She watched as Chiun and Remo knelt on the floor next to the iron ring. Then they each launched a hand slash at the ring. The two blows landed only a fraction of a second after each other. The vibrations that Chiun started in the metal, Remo interrupted; the metal swallowed its own vibrations, and the inch-thick-ring screeched in pain, then splintered into fragments.
Then, as if the locks were not there, the iron bands on her wrists and ankles were broken, and the chains fell heavily to the floor.
Maggie straightened up, painfully, rubbing her wrists which had been chafed raw by her writhing movements on the point of the guard's gun. She stared disbelievingly at the broken shards of steel on the floor, the remnants of the manacles that had held her so tightly.
Then, Remo had her by the elbow and said, "Come. Nemeroff is waiting for us."
She followed Remo and Chiun out of the cell, then stopped, and went back in. The guard's gun lay at his fingertips. It was a .45 automatic. She picked it up.
"I may need this," she said to Remo.
"Don't get in our way. It'll be safer."
"For whom, Mr. Kenny?" she asked.
"For all of us. And I'm not Mr. Kenny."
They moved quickly up the stairs leading to the main floor, Chiun leading the way. By the time Remo and Maggie had reached the first floor, Chiun was pressing the secret button for the elevator. Remo asked him: "How did you find that?"
"It gives off vibrations. One must listen for them."
"I didn't hear a thing," Remo said.
"Of course not. The perpetually open mouth impedes the efficiency of the sometimes-opened ear," Chiun said and led them into the elevator.
Remo pressed the button marked V.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Every seat at Baron Nemeroff's conference table had been filled.
From all over the world they had come, white men, black men, yellow men. They wore the costumes of their native countries: dashikis from Africa, cotton suits from Asia, dark blue mohair from the United States.
Among them, the thirty-odd men present had accounted for thousands of deaths on a one-by-one basis; they had sent thousands of girls to the brothels; through them, tens of thousands of adults and children had fallen prey to the perils of the needle.
They thought of themselves as indispensable businessmen in an indispensable business. And across all the lines of all their businesses ran the influence of Baron Isaac Nemeroff and when he called, they all came.
Now they all listened.
Overhead, the helicopters flew with their slow flapping sound, occasionally shrouding the room in a flash of shadow as one passed over the multi-coloured, glass dome set over the conference table.
Angelo Fabio, the biggest man in the United States was toying with a pencil between his fingertips. Nemeroff's idea seemed to make good sense to him. Occasionally, he would look up and his eyes would meet those of Fiavorante
Pubescio who had come from California or Pietro Scubisci who had come from New York, wearing his dirty suit and carrying his omnipresent bag of peppers. He would nod and they would nod in agreement.
Still something nagged at Fabio; he wished he could pinpoint it.
Nemeroff stood at the head of the table, towering over the seated men, his blotchy face flushed with excitement as he spoke to them.
"Consider, gentlemen. Our own nation. Under crime's flag. Where no laws will be enforced that we do not want enforced. Where poppies will grow freely in the fields. Where hunted men from anywhere on the face of the earth can find shelter and refuge."
He looked around the table, from man to man, to murmurs of approvals. One man spoke. He was short and thin; his skin was yellow; his white suit was wrinkle-free; but Dong Hee, crime's undisputed king in the Far East, ran a finger down the crease in his sleeve as he spoke:
"How do we insure this Asiphar's loyalty?"
Nemeroff noted the "we," and with a faint smile turned to the tiny Korean.
"If you will look at the screen up over the elevator door, gentlemen. Behind you, Mr. Hee." Nemeroff leaned forward, pressed a control button imbedded hi the wood of the table, causing a plywood section of the wall over the elevator door to slide back revealing a six-foot-square television screen.
Men pushed their chairs back from the table, so they could swing their bodies around and look at the screen.
Nemeroff pressed another button. Immediately, the sound of a voice was heard. "Oh, do it. Do it some more." It was a man's voice, thick and guttural, and it was pleading. Then the screen lightened into a picture of
Asiphar, his fat body a study in black against the white sheets, his body being violated by a fair-skinned blonde girl armed with a hand vibrator. They were naked.
Nemeroff let it run for thirty seconds, then turned down the sound, but let the picture continue.
He cleared his throat and eyes turned back to him.
"That is your soon-to-be-President Asiphar," he said coldly. "He is a swine. He will do anything for the promise of a woman."
Dong Hee spoke again. His English was precise and delicate, as were his features. "That is so, Baron, I am sure. But when he is president, what guarantee will we have that… satisfying his aberrations will still be enough?" As he spoke, his right side and shoulder flickered with the bluish colour from the TV screen. "After all, as president, he should be able to make his choice of women. He will have wealth, position. Will he really need us to be his pimps?"
The others had been watching Hee with interest. Now they turned to Nemeroff for his answer.
"You make a very good point, Mr. Hee." As he looked around the room, he saw a puzzled look on Fabio's face. "True enough, as president of Scambia, Asiphar would have certain power. But as for wealth? Whatever his dreams are, they will not be realized.
"For the last five weeks, a crew of workmen has been laying a sewer next to the wall of the east wing of the Scambian presidential palace. They are no ordinary sewer workmen; they are my men.
"When President Dashiti is assassinated, at that very moment, the national treasury of Scambia will be removed from its vaults, in the east wing of the palace. Our Asiphar will find that he is the head of a country without funds even to pay for its president's funeral. He will be on an allowance. From us."
There were murmurs of approval around the table. Hee nodded his head to Nemeroff in satisfaction. Fabio remembered what he wanted to ask:
"What about PJ Kenny? Why is he here?"
"I was coming to that, Mr. Fabio, because that is another guarantee of Asiphar's cooperation." Nemeroff slowly scanned the table, meeting individually as many pairs of eyes as he could, before speaking again. "Those of you who are from the United States have, I am sure, heard of Mr. PJ Kenny. Certainly, you have heard of his work. I daresay many of you from other nations have also.
"It is my proposal to keep Mr. Kenny in Scambia as our resident manager, as it were. He will guarantee President Asiphar's cooperation, because Asiphar will be given to understand that if he steps out of line, Mr. Kenny will slit his throat. Mr. Kenny's presence will have another benefit too. I think it would have a dampening effect upon the ambitions of anyone who might try to display his entrepreneurship in Scambia." The words were soft and measured, but the meaning was blunt and hard, even to the Americans who had never heard the word entrepreneur. Anyone who stepped out of line, who tried to get cute and take over the Scambia setup, would be killed. By PJ Kenny. Who never missed.
"Does that answer your question, Mr. Fabio?"
Fabio grunted.
Nemeroff added, "Mr. Kenny is in the castle right now and I expect him here momentarily. I would like to caution some of you who have seen him in the past that you will not recognize him. He has undergone plastic surgery recently, to facilitate his departure from his own country. He will not look like the man you may remember."
"Just so he works like the man we remember."