Smith waited for the automatic search localizer to read out the telephone number captured by the black box really a NYNEX Caller Identification box–and identify the locale.

  “Ahh,” he said. “A Massachusetts area code.”

  “Some breakthrough,” Remo said sourly.

  “The next three digits indicate the city of Quincy,” Smith went on. “The northern section. Let us see if the final four digits represent a pay-phone location.”

  Smith frowned. “Odd. It’s not a pay-phone. We may be able to trace this to a residence.”

  As Harold Smith’s fingers flew, Remo glanced over to the Master of Sinanju. He was surreptitiously examining Remo’s eyes. Remo put a hand over them and looked away. Chiun pretended to look out the two-way window.

  “This is odd. This is very strange,” Smith was saying.

  “What is?” Remo asked, approaching Smith’s terminal, his eyes curious.

  “According to the phone-company data files, the number that answered the ad is not a working number.

  “Is that possible?”

  “If they are using pirated telephone connections, it is. It has been done before.”

  “So it’s a dead end?”

  Smith logged off. He brought up a wire-frame state map of Massachusetts and input the names “Quincy” and “Saugus.”

  “Hmmm. They are not remotely near one another at all. That may mean Quincy is a private residence.” He looked up. “We will deal with this later. Master Chiun, I would like for you to meet these people at the place they named and give them back their hard disk.”

  “What of the seventy-five thousand dollars mentioned?” asked the Master of Sinanju.

  “Of course, collect it if you can.”

  “There is no ‘can’ when Sinanju collects a debt,” Chiun said loftily. “There is only ‘must.’”

  “You will of course return the money to me.”

  “Minus my finder’s fee, of course,” suggested the Master of Sinanju, his eyes twinkling.

  Smith sighed. “Is ten percent acceptable?”

  “Yes,” said Chiun slowly. “I will allow you to retain ten percent. But only because you are my emperor. Otherwise it would be five.”

  Both Harold W. Smith and the Master of Sinanju glowered at Remo as he broke into gales of laughter.

  Clearing his throat, Harold Smith returned to his computer. He had to finish maintaining the LANSCII hard disk before it was delivered to Saugus.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It was supposed to be a simple errand, thought Nicolo “Nicky Kix” Stivaletta. Meet the Jap. Hand the Jap the payoff. Take the hard-on disk. Then whack out the Jap where he stood.

  “Simple. In and out. Bing bang boom. And home in time for Hunter,” as he told Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto, who had earned his nickname because he’d once been arrested for the heinous crime of dumpster diving. The Maggot’s hairless bullet of a head contributed to its longevity.

  “What if the Jap ain’t alone?” the Maggot wondered.

  “Then you got somebody to clip too,” said Nicky Kix, who had come by his street name because of his habit of kicking in the ribs and skulls of people after he had brought them down with a sawed-off shotgun.

  “Okay, I got somebody to clip too,” said the Maggot, who had often boasted to his fellow Deer Island inmates that he had clipped as many guys as he had fingers. In fact, the Maggot had never clipped anything. Including his nails. The Maggot was not renowned for his grooming skills.

  The headlights of their Dodge raced ahead of them as they came off the Saugus exit of Route One, north of Boston. They threw the chain-link fence of the Bartilucci Construction Company into sharp relief as the car slid through the open gate.

  “Okay,” said Nicky Kix. “It’s show time.”

  They got out.

  “See anything?” Nicky asked uneasily.

  “Nothing. Maybe he ain’t showed yet. Maybe he ain’t gonna show,” the Maggot added, silently hoping he would not have to clip anyone.

  Then a low, stern voice seemed to surround them.

  “I am here, messengers of the dreaded boss.”

  “Where? Where is he?”

  A figure detached itself from the shadow of the long storage building.

  He stepped into the headlight beams, clad in a kimono of dull black silk, his eyes narrowing to slits, his hands unseen in the tunnels of his joined sleeves.

  “Put your hands where I can see them,” warned Nicky Kix, amazed that the old Jap wasn’t blinded by the lights.

  “Show me your ransom first,” returned the old Jap.

