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"I don't care. He'll leave when the American is sausage. The American goes
down now," said the KGB security chief to the man on the monitor.
Outside the gate, with precise British rectitude, an employee of Her Majesty
informed Remo that his presence would be perfectly acceptable inside the Tower
at this late hour.
"I've got friends," said Remo, glancing back at the car. "Can they come too?"
"I'm sorry," said the woman ticket seller. "I'm afraid they can't."
"That's all right," said Remo just as pleasantly, "they are."
"I am terribly sorry, but they will have to stay." The woman smiled. She was
polite. She politely asked the yeoman warders in red tunics with Her Majesty's
seal upon their breasts to escort Remo inside the Tower of London. They wore
squarish black hats and were called Beefeaters. Remo didn't quite know why
these men in particular got that name because everyone on this island seemed
to smell of beef-eating.
"And I am even sorrier," said Remo, "but I've got to keep one of these guys."
He looked back at Lord Philliston. Britain's top secret agent blew him a
kiss.
"Well, sir, I am terribly, terribly sorry but you can't keep anyone. Not in
the Tower. These are special instructions I have received from the
administration to allow in only you." Remo liked the way the British were
always incredibly, cheerfully polite.
Unfortunately, he pointed out that he had found Lord Philliston and that he
was his, and he wasn't going to the Tower complex without him, and he
certainly was going in the Tower complex.
Lord Philliston rolled down his window.
"I love it when you talk so butch," said Britain's prime intelligence defense.
Remo nodded him out of the car and Lord Philliston swished from the rear of
the limousine, right to Remo's side.
"Not so close," said Remo.
For the first time in three hundred years, the Beefeaters, yeoman warders of
the Tower of London, were called into action. Their orders: Keep the American
from bringing the Briton inside. In brief, rescue the Briton, who apparently
did not want to be rescued.
The yeoman warders advanced with pike, pick, ax, and bare hand in square
formation. Afterward they would all swear the American was a mirage. He had to
be. He not only moved through them as though they were air, but dragged the
man they were supposed to rescue with him.
Remo had Lord Philliston by the sleeve. Lord Philiiston was giggling and
laughing and trying to skip. Remo did not feel comfortable with Lord
Philliston skipping, so he kept him off balance.
Lord Philliston pointed out each turn. Dark ravens as large as eagles cawed
menacingly. A few lights of the keepers shone soft and yellow, little dots of
warmth in a cold stone fortress.
Remo sensed that they were in someone's sights. It could have been a spear or
a rifle. The sensation was the same. It was not alarm. Alarm was a function of
fear, and that tightened the muscles. It was a quietness about the place.
Anyone could feel it, but few would listen to it. Often people would remember
how sudden and surprising an attack was, when in reality it should never have
been that surprising. Humans were equipped to know these things, unless they
were trained to respect their senses, they would never perceive them.
Now, entering the Tudor-style Queen's House, Remo felt that quietness close in
on him.
Guy Philliston showed Remo the door that led to the absolute safest safe house
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in all England. The special dungeon of Henry VIII.
A broadsword came down first, clanging into rock at Remo's side. But he was
soon beneath it and beyond it, smoothly, even while he wondered why the large
man was using a sword instead of a gun. A second man dropped from a concealed
loft just above Remo's head. He dropped, kicking with steel-tipped shoes and
stabbing with a sharp dirk, a nasty little dagger good for infighting in
tavern and alley.
Lord Philliston stepped back. He was hoping this wasn't going to be messy.
Someone behind him was trying to drag him away. When he saw one of the
attackers lose an arm in a gusher of blood, he realized that this was going to
make a rather untidy mess. He scampered into a stone doorway adjacent to the
passage as another four men came hurtling down into the attactive American.
Lord Philliston's contact was motioning for him. Quickly, he stepped inside,
and closed the door quietly behind him as the battle went on down the steps
toward the room where they had the American woman.
"You almost got killed, Lord Philliston," said a short dark man, squat as a
bale of hay. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
"I suppose it would be useless to ask you to let him live."
"I am afraid we cannot do that," said the contact. "You must get out of here
quickly and let us take care of this."
"You really are becoming quite British. Do whatever you want and then say
you're sorry about that."
"A thousand apologies, my lord."
"He was beautiful."
"There are many beautiful men in your country."
"He was special," said Lord Philliston with a sigh. The Cold War was hell.
Remo knew Lord Philliston was gone and did not bother to stop him. He did not
stop him because he heard a woman groan just around the curving stone
staircase. And he wasn't sure what it was. It was not pain. And it was not
fear. It certainly was not joy.
What he did not realize was that it was practiced. Kathy O'Donnell had been
practicing this groan since her freshman year at college. Her roommates had
told her how. You made sure you started the groan while the man was working
toward his climax. Often, if you groaned properly, that would precipitate his
release. And then it would be over sooner. Kathy O'Donnell gave Dimitri this
groan as his face contracted and his body tensed, and then he was done.
Tragically, he had been no better than the others after all.
"Wonderful, darling," whispered Kathy to the man who had shown so much
potential, and because of that been such a failure.
She heard a commotion heading toward the room. A man came hurtling in against
the stone wall with a knife still in his hand. He hit like old china in a
burlap bag. You could feel his bones break. Blood shot out of his mouth in one
spurt and nothing moved.
Now Kathy's body began to tingle the way it had at Malden. Dimitri moved off
her, steadying himself, reaching for a lamp. Another body came into the room,
headfirst. The body followed an eighth of a second later. She, felt her thighs
become hot, sticky hot. Her nipples tightened. Two hard slaps against stone,
unmistakably people being crushed. An impossibly tantalizing caress seized
her, and drove her beyond control as she lay there alone on the bed.
A somewhat thin man emerged from the passageway. Dimitri's thick muscled body
had him by at least fifty pounds. Dimitri squatted, waving the heavy brass
lamp, then he charged, a nude man coming in for the kill. She could see
Dimitri's muscles perfectly drive the heavy macelike lamp into the thin man,
but then, catching all his force, the thin man flipped Dimitri like a frisbee
into a wall. The crack made his back into a rubber band and he fell without a
twitch. He was dead.
And then the man spoke to her. "Dr. O'Donnell," said Remo.
The answer was a groan. Not like the ones before. Kathy O'Donnell, on hearing
Remo's voice at that moment, suddenly found out what all her friends were
taking about. She had just enjoyed her first orgasm.
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Finally with her body glowing in completed ecstasy, Kathy said, with the most
girlish of smiles: "Yes."
"We've got to get out of here. Are you all right?" said Remo.
All right? She was magnificent. She was delirious. She was exalted, thrilled,
triumphant, ecstatic.
"Yes," said Kathy weakly. "I think so."
"What were they doing to you?"
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