Missing link, p.7
Missing Link, page 7
“We are against everybody who is against freedom for the masses,” Freddy Zentz said. Jessica squealed a little and clapped her hands together in appreciation. A dip, Remo thought. An absolute dip. Zentz favored her with a slight nod of appreciation for her applause.
Remo was going to ask who decided what countries were against freedom for the masses, when a fat man across the room, obscenely dressed in an Indian style pull-over shirt and blue and white blotched, bleached jeans, asked that same question.
“As your leader, I do,” said Freddy Zentz.
The fat man persisted. “Okay, then what do we do about it all?”
Everybody’s attention riveted sharply on Zentz.
And then it hit Remo. There was something unusual about the other men in the room: they were all cops. He hadn’t noticed it before, but like cops everywhere, no matter what their disguises, they were wearing heavy thick-soled shoes. And they all wore wristwatches, and all the watches had leather bands. All cops and all sitting there, on assignment from whatever departments they represented, waiting for Zentz to say enough to hang himself.
Zentz had cleared his throat. “You ask what we do about it all,” he said.
“That’s right. That’s what I asked,” the fat man said. Now that he knew they were all cops, Remo wondered where this man came from. The fat man probably was a Hoboken cop. No one else would try to dress a 250-pound man with a bald spot in jeans and pass him off as a hippie. Maybe a Hell’s Angel, but not a hippie. Particularly since Remo could see the bottom of a tattooed ship’s anchor peeking out from under the cuff of his open sleeve.
“Too often in the past,” Zentz said, “terrorist groups have tried to take the law into their own hands. They’ve gone to the street with bombs and guns, as if that way they could convince people of the rightness of their cause. And all they did was to get the public mad at them. They gave terrorism a bad name. We’re doing something new.” He looked around the room as if expecting a standing ovation. Instead he got six men who asked simultaneously: “What?”
“We’re not going to be a field organization,” said Zentz. “That way we’re going to stay legal, ’cause the last thing in the world we need is a lot of dimwitted cops stomping around here with their big feet trying to arrest us on trumped-up charges.” Remo noticed the six other men in the room pull their heavily clad feet back farther under their chairs. He saw six pairs of tightly set lips and realized that if Zentz were ever booked for anything, he had just cleverly arranged for the charge to be upgraded to a capital offense. Zentz, however, realized no such thing. He was still pouring it on.
“We’re going to be a clearing house for information,” he said. “Instead of going out on the street and setting off bombs, which always gets the public pissed at you, we’re going to convince other people to set the bombs off.”
“That’s still a crime,” one of the men said. “Inciting to violence or riot or something.”
“Bullshit,” said Zentz. “That’s free speech. Nobody ain’t gonna tell me what to say.” He had gotten agitated as he answered the question and with his two solitary front teeth dipping up and down, he looked like a mouse working over a wedge of imported Swiss cheese.
His next sentence was overpowered by a loud thump out in the street. The other men in the room looked startled, but Zentz smiled.
“There,” he said. “The first fruits of our labors. All children need is someone to guide them.” Remo thought back to the afternoon and the instruction sheets for making Molotov cocktails which were printed on the hot dog napkins PLOTZ had distributed to the children.
There was another thump out in the street and another. Remo noticed Chiun had opened his eyes. His cold hazel eyes were staring at Zentz now.
“Should we all go see what’s going on?” Zentz said. He rose to his feet. Chiun was up also.
“Yes,” Chiun said. “We must see just what you are responsible for.”
Remo stood up alongside Chiun. He knew the age-old prohibition of the House of Sinanju against involving children in the theater of death.
The men trailed out onto the steps of the building behind Zentz. As they stood on the sidewalk, there was a roar and a flash of heat enveloped them. A car had been burning half a block away, ignited by a Molotov cocktail, and the flames had finally reached its gas tank, which exploded.
