Warren Murphy: Missing Link

Freddy Zentz arrived just after 8 p.m. Remo thought he looked like the head clerk at a Philadelphia race track. He wore a powder-blue polyester leisure suit and white plastic patent leather shoes. Remo wondered if every man in America owned a blue leisure suit. Zentz was a small, slight man. Surprisingly, he had a closed-cropped haircut. He wore thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses and was missing his two canine teeth, so that when he smiled, as he did

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in greeting, he looked like a beaver approaching a succulent birch tree. He was about thirty.

"Hello, hello, hello," he said. Solemnly he walked around the room shaking hands with each of them in turn. Jessica stayed behind in the doorway to the room, smiling maternally, as if this were her son with whom she was well pleased.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of the Pan-Latin Organization against Terrorist Zionism," Freddy said to each of them in turn, as his thin bony hand shot from his sleeve like an unleashed piston. Remo shook his hand and restrained his impulse to crush his bones. Chiun listened to Zentz's greeting without expression on his face. But he kept his hands inside his kimono sleeves, and when it appeared that Zentz might stand in front of him all night waiting for Chiun to shake his hand, Chiun closed his eyes, signaling clearly that the audience was ended.

When he was done making the rounds of the room, Zentz pulled a chair to the front wall, near the old unworkable fireplace.

"I'm glad you all came," he said. "I was hoping for more, but this is a pretty good nucleus." He pronounced the word "nook-a-luss." Jessica sat down on the floor in the doorway at the other end of the room. She looked at Remo, who smiled at her. She smiled back.

Remo wanted to ask what the organization was all about.

A man across the room from Remo with a face that was cragged and riven said to Zentz, "What's this organization all about?"

Zentz's eyes twinkled with satisfaction. "What

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you have the privilege of being in on is the first wave of the new wave of revolutionary action." He paused as if that had answered the question.

Remo was going to ask what that meant when another man at the end of the room near Zentz asked, "What does that mean?"

"It means that the Pan-Latin Organization against Terrorist Zionism is a new kind of information house for groups that understand the basic corruption of the United States and all its allies around the world, preying as they do on the poor and the weak, so that the big money industrialists and the robber baron oil companies and all those who partake of America's racist fare can grow sleek and fat."

Remo noticed the expressions around the room ranged from distaste to disgust. Except Chiun, whose eyes were still closed and his face impassive, and Jessica who seemed enraptured by all the truth and beauty that Zentz was revealing.

Remo was going to press the question again, but someone beat him to it.

"Yeah," the man asked from his seat next to Remo. "But what does that mean? Against Terrorist Zionism. Does that mean we're against the Jews and for the Arabs or what? What does that mean?"

"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

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,

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 Tightness 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

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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 dim-witted 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

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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.