Missing link, p.2
Missing Link, page 2
“In such international arrangements, a finder’s fee is often paid the one who makes it all possible,” Kaffir said.
“How much?”
“This fee is a perfectly legitimate item,” Kaffir said.
“How much?”
“Of course, it would have to be—”
“How much!” Billings insisted.
“One million dollars,” Kaffir said.
“All right,” said Bobby Jack. “Two hundred thou down.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Two hundred thousand down. In advance. Nonrefundable. Whether I succeed or not. I’ve got to have something to reimburse me for my time, even if I can’t get the okay.”
Kaffir thought for a moment, his dark eyes scrutinizing the open face of Bobby Jack Billings.
Billings stood up from his seat on the platform edge.
“You talk it over with the other Ayrabs,” he said. “I gotta go tap a kidney.”
He walked away from the three Libyans toward the far end of the platform. They’d go for it, he knew. It was only two hundred thousand dollars, tax-free and unrecorded. He had made exactly the same deal four other times before. He had promised the Rhodesian Communists that he would make sure of their recognition by the U.S. He had promised a Red Chinese delegation that America would hand over Taiwan. He had promised Iranian rebels that he could prevent the United States from stepping in to keep the shah in power. The only thing he had failed on was a promise to get the President to send in troops to help bail out Idi Amin’s imperiled regime in Uganda.
But three out of four wasn’t bad for no work, he thought. His practice on all such contracts was the same. He took the money and then forgot about the contract. Most of the time it turned out all right, because his brother-in-law’s foreign policy often seemed to have been drawn up in the back seat of Fidel Castro’s car.
Of course, the people he dealt with never knew that, and probably would not have believed it even if Bobby Jack had told them. They were sure the only reason they had succeeded was because they had a friend at the highest level—Bobby Jack—whispering in the President’s ear.
As he reached the corner of the platform, Billings looked back to see the three Libyans staring at him. He unzipped his fly and pointed at his groin.
“Just got to make a little tinkle against the wall here,” he said. “Be right back.”
Mustafa Kaffir nodded. When Billings jumped down from the platform to the dirt alongside the building, Kaffir broke into animated conversation with his two companions, speaking Arabic.
They had all decided to go for the deal. After all, two hundred thousand dollars was a small down payment for the ingredients necessary to build atomic bombs to destroy Israel. But they agreed to seem reluctant to pay such a large amount. If they looked too willing, Billings might ask for more. But they knew the price was right. After all, hadn’t Billings managed to make the President withhold American recognition of a free government in Rhodesia, instead throwing its lot in with Communist-backed rebels? Had Billings not convinced the President to disregard the treaties America had with Taiwan? Had Billings not kept the President immobile when America’s staunchest friend in the Middle East, the shah of Iran, was being overthrown by an American-hating rebel band? The man might be a sweat-smelling ignorant clod, Mustafa Kaffir thought, but he knew how to move the American government. His record of success was untouched. At two hundred thousand dollars down payment, he was a bargain.
Kaffir and his two companions waited for Bobby Jack to return. After five minutes, one of the men wanted to look for him.
“He was going to urinate. He should be back by now,” the man said. He was the Libyan minister of finance.
“Not yet,” the other man said. He was the minister of culture. “Maybe he had to make number two.”
The finance minister giggled.
“Silence,” said Kaffir in Arabic.
They waited ten more minutes.
“Perhaps he has forgotten,” said the minister of culture.
“Who forgets two hundred thousand dollars who wears such clothes and urinates against walls?” asked Kaffir. “Wait here.”
He walked to the far end of the platform. He stopped just before the corner of the building.
“Mr. Billings. Are you there?”
There was no answer and Mustafa Kaffir leaned around the corner and looked along the red-painted wooden wall of the old frame building.
Bobby Jack Billings was not there.
There was a wet stain in the sandy soil showing where he had stood a few minutes before, but the man himself was gone. Mustafa Kaffir looked around. He saw railroad tracks, open fields, and occasional houses several hundred yards away, but no sign of Bobby Jack Billings.
Kaffir signaled his two men to follow him and they walked together to the front of the railroad station. The only persons in sight were the two Secret Service agents sitting inside a black Chevrolet station wagon with the air conditioner running.
As the three Libyans approached them, the agents stepped out of the car.
“Yes, sir,” said the older one.
“Where is Mr. Billings?”
The agent looked startled.
“I left him with you,” he said.
“Yes. But he walked away and did not come back,” Kaffir said.
“Oh, shit,” the agent said.
The second agent had opened the car door and was reaching for a radio phone. “Should I call in?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the first agent said. “Let’s take a look around. Maybe he just went to take a piss or steal a beer somewhere.”
Mustafa Kaffir showed the agents where Bobby Jack Billings had stood to urinate against the wall of the station building.
The tall agent knelt down to look closer at the ground. The dusty soil was packed hard where Bobby Jack’s feet would have been. The agent stuck a finger into the dirt and felt metal. He brushed dirt away.