  “Okay,” said Nicky. “Have it your way.” He pulled a thick manila envelope from inside his jacket, fat with greenbacks.

  He held them up to the lights so the edges of two twenties were visible. “All seventy-five grand,” he added, keeping a straight face. There was actually less than fifty dollars in the envelope sandwiching a dollar-size sheaf of cut newsprint.

  “Very well,” said the Jap, bringing his hands into view.

  One hand–the left–was clutching a black plastic box.

  “That’s it,” breathed the Maggot.

  “I know that’s it,” hissed Nicky. “Now shaddup and let me do all the talkin’. Okay,” he said, lifting his voice. “Let’s swap.”

  The Jap advanced. As he loomed larger and larger in the light, seeming to make no sound as he moved toward them, Nicky Kix lifted the envelope with one hand and reached out with the other to accept the all-important disk.

  “When I’ve got the disk,” he hissed to the Maggot, “you shoot him. In the stomach, not the head.”

  “I thought the head was better,” the Maggot breathed back, beads of dirty sweat popping up on his shiny forehead.

  Nicky Kix was speaking through clenched teeth so it would look as if he were smiling.

  “It is,” he said. “If you wanna clip a guy right off. I just want him down so I can kick the shit out of him while he’s squirming and bleeding.”

  “Okay,” said the Maggot, swallowing hard.

  The old Jap was now less that five feet away. Then four. Three.

  He stopped with less than two feet separating him from the outstretched money envelope. The hard disk came up into the moonlight. Nicky Kix laid blunt fingers on it as longnailed fingers simultaneously snatched away the envelope.

  To cover for what was about to happen, Nicky Kix said, “You don’t need to count it. It’s all there.”

  “You are Romans,” said the old Jap. “I need to count it.”

  And to Nicky Kix’s astonishment, the old Jap blatantly ignored underworld etiquette and riffled through the money.

  “Now!” he hissed to the Maggot. “He’s gonna catch on. Now!”

  “But,” said the Maggot, his eyes fear-sick, “I forgot to bring a gun.”

  That was all Nicky Kix needed to hear. He went for his own weapon.

  It was a silenced .22 Beretta. He brought it out of a worn shoulder holster. He was going to put one in the old Jap’s stomach and then kick him around the yard as Don Carmine had sanctioned.

  Nicky Kix made the gun level with his belt, putting the barrel in line with the old Jap’s stomach. As he began to caress the trigger, the old Jap’s head came up angrily, his dark eyes flashing. He had discovered the newsprint. Too late now, you old riceball, Nicky thought savagely.

  Nicky Kix pulled the trigger.

  The resulting scream of terror was bloodcurdling.

  A wolfish grin started to warp Nicky Kix’s face. Until he realized that the scream had come not from in front of him, but to his immediate right. He looked right.

  Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto was doubled over on his feet, clutching his paunchy stomach. He was squirming and stamping his feet and making incomplete footprints in the blood that was dribbling down his pant legs to the ground. Then he fell over and began to kick and writhe like his hairless namesake.

  Nicky Kix looked down. He saw that his .22 was pointed in a different direction than his brain had thought it was. A long-nailed hand had redirected it with such suddenness that Nicky never felt his own hand move.

  Nicky Kix took a quick step backward, the .22 sliding from the light redirecting touch of the old Jap. He brought the muzzle back in line. And fired.

  The old Jap twisted on one foot, the other suddenly stamping down in a different place.

  Nicky knew he had missed only because his wayward bullet had struck a silvery spark at a fencepost behind the wily old Jap. He tried again.

  The old Jap was quicker. He spun, feinted, and ducked.

  Nicky thought he had followed every wily move. He was sure he had a solid bead when he drew back on the trigger. He felt the recoil, heard the dry pop of the cartridge separating, and was rewarded with the sound and spark of a slug ricocheting off the idle nibbler machine.

  “You have what you want, cheater,” intoned the old man. “Go now and I will let you live.”

  “Screw you,” said Nicky, going for a lucky third shot.

  He never got a chance to fire again.

