of any mission, Remo had been made to understand, was that the organization never be made known to the public.
For its purpose was to do outside the law what America could not do inside. It was to carry out the survival missions of the nation that the nation could no longer perform. It was an admission in its basest form that America did not work within the Constitution.
"All right. All right. I understand, Smitty. But first, I'll be killing Diaz, so that information, whatever it is, will die with him, and second, he has a wonderful idea. I like it."
"Remo, do you understand that Diaz is so dangerous precisely because he offers people wonderful ideas? That's how he ruined the narcotics squads of three police departments. "
"Yeah, but we're missing the big guys. There's this bank in Boston that-"
"Remo, neither the bank nor Mr. Diaz matters. There is something coming in from Russia that may be the most dangerous threat to our country ever."
Remo put a hand over the receiver.
"I think you've been dropped to second place, Diaz," said Remo.
"In these circumstances it might be welcome," said Diaz, toasting Remo again.
Remo took his hand off the speaker.
"You're already having conversations with Guenther Largos Diaz that you're not sharing with me. If that doesn't tell you something, Remo, nothing will."
"What is this big deal from Russia?"
"We don't know. But something big is happening."
"When you find out, let me know, Smitty. In the meantime, Guenther and I are going to Boston," said Remo, and he hung up.
"Shall we take a slow boat?" asked Diaz.
"Nah. You bought yourself a day at most," said Remo.
"Then to a wonderful last day," said Diaz.
The flight to Boston in the Diaz jet was luxurious. The 747 had beautiful women and movies and couches and deep pile rugs.
But Diaz found Remo more interesting than these pleasures. He sent the women to the rear of the plane while he talked with the thin man with the thick wrists. So well appointed was the plane that it carried its own tailor and Diaz offered Remo new clothes instead of his bloodied dark T-shirt, gray slacks, and loafers. Remo asked for a new dark T-shirt and a new pair of gray slacks.
"You will have it by the time we reach Boston. I gather your agency is not listed in the line of command in Washington. "
"Right."
"I would gather very few know of it, less than a handful." Remo nodded.
"But let me take another guess," said Diaz. "Because I have quite an extensive knowledge of what I thought were all of your country's law-enforcement structures."
Remo nodded for Diaz to guess away.
"An agency could not remain secret using many personnel, least of all those who kill like you."
Remo nodded.
"So I would estimate that there are fewer than three of you in the entire organization, three who are licensed to kill."
"I never knew someone needed a license."
"Governments give them to agents. The only way your organization could have escaped detection was with a very small enforcement arm."
"Are you trying to find out that if you kill me, there won't be someone else coming after you?"
"No, as a matter of fact. I've given that up. I don't think I'll have to. I am more valuable to your people alive than dead. And I think you people and I can make a deal. I would like to meet this Smitty."
"No deal. He'd have a heart attack."
The boardroom of the Boston Institutional Bank and Trust Company of America seemed unchanged from the nineteenth century. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany. The painted portraits showed rigid, moral New Englanders casting their gazes down as if considering whether the viewer were good enough to be in the room.
These were the framers of the American Constitution, and the arbiters of America's moral standards. These were the men who, when they decided slavery must go, helped finance the Civil War. Of course, these same men had built their family fortunes on buying slaves in Africa, selling them for molasses in the Caribbean, and turning that molasses into rum in New England, which they sold for slaves in Africa. It was called the golden triangle. And it made them and their descendants rich beyond imagination.