He found two pieces of metal: a small golden Star of David and a small iron swastika.
“What the hell does that mean?” he said aloud to himself. He lifted the two pieces of metal in a handkerchief and dropped them into his pocket.
He looked up as the second Secret Service man approached, shaking his head.
“They just took me all over the train,” the agent said. “He’s not in there.”
“Shit,” said the older agent. “Better call in for help.”
“You know he’s gonna turn up in some saloon, don’t you?”
“Sure I do, but we’ve gotta call in anyway. You make sure those Arabs wait here and I’ll call headquarters.”
The radio phone was answered immediately in the Secret Service field office in Atlanta, Georgia.
“This is Gavone,” the older agent said with the dry, bored, laconic voice usually unaffected by airline pilots whose planes were plunging nose-first into an ocean. “Got a little problem.”
“What’s that?” responded another dry voice.
“We think the Link is missing.”
“Look under a porch someplace. He’s probably sleeping one off.”
“We looked,” Gavone said. “He’s gone. Better send help.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Deadly serious. Hurry up, will you?”
“Shit,” said the voice in Atlanta. “The Missing Link. Just what we need.”
CHAPTER TWO
HIS NAME WAS REMO and he was going to do something about pollution in America.
He stood on a hill looking down at three tall smokestacks that jutted up into the sky, puffing out wisps of thin white smoke. It was coal smoke, Remo knew, but it had been washed and filtered and processed until it was cleaner than the smoke from oil furnaces. The cleansing process had raised the price of using coal until it was higher than that of using oil bought from the Arabs. But it was all America had—high-priced oil or equally high-priced coal. Nuclear power was dead in the water. A small accident in which not one person was injured—no person had ever been injured in a nuclear accident in America—had been turned into the scare story of the century by the media, and by the time it was over, the drive toward nuclear power was scuttled. Remo thought it was sad that the country that had developed and pioneered nuclear power someday probably would be the only country in the industrial world not to use it. The marchers had won again.
They were the same marchers who had welcomed the Vietcong victory in Vietnam and so weakened America’s will that the United States pulled out of the Far East and let it be overrun by the communists. A long night of terror had descended over that part of the world. In Cambodia the illiteracy rate had reached 99 percent because everybody who could read or write had been murdered. It was a country with six doctors for six million people. Somehow, the marchers had nothing to say about that.
Remo had decided a long time before that America had lost more than face when it quit the war in Vietnam. It had lost America; it had lost its spirit. Formosa was given up, Iran was lost. In southern Africa, America had made it clear that the only government it would recognize would be a government made up of Communist terrorists—no matter how the people of that region voted. A college professor whose primary qualification was that she hated America had gone to Russia to receive an award from the Communists and said that all the talk about Soviet persecution of dissidents was a smokescreen to cover up America’s persecution of dissidents. And then she had gone back to her publicly paid position on the faculty of a state-supported college.
So much pollution, Remo thought, as he looked down into the small valley at the five thousand people who were camped outside the fences of the small coal-burning electrical generation plant. He turned to the small Oriental next to him and said sadly, “Chiun, it’s all over.”
“What is?” the Oriental said. He was only five feet tall, almost a foot shorter than Remo. He continued to look down at the crowd, the thin wisps of white beard and hair around his ears puffing occasionally in a stray breeze.
“America,” Remo said. “We’re done.”
“Does this mean we are finally leaving to find work elsewhere?” Chiun asked. He looked toward Remo who was still staring down at the crowd. “I have told you many times there is no shortage of countries that would be glad to have two premier assassins performing for them.” Chiun’s voice was high-pitched but strong, a voice that seemed too strong to come from a man who appeared to be eighty years old and frail. The old Oriental wore a bright white brocade kimono and despite the summer heat of Pennsylvania, he did not sweat.
“No,” Remo said. “It does not mean that we are going to look for work elsewhere. It’s just kind of sad that no matter what we do, America is shot.”
“I have never understood this,” Chiun said. “You act as if America were something special, but it is not special. It is just another country. Think of the grandeur that was Greece, the glory that was Rome, gone in the mists of time. All that is left is men who dance with each other and women who cook spaghetti. Think of the pharaohs and their empires. Think of the blond Macedonian. All gone. Should America be different?”
“Yes,” Remo said stubbornly.
“You can explain why?”
“Because this country is free. All those other places you mentioned, there was no freedom. But here people are free. And we’re being conquered from inside. We’re being torn up by Americans.”
“That is the way it is with freedom,” Chiun said. “Give people freedom and many of them will use it to fight you.”
“So what’s the answer?” Remo asked. “Take away freedom?”
The wizened old man looked up at the sky before replying. A lone chicken hawk patrolled the bright white skies. “The House of Sinanju has been in many nations for many centuries,” he said.
“I know,” said Remo. “Please, no history lectures.”
“All I wish to say was that this was the first country I had ever learned of which seemed to be run by caprice and whimsy. It is as if the tiniest minority runs this nation, and it is always that minority which hates the country most.”
“I know that,” Remo said. “So remove the freedom? That’s the answer?”