  From behind the nibbler a tall lean shape plunged.

  Nicky Kix didn’t stick around to figure out who this new guy was. He might be packing. And Nicky remembered that his job was first and foremost to get the hard-on disk to Don Carmine.

  He jumped for the open door of his idling Dodge. Without closing it, he sent the car screeching into reverse, out the gate, and around and into traffic.

  He floored the gas pedal, remembering to close the driver’s side door only after he was on Route One.

  · · ·

  Back at the Bartilucci Construction Company, Remo Williams watched the Dodge back out of the yard as if chased by a junkyard dog.

  “Are you okay, Little Father?” he asked anxiously.

  “Why do you ask?” said Chiun, stepping up to the squirming figure of the Maggot.

  “I heard shots.”

  “They became excited,” said Chiun, resting a sandal on the twisting head of the Maggot. “And are you not forgetting your duty? You must follow that one.”

  “I will, I will,” Remo said impatiently. “I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”

  “Of course I am all right,” said Chiun harshly, bringing down his foot. The Maggot made a cracking sound with his head and a kind of lamb’s bleat with his last breath. A yellowish-red squirt of combined blood and brains jumped from each ear. “I am the Reigning Master of Sinanju. Not some doddering ancient.”

  “Okay, okay, I just wanted to be sure.” Remo started off. He turned suddenly. “You’ll be okay until I get back?”

  “Be off, callow youth!”

  Reluctance in every movement, Remo melted into the darkness.

  · · ·

  Out on the street, Remo shook off his lack of resolve. He ran up onto the curving on-ramp and into the humming night traffic of Route One. He knew the fleeing car had to be going south, so he ran south.

  Legs pumping, he seemed to float along the breakdown lane. Cars whizzed by, their headlights warming the back of his neck, practically his only exposed piece of skin.

  Remo was wearing his silk suit and it was hampering every movement. Still, as he settled into a rhythm, he began to pick up speed. Soon the cars were no longer whizzing by. Remo was zipping past them. His eyes were peeled for the Dodge. He would recognize it from its plate.

  A mile clicked by. Remo’s hair was flying back, the wind in his face. His new face. No, strike that, he thought. His old face. His first face. He was feeling good. He was running at optimum speed and it was just a matter of trailing the thug’s car to its destination.

  Except for the Boston traffic, it would have worked.

  Remo had gone less than three miles when he realized the occasional speeders and lane cutters were not the exception but the rule.

  “They’re maniacs up here,” Remo growled as he was forced to enter the thick of traffic when a Porsche barreled up the breakdown lane as if it were marked off for his personal convenience.

  “Screw this,” Remo decided. Three cars behind the Dodge, he picked a flat-roofed yellow-and-silver MBTA bus and maneuvered behind it.

  His breathing lowered to keep out noxious exhaust fumes, Remo matched the bus’s lumbering speed, only a few inches behind the rear bumper.

  When he knew the timing was right, he jumped.

  Except for the fact that this was a highway, he might have been a kid back in Newark hitching a ride to the back of a trundling bus. Except Remo didn’t stay on the bumper. He went right up the back to the roof.

  Up there he stood braced on both feet, like a surfer negotiating the swells. The bus ran smoothly, and Remo had a good view of the Dodge. He grinned. This was going to be a piece of cake.

  And because he was standing up in full view, he saw the Dodge take the Melrose exit simply by cutting in front of two lanes of traffic.

  Over a dozen cars slammed on their brakes at the same time. Including the bus Remo was straddling.

  Amid a cacophony of crumpling fenders and shattering safety glass, Remo was thrown off the bus roof as if pitched from a bucking bronco.

  Normally he could have compensated for the centrifugal force of the bus’s sudden change in direction. The shifting flow of air on his bare arms and his body would have triggered body reflexes before Remo became conscious of the impending shift in momentum.

  But his arms were not bare. Remo, caught off-guard and lacking anything to grab hold of, lost foot contact with the bus roof and was thrown forward.

  Turning in the air, he found his equilibrium and picked a ragtop to alight on. He bounced slightly and came down on the median strip.

