"You people have cornered the market on ditzy secretaries," Remo commented to the studio heads. He avoided the seat, choosing instead to stand before the pair of soulless glass-and-chrome desks.
"And you are?" Bruce Marmelstein asked leadingly. His tone was frosty.
"Annoyed," Remo replied. "Where's Assola? Or Koala, according to your secretary. Or whatever the hell name he's going by today."
"Do you mean Mr. Albert Koala?" Hank Bindle asked icily.
"I thought the 'Al' was for 'Alvin,'" Bindle said to his partner.
Remo was looking at the two studio executives, a confused expression creeping across his features. It took him a moment to place them, but it suddenly came back to him.
Years before, while en route to a backup system in St. Martin, the files of CURE had been accidentally rerouted during a freak storm over the Atlantic, winding up in the computer of a Hollywood screenwriter. Without knowing what the information truly meant, the writer had fashioned into a screenplay some of the exploits of Remo and Chiun contained in the files. He had pitched the idea to a pair of producers who were as blind to the true nature of the files as the writer. Hank Bindle and Bruce Marmelstein.
Remo had been on assignment at the time, and so it was up to Harold Smith to deal with the producers and the writer. Remo had met them only briefly when he had accompanied Smith to L.A. to retrieve both the computer information and the various screenplays the writer had left with the producers.
Apparently since that long-ago visit these two men had risen above their position as lowly producers. They were now in charge of an entire studio. With what little he knew of the pair, Remo was glad he didn't own stock in Taurus.
"Yes, well," Hank Bindle droned slowly, "in spite of what Ian might have led you to believe, we are not in the habit of passing out the locations of our business associates. Now if you don't mind, we are very deeply involved at the moment in the creative process."
"Yeah," Remo said with a nod. "Your megaflop."
"I'm calling security," Bruce Marmelstein snipped. He reached for his slender high-tech phone.
"You might want to reconsider that decision," Remo said, stepping over to the desk of the business arm of Taurus Studios.
Marmelstein was hooking the wire to his radiotelephone around his head. He wiggled the mouthpiece in front of his overly-glossed lips.
"Give me one good reason why," Marmelstein said crisply.
"I'll give you two."
Remo held up two stiff fingers in the traditional Cub Scout salute. With a sweep of his arm, made deliberately slow so that the two men would not miss a thing, he brought his fingers down hard against the edge of Bruce Marmelstein's desk.
A loud, rattling crack filled the room, as from ice settling on a winter pond on a still night.
A perfectly straight fissure moved inexorably from the impact point of Remo's fingers across the surface of the wide desk. When it reached Bruce Marmelstein's corseted belly, the desk simply split in half. The two heavy sections flopped outward, thundering to their chrome sides. When they struck the carpet, the perfect halves of glass shattered into a million pieces each, raining down onto the chrome sections of desk like ice crystals dropped into the frigid office air.
Marmelstein was left sitting before empty space, the radiophone still hooked around his greasy, dyed-black hair.
"I think he's at L.A. Harbor," Hank Bindle offered without missing a beat.
"Definitely," Bruce Marmelstein said. "Say, while I've got the phone, would you like coffee? Bagel? Croissant?"
"I'm all set," Remo said. "Thanks."
He turned and left the office. Ian had to jump to avoid being struck in the face by the thick glass door.
After he was gone, Hank Bindle smirked at Bruce Marmelstein's broken desk. Just then the tanks in the parking lot behind him resumed their maneuvers. His own desk began its persistent glassy rattle.
"You know, three hundred million is a lot of cash," Bindle offered, nodding absently to his desk. Marmelstein looked from the rattling, intact desk of his partner to the shattered remains of his own. "New desks?" he asked, suddenly happy.
"New desks," Bindle affirmed.
Chapter 6
The Air Force 727 climbed steadily into the warm Italian sky after pulling away from the gummy tarmac of Ciampino Airport outside of Rome.
The moment she was settled on board, United States Secretary of State Helena Eckert treated herself to a long, well-earned nap. She had spent three days in the American Embassy at Via Veneto. Three long days awaiting a mere forty-five-minute audience at St. Peter's Basilica with the ailing Pope. It was a meeting that the beleaguered U.S. administration had insisted was politically prudent considering the health of the pontiff.
All things considered, the Pope had looked fine. A little weary, perhaps, but not particularly ill. The secretary of state viewed the time she'd spent in Italy completely wasted. And she had no intention of similarly wasting her time on board the plane. Before the plane had even leveled off for its flight across the Mediterranean, she was asleep. The sound of the secretary's snoring could be heard by the flight crew all the way up in the cockpit.
Lately Helena Eckert took her naps when she could. It was only recently that the nightmares had stopped. About a year ago she and two other highranking diplomats attached to the United Nations had been kidnapped. She and the British ambassador to the UN had come through the ordeal in one piece. The late Russian ambassador had not been so lucky.
While in the clutches of their crazed abductors, the three diplomats had been subjected to bizarre scientific experimentation that had enhanced their physical abilities to incredible extremes. After her liberation, Helena had been forced to undergo a reversal of the process-otherwise, she had been bluntly assured, she would die.
Afterward, she reverted to her normal physical self-a schlumpy sixtyish matron with an ample bottom, a short fuse and an inability to climb more than two stairs without getting winded. And she had trouble sleeping. Fortunately that aftereffect of her ordeal seemed to be waning of late. On her plane ride over the Mediterranean, she slept like Rip van Winkle on NyQuill.
Unfortunately the restful slumber didn't last long. Helena was awakened by an aide after what seemed like only a few minutes.
"What is it?" she snorted, blinking the sleep from her saggy, mascara-smeared eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, ma'am," her efficient male aide said. "We're ready to land."
Tasting the film on the roof of her mouth, the secretary of state looked out the small window next to her seat. She was startled to see that the plane was indeed on its final approach. The green-and-brown tinged ground of Italy had been replaced by an endless wash of beige.
Rising wearily from her seat, the secretary of state gathered up her handbag wherein resided her omnipresent supply of makeup.
Helena Eckert hurried to the rest room. She had only a few minutes to compose herself before her plane would touch down in the capital of Akkadad in the Khalamite Kingdom of Ebla.
THE CAR RIDE from the airport to the Great Sultan's Palace was odd. Yes, that was how the secretary of state would have characterized it. Distinctly odd. In fact, if not for the good relations Ebla enjoyed with the U.S., Helena would almost judge the atmosphere as tense.
She knew her driver-an Eblan diplomat she had met twice before-spoke English, but the man offered very little in the way of conversation. He and another Eblan companion sat silent as stones in the front seat. They did not even communicate with one another.
The secretary chalked their silence up to a bad day. After all, everyone was entitled to have one once in a while. Helena herself was working on her second full year of them.
But the mute escorts were not the only odd thing about this trip. The car that had been sent for her was strange, as well. It was not a limousine, as was the norm. A group of nondescript government vehicles had been waiting on the tarmac for the sec retary of state and her entourage. As soon as she'd deplaned, she had been ushered wordlessly into the first car.
Odd. Definitely very odd.
There was one other American in the car with Helena-the young man who had awakened her on the plane. The two of them sat together in the back seat.
The secretary turned to the young diplomat, pitching her voice low. "Hugh, did something happen while I was asleep that I should know about?"
The aide shrugged, shaking his head. "Nothing Washington told us about," he admitted.
There was a worried look lurking in the back of the young man's eyes. He tried to mask it as he looked back over his shoulder. The other cars were still following closely behind the secretary's. He seemed relieved that they were.