“No,” Chiun said. “Remove the freedom and you will be conquered from outside. Keep the freedom and you will be destroyed from inside.”
“So there’s no hope,” Remo said.
“None at all,” Chiun said. “All nations die. The only thing wrong with your nation’s death is that it will be inglorious. Better to die before the sword than before the germ.” He looked down again at the five thousand people lounging around before the electric company gates, a few of them shouting slogans and singing. “Take heart with one thing, though,” he said.
“What’s that?” Remo asked.
“Those germs down there. When this country gives way to whatever will follow it, be assured that they will be the first to go.”
Remo shook his head. “It all makes you feel hopeless.”
“No, no,” Chiun said quickly. “We have our art. The fullness of our lives comes from within. It requires nothing else.”
“Except targets,” Remo said.
“That is true,” Chiun said. “I stand corrected. Assassins need targets.”
Suddenly Remo was angry and he waved his hand at the marchers milling around below and said, “There should be enough targets there to satisfy anyone.”
“I will wait for you here,” Chiun said. “Enjoy yourself. But restrain your anger.”
“I will,” Remo said as he moved quickly down the hill. This was the fifth day the electric plant had been shut down by the pickets who surrounded it. The demonstrators had also made a daily run at the fence surrounding the plant and each day had been held off by the beleaguered town and plant police. But this day was different, Remo had heard. He had gotten word from Upstairs that guns and explosives had been shipped in to the demonstrators.
With the plant closed down, one hundred thousand families had been without electricity for five days. No refrigeration, no electric lights, no television and no radio. Hospitals were using emergency generators to perform major surgery and if any of those generators failed, people would die because there were no more backup systems.
The crowd around the electric plant was like a small declivity in marshland. When the tide came in, it filled, and when the tide went out, it emptied. Except that the television cameras were the water pressure that filled and emptied this pool of people. When the TV cameras were on, they charged the fence and chanted, and when the cameramen had gone, the pickets pulled back away from the fence, leaving behind a landscape littered with broken frisbees, sandwich wrappers, plastic Big Mac containers, the stubs of hand-rolled cigarettes, and the remnants of their signs opposing dirty air and “the polluting coal interests.”
This was the low tide time. Remo moved through the large crowd, which hung out in lethargic groups, many of them lying on their backs working on their suntans. Others shared beer. Vendors were selling sunflower seeds. A hundred feet away, a half-dozen uniformed policemen guarded the plant gates, but even they stood relaxed, knowing that the absence of TV camera had lulled everything into a kind of truce.
Remo did not expect to find the person he was looking for. No one looked at him as he walked around through the small clusters of people.
“Hey, man, got a smoke?” somebody asked him.
“No,” Remo said.
“Come on, gimme a smoke,” the man said. He grabbed Remo’s shoulder. Remo turned to look at him. He was a thin man in his mid-forties wearing a powder-blue polyester leisure suit and white patent leather shoes. Remo wondered what he was doing there. Weren’t revolutionaries supposed to stop revolting when they got older? They weren’t supposed to switch from jeans to leisure suits and keep doing the same old thing in different clothes.
“Aren’t you a little old for this?” Remo asked. He disengaged the man’s hand from his shoulder. The man felt his hand go numb. But it did not hurt; that would come later.
“Yeah, I suppose so, but what the hell, this is where the chickies are.”
Remo shrugged.
“But you need grass to score,” the man said. “You really do. Come on. I gotta make some grass.”
“I’d like to see you all making grass,” Remo said. “From underneath.”
“Owwww, my hand hurts. What’d you do to it?”
“Enjoy it,” Remo said. “It’s organic pain. The real thing.”
“You’re not funny,” the man said. He wore a vasectomy pin in his lapel. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I’m looking for Janie Baby,” Remo said. She was an internationally known folk singer who had made a fortune in America, then moved to London where she unleashed a continuing series of broadsides at racist, imperialist, war-mongering America. She had stayed in London five years, until the British had raised their tax rate into the ninety percent range, whereupon she had moved back to America and married an attorney who had gained notoriety by defending protest leaders in the Sixties. He was called the intellectual force behind the protest movement, which was not all that difficult, considering that most of the protesters regarded logic as a middle-class white American trick to enslave the blacks and the poor.
“She said she’s coming back later. She’s probably in her room in town,” the man said. He tried to rub his hand, but when he touched it, it hurt and he made a grimace of pain.
“Thanks,” Remo said. “Watch out for that hand.” In her room in town? Remo doubted it. The shutdown of electricity would have shut down the air conditioning in her suite and in the extreme summer heat, she was not going to be in any uncooled room if she didn’t have to be.
Remo trotted back up the hill and collected Chiun who seemingly had not moved a muscle since Remo had left. They drove back into the small town of Clairburg and Remo stopped alongside a policeman doing traffic duty.
“Officer,” he called.
The policeman flinched as if expected to be attacked. His hand crept toward his holster. Then he saw Remo and relaxed at the sight of an adult.
