Devlin didn't move. Bite it off, goddam you, Remo thought. Otherwise, I'll have to kill you right here. And O'Brien, too.
He shoved the crucifix closer to Devlin's face.
"The Lord will protect you," he said. If you don't take that pill, you're going to need the Lord. He waved the crucifix in front of Devlin, who looked at him, doubt on his finely-featured face, and then shrugged imperceptibly and reached out both hands, taking the crucifix, carrying it to his mouth, and kissing the feet of the statue.
"Eternal life will be yours," Remo said, and winked at Devlin, who did not know that for him, eternity would end in fifteen minutes.
"Can you find your way out, Father?" O'Brien asked.
"Yes," Remo answered.
"Then I'll take the prisoner back," O'Brien said. "Good day, Father."
"Good day. Good day, Mr. Devlin." Remo turned to the door, glancing down at the crucifix, noting with relief that the black pill had gone. Devlin was a dead man. Good.
He could not resist the challenge. At the top of the stairs, he waited until the guard downstairs had looked up into the reflecting mirror to check the staircase. Then, hitching up his robe, Remo moved into the narrow stairwell, his body skittering from side to side, his feet moving noiselessly down the steps. The guard looked, unconcerned, into the staircase mirror again, and Remo broke his rhythm, melting into a vague shadow-shape on the wall. The guard looked down again at his papers.
Remo coughed. The guard looked up, startled to see someone there.
"Oh, Father? I didn't see you come down."
"No," Remo agreed pleasantly. It took three more minutes for him to get through the penitentiary's infallible security system.
He was soaked with perspiration by the time he reentered the bright sunshine of the day, and he was in such a hurry to get distance between himself and the prison that he did not bother to notice the two men across the street, who matched their pace to his and followed him at a leisurely gait.
CHAPTER THREE
Remo pushed through the revolving door of the Palazzo Hotel, then stepped quickly across the marble lobby, toward a bank of elevators in the corner.
A bellhop leaned against a small counter, watching him. As Remo stood by the elevators, he came up alongside.
"Sorry, Father," he said briskly, "no panhandling."
Remo smiled gently. "I've come, my son, to perform last rites."
"Oh," the pimply-faced bellhop said, disappointed that his show of power had failed. "Who's dead?"
"You will be if you don't get your ugly, bugging face out of my way," Remo said. The bellhop looked at him, this time carefully, and the monk was no longer smiling gently. The face was hard and angular; the expression would have shattered crystal. The bellhop got his face out of there.
Remo rode the elevator to the eleventh floor, giving a blessing to an old woman who entered on the seventh floor and got out on the eighth. Then he was in the hallway on the eleventh floor, heading for one of the expensive suites on the left side of the corridor.
He paused outside the door, heard the usual melange of voices from inside, and with a small sigh unlocked the door and stepped in.
At the end of a small hallway was a living room. From the doorway, Remo could see the back of an aged Oriental, seated in a lotus position on the floor, his eyes riveted to a television set whose picture was pale and washed out in the bright noontime sun.
The man did not move as Remo entered the room. He did not speak.
Remo walked up behind him until he was only a foot away. He leaned over, close to the man's head, and then shouted at the top of his voice:
"Hello, Chiun."
Not a muscle moved; not a nerve reacted. Then- slowly-the Oriental's head lifted and in the mirror over the television, his eyes met Remo's. He lowered his eyes to Remo's brown robes, then said, "You will find the Salvation Army mission in the next street." He returned his eyes to the television set, playing forth its daytime drama of tragedy and suffering.
Remo shrugged and went into his bedroom to change. He was worried about Chiun. He had known the deadly little Korean for ten years now, ever since Chiun had been given the assignment by CURE to make Remo Williams the perfect human weapon. In those years, he had seen Chiun do things that defied belief. He had seen him smash his hand through walls, walk up the sides of buildings, destroy death machines, wipe out platoons of men, all by the strange harnessing of power in that frail eighty-year-old body.
But now, Remo feared, that body was running down, and with it, Chiun's spirit. He no longer seemed to care. He showed less interest in his training sessions with Remo. He seemed less anxious to cook a meal, to make sure that he and Remo were not poisoned by the dealers in dog meat who called themselves restaurateurs. He had even stopped his incessant lecturing and scolding of Remo. It seemed that all he wanted to do was to sit in front of the television and watch soap operas.
No doubt about it, Remo thought, as he peeled off the brown robe, uncovering nylon lavender briefs and undershirt. He's slipping. Well, why not? He's eighty years old. Shouldn't he slip?
It was all very logical, but what did it have to do with a force of nature? It was like saying the rain was slipping.
But he was slipping nevertheless. Yet, for the better part of those eighty years, Chiun had plied his trade very well. Better than any man before. Better, perhaps, than any man would ever do again. If there were a hall of fame for assassins, the central display belonged to Chiun. They could stick everybody else, Remo Williams included, in an outside alley.
Remo rolled the monk's robe up into a brown ball, wrapped it tightly with its own white rope, and dropped it into a wastepaper basket. From a wall-length closet, he took out a pair of mustard-coloured slacks and put them on. Then a light blue sports shirt. He kicked off the sandals and slid his feet into slip-on canvas boat-shoes.
He splashed skin-bracer on his face and neck, then walked back into the living room.
The telephone was ringing. Chiun studiously ignored it.
It would be Smith, the one, the only-thank God, the only Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of CURE.
Remo picked up the telephone.
"Palazzo Monastery," he said.
The lemony voice whined at him. "Don't be a smartass, Remo." Then, "And why are you staying at the Palazzo?"
"There was no room at the inn," Remo said. "Besides, you're paying for it. Therefore it gives me pleasure."
"Oh, you're very funny today," Smith said, and Remo could picture him twirling his thirty-nine-cent plastic letter opener and magnifying glass at his desk at Folcroft Sanatorium, the headquarters for CURE.
"Well, I don't feel funny," Remo growled. "I'm supposed to be on vacation, not running errands for some…"
Smith interrupted him. "Before you get abusive, put on the scrambler, please."
"Yeah, sure," Remo said. He put down the telephone and opened the drawer of the small end-table. In it were two plastic, foam-covered cylinders that resembled space-age earmuffs. Remo picked up one of them, looked at the back of it for identification, then snapped it on the earpiece of the phone. He snapped the other over the mouthpiece.
"Okay, they're on," he said. "Can I shout now?"
"Not yet," Smith said. "First set the dials on the back to number fourteen. Remember to set each one of them to fourteen. And then turn the units on. That's important too."
"Up yours," Remo mumbled as he held the telephone away from him and set the dials on the back of the scrambler units. It was CURE'S latest invention. A portable telephone scrambler system that defied interception, recording devices, and nosy switchboard operators.
Then Remo flicked the "on" switches and raised the phone back to his ear.
"All right," he said. "I'm ready."