Chapter 4

“I’m acting under the direct orders of my supervisor,” Remo told the emperor of Sicily. “And I never disobey an order.”

“It is a million dollars. Surely you can disobey one small order in exchange for a million dollars.”

“Listen, Burpescusmi, I just shrugged off a career in the Extreme Naked Athletics for a million bucks.”

“What?”

“On the other hand, I could have been the best Crocodile Outback Marathon runner that there ever was. Another easy million. Or ice-wall climbing. I could have done that blindfolded. Another million.”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” said the emperor of Sicily. “Please talk slower because of my English.”

“Did I mention my TV career? Way more than a million bucks, bucko, and I would have got to bag more sleazy celebrity teenyboppers than you could shake your stick at. But I gave it all up.”

“Why?”

“My father. He would have been irked. Now, you want to know who’s really irked? Me. Why? Miguel Jackon.”

“Ten million dollars,” the emperor said. Even crazy men had their price, right?

“Not bad. If you had it. Which you don’t. Did you hear about Miguel Jackon? The whole business with the star in Hollywood. That was me. I moved it. But it’s not what I wanted to do. You know what I wanted to do?” The American began snapping imaginary bones in his hands. They weren’t especially powerful-looking hands, but the wrists were thick as the drive shaft on a piece of construction equipment.

“I can get you ten million U.S. dollars by daybreak.”

“If I cared, which I don’t. I’m already rich, see?”

“No government agents are rich. Except in my government.”

The American’s smile was made all the more chilling by the malevolent brown eyes. “What you call a government I call organized crime.”

“Yes, we are organized, yes, and now official, too. We have the legitimacy of statehood.”

“You think because some slimeball mafioso declares himself king he really is king?”

“Yes, that is true,” declared Don Bertilescessi. “Sicily has always been under the oppressive rule of the mainland Italians. Too long have they dictated their will to the Sicilian people. Until now there has been no man with the strength of will to take a stand against the dictators of Rome.”

“Doesn’t make you legitimate.”

“We have been recognized by other heads of state! This makes us legitimate!”

“Just because a bunch of other international criminals say you’re not a criminal doesn’t mean you’re not a criminal. You know how many innocent people have been killed during your reign of power? One for every rice grain in my breakfast bowl.”

“We are fighting for our freedom!”

“You’re a thug. A bully. You’re a coward.”

The emperor of Sicily grew red in the face. “No man alive today has ever called Don Bertilescessi a coward. All are dead!”

“I know. Take, for example, that village mayor from up in the hills.”

“Exactly!”

“He said that it was cowardly of Bertilescessi to hold the families of the Italian government as hostages.”

“Yes!” Bertilescessi hissed.

“So you sent the other thugs who work for you to kill the mayor. And his family.”

“He got what he deserved!”

“Hello? Stupid man? You proved how cowardly you really are.”

“I’m not a coward!”

“You’re chickenshit. The wonderful wizard wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

The emperor of Sicily attempted to kick, or swing a roundhouse, or surreptitiously extract the dagger from his sock garters. He wasn’t capable of moving anything below the neck. The smart-ass from America had paralyzed him with a nerve pinch of some kind.

“You call me a coward when you have incapacitated me! A real man would fight fair.”

Remo nodded. “You have a point.”

Remo and Don Bertilescessi, the self-installed emperor of Sicily, came to a gentlemen’s agreement.

The don’s upper ranks were invited to his penthouse suite to see that the agreement was fairly executed.

“Come in, everybody. I’m Remo and you’re not.”

There was confusion and distrust, and there were many drawn weapons. One of the don’s top men asked a question that Remo didn’t understand, but he assumed it was your standard “What’s going on?” The don muttered quickly in response.

“Here’s the deal,” Remo announced when eight armed and unpleasant Sicilian mafiosi were milling around in the penthouse suite that was the don’s private bedroom. “The don and I have come to an agreement. We’re going to have a fight, fair and square, man to man.”

There was a flurry of raised firearms.

“Do not shoot!” the don ordered. Remo was now holding his wrist, and the don knew what sort of pain could happen when Remo squeezed the wrist.

The second slimeball in command issued some rapid-fire demands, but the don interrupted him.

“Speak only English.”

“Thanks, Don,” Remo said. “Now, everybody knows that the don here is a big sack of cowardly shit, just like the rest of you—”

“Don’t shoot!” the don squealed.

“He says he’s not. We’re going to have a fight to determine who’s correct. The don gets his choice of weapons. I fight without weapons. If I win, the don goes on Sicilian television and tells the viewing audience that he is a coward and a worthless hunk of dog droppings. Got it? You guys—I’m trusting you now—will make sure that he follows through. ’Kay?”

The high-ranking hoods, who also served as the upper ranks of the Sicilian government all week, came to the conclusion that this American was a lunatic. But until the don was free of the lunatic, they played along.

“Okay, Don, choose your weapon.” Remo adjusted the don’s spine, and Bertilescessi regained the use of his arms and legs. He smiled self-assuredly, got to his feet and strolled across the room to his men.

Now Remo was on one side, and the don’s army was on the other.

