Power Play

Chapter five

Security meant not being afraid when you were summoned to the boss's office. This thought came to Will Bobbin as he walked, whistling, down the hall to the office of the director of community relations for the National Fossil Fuels Institute. He was no longer afraid; he was secure in his job.

And it had taken him a long time to achieve that goal.

When he had first come to work for the institute, he had anticipated making the oil and coal industries forward-looking, responsive to the public good. In his occasional appearances on television talk shows, he was always cool and articulate, nodding gently and concernedly when anti-oil bigots attacked the major producers, quietly awaiting his chance to systematically demolish them with impeccable logic. He fancied them as Tchaikovskian bursts of noise and himself as the gentle, precise melody of "Liebestraum."

He had been sure his performance was being noticed upstairs. And whenever one of the presidents of an oil company had died, he had harbored the small hope — one he was unwilling to admit even to himself — that someone in the industry with foresight and imagination would recognize his merit and reach down into the ranks and snatch him up for president. And then he could show them how to run an oil company. How to make profits and still be sensitive to the public's wishes. How to balance the bottom line for the company — profits — with the bottom line for humanity, which was "concern for the well-being of our country... nay, even for our species," as he had once said on an interview show.

But no one had reached down to anoint him as a president, and as time went on, it slowly began to sink in that no one in the business took him seriously. His boss was fond of saying to him, while reading a report and talking on the telephone at the same time, "Yes, yes, Bobbin, that's very interesting, send me a memo if you get a chance."

One day, after he had been with the institute for more than ten years, he took a look around and realized that everyone who had joined the company at about the same time he had, had already been promoted upstairs while he was still in the same dead-ended job.

He thought about it for a long while and decided that the difference between them and him was that they were jingoistic fools who believed in the fossil fuels industry, right or wrong, and they would never attain his special higher form of intellectual grace. On the other hand, they were all making over fifty thousand dollars a year, and still climbing.

So Bobbin looked carefully at the industry that had obviously spurned his enlightened ideas, and he looked at the mortgage on his house and the college bills for his kids and the amount he still owed on his summer home, and he came to the decision that the fuel industry would have rewarded his genius if they had been allowed to. But they had been prevented from doing that by an avaricious American public that always wanted something for nothing and by a greedy, grasping government that wanted to steal all your profits in tax dollars so they could piss them away on the unworthy.

This Jesuitical judgment allowed Bobbin to hate the American consumer and the American government instead of the industry that had rejected him. And he hated with a passion. His voice became one of the most strident in the industry, attacking the looneys and the fuzzy-brains and the free-lunch grubbers.

Gone was the thoughtful, professorial Will Bobbin of the early days. Gone were the gentle explanations on talk shows of the oil company position. Instead, Bobbin turned into a gut fighter, always looking for an edge, shouting down opponents with performances that would have sickened him ten years earlier.

And the promotions had followed. And the raises.

Then he had developed his screening program for potential oil executives.

"What's the point of all this?" the head of the lobby had asked him.

Bobbin had laid on him his very best, knowing, sardonic smile.

"Just to prevent the wrong kind of guy from getting to run one of our companies someday," he said.

"Oh? And what is the wrong land of guy?"

"The kind of guy I used to be," Bobbin said.

The head of the institute had smiled and given him the go-ahead for the program. They had used professional models in the films of the old people freezing, and then used life-sized mannikins underneath the ice for the later shots.

Bobbin supervised the filming himself and kept asking the cameraman and the director for "realism, dammit, more realism. I want to feel those old fucks shiver and twitch. I want to hear their flesh turning hard and their blood congealing. Make it realistic."

For a few moments, Bobbin had thought of finding some old couple who were willing to enter a suicide pact and to lay a lot of money on their estate if they were willing to freeze to death on camera. But he rejected that idea because it might just to be too hard to find such a couple and he wanted to get the film shot and the program in operation as soon as possible. He could be delayed months, just to look for some old gas guzzlers who wanted to die.

The program had gone well and Will Bobbin had promotion on his mind when he walked into his boss's office. But a look at his boss's face had driven that idea from his mind, and for just a moment, he felt the same old twinge of fear he had felt in the early days when he was being called on the carpet.

"Bobbin, you see what this sucker's doing?"

"Which sucker is that?"