Drops of gasoline had splattered into the air and dropped down on other cars, igniting the paint. Some of the gasoline had set afire summer-dried bushes in front of a few of the old frame houses. The sound of oncoming fire engines could be heard, their klaxon horns whooping in the evening stillness. A group of young children, none more than 12 years old, stood across from the fire scene, shouting exultantly.
“Dynamite,” said Zentz. “Great. Marvelous.” He turned around and looked at the other men’s faces. “Ain’t that something?” he said. Remo looked around at the men whose faces were set tight in anger. He noticed that Jessica had not joined them.
“Let’s go look for some more,” Zentz said. He marched off with the men trailing him. Chiun walked at his side.
“You like this?” Chiun asked.
“Great. First we train the kids, and they’ll bring this government down.”
“With fires and death?” Chiun asked.
“Whatever it takes,” Zentz said.
Remo moved up alongside the two other men. “This is all good,” he said, “but we ought to maybe do something more dramatic.” He spoke softly so he was not overheard by the six policemen who were following them. “Like kidnap somebody. Say, like Bobby Jack Billings.” He looked at Zentz’s face for some reaction.
The reaction was a scowl. “Naaah,” said Zentz. “That kind of stuff gets you into trouble. Feds and all that bullshit, breaking laws. I like what we’re doing.”
“Is there anybody else in this organization but you?” Remo asked. “I like to know who I’m joining.”
“Not yet, maybe,” Zentz said. “But someday well have an army. You can see what these kids can do. Wait until we have thousands.”
“It will never happen for you,” Chiun said grimly.
They turned the corner and looked up Fourth Street toward Washington Street, the city’s main thoroughfare. Four cars had been ignited and were burning. Sparks had started a fire in the dry wood siding of a four-story frame house near the cars.
“Swell,” said Zentz. “Marvelous. Great.”
“Sick,” said Chiun.
“Who puts up the money for this organization?” Remo asked Zentz.
“Public donations,” the young man said. He was rubbing his hands together in gleeful satisfaction as he looked at the fires. “I love fires,” he said. “There’s something pure about them. Clean.”
“You think so?” Chiun said. He saw another group of children standing across the street from the fire scene. They were twenty feet ahead now of the other six men.
“Yeah. Don’t you think so?” Zentz said. “Just look at those flames.”
“If you enjoy them so much…” Chiun said.
Before Remo could reach out a hand to stop him, Chiun had grasped Zentz’s right wrist. He twirled the man around in front of him like a stone on a string, then let him go. Feet first, Zentz went through the brittle back window of a burning car. His body vanished inside the car. His screams filled the night. He tried to climb up through the same broken window. Just as he did, the flames reached the car’s gas tank.
It exploded. The roar muffled Zentz’s screams, and when the first flash of flame had lessened, there was no longer any sign of the PLOTZ director in the window.
Remo sighed. “You’re getting pretty goddamn dangerous around cars,” he said.
“Somebody who loves fire that much should not be deprived of his enjoyment,” Chiun said.
“I was still questioning him about PLOTZ,” Remo said.
“The fool knew nothing. Questions were a waste of time.”
The six men came running up behind them.
“Was that him in the car?” the fat man with the balding head said.
“Yeah,” Remo said. “What department you with?”
“Hoboken police,” the man said. He looked at the burning car. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
The other five men stood around.
“It looked like he jumped into that car,” one of them said.
“He did,” Remo said. “My friend here tried to stop him, but he just shook him off.”
“Shit,” another man said. “I’ll be up all night writing reports on this.”
They turned out to be from the Hoboken police, the New Jersey police, the FBI, the county prosecutor’s office, the county sheriff’s office, and the U.S. Attorney General’s office.
Remo and Chiun left them on the corner by the car, concocting a plan whereby only one of them would have to write a report, and the others could all file duplicates. Since policemen hated writing reports worse than they hated crime, this idea appealed to all of them.
“C’mon,” Remo said. “We’ll get back and see what’s in Zentz’s office.”