“Kill him,” the emperor of Sicily ordered.

The second in command was waiting, with his finger on the trigger, for this very command, and he fired even as the words were spoken. The high-powered Glock handgun cracked like thunder.

Something happened very fast. The second in command staggered and stared down at the big bloody hole where his manhood used to be, then he slumped against the wall and slid down it, hissing like a leaky tire.

“Ha! What a buffoon!” Remo was now standing behind the don, spoiling any other shots.

“He was my brother!” the don gasped.

“Your brother was a total idiot.”

“He was a great man!”

“Is that why he shot his own privates? Anybody else going to try spoiling the fight?”

The don didn’t know what was happening, but he ordered his men to stand down. “We will fight, as I have sworn I will fight.”

“Call the local news,” Remo added.

“Let us wait to see the outcome.” The don selected a stubby Uzi submachine gun as his weapon of choice. He checked the magazine and, without so much as a handshake, began firing at his opponent.

Somehow he missed and missed and missed while Remo shuffled and slithered around the penthouse. When the submachine gun chugged to a halt, the penthouse was in tatters.

Remo fingered a smoking hole in a seventeenth- century Sicilian tapestry. “Your weapon must be defective, Don.”

The don snatched a revolver from one of his men and triggered it repeatedly at Remo, who leaned a little this way and a little that way until the revolver clicked.

“We did agree on one weapon,” Remo pointed out, but Bertilescessi snatched up a short-barreled combat shotgun and blasted a hole in the wall where Remo was standing. Remo was standing somewhere else now. More holes blossomed in the walls. The don threw the shotgun at Remo, who ignored it, drifting like flash of shadow up close to the don and using one of the most recognizable hand-to-hand combat moves in the business—the Stooges’ two-finger eyepoke.

“Ouch. Did that hurt?” Remo asked the gasping don, who slithered to the floor, moaning in pain.

A human beer barrel brought his pistol down on Remo’s skull, only to have it slapped out of his hand at the instant before impact. The sting turned to raging pain, and the human beer barrel saw his hand was a limp skin sack full of broken pieces. The gun was imbedded in the forehead of another man, who didn’t know he was dead yet and gargled as he collapsed.

“I expected you guys to stand by the word of your don,” Remo said. “Where’s your integrity?”

Another man answered by firing his own submachine gun. He traced a line in the wallpaper. Remo was still standing there, with smoking holes in the wall behind him but none actually in him.

Remo appeared to take one long step that carried him across the room, as if his legs were elastic, and he adjusted the aim of the submachine gun. A few rounds peppered the chest of the gunner’s neighbor, and then Remo pinched the barrel and the last round blew up the Uzi in the face of the assailant.

“I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything better,” Remo said.

The bodyguard whose Uzi was appropriated by the don looked for another weapon. He found the blood-soaked Glock lying on the carpet, and he tried to use it.

“Obviously, that gun is malfunctioning,” Remo told the guard, who found his manhood splattered on the floor just like the don’s brother. The man died just as readily. “Anybody else want to give it a try?” Remo showed the gun to the three survivors.

One of them fired his own piece right at the heart of Remo Williams, but his aim was off slightly. The bullet hit the Glock in Remo’s hand and ricocheted back into the gunner’s own chest.

“I think it’s cursed,” Remo said, tossing the Glock.

The other two men were without weapons, but when the gun landed on the carpet in front of them, they wouldn’t touch it.

“Didn’t I tell you to call the TV news?” Remo said. They stared at him. “Well?”

One of them went for the Glock, and the other man tried to stop him. Somehow, the Glock went off in the tussle, with a little help from Remo. The don was just blinking his eyesight back as his last two men flopped dead from the same bullet.

The recently self-proclaimed emperor of the Independent Kingdom of Sicily resigned as the world watched.

“I am a worthless piece of human trash,” he informed them over his video feed. He spoke in English for some reason. He was broadcasting from the luxury, high-security apartment from which the government had operated. “I am a coward and a bully. I’m not a man. I’m just a slime-wall.”

A hand came into the shot and dragged the emperor out of the camera’s view. There was whispering off-screen as the camera’s automatic lens adjusted to bring the background into focus. It was a slaughterhouse. The government of the don had clearly been eviscerated.

“Excuse me,” the don said as he was thrust back in front of the camera. “Slimeball. I am a slimeball, not a wall. I will now release the 120 political prisoners …”

He was yanked out of the shot and shoved back in.

“The 120 innocent hostages will now be released. I, and the cowards who grovel at my feet like filthy dogs, should be arrested and charged with mass murder. Also, we are morons.”

The emperor looked off-camera and raised his eyebrows. “Anything else?” the world heard him ask.

Remo yanked the power cord to the camera and its lights went out. “That ought to do it.” He nodded at the wide-screen TV on the wall. “Look, you’re on CNN Europe already.”

Remo was thrilled at the instant success of the don’s nifty video hard-link to the local news station. The don had used it for the past few days to make proclamations to his new subjects. Now the don proclaimed to the world that he was an imbecile and a coward. He was worse than finished—he was emasculated.

“Kill me,” he pleaded.

“Sure thing,” said Remo Williams.