Warren Murphy - Hostile Takeover

"Maybe. But we won't be friends."

"We never were. I won't hesitate to sacrifice you for the cause. If you keep that in mind, we will get along."

"You know, Smith," Remo said thoughtfully, "I never knew my father. I always thought that was pretty tough. But from what I heard back there, your situation was worse than mine."

"I threw away my last chance to make amends in the flat," Smith said, glancing up at Sir Quincy's window. He adjusted his glasses. "I will never forget that, but I will never regret it either. My duty was clear. I hope that you will come to see your duty more clearly, and with less pain. "

Remo smiled tightly. "Give you a ride back to London, Smitty?"

"No," Harold Smith said without warmth. "I bought a return bus ticket. I like to get my money's worth."

And Harold W. Smith walked away, looking old and stooped and very fragile.

Remo waited until he turned the corner before trudging off to his car. It started to rain, but he didn't notice this time. He had too much to think about.

Chapter 31

P. M. Looncraft arrived in London's Heathrow Airport confident that back in the soon-to-be-defunct United States of America, the balance of economic might had shifted to Crown Acquisitions, Limited, and its stockholders. It would take another year, possibly two, before everything was consolidated, Looncraft reflected, but it was better than running tanks in the street. The Conscripts would be a great help once the stubborn ones were brought into line by the impressment gangs.

As the Jetway ramp was moved into position to accept disembarking passengers, he adjusted his chalk-striped Savile Row coat and patted his tightly combed hair.

The stewardess said good-bye in a homey British accent and P. M. Looncraft stepped out into the waiting room, smiling thinly.

"British soil at last," he said.

He looked around, wondering if perhaps the queen herself might be waiting for him. He dismissed the happy thought as sheer vanity. Of course not. A coach from the Royal Mews would suffice, however.

Instead of a coach from the Royal Mews, there was a quartet of stern-faced London constables. One of them stepped up to him after glancing at a Forbes cover. Looncraft recognized it as the one that had first proclaimed him King of Wall Street. He wondered if he would be knighted.

"Percival Marylebone Looncraft?" the constable inquired with proper British civility.

"Precisely, my good man," Looncraft said, trying to match his accent. "I presume you are to escort me to my destination?"

"That we are. A car is waiting."

"Capital. "

The car proved to be a common police car.

At the sight of it, Looncraft's long face became positively sunken.

"I was hoping for something more . . . ah, ceremonial," he complained as the door was held open for him. "One does not normally go to Buckingham Palace in a common police vehicle."

"In you go," one of the bobbies said. "We'll explain it on the way."

Looncraft climbed in. The door slammed and the others entered the car.

The drive took them to the outskirts of London, and the car kept going. Perhaps they were taking him to Windsor Castle. Looncraft asked.

"You are not going to Windsor Castle, bloke," the man seated next to him said tartly. "Your destination is Wormwood Scrubs."

"Remarkable name," Looncraft said. "Is it the royal retreat?"

"Wormwood Scrubs is a prison," he was told. "For you have been detained in the name of the queen."

Looncraft's lantern jaw dropped. "Prison?" he bleated.

"The charge is perpetrating crimes against the crown."

"There must be some mistake," Looncraft insisted. "This is highly uncivilized. I understood I was to see the queen. "

The bobbies broke into raucous laughter at that remark.

They were still laughing an hour later as they unceremoniously threw him into a dank prison cell.

P. M. Looncraft grabbed the scabrous bars and stuck his long nose through two of them.

"A dreadful mistake has been made!" he called. "My family has been loyal to the crown for over two hundred years. The Looncrafts billeted the King's Own regiment during the Rebellion. You must get word to the queen. She knows who I am."

"Queen?" a mincing cockney voice asked from the creaking double cot directly behind P. M. Looncraft. "You've come to the right pew, mate."

Remo Williams pulled up in front of the Morton Court Hotel, wondering where all the SAS commandos had gone.

The Indian girl at the reception desk told him that the Master of Sinanju had checked out after receiving a telephone call from a man who said his name was Smith.

"Know where he went?" Remo asked, noticing that the girl was not returning his smile.

"No, I do not," she said coolly. "And he neglected to pay his charges."

Remo sighed. "Give it here."

After Remo had paid the bill, the clerk found her smile and her memory.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," she said. "He did leave you a note. "

The note was brief. It said:

"REMO: I AM TAKING TEA WITH THE QUEEN MOTHER. AWAIT ME OUTSIDE BUCKINGHAM PALACE GATES. CHIUN."

Remo took the underground to Green Park and walked up the tree-lined Queen's Walk to the Mall and Buckingham Palace. There was no sign of the Master of Sinanju, so he cooled his heels outside the gates until, nearly two hours and three intermittent rainstorms later, Chiun emerged from the gates, beaming contentedly.

A matronly woman in what Remo thought was a dowdy dress and a gold crown waved good-bye from the big front door.

"How did it go?" Remo asked grumpily.

"It went well," Chiun said airily. "The queen mother is a sterling woman. She accepted the Royal Sceptre with grace and without recriminations-unlike that common scold, her daughter."

"I saw Smith in Oxford," Remo said as they began walking in the direction of Saint James's Park.

"I know. He told me everything. I understand the matter is settled."

"I got the head guy. And an earful from Smith about duty. "

Chiun looked up at Remo's set profile with lifted eyebrows.

"And what have you decided?"

"I haven't. I'm still pissed at Smith. But I'll string along with you until I figure out what I really want to do with my life."

"Then be good enough to string along with me for a few more hours," Chiun said. "Then we will leave this gray city of gray people and gray skies."

"An island full of Smiths," Remo remarked dryly.

"There is some good in all peoples," Chiun said, lifting a yellow forefinger. "Except possibly the Japanese."

"Don't forget the Chinese," Remo said good-naturedly. "Whom we are never, ever going to work for."

"The Thais also have their shortcomings," Chiun put in.

"I was never a fan of the Vietnamese. Or the French."

The Master of Sinanju led Remo to Oxford Street, near Oxford Circus, where he went into a store called Virgin Mega.

Remo waited outside, where he bought a copy of a tabloid which ballyhooed the realigning of the sphinxes at Cleopatra's Needle. He gave the vendor a fifty-pound note and received what seemed like a piggy bank's worth of coins in change. His pockets were already bulging with pound coins.

"Don't you have any pound bills?" Remo demanded.

"Sorry, sir. The pound note's been abolished."

"Keep the change, then," Remo said, letting the coins drop to the sidewalk. His pockets couldn't bear any more weight.

Chiun came out and crossed the street to another store called simply HMV. When he came out again, his arms were filled with plastic bags.

"Where to now?" Remo wanted to know.

"Heathrow," said Chiun. "I have summoned the Nostrum jet. Now that we are once again honored in this land, we need not leave as we entered, in secret."

"What do you mean-we? I was catching my death, as the British say, while you were sipping Earl Grey."