As they ran to the front of the loft building, a yellow cab was pulling away from the curb. They hurried inside the building. Zentz’s office door was open; so was his safe and his filing cabinets. Papers had been riffled, and files had been yanked.
“That woman,” Remo said.
“Correct,” said Chiun.
“She’s taken the files.”
“Correct and obvious,” Chiun answered.
“We’ve got to get her,” Remo said.
“Whatever makes you happy,” Chiun replied.
They ran back out of the building toward their rented car, parked a block away.
As Remo unlocked the door and started inside, Chiun said, “You are going to drive this car?”
“Of course,” Remo said. “I drove it here, didn’t I?” He reached across and unlocked the door for Chiun who slid in onto the front seat next to Remo.
Remo started the engine which caught with a smooth purr.
“Where are we going?” Chiun asked.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Remo said.
“Think of it,” Chiun said.
Remo thought of it. “Newark Airport. It’s right near here. If that chick is splitting by cab, that’s probably where she went.” He nodded his head, agreeing with himself.
Remo dropped the gear shift into drive and pulled away from the curb.
Kerthunk. Kerthunk. Kerthunk.
“What the hell is that?” asked Remo.
“Four tires that are no longer round,” Chiun said.
“Four flats?” Remo said.
Chiun nodded.
“She flattened our tires so we couldn’t follow her,” Remo said.
“Don’t whine,” Chiun said. “It is not becoming to you.”
Remo nosed the car into a parking spot and turned off the engine. With Chiun behind him, he ran up the block. At the corner of First Street, they saw a yellow cab and jumped into the back seat.
The cab was obviously the pride of the Hoboken fleet in that it had one wheel on each corner and still had all its fenders. This was no mean feat in a city in which the police regularly announced crackdowns on triple parking along Washington Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, a street that was a hundred feet wide but so snarled by parked cars that getting through it on anything wider than a bicycle tested the endurance of man and the permanence of steel.
The driver looked at them.
“I’m supposed to be going home now,” he said.
“Newark Airport. Then you go home,” Remo said.
“Naah,” the driver said. “Gotta go home now.”
Remo put his hand on the vinyl seat cover of the seat next to the driver. He closed his fingers and ripped out a large chunk of vinyl and foam rubber, exposing the seat’s steel springs.
The driver looked at Remo, the ripped seat, and then at Remo again.
He shook his head and screeched from the curb.
“Newark Airport coming up.”
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN THE COST OF building the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels under the Hudson River was repaid, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was supposed to make the two conduits toll-free. However, the Port Authority always managed to find a way to avoid such displays of public largesse. It built the tunnels and kept the fares intact. Then it built some more, and raised the tunnel fares for motorists—even though the cost of the tunnels had been paid by tolls five times over.
One of its projects was the rebuilding of Newark Airport. The Port Authority had built the airport four times as large as it had to be. This surplus of space and network of only partially used roads made the airport the most efficient, the easiest to get into and out of, of any airport in the continental United States.
Remo and Chiun’s taxi fare from Hoboken was fourteen dollars and fifty cents. Remo paid with a twenty and told the driver to keep the change.
Chiun said this was wasteful. “If he is supposed to get twenty dollars, that little box there should say twenty dollars. Why do you give him twenty dollars when the little box says fourteen dollars?”
“That’s a tip. It’s an American custom,” Remo said.
“What is?”
“To pay somebody extra for good service.”
“Do you pay less for bad service?” Chiun asked.
“No.”
“Then you are an idiot. Get your change.”
This conversation took place in the back seat of the cab. The driver, who did not have the latest New York City inventions—bullet-proof electrified glass partitions that separated him from his passengers, and alarm lights and bells on top of the cab that could be seen from four miles away and heard from halfway around the world—leaned over his back seat and paid attention. He was rooting for Remo.
He nodded approvingly as Remo told Chiun, “No, I don’t want the change.”
“I do,” said Chiun. He looked at the driver. “Change, please.”
The driver shook his head. “It’s an American custom, fella. Listen to your friend there. He’s telling you right. Good drivers like me always get a tip. A little something extra.”
