"How did you know?"
"I know. C'mon. I'm working."
Work was disarming two bemedaled officers who were aiming pistols at them. When Remo disarmed, he did it at the shoulders. Again he did not finish them. He didn't even touch the two brutes who dropped their weapons when they saw the horror of the officers losing their arms. He was even pleasant as he walked into the next room, where an officer was excitedly telling Generalissimo Eckman-Ramirez about the dangers of a single man who had come here to threaten His Excellency.
Remo, Kathy realized, could be a tease. And she also realized that she needed him to finish one of these men, or she would go crazy with want.
"Get on with it," she said.
Remo nodded her way. The Generalissimo, it turned out, spoke English. He spoke English rather well, in fact, and quite rapidly when it was pointed out to him that the man who had gone through his guards like tissue paper was now standing there.
"What can my humble house offer you, friend?" asked the Generalissimo. He had fine features: a thin small nose, sort of blondish hair, and dark eyes. He also sported a glistening yellow tooth right up front. When one had gold, one apparently flaunted it in this country.
He kept looking at Remo's wrists. "I want your fluorocarbon thing."
"But, sir, I have no such thing. But if I did, you, sir, would be the first to have it."
"Oh what a liar," gasped Kathy. "These butchers are such liars. "
"Who is your beautiful friend who calls me a liar?"
"You mean to say you didn't stand right there and tell me to measure oxidation and liquid refraction of ultraviolet intensity on a transatlantic angle?"
"Senora?" said the Generalissimo helplessly.
"Malden. In Malden, you bastard," said Kathy.
"Malden. I don't know of a Malden."
"You don't know of little dead animals? You don't know of the ozone layer? What else don't you know?"
"I don't know what you are talking about, lady."
"He's the one," said Kathy.
What happened next posed an immediate problem for her. She had been planning on Remo's killing off the Generalissimo and leaving her free to her own devices.
Unfortunately Remo could do things with bodies that she hadn't even suspected. Like run just two fingers along a spinal cord, creating pain, turning the general's fierce eyes to watery tears, and his pallid face to red pain. What if the Generalissimo denied any knowledge of the machine to his death? Would Remo find out she had tied to him? "They usually tell the truth under this," said Remo.
"Apparently he's more afraid of the person he works for than you. Look at his face. He's in pain."
"That's why they tell the truth. To stop the pain." Kathy saw the face flush red, ease, then flush red again; it was as though this man had gotten control of the Generalissimo's entire nervous system.
"It was the North Vietnamese, wasn't it? You showed them it could work didn't you? That's how you used me, wasn't it? To develop a weapon for Hanoi," said Kathy. She felt her body alive with his pain.
The Generalissimo, who would have admitted to murdering Adam and Eve at that point, let out a resounding yes. Especially when the pain eased. So delicious was this lack of pain that with Kathy's help he embroidered on the sale to North Vietnam. He even confessed guilt and asked forgiveness.
"But Hanoi isn't west of Great Britain."
"It is if you go far enough," said Kathy.
"I did it. I did sell this horrible ... thing?"
"Fluorocarbon generator," added Kathy helpfully.
"Yes, fluoro ... thing. I did. I confess."
"Where in Hanoi?" said Remo.
"I don't know. They just came and put it in a car and drove off," said the Generalissimo.
Remo looked at Kathy. She was shaking her head. "You're a scientist," said Remo. "Does that sound right to you?"
"Could be. Could be," she said. What they would do in Hanoi, she did not know. What she would do, she was not certain. But she needed a climax to all this excitement.
"Are you going to let him live? Maybe he'll warn the others."
"Sometimes it's a help," said Remo. "Then they all run to protect what they don't want you to have."
"I'd feel safer if you killed him. I can't go with you knowing this butcher and his officer would be phoning a warning ahead. It's been so hard on me, Remo. I couldn't."
And then she cried. She was good at tears. She had found out just how good she was at them when, at five, she had strangled her own hamster and had the house looking for the killer who had done that bad thing to Kathy's Poopsie Woo, her pet name for the little rodent who had squirmed his furry last in her hands.
"All right. All right," said Remo. "Stop the crying. Look, they're dead."
There were two very quiet bodies on the floor, the Generalissimo's sandy blond hair facing the ceiling, his nose pressed into the floor, the officer's arms out in the same hysterical motion he had used to warn his Maximum Leader that a horrible man and a beautiful woman had just breached his security like butter.
"I didn't see you do it. How did you do it?" said Kathy.
"Never mind," said Remo. "I did it."
"Well, don't be so fast. Why did you have to rush? Don't you have any consideration?"
Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell did not see the small swellings on the back of the necks of both men. But the general's physician did. It was unmistakable. Two spinal vertebrae had been cracked and fused as though with heat. An extraordinary feat, especially since the guards reported that no machinery had been brought into the Generalissimo's room. It was just one man and a redhead. The doctor very carefully got their descriptions. And then he phoned a large embassy in a nearby country.
"I think I have the answer to your problems," said the doctor.
"This had better be major for you to break cover," came back the voice.
"If it was major enough for you to warn me to look for, I assume it is major enough for me to get back to you."
"That was a general warning this morning,"
"I think I found them."
"The man and the woman?"