"Wesley Pruiss." His boss, a big man with big brutish hands with hair all up and down the backs of his fingers, waved a New York Times at Bobbin, who already had read the story. "He's going ahead with that solar energy shit. You'd think a guy gets crippled, he'd have enough sense to do what he's supposed to do. Go home and play with himself or something."

"I saw the story," Bobbin said. "Bad news."

"Well?"

"Well, what?" Bobbin asked with a small sinking feeling.

"You said you could take care of it."

Bobbin nodded.

"Then you better do it. There's no room in this business, Bobbin, for weaklings who can't see their duty and do it. You get my drift?"

Shaken, Bobbin rose to his feet and nodded. He was dismissed by a curt nod of the head. As he walked from the office, he vowed to himself that he had not come this far in the business just to have his life messed up by some porn publisher. If it turned into a question of the good life for Will Bobbin or life for Wesley Pruiss, well then Wesley Pruiss had just better duck.

The assassin stood in the woods behind the Furlong County Golf Course. He was a small man, dressed casually in khaki slacks and a yellow sports shirt, and he would have looked like many other small men in Furlong County if it had not been for the fact that his skin, like his shirt, was yellow.

His attention was fixed on a squirrel, hopping along a felled tree. The squirrel moved a foot in a nervous hop, stopped, with his plumed tail waving about, then hopped again, all in a quick, herky-jerky movement.

Slowly, the assassin bent down and picked up a small stone in his left hand. He tossed it up into the air, about ten feet high, in the general direction of the squirrel. The stone bounced off the log behind the squirrel who took off as if propelled by a diarrhetic jet.

The animal raced the ten feet down the log, across two feet of open space, hopped onto the trunk of a fat black tree and flashed up toward safety.

The assassin's right hand sped almost like an electric spark toward the back of the thick black leather belt he wore. In one smooth movement, he extracted a red handled knife, brought it up to his ear, and let fly.

The knife made one fast half-turn in the air and then slammed into the squirrel's tail, ripping through the fur and flesh and burying itself an inch deep into the wood of the tree. The squirrel kept trying to climb but, pinned by the knife, was unable to move and emitted a pained, noisy shriek.

The shriek lasted only a split second, because even while the first knife was being thrown by the right hand, the assassin's left hand was moving to the back of his belt, removing another knife, and with an identical throwing motion, winging the knife toward the spot on the tree where the squirrel futilely moved his legs.

That knife too made a lazy half-turn before the spike-sharp point buried itself into the squirrel's small skull, cracking it with an audible split and pinning the animal to the tree. The shriek died in the animal's throat. The assassin smiled and walked toward the tree to retrieve and clean his knives and return them to the belt of six he wore.

But the assassin's smile was not a smile of pleasure. This had been his third squirrel of the day and he felt a lingering tinge of apprehension that his ancestors who had honed this knife-throwing art over the centuries would be disturbed if they could see that he kept his skills sharp by killing squirrels.

But soon, he thought, soon came Wesley Pruiss.

But even that did not give him much satisfaction, for a normal man was not much more to him than a squirrel. No more of a challenge. No more of a threat.

He wished instead for the days he had read about and heard about, in centuries past, when great killers were sent out to track down other great killers.

Today, he thought to his dismay, there were no great killers left to test him and to challenge his genius in a contest in which second-place meant death.

Wesley Pruiss was sleeping when the pickets arrived. Rev. Higbe Muckley wore a long frock coat and a shirt with a frayed collar and a tie whose back strand was longer than the front.

Behind him were forty pickets, most of them carrying signs. One sign read: "Rock of Ages."

"What the hell does that sign mean?" Remo asked Theodosia.

She came to the window and brushed her body against his, but she did not recoil at the touch. Instead, she stayed there and pressed against him harder.

"What sign?" she asked, looking down.

"The one the lunatic is carrying."

"Be more specific."

"'Rock of Ages,'" Remo said. "What does that mean?"

Theodosia shrugged, a rubbing shrug that manipulated her body against Remo's.

Pruiss woke up as the pickets, marching slowly around the building, began to sing.

"What's going on out there?" he snarled from his bed.

"The dancing girls have arrived," Remo said.

"Chase 'em, I'm trying to sleep."

Their voices drifted up from below:

"...Cleft for me.

Let me hide myself in Thee."

"Who brought the pickets?" Pruiss asked sleepily.