“You want something extra?” Chiun said.
The driver nodded.
Chiun grabbed the back of the front seat, his hands on each side of the gouge Remo had taken from the vinyl and foam. The old Oriental wrenched with his hands, gently. Two more big rips of material came from the seat. Chiun opened the door and stepped outside onto the sidewalk.
Behind him, Remo gave the driver two more twenties. “Fix your seat,” he said.
On the sidewalk, he said to Chiun, “You’re in a fine mood.”
“It is your fault for making me meet that creature who makes children into criminals. It spoiled my night.”
“It didn’t do much for his either,” Remo said.
As they walked to the automatic terminal doors, a black car pulled up at curbside behind their taxi cab. Two men in dark blue business suits got out.
As they passed through the doors, Chiun asked Remo, “Are you aware?”
Without turning, Remo said, “Yeah. Two of them. This might be a break.”
Chiun nodded. He and Remo walked off toward the south end of the terminal, moving slowly, waiting until they were sure the two men from the black car had not lost view of them.
“I know what you’re so ticked about,” Remo said. Chiun was silent. “You’re just upset ’cause I won’t ask Smitty to send you to the Olympic games.”
“It is all right,” Chiun said. “I am working on an alternative.”
They went up an escalator. As they were stepping off, Remo felt under his feet the weight of two men stepping on the escalator below them.
They turned to the left. Ahead, Remo saw a door marked “no admittance.” He and Chiun moved quickly inside. Remo saw it was a room used for record-keeping by the baggage handling staff. It was empty of workers.
Remo held the door open long enough for their two pursuers to get off the escalator and follow them. Then he let the door swing closed. He moved against the far wall of the room and told Chiun, “Now behave yourself.”
“I will not lift a finger,” Chiun said. He looked out the window and folded his arms.
The two men came into the room, their hands in their pockets, obviously holding guns.
They were startled when they saw Chiun with his back to them and Remo leaning against a wall casually, as if waiting for them.
“Come on in,” Remo said. “Plenty of room for you too. Don’t be shy.”
The two men were swarthy with dark hair and thin mustaches. One smiled as the door closed tightly behind them. Both men withdrew their hands from their pockets. Heavy automatics were cradled in their fists.
“All right,” Remo said. “Now who are you? You better talk, before I unleash my friend here.”
The two men smiled. Chiun remained with his back to the room.
“It is not who we are,” one said with a thick accent that Remo had heard very recently. “It is who you are.”
“Oh, us,” Remo said. “I’m Remo. This is Chiun. We’re secret agents for the United States government. Now who are you?”
“We are representatives of—” one man begun.
“Ahmir,” the other spoke sharply, interrupting him and cautioning him to silence.
“That’s your last word on the subject?” Remo said.
“The last word you will ever hear,” the man said. He leveled his automatic at Remo’s chest. The other man aimed his weapon at Chiun’s unmoving back.
“Chiun, are you going to stop fooling around?” Remo said.
Chiun raised his arms over his head in a motion that suggested Remo get lost. Remo shook his head. He watched the men’s hands. He was nine feet away from them. The one aimed at Chiun showed tension in his trigger finger. The other’s index finger was still loosely held inside the trigger guard. As Remo watched, the trigger finger on the weapon aimed at Chiun tightened.
Remo made a movement to the right, a sudden curl of his body that forced his man to swing his gun to the side, and squeeze off a shot at him. But even before the shot had been fired, Remo was moving back left, diving through the air, his body parallel to the floor. His hand closed on the weapon aimed at Chiun just as the trigger was depressed, but the bullet fired harmlessly into the floor. The second man had swung around, again aiming at Remo, but this time, before he could get off a shot, Remo’s right foot lashed out. The tip of his right toe caught the underside of the weapon and drove it around and upward so that it plunged barrel-first into the gunman’s throat. The man’s eyes opened saucer wide, and then, as Remo watched, they seemed to cloud over and the man slumped to the floor.
