Warren Murphy - Last Call

Then Chiun was silent, still staring out the window at the plane's left wing.

"So?" asked Remo.

"So? What so?" said Chiun.

"You can't stop a story like that," Remo said. "What does it mean?"

"Is it not obvious?" asked Chiun, finally turning his hazel eyes toward Remo.

"The only thing obvious is that the Masters of Sinanju are always mean, duplicitous men who can't be trusted," Remo said.

"Trust you to misunderstand," Chiun said. "Sometimes I don't know why I bother. The moral of the story is that it is hard to defend yourself against an assassin when you do not know who the assassin is."

"Chiun, that doesn't tell me a damn thing I didn't already know. We know how hard it's going to be to protect the ambassador when we don't know who the button man is."

"You see nothing else in that story?" Chiun asked.

"Not a damn thing," Remo said.

"There is another moral," Chiun said.

"Namely?"

"Danger comes wearing no banners. And the closer it is, the more silent it will be."

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Remo thought for a moment. "Who will watch the watchman?" he suggested.

"Exactly," said Chiun, turning back to the window.

"Little Father?" said Remo.

"Yes, my son," Chiun said.

"That story stinks."

"One cannot describe a stone wall to a stone wall," Chiun said mildly.

It was damp and cold when Remo and Chiun stepped into a cab in the heart of London. Water dripped from Lord Nelson, his statue black in the night, high over the black stone lions of Trafalgar Square.

"How much to the Russian embassy?" Remo asked the cabbie, a warted man with a sweat-soaked cotton cap.

The embassy was only nine blocks away on Dean Street, but the cabbie recognized the American accent.

"Four pounds, lad," he said.

"Take me to Scotland Yard," Remo said. "The taxi fraud office."

"All right, mate. Two pounds and not a penny less. And you'll not get a better price anywhere this foul night."

"Okay," Remo said. "Get it moving."

To make it look good, the cab driver took them through Leicester Square and past Covent Gardens before doubling back to Dean Street.

"Here ye be, lad," the drive said when he pulled up in front of a three-story brick building on the quiet cobblestoned street. A cluster of

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metal piping hung down a wall of the building and a television antenna reached out awkwardly into the black nighttime sky.

"Wait a minute, Chiun," Remo said. "You, too," he told the cabbie.

Remo hopped out of the cab and walked up the three brick steps to the building's front door. The bell was the old-fashioned kind that required manual cranking and Remo gave it three full spins around, setting off the cluster of squawks inside.

A man in a business suit answered the door.

"Is this the ambassador's residence?" Remo said.

"That is correct." The man's English was precise but had a faint trace of a European accent.

"Well, get him out here. I want to talk to him," Remo said.

"I'm sorry, sir, but he is not at home."

Remo reached out his right hand and caught the man's left earlobe between his thumb and index finger.

"Now where is he?" Remo asked. Through the partially opened door, he could see men lounging in chairs in the hallway. They were armed, because their bodies had the slight off-balance tilt caused by heavy handguns in shoulder holsters.

The man grimaced with pain. "He's at his summer place in Waterbury, sir. Stop, please."

Remo kept squeezing. "Where?"

"His summer place in Waterbury. He will be there for the week."

"Okay," Remo said.

He released the man's ear.

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"Is there a message, sir?" the man asked. He rubbed his ear with the palm of his hand.

"No message," Remo said. "I'll see him when he gets back."

The door closed quickly behind Remo as he went back to the cab and hopped inside.

"Drive to the corner, James," he said. He leaned closed to Chiun. "It's all right. He's here."

"How do you know?"

"I didn't squeeze him hard enough to force out the truth," Remo said. "He told me what he was supposed to tell me. And if they're shipping people out to Waterbury, wherever that is, that means he's hiding out here. Particularly when there are a bunch of guys with guns hanging around."

At the corner where the road hung left in a series of steps toward Greater Marlborough Street, Remo and Chiun got out.

Remo gave the driver five American dollars.

"That's about three pounds now," Remo said. "Hold it for twelve hours and at your usual inflation rate, it'll probably be up to five pounds. Hold it a week and you can buy a house."

As he drove away, the driver muttered, "I'll hold it a month and buy a bomb to stick up your blinking bum, smartass Yank."

As Chiun and Remo walked back down the rain-slicked street toward the ambassador's residence, Chiun asked, "Are we anywhere near London Bridge?"

"No."

"Where is it?"

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"I think it's in Arizona. They sold the thing and somebody moved it to Arizona."

"Did he buy the river too ?" asked Chiun.

"Don't be silly. Of course not."

"Why would he buy a bridge and move it to Arizona?" Chiun asked.

"I don't know," Remo said. "Maybe he's got a water problem out there. I don't know."

"I am always amazed by the depth and breadth of the things you do not know," Chiun said.

Remo had an idea. Chiun did not seem interested.

"It's a pretty good idea, Chiun," Remo said.

Chiun said nothing. He looked around the third-floor bedroom, which they had entered by forcing a window after sliding up the outside drainpipe from the sidewalk below.

"This is it," Remo said. "The idea."

Chiun looked at him.

"You ready?" Remo asked.

Chiun sighed.

Remo said, "See, we've got no orders on what to do with this guy except keep him alive. So what we'll do is bundle him up, take him on the plane with us back to the U.S. Then we give him to Smitty and that way nothing can happen to him. What do you think?"

"Even the most subtle languages begin somewhere with a grunt," Chiun said.

But Remo was not listening. He had crossed the bedroom and was peering through a crack in the door.

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Outside was a drawing room and a man in shirtsleeves was sitting at a table playing solitaire.

There were five other men in the room. Four of them wore the too-tight-in-the-chest, too-loose-in-the-hips blue business suits of the KGB. They took turns walking to the windows and looking outside, opening the door to the hall and glancing around, checking behind the long drapes in case someone was hiding there. And when one finished making those rounds-windows, door, drapes- another began. Windows, door, drapes. The fifth man in the room stood near the man who was playing cards, emptying the man's almost-empty ashtray, refilling his almost-full drinking glass, shuffling the cards for him after each game.

Remo recognized the seated man as the ambassador. He had golden blond curls that framed his broad forehead and his face had the healthy tan of sun and summer and Remo wondered where he had managed to find either in London. The man wore a tapered shirt that hugged his trim body. Smith had given Remo a brief folder with the photograph and background of Ambassador Semyon Begolov. It had described him as the Casanova of the world's diplomatic corps and Remo could see why.

Begolov was asking the KGB men to play poker with him.

"We cannot play cards with you, Excellency," one of the four KGB men said. "There was that American who came calling for you a little while ago. We must be on the alert lest he return. And someone who is playing at games is not working

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at his duties for the motherland." He was a grim and smug twerp giving the ambassador a lesson in being a good dedicated Communist.