70
them said that America should be more responsive to Arab demands because of Arab oil. There were many articles about how America was paying a high price for oil because the Arabs had been offended. There were ominous threats of cutoffs of oil by the Arabs.
Then there was a five-part series about how America was being unfair to the Arabs by blaming them for using oil as blackmail. It was written by Melody Wake-field.
At the time the Iran-Iraq war broke out, splitting Arab countries into different sides, Melody Wakefield covered a convention of Arab-Americans in Boston. Melody Wakefield asked 107 incisive questions at the convention. Not one of them mentioned the Iran-Iraq war. Most of them had to do with how unfairly the Arabs were being treated in the news media in America. The rest had to do with how unfairly the Arabs were being treated in the Middle East. A few had to do with major Arab contributions to world civilization and why Americans wouldn't recognize them.
There was only one question in the 107 that didn't sound as if it had been drafted by the Arabs' public relations staff. That question was, where was the ladies' room. It was the one question that didn't get an answer.
The Blade called the Melody Wakefield series hardhitting and explosive, "telling you what some people don't want you to know about the Middle East." The implication was that there were vast forces fighting the courageous truth of Melody Wakefield.
Remo gave up and called the office manager, who had returned to her desk.
"I can't get what I want from this thing," he said. "The media up here is all aberration."
"That's not so," she said. "It only seems like it. The computer just gives you the bad parts, not the good work."
"How long would the good work take?" asked Remo. "A minute?"
"I would not expect you to understand, sir. Anyone 71
who could treat such a kind, decent, gentle person with
such depraved lack of gratitude certainly isn't fit to
pass judgment on the media of our city." "Who?" said Remo. "Who have I mistreated?" Chiun cleared his throat in the background. He
smiled and the office manager brought him another cup
of ginseng tea.
Bradford Wakefield III waited for the telephone call from his contact, telling him that all had been taken care of with the two new scientists at MUT. He waited past noon and past three p.m., when his granddaughter, Melody, called from Hamidi Arabia.
Melody didn't know whether to do a ten-part series for The Blade on how the West defamed Islam or a twenty-part series on how the West defamed Islam.
She had plenty of time to think about it in Hamidi Arabia because no mullah would speak to her in the clothes she was wearing. She had also been told to read the Koran, but she thought it was boring. And one thing the world was not allowed to do was to bore a Wakefield.
"Melody, I am waiting for an important call," said Bradford.
"You mean I'm not important, Grandpapa?"
"Not as important as this call I'm waiting for."
"Grandpapa, I am in the greatest revolution of all time, where the wealth of the West has been transferred to a Third World country. Now, that is important," she said.
Bradford understood what she meant by a transfer of wealth. That meant little old ladies in Maine keeping their homes at 60 degrees in the dead of winter and paying ten times as much for their heat anyway. When a Wakefield referred to the wealth of the West that had to be shared with developing countries, it was not Wakefield wealth but the single homes of middle-class families, the long summer vacations by car, people's color television sets, and inexpensive and abundant food. This was the transfer of wealth they were talking
72
about. OPEC profits just made the Wakefield fortune larger.
"Melody, I regret that the transfer of wealth from the West might be our own wealth if you don't hang up."
The phone clicked as dead as if it had been cut by a razor blade. Melody was a good girl, her grandfather thought. She was only trying to do for the Arabs what her earlier book had done for the Vietnamese and Cambodians, when she proved beyond argument that the only thing wrong with those countries was American's presence in them.
When America had left and the Cambodian communists engaged in a population slaughter unseen since Adolf Hitler, The Blade, through Melody Wakefield's typewriter, proved that it was not the communists' fault for the killing, but America's because America had bombed that country years before.
When the Vietnamese took to the boats to escape their "liberators" from the north, The Blade proved that boat people weren't really Vietnamese at all, but Chinese money lenders. Melody's poisoned pen led the attack.
Melody loved revolutionary discipline for the masses and sometimes, Bradford knew, she only went to these countries to watch revolutionary discipline in action. She had her own whip for revolutionary discipline. She carried it in her traveling bags or sometimes stuffed into her high leather boots.
Bradford looked at his watch. It was four P.M. and still no call. He went to his stone patio to look out over his own rocky shoreline of Mamtasket. He paced until four-thirty p.m., when his stomach started heaving.
The paper had been trying to reach him for an hour, but that wasn't the phone call he wanted. The paper phoned again. And when Bradford ordered his butler to tell his newspaper not to bother him anymore, the butler said it was about a killing.
"What?" said Wakefield. "Give me the phone."
The managing editor told him there had been a 73
racial killing near MUT, across the river from Boston. Two blacks had been found murdered, stuffed into a trash cart and left along Memorial Drive.
"Did one of them ... did one of them . . ." said Bradford, his voice choking, his legs becoming weak. "Did one of them have very large hands?"
"Yes. He was identified as the civil rights activist who only wanted freedom for his people—Bubba. We helped get him out of the racist oppressor jail."
Bradford felt weak. He hadn't felt so weak since a Jew and Catholic and somebody from Ohio had tried to move into Mamtasket.
He hadn't minded the Jew. He was quiet and could be ignored. The Catholic was in industrialist who was called "the rapacious beast of Wall Street," so he and Bradford had something in common. But the family from Ohio laughed loudly and sang songs. Right out in the open. One of them ate a hot dog on a bun, and the father had been raised on a farm where they grew things. They went to football games. And none of the games was Harvard. Their youngest daughter had those big Midwest things on her chest called breasts. No Wakefields had them. They had decent old line New England breasts. Egg size. Fried egg.
Bradford hung op on his editor and shakily made his way into his study and phoned the one person he hated to give bad news to.
"Hello," said Friend at the other end of the line.
"The initial attempt on the two new scientists failed," said Wakefield.
"Fine," said Friend cheerily.
"You're not bothered?"
"No."
"But I thought you didn't allow failure."
"Not at all. How foolish I would be if I insisted on perfection. Do you know how unreal that is?"
"Then you have a contingency plan for a second attempt?"