Warren Murphy: Slave Safari

"Right or wrong, duck," said Remo.

"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Mr. Mueller. I'm going outside. I will be back in five minutes or whenever I hear the word 'yes' yelled at the top of your lungs. If you still have lungs."

The man with the briefcase rose somberly and walked to the front door. He left it open and Remo could see him light a cigarette in the front yard. The two men with the concealed weapons rose and approached Remo.

"Stay out of this, old man, and you won't be hurt," one said to Chiun. The Master of Sinanju smiled sweetly. "Oh, thank you so much for sparing a frail old man."

Remo shot him a dirty look. He didn't like it like this, not with Chiun watching. There would be non-stop bitching later on about Remo's technique. Well, Remo would be very simple and stick to basics. He was not in the mood for a harangue.

"We would rather be easy on you," said the man nearest Remo. He grabbed Remo's wrist and twisted ever so slightly. It was a move of either kung fu or karate, but Remo did not remember. Chiun liked to catalogue these foolishnesses, but Remo did not want to be bothered. All of them were incomplete tools, even at their most advanced levels where they became workable for actual use. This man was being "the clinging vine" or something. He twisted.

Remo saw Chiun watch his elbow. Damn. Well, whatever. Remo brought his gripped hand back, taking the man with him and caught the chest bone with his right thumb. A single timed move that enabled him to step over the falling breathless body to the man facing Chiun, who now realized what Remo was doing. Remo tried to put the second man between him and Chiun so that Chiun would not witness the stroke.

The man guarding the old Oriental saw his parchment bearded face, saw him suddenly dart into a crouching position and look around the man's waist. The man looked down behind him, but saw nothing. Suddenly everything was black.

"Your stroke was rushed on the second man. I could not see the first because of the falling body," Chiun said.

"You couldn't see the second either, Little Father."

"I saw it."

"You cannot see through flesh."

"I saw the stroke of your hand in the heel of that foot," said, Chiun, pointing to the man on the floor. "It was rushed."

One of the men twitched.

"Well, the stroke worked," Remo said glumly.

"A child playing by the beach builds castles that work also, but they are not enough to live in and certainly not enough for the storm. You must build a house for the storm, not for the sunny afternoon. Your stroke was for a sunny afternoon."

"These guys were a sunny afternoon."

"I cannot reason with you," said Chiun and lapsed into a stream of Korean with such recognizable terms—to Remo—as the inability of even the Master of Sinanju to make a banquet from rice husks or diamonds from mud.

The man with the briefcase returned to the cottage with an order: "Don't you two guys hurt him too much. We need him," he said and then he saw his two guys.

"Oh," he said.

"They fall down, go boom," Remo said. "Now I'd like to ask you a question or two in all fairness and honesty."

To assure fairness and honesty, Remo placed a hand very quickly on the back of the man's neck, and as he pinched a nerve just so, the man too felt fairness and honestly were the only way to answer questions.

He worked for the Lippincott Foundation. His direct boss was Laurence Butler Lippincott. Another Lippincott, James Forsythe, had disappeared in the Busati bush. The government was working on it, but Laurence Butler Lippincott thought he could do better. Remo Mueller was wanted because he obviously was friends with General Obode. The Lippincotts would use him to get to Obode, to get his help in finding James Forsythe Lippincott. Laurence Lippincott himself had ordered that Remo be approached.

Remo released the pinch on the nerve.

"Your friends will come to in a moment or so," he said. "Where I can find Laurence Butler Lilliput?"

"Lippincott," the man said. "No one finds Mr. Lippincott. You see him by appointment only, if you're lucky."

Remo decided to rephrase the question and there must have been something in the manner of his voice because he got an immediate response. Laurence Butler Lippincott was at the headquarters of the International Bank of New York City, 88th floor, the Lippincott Suite.

He appeared promptly each morning at 11:30 A.M. and worked through till 4:30 P.M. Non-stop. Remo released the man's neck.

No one gives Mr. Lippincott orders," said the briefcase man. "Maybe you stopped me, but there'll be more. No one can stand up against vast money. No one. Not governments. Not you. No one. All you can do is serve and hope you'll be rewarded."

"You will personally see your vast money in little soggy lumps," Remo said.

"Have you learned nothing?" shrieked Chiun. "Boasting? A boast is more fatal than a rushed stroke. A boast is a gift to an enemy. Have you learned nothing?"

"We'll see," said Remo. "Do you want to come along?"

"No," said Chiun. "A boast is bad enough but a successful boast is worse because it encourages other boasts, and they surely will cost in price. Nothing in this world is without payment."

Payment was a good word and Remo thought about it as the briefcase man drove him to New York City. Every so often, the two bodyguards would wake up and Remo would put them back to sleep. This went on until the Taconic Parkway when the two men finally got the general idea that they were no longer expected to overpower Remo.

Laurence Butler Lippincott did not have his offices in the huge tower his banks were famous for financing. They were instead in a tall, aluminium, looming building just off Wall Street, a narrow side street made wider by a large open entranceway with modern sculpture, which the briefcase man told Remo cost the Lippincotts more than two million in lost office space. Most people were amazed that Lippincott had spent $70,000 for the sculpture, but never considered that it cost so much more just to give it space. If Remo would think about reality, he too would appreciate what working for Lippincott meant. Remo did not appreciate reality.

He pushed the two bodyguards and the briefcase man ahead of him and managed to compress them all in a revolving door with the breaking of only one bone, the briefcase man's left arm which didn't quite fit. He screamed appropriately.

They had to take two elevators to the Lippincott floor. The first went only up to the 60th floor where three guards and a manager questioned Remo and his party.

Remo was polite and he was honest. He told the three guards and the manager that he was going to see Mr. Lippincott and would be delighted if they would accompany him. This, three of them did, with happy hearts. They were happy because they were not the fourth man who lay on the carpeting of the sixtieth floor foyer with his ribs and nose broken. The happy throng burst out into the 88th floor with exuberance, two guards going across the magnificent mahogany desk of Lippincott's private secretary, driving her back into a Picasso original. The office was like an art gallery, except that few galleries could afford this collection of Picassos, Matisses, Renoirs and Chagalls. Remo grabbed a blue picture with many dots off the wall and led his group to see Mr. Lippincott himself. A guard protested, so Remo left him behind—with his head in a bookcase.

The office of Laurence Butler Lippincott had no door. None was needed, Remo realized. The door was really back down at the 60th floor.

Lippincott looked up from a typewritten page he was reading. He was a graying elderly man, with taut skin and the placid confidence of the very rich in his face.

"Yes?" he said, apparently undisturbed by the commotion.

"My name is Remo and I say no."