All right? She was magnificent. She was delirious. She was exalted, thrilled, triumphant, ecstatic.
"Yes," said Kathy weakly. "I think so."
"What were they doing to you?"
"I don't know."
"Can you walk? I'll carry you, if you're having trouble. I've got to get you out of here."
"I think so," she said. She reached out weakly and thought she was pretending to be unable to stand. But the man said:
"You're all right. Get dressed. Let's go." So he knew her body, she realized.
"Yes. I am all right."
She noticed that his movements appeared slow but he got things done quickly. She thought he might be aroused by her nude body, but she sensed he was only as interested as one might be if a platter of hors d'oeuvres was served to someone nibbling all day. He might take her, but he wasn't thrilled. He said his name was Remo. He said he had come to rescue her. He said terrible things were happening because of an experiment in which she was involved.
"No," said Kathy. She covered her mouth as though shocked. She knew how to pretend innocence because she had had a lifetime of practice.
A noise came down the passageway. And then she saw what this man could do. It was no accident of ferocity that had gotten him through all those armed men.
With a slow breathing balance he seemed to run his hand along a five-foot-high stone that must have weighed three to four tans. Then he simply cocked a knee into it, and it seemed to come out of the wall on him, resting on his knee. But the strange thing about it was that it seemed so absolutely un-strange. It seemed so incredibly normal the way the stone rested on the vertical thrust of his body. He simply plugged the passageway.
Only when the stone went in did she realize the massive force Remo had exerted. Several stone stairs splintered into dust.
"That was the only way out," said Kathy.
"Shh. It'll work," said the man.
"What will work? You've plugged our only escape," whispered Kathy.
"C'mon. Shh," said Remo.
"We can't get out of here," she whispered. What a fool. Was this Remo like all the others after all?
"I want to get you out of here. I could go up those steps and make it out in one piece, but you couldn't. So shut up."
"I don't know what you're doing," said Kathy. Beyond the heavy stone she heard noises. Men were beginning to heave at the stone.
"Do you want to know?" said the man. He guided her to a side of the stone, not even bothering to look at her, but concentrating on the blocked passageway.
"Yes," she said.
Remo gave it to her exactly as he had learned it. "What language is that?" she said angrily.
"Korean."
"Would you mind translating it?"
"Sure, but it loses something in the translation. It means 'the strong flower never grows to its food but lets its food come to it.'"
"That makes absolutely no sense," said Kathy, putting on her blouse and smoothing her skirt.
"I told you it lost something in translation," said Remo.
He moved her against the wall, and then when the bodies started to drop, she realized what he had been talking about. To move the stone, several men in the passageway had to put their shoulders into it. And when the stone came rumbling out, she saw that the men had guns. Those guns might have killed her. When she observed the smooth speed of Remo's execution of the guards, she realized he might have easily escaped the gunfire. What he had done was let the danger to her mass itself outside the stone and come in with a rush, clearing the tunnel of danger to her. He took her quickly up the passage where only a single last guard stood at the upper level. It was a yeoman warder who did not know who was who, apparently, but who did see a stranger and, in stout British tradition, attacked same stranger. Also in tradition, he gave his life for Queen and country.
Outside, after they had run through the squares and tunnels, Remo found the car was gone. Eluding several bobbies, they finally came to rest in a charming Italian restaurant off Leicester Square. There, Kathy asked Remo how he knew his plan would work.
He seemed puzzled by that question.
"They were . . ." He didn't quite have an English word for it, but the closest ones were: "too anxious. Too bunched up. They were set on going in. I guess when the tunnel was blocked they had to surmise they couldn't get in and forced it."
"Yes. But how did you know they were going to do that?"
"I don't know. I just knew. Look, grab a bite. And let's get to the source of your experiment. Do you know the whole world may be wiped out?"
I already have been, thought Kathy, looking at this magnificent dark-eyed man who killed so well and easily and smoothly.
"No," she said. "That's awful."
Then she heard how their fluorocarbon stream had somehow panicked another country, and was believed by some American agency to be threatening to destroy the world by removing the entire ozone shield. She could have told him that that danger was past. She could have told him they had solved that problem with the short duration of the shield opening. The blue light that bothered this man was really the shield closing again.
Rather, she told him that all she knew about the experiment was that it came from a company in America. She gave him the phony cover address she had given to the British.
"No good," said Remo. "That's a phony."
"Oh, my lord. These people are evil," said Kathy O'Donnell. But there was not much tension in her voice. She was as warm and content as a milk-full kitten by a warm winter stove.
Chemical Concepts might as well be on the moon, she thought. "Do you remember anything about the people who hired you?" he asked. He didn't eat the food. Kathy sucked contentedly on a breadstick.
"I remember a bit. You look married."
"Not married. What were they like?"
"Never been married?"
"No. Were they Americans? What did they tell you about themselves? What didn't they tell you about themselves?"
She picked a name at random. Someone far away, someone who it might take some time getting to. She also picked one of the deadliest men in the world. He was in a jungle somewhere in South America.
"Do you like jungles, Remo? I hate jungles."
"Which jungle? Lots of jungles in the world."
"It was a jungle. You know, if you don't like Italian food we can leave. What do you eat?" she asked.