"It looks like that Reverend Muckley," Theodosia said. "The bible thumper from California." She pressed closer to Remo.

"Well, at least it ain't none of them lesbian libbers," Pruiss said, before turning his face away on the pillow and closing his eyes. Remo felt Theodosia's body stiffen slightly.

"Why'd this Reverend Muckley come here?" Remo said.

Theodosia said, with sureness. "Those goddam oil companies must have put him up to it. I think they're behind everything that goes on around here."

Pruiss, on the edge of sleep, mumbled something.

"What, Wesley?" Theodosia asked. But Pruiss was asleep.

"The CIA," Remo said.

"What?"

"He said 'the CIA.'"

The dark-haired woman shook her head. Her hair brushed against Remo's cheek.

"Ever since Grossdid an article on CIA assassins, Wesley's been convinced the CIA is after him. If his car runs out of gas, it's the CIA. If the tailor rips a button off his shirt, it's the CIA. It's like a fixation with him."

"I don't know," Remo said. "They do some strange things."

"If they wanted to harass somebody, they could surely find a better target than Wesley," she said.

"They've got enough people to harass everybody," Remo said.

Downstairs, the hymn-singing had changed to chanting:

ONE, TWO, DOSEY-DO,

PRUISS IS GONE

AND GROSSMUST GO.

"That's enough of them," Theodosia said. "I'm calling the police."

"Don't bother," said Remo. "I'll shoo them."

Remo went downstairs and waited on the front steps for Rev. Higbe Muckley to make the circuit of the country club building.

"Nice sign, mama," he said to an old woman who walked by, carrying a placard that read: "We will not be bought off by a mess of tax pottage."

"You think so?" she asked, her bitter lined face lighting up.

"Best one yet," Remo said.

"Think it'll make that Pruiss go home? Back to New York where he belongs?" she asked.

"No," Remo said. "Of course not. Signs never do anything except get you on television."

"Oh my, television." Her hand moved to smooth her hair.

"Absolutely," Remo said. "You're a shoo-in for it."

"You're one of them, aren't you," the woman asked Remo. She nodded toward the house.

"Guess so."

"Well, you probably can't help it, being Italian and all," the woman said.

"Nice talking to you, mother," Remo said as he saw Reverend Muckley come around the far corner of the building, moving his hands as if an orchestra leader, conducting the chants. He was a big man and he ambled along and Remo thought all he needed was a beard and top hat to look like Abraham Lincoln.

Remo fell in alongside him as he passed the steps.

"Good to welcome you here, son," Muckley said. "Where's your sign?"

"I don't have one," Remo said. "Look. There's a man sick upstairs. Whether you like him or not, he's sick. Now why don't you go away and give him a chance to heal up?"

"An angel of the devil," Muckley said. "Sent to visit evil upon us. It is God's will that he be ill and God's will that we be here, the hosts of the Lord, to guard against him." His voice was impassioned but Remo saw there was no fire in Muckley's eyes. He was just reciting from memory, probably something he'd recited hundreds of times before.

"I'm glad we had this little chance to talk," Remo said. He grabbed Muckley's right hand and pinched the flesh between his index and middle fingers. "Sure I can't convince you?"

Muckley winced. "Of course, there is a time and place for Christian charity. Even to those who offend us."

"Right," Remo said. "Sort of turn the other cheek."

"Correct," Muckley said. Remo was leading him away from the house now, back toward the narrow street. As if they were mountain climbers, attached to their leader by lifelines, the forty pickets followed him.

Remo kept pressing the flesh between Muckley's fingers.

"Go away now, Reverend."

"Yes. I understand your point of view."

"I thought you might," Remo said.

"Folks, we've done what we can here," Muckley called out.

There was a groan from the crowd. The old woman shouted, "The television ain't arrived yet."

"Now we should all go back to our homes and pray for this evil man," Muckley said.

"Let's set the house afire," someone else called.

"No, no, no," Muckley yelled. "Christian love will conquer all. Our prayers are the only flames we need. They will light the fire of decency, even in such a cold heart as Westport Prune's."

"Good going." Remo said.

"You going to be here tomorrow?" Muckley asked.

"Every day," Remo said.

"All right," Muckley said. "But no more with the hand, huh?"

"If you behave," Remo said.

He let Muckley's hand go and the tall minister walked off down the road, followed by the straggling line of disappointed picketers.