"Listen. If you let them have a discussion, you are going to be run around. No discussions. No games. You go in there and tell them to break bones. No games. Blood. Get the sort of people into Britain who will not stop at the sight of blood. To hell with undercover. If this war comes, there will be no cover for any of us," said Zemyatin. He banged a hand on the armchair. If he were younger he might have literally strangled this man. Not out of anger, of course, but because this Premier was so susceptible to force. He had to make it strong and simple:
"Blood. Blood on the streets. Blood in the gutters. Find out what they know. There is no tomorrow. Now!"
An immaculately uniformed colonel met Remo at the airport, offering smiling pleasantries, expressing happiness over the opportunity to work with Remo, inquiring what department Remo reported to, and allowing that he was terribly impressed that the highest levels of the U.S. government had requested that all cooperation be extended to Remo. But.
But what? Remo wanted to know.
But unfortunately there was blessed little Colonel Aubrey Winstead-Jones could offer in the way of assistance. Her Majesty's government did not know what Remo was talking about. Really.
"Frankly, old boy, we would have told your State Department early on had you asked. No need to have you over here, what?"
Remo listened politely, and on the way from Heathrow Airport into London, with the gray industrial choke of Great Britain on either side of the chauffeured automobile, Colonel Winstead-Jones suddenly decided to tell Remo that he had been instructed to guide Remo around London, taking him nowhere in particular until Remo got tired and went home. Colonel Winstead-Jones was not to help Remo in any way. He was supposed to make sure Remo had all the wine, drugs, and women he wanted. He had been told this by the station chief of MI-12. When asked, he willingly gave Remo the address and cover used by MI-12, and a brief history of the ministry. Remo for his part was equally cooperative. He assisted Colonel Winstead-Jones back into his car, which had been dragging him along the British highway system. Joining the colonel to the native highway system had done wonders for openness in communication. The colonel might even regain the use of his legs in the near future, Remo assured him. At least those parts still attached.
The colonel told him exactly who had given him the orders to run Remo around.
"Thank you, old boy," said Remo.
Just off Piccadilly Circus, in an old Tudor building, stood the office of MI-12. It was inconspicuous in the extreme. Seemingly a tobacconist's shop on street level, a side door led up a single staircase to a second floor with dusty windows. Actually, they were ground opaque, impenetrable to eyesight or listening device, and looked remarkably like the windows in a quaint library. But inside, a crack team of British Special Service chaps lurked as a cunning trap for anyone daring to penetrate MI-12.
This was the building, the colonel said, that housed the station chief who gave him orders. Would Remo be so kind as to give him back the use of his legs?
"Later," said Remo. He got the same promise from the driver by running his hands down the spinal column and creating a small nerve block in a lower spinal vertebra.
"Be right back, old boy," said Remo.
Remo opened the door and saw the stairway leading up to the second floor. The place could have bottled the must and sold it. The wooden steps creaked. They were dry and old and brittle. They would have creaked under a mouse. But Remo did not like making noise when he moved. His system rebelled against it. He set his balance to ease the wood, to be part of the age of the wood, so that he now moved quietly upward. But he had made the first noise.
A door opened at the top of the stairs and an elderly man called down:
"Who is it? Can we be of service?"
"Absolutely," Remo said. "I've come to see the station chief of MI-12, whatever that is."
"This is the Royal Society of Heraldry Manuscripts. We are sort of a library," came back the voice.
"Good. I'll look at your manuscripts," said Remo.
"Well, can't be done, old boy."
"It's going to be done."
"Please be so kind as to stay where you are," said the elderly man.
"Not at all," said Remo.
"I am afraid we are going to have to give you your last warning."
"Good," said Remo. There wasn't going to be any surprise. He already heard the feet. They had the steady light movement of athletes: trained feet, trained bodies. Hard. They were getting into position upstairs. There were seven of them.
"All right, come on up if you wish," said the man.
By the time Remo got to the top of the stairs he could smell their lunches. The men had had beef and perk. The odor was about a half-hour strong in their bodies. They would move slower.
As Remo entered the room, two men came up behind him with what were supposed to be catlike movements. Remo ignored them.
"Suppose you tell us, young man, why you think this is MI-12?" said the elderly gentleman who had answered the door.
"Because I dragged a colonel two hundred yards along one of your lovely roads until he told me it was," said Remo. "But look, I don't have time for pleasantries. Take me to the station chief."
The cool muzzle of a small-caliber pistol came up to Remo's head.
"I am afraid you are going to have to make time for pleasantries," said a deep voice. At that point, the pistol nudged the back of Remo's head, presumably to make Remo more cooperative.
"Let me guess," said Remo. "This is where I'm supposed to spin around, see the gun, and turn to quivering jelly. Right?"
"Quite," said the elderly man.
Remo snapped back an elbow far enough to catch the pistol and send it into the ancient ceiling like a rock into dried mud. The pistol went with its owner. A shower of old plaster and Spackle exploded over the room like a snowstorm.
A bulky commando type stepped out from a wall with a short stabbing dagger, angling for Remo's solar plexus. Remo sent him back into the wall with a side kick. The elderly man ducked, and from behind him appeared a lieutenant in full uniform, who began firing a submachine gun. The first burst came straight at Remo. There was no second burst because the bullets appeared to Remo like a line of softballs coming at him. Fast enough to hurt, but slow enough to dance around, even before they had left the barrel. His body allowed itself to sense the slow stream, and move through and then beyond it to its source.
The lieutenant, lacking such skill, found himself without gun and very much smashing backward into the steel door he had vowed with his life to defend.
The door shivered on its drop-forged pins and came down in the next room like a bridge over a moat.
Remo stepped over the unconscious officer into an office.
A man in gray sports jacket looked up from his desk to see that his penetration-proof cover had been penetrated by a thick-wristed young man in dark slacks, T-shirt and loafers, using no other weapon, apparently, than a knowing smile.
"Hi," said Remo. "I'm from America. You're expecting the one Colonel Winstead-Jones was supposed to dilly around London with wine, drugs; and women."
"Oh yes. Top-secret and all that. Well, welcome, Remo. What can we do for you?" asked the man, lighting a meerschaum pipe carved to resemble the head of some British queen. He had a long-nosed, gaunt-cheeked patrician face and a toothy smile. His sandy hair might have been combed by a lawn mower. He didn't rise. He didn't even look upset. He most certainly did not look like a man whose defenses had been turned to broken plaster. "We have a problem with something that's poking holes in the ozone layer, and the possibility that if we don't fry slow from the sun, we are going to fry fast from Russian nukes," said Remo.
"Would you kindly explain to me how this involves you barging in here and throwing our people around? I would ever so much like to know why."
The station chief took a puff of his pipe. He had spoken most pleasantly. Remo most pleasantly slapped the pipe out of his mouth, along with some frontal teeth thal looked too long for anything from a human head outside of the British Isles.
Remo apologized for his American rudeness.
"I'm trying to head off World War III, so I'm in kind of a rush," said Remo.
"Well, that does put a bit of a different complexion on the matter," admitted the station chief, shaking his head. He did not shake too hard because blood was coming from his nose. He thought a brisk shake might loosen some of the brain matter above his nostrils. "Yes. Well, orders came from the Admiralty."
"Why the Admiralty?"
"You can kill me, old top, but I never will tell you," he said. But when Remo took a step toward him, he hastily added; "Because I don't know. Haven't the foggiest."