"Yeah," Remo laughed. "I used my special cheese cutting knife for that job." Then he added, "Ho, ho, ho."
"Hee, hee, hee," laughed Fabio, remembering the one hundred twenty-seven pieces of the remains of his brother, Matthew, whose crime had been that he held up to ridicule the son of another gangland leader.
"Ha, ha, ha," whined Baron Nemeroff. Then he turned the smile and laugh off as if by a switch, and said,
"Come, Mr. Fabio. We will go to the meeting room upstairs. Some of our mutual friends have already arrived."
He stepped toward the picture on the wall and pressed the button hidden in the moulding of the frame. The door slid quietly open.
He stepped aside to allow Fabio to enter first, and turned to Remo: "The man-O'Brien-is in the study. Perhaps he can tell you more about this Williams. What he looks like or what to look for."
Remo nodded and waited until Nemeroff had entered the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The painting moved softly back over the door opening.
Remo turned and walked across the parquet floor, his tennis shoes noiseless on the highly polished wood. The door was a giant wooden panel, deeply carved with elaborate filigrees, but it pushed open as though it had been hinged on ball bearings.
The room was dark. Remo found himself looking at the stark silhouette of a man, who stared out the first floor window toward the end of the house. Over his shoulder, through the window, Remo could see a red helicopter coming into view. He realized the man was following the helicopter's flight with his eyes. Though neither knew, it was the craft that had taken Vice President Asiphar the few miles to the Scambian Presidential palace where he expected, within forty-eight hours, to occupy the presidential bed.
Remo moved up behind the man, close enough to touch him, and he said, "O'Brien?"
The man wheeled and as he turned, released the heavy drapes he had been holding, and the room again leaked into semi-darkness. But Remo could see the man's face was startled, and the man said: "Boy, you gave me a fright, sneaking up on me like that."
"Tennis shoes," Remo said, as if that explained it. "The baron tells me you know this Remo Williams?"
"No," O'Brien said, "I don't know him. But I saw him once." He brushed past Remo and walked back to a small chair alongside a desk, and plopped down heavily into it.
Remo turned, the sun glistening between the drapes now at his back and shining into O'Brien's face.
"What's he look like?" Remo asked.
"Well, when I saw him, he was dressed like a priest," O'Brien said.
"That's not going to help me much."
"Wait. I'm trying. He had brown eyes, but not like regular brown eyes. They were deep, like they had no black. All deep-coloured. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"And he had a hard face. Like he was dressed like a priest, but he sure didn't look like any priest. His nose was straight and he was the kind of guy that looked right in your eye."
O'Brien squinted to try to get a better look at the man standing in front of the window, but all he could see was the outline of his head and body.
"All right," Remo said, "cut the art class lectures. How big was he?"
"He was a big guy, but not that big. Maybe six feet. Not heavy either. But big thick wrists, like he worked on a chain gang or something."
Remo moved closer to O'Brien's chair. O'Brien was casually inspecting his toes. Remo leaned onto the desk top.
"Yeah, go on," he said.
O'Brien looked up, squinting. "As I said, he had thick wrists. Like yours," he added, glancing down at Remo's hands on the desk. "And there was something else."
"What's that?"
"It was his mouth. It like didn't have any lips. It was thin and hard looking and you just knew he was a bad-ass. That was some bad mouth," O'Brien said. He looked up and squinted again into Remo's shadowed face, reflecting slowly, "It was like yours."
"And his eyes were brown?" Remo asked.
"Yeah. Brown… like yours."
"And his hair?"
"It was dark," O'Brien said. "Dark . . . like yours." He jumped up from the chair and his hand flashed to his side, but then his hand didn't work anymore and he was back in his chair, and a pain more excruciating than any he had ever felt before was happening along his partially-crippled right arm, and the man who thought he was PJ Kenny said, "What the hell's the matter with you? What are you trying to pull a gun on me for?"
O'Brien said, "Don't give me that. How'd you get here?"
"What are you talking about?" Remo said. "I work for the baron."
"Sure," O'Brien sneered. "He just went ahead and hired Remo Williams."
"Remo Williams? What the hell are you talking about?"
"You're him, man. Maybe you can shit the baron but you can't shit me. You're Remo Williams."
"And you're nuts. I've been assigned to kill Williams."
"Well, just cut your wrists, man," O'Brien said. "And Williams'll die of the bleeding."
"You're dreaming," Remo said.
"Look, Williams," O'Brien said. "I don't know what you're pulling here, but how about letting me in on it? I can probably be some help to you."
Remo was busy trying to sort out what O'Brien had said, but it was all wrapped up in darkness. He was PJ Kenny. But this man said he wasn't. This man would know and he said that he was Remo Williams. But how could he be?
"I just had plastic surgery," Remo said. "It must just be a coincidence."
"No way," O'Brien said. "How about it? You and me? Fair split?"
A fair split. Remo thought about it for a second, O'Brien's hand went toward his gun again, and Remo suddenly hated this man who had brought confusion into a life that was simplifying into the daily humdrum of the professional assassin. So he reached high into the air and brought the side of his fist down against the top of O'Brien's skull and heard the bones cracking like ice cubes splintering in a warm mix and O'Brien slumped forward in his chair, dead.
Remo let the body fall heavily onto the floor.
Remo Williams? How could it be? He was PJ Kenny. Nemeroff had known him. Maggie had known him. How could he be Williams?
But there was the chink. Had the chink recognized him when he stepped into that door at the hotel? Had the chink known he was Remo Williams? Then why hadn't he said something? Why had he just stood there, waiting to be killed by PJ Kenny?
He tried to consider the moves and every move came back to Chiun, to that old Oriental calmly awaiting death in his cell, humiliatingly bound, wrist and ankle to the floor, and Remo knew his answer was there and he would have to confront the old man.