Remo turned away from the hole in the wall. Paint-smeared tarpaulins rattled in the soft, warm breeze. He set his dead-eyed gaze on Bindle and Marmelstein.
"Where is he?" he repeated.
"Bruce had him kidnapped," Hank Bindle blabbered.
Marmelstein whirled on his partner.
"Me?" Bruce Marmelstein snapped, shocked. "It was all your idea. Check the check," he said, spinning to Remo. "Hank's handwriting is on everything but the signature."
Bindle looked horrified.
"You told me you didn't want to wreck your manicure!" he shrieked.
"Liar!" Marmelstein screamed.
Hank Bindle desperately searched his repertoire for an appropriate comeback. The one he found gave him intense satisfaction.
"Hairdresser!" Bindle screeched.
The look of pure hateful rage that blossomed on the face of Bruce Marmelstein quickly transformed into one of intense pain. Before he was able to screech a response back at his partner, he felt an explosion of raw agony at the back of his neck, as if someone were extracting his spinal cord and all his body's attendant nerves through an acid-formed incision. Through panicked, watering eyes he saw that Hank Bindle was in similar agony.
When the two partners searched for the source of the sudden pain, they found Remo standing between them. He was clutching them both by the tops of their spinal columns and lifting them off the floor. His face was a mask of rage.
"Where is he?" he said through clenched teeth.
"I don't know." Bindle winced.
"With Reggio Cagliari," Marmelstein pleaded.
"But we don't know where they are," Bindle gasped.
"You'd better be able to find out," Remo threatened. "Or when the next desk drops, you two nitwits will be under it."
Dropping them back to the carpet, he spun for the door.
Wind still blew in through the gaping hole in the wall. Bindle and Marmelstein glanced at the remaining enormous desk. They gulped simultaneously. The threat was too real for comfort.
Shuddering at the thought, both men trailed Remo rapidly from the office.
FOR MOST OF THE MODERN WORLD, the Eblan-Israeli war began with an electronic whimper. So it was for Harold W. Smith.
Tired eyes glued to his computer screen, haggard face illuminated in weird, amber-fueled shadows, Smith tracked the troop movements as they were recorded by satellites stationed in geosynchronous orbit above the region.
Eblan forces that had been massed along the Anatolia Corridor in the desert between Syria and Lebanon had moved down into the mountainous Golan Heights region just over an hour before. There would be no turning back.
Smith dipped in and out of various reports. From the satellite information, he shifted to the raw data collected by U.S. intelligence services. This was augmented by CURE's secret pipelines into the Mossad and Israeli military command. Throughout all this, Smith utilized the screen-in-screen function, devoting a small corner of his monitor to the constant video feed from the ITN cameras at the scene of battle.
It was proving to be a massacre of unbelievable proportions.
With his announced intentions, Israel had had almost two days to prepare for Sultan Omay's invasion. The disputed Golan Heights had been packed with enough firepower to repel any assault that Ebla could mount. The Israeli level of preparedness was proving to be more than formidable.
The casualty figures had not yet been reported, but news correspondents on the ground were likening the outcome of the first Ebla-Israel engagement to the routing of Iraqi forces in Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Smith did not need casualty figures to tell him what was happening. He could see the bodies of the Ebla Arab Army soldiers as the Israelis swarmed over them. As yet Smith had not seen a single dead Israeli.
In isolation the war as it was unfolding would have been a cause for celebration for Jerusalem and its allies in the West. However there was another, darker factor at work in the region. The aspect that was not yet being covered by the press was the effect the Eblan invasion was having on other fundamentalist nations in the Mideast.
Already there were demonstrations in support of Ebla and its sultan in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. There were even radical elements in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia who applauded the decisive conduct of Sultan Omay.
As a result of the action of this one, insignificant little nation, all of the Mideast was ready to ignite. Even Israel would not be able to repel attacks from all sides.
Libya had already announced support for Ebla. It was eager to join the fray, yet was cautious enough to see how America would react to the aggression of others.
So far the United States had remained neutral in the actual conflict. While publicly denouncing the actions of Ebla-which he had done many times in the past few days-the President had ordered U.S. battleships in the Mediterranean not to engage.
American troops on the ground in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had been put on a heightened alert status, but had been similarly instructed. Everyone knew this would last only until the rest of the Islamic world joined Ebla against Israel. When push finally came to shove, there was no doubt anywhere in the region, or indeed in the world, on whose side America's ultimate loyalty would fall. If it came to it, the United States would back its longtime ally, Israel.
And once the U.S. was actively involved, there would be no turning back. Other nations around the world would take sides. As a result of tiny Ebla's actions, the world was heading inexorably down a destructive path it had not ventured on in more than half a century.
It was a tricky situation. Even now the President had put on hold any attempt to rescue the secretary of state and the rest of the hostages lest the presence of American military personnel within its borders inspire Ebla to claim that the U.S. had joined Israel.
In the solitude of his Folcroft office, Smith scanned the minute-by-minute reports with forced detachment. There was no sense in pointless agitation. He had a sinking feeling that there would be enough of the real thing to go around in a very short time.
Chiun would soon be at ground zero.
The situation had become too grave too quickly. Smith was forced to intercept the Master of Sinanju's commercial craft in Honolulu. He had arranged for an Air Force flight out of Hawaii to take Chiun directly to Tel Aviv. But until the Master of Sinanju was in place and ready to defuse one end of Omay sin-Khalam's diabolical trap, Remo could not act.
Smith had not yet gotten hold of Remo to tell him the plan had been accelerated. When he tried reaching CURE's enforcement arm at Taurus, an effete secretary informed him that Remo had left the studio in the company of Bindle and Marmelstein. No matter. With the worldwide crisis that was brewing, Remo would surely not miss his usual check-in time. Smith hoped.
Watching the video images on his computer screen of bodies piling up on the parched mountainous desert of the Golan Heights, Smith realized that he hoped for a lot of things right now.
And as Hell erupted in the Middle East, all any of them could do was wait.
"WHAT DO THEY DO with thieves in Ebla?" Bindle asked.
They were driving through occupied Culver City. Remo was behind the wheel of the Taurus Studios jeep. So far the Eblan soldiers they had encountered had left them alone.
"Probably cut their hands off," Remo said, uninterested.
Hank Bindle was horrified. "But I use mine." He pouted.
Bruce Marmelstein was equally upset. "And my Rolex would have nothing to hold it on," Marmelstein argued. He waggled his new watch, which was a replacement for the Swiss watch with his face. The Swiss watch had broken an hour after he first put it on.
"Maybe you can ask for a substitute," Remo suggested. "I'd recommend your tongues."
The headquarters of Local 529 was in a small office in a complex off of La Cienaga Boulevard. Remo parked on the sunlit street out front and went inside. The two movie executives followed.