  Anxiously Remo looked for the off ramp. Maybe there was still time to catch up.

  He put all thought of the slippery Dodge out of his mind when a frantic voice cried, “Help me, someone! My wife is trapped!”

  Remo jumped over a sedan hood and pushed a man out of the way so he could get to the passenger side of a compact whose engine had been vomited from its shorn hood and was spilling licking gasoline-fed flames.

  On the passenger side, a woman was hung up in the straps of her shoulder harness, her head down, a tributary of blood visible in the snarling orange glow washing her forehead.

  Remo saw that the driver had escaped through his shattered window. The driver’s door had been compacted in place. He was trying to wrench it open, sobbing and crying his wife’s name.

  Gently impelling him to one side, Remo stepped up to the gaping window and took hold of the jagged frame. He stepped back.

  The door surrendered with a lurching groan. He set it aside and crawled in. The straps came free like cobwebs under his swift hard fingers. The woman slumped. There was no time to worry about broken bones. The flames were starting to roar.

  Crawling back, Remo pulled the woman out like a dead cat. Only she was not dead. Her heart still beat.

  He brought her to the side of the road and laid her there as her husband fell to his knees behind her, sobbing without words.

  There were more injured, and Remo went to help them. He had no choice. He had screwed up. Not lying flat on the bus roof had spooked the mafioso. This had been the result.

  · · ·

  An hour later, a tired Remo Williams limped back to the Bartilucci Construction Company yard.

  “You failed,” Chiun said after only a glance at his pupil’s bedraggled clothes. His necktie was smeared with soot. Here and there, seams had burst.

  “Don’t rub it in, okay?” Remo said dispiritedly.

  “You should have done your duty, not dallied like an amateur.”

  “Hey! I was worried about you. Is that a crime?”

  “Worry I will accept. Pity is unacceptable. You think I am too old to serve my emperor?”

  “No, I do not,” Remo said. Chiun glared. “Okay. Maybe a little.”

  “I will remind you that you were incautious enough to make an alarm sound when Smith sent you on a small errand.”

  “It was one of those ultrasonic alarms,” Remo said sourly. “A fly can’t get past them. And I’d like to see you handle one.”

  “Perhaps you will,” said Chiun tightly.

  “Great. Then you can teach me. Come on, let’s give the bad news to Smith.”

  “I will leave it to you to inform Smith that the ransom was not properly paid,” Chiun said tonelessly.

  “Except that I saw you take the envelope. What’re you trying to pull?”

  “Nothing. Behold. There is no more than forty dollars in this envelope. The remainder is waste paper.”

  “Only forty?”

  Chiun beamed. “Less my finder’s fee, of course.”

  “That’s too bad, Little Father,” said Remo. “You get only thirty-six bucks.”

  “Smith will make up the rest, of course. For my fee was based on the ransom to be paid, not the ransom that was delivered.”

  Remo said, “Chiun, I can hardly wait to be the fly on the wall when you try to work that out with Smitty.”

  “Smith will not deny me.”

  “No,” said Remo, jerking a thumb at the deceased form of Vinnie (The Maggot) Maggiotto. “If you hadn’t eliminated that guy, we would have had a line on LCN headquarters.”

  “We will not speak of this one to Smith,” Chiun said quickly.

  “Only if you stop carping.”

  “I never carp. I enlighten.”

  “Try enlightening without carping, then,” said Remo.

  “Only if you will attempt to receive enlightenment,” returned the Master of Sinanju.

  They left the body to decompose in the dark as they walked to their waiting car parked behind the long shed.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Don Carmine Imbruglia was soaking the postmarks off a stack of postage stamps he had steamed off the day’s mail when Nicky Kix burst in with the bad news.

  “I didn’t whack the Jap.”

  “Scroom, then,” said Don Carmine, adding a dollop more Lestoil.

  “And I lost the Maggot.”

  “Screw the Maggot,” snarled Don Carmine. “He eats garbage. Tell me somethin’ important. What about the fuggin’ hard-on disk?”