The End of the Game td-60

by Warren Murphy

  Pamela's hand moved instinctively to her throat to adjust the collar of her blouse.

  Remo walked toward one of the cameras, looked at it, and said aloud, "Buell, if you're listening. This is the last time you're going to mess around with the telephone company. I'm coming for you. You understand? I'm coming for you."

  As he ripped the camera from the ceiling, he said, again, "I'm coming for you. If you're watching."

  sChapter Eleven

  "--if you're watching."

  Abner Buell was watching and the last thing he saw was Remo's hand extend upward toward the hidden camera and then the screen went black.

  It had all been a game up till now, but suddenly, for an instant, he felt the hair raise along his arms and on the back of his neck. For he had looked into the televised image of Remo's dark eyes and felt as if he were looking into the face of hell.

  Another television screen was next to him and as soon as the first screen went blank, bells began to ring on the second, small multicolored cartoon figures marched across the board, and then were replaced by a neat precise drawing of a man in a three-piece suit lying dead. Mr. Hamuta.

  The machine spelled out a message to Buell.

  "Target Remo now worth five hundred thousand points. Last defender gone. Play options: 1) surrender and save life; 2) fight on alone. Chances of success: 21 percent."

  "Who the hell asked you?" Buell snapped, and switched off the game screen.

  Behind him, Marcia asked: "It is not going good, is it, Abner?"

  He wheeled around. Marcia was wearing a French maid's costume, her breasts high and saucy in a push-up bra. Her legs were encased in black mesh stockings that ended high up her white thighs with a black garter belt. A small black apron with a white lace fringe completed the costume.

  Buell said, "Not going good? I haven't even started. What the hell does the computer know?" He looked at her costume again, seeming to notice it for the first time.

  "I like the harem pants better. Wear them. With nothing on underneath. And the little gauze vest. I like that. Don't button it."

  "As you wish, Abner," she said, but she did not leave immediately. "What do you plan to do now?"

  "Why are you asking so many questions today? You going for Barbara Walters' job? Why don't you go back to modeling?"

  "I am just interested in you," she said evenly. "You are the most remarkable man I have ever met and I want to know how your mind works."

  As he turned back to the computer, he said, "Brilliantly. Brilliantly."

  He turned on the machine and hunched his shoulders as he leaned over the keyboard. Marcia watched him for a few long seconds, but when it was clear he was not going to speak again, she left to change her costume.

  Buell did not hear her leave. He was working over the computer, creating a program and inserting data as rapidly as most people could type.

  His first thought was to find out how this Remo, whoever he was, had traced him accurately in Malibu and in Carmel. Had Buell himself made it too easy?

  But neither house was listed under his name. None of his neighbors in Carmel-- and they were all far distant on both sides of his home-- even knew him and as far as he knew had never even seen him. If Remo had come to Carmel and asked for Abner Buell's home, all he would have gotten was a blank stare.

  How had he found it so easily?

  He sat at the machine, asking the computer different questions, getting answers that did not satisfy him. He waited for the computer to solve the puzzle but it did not. And then, in one of those leaps of intuition that he felt would always separate man's mind from the machine mind, he asked the machine: "What about utility bills?"

  The computer did not understand. Its screen lit up with a line of question marks.

  "What home is biggest private user of electricity in Malibu?" he asked.

  The computer responded: "Wait. Tapping into utility-company computer records."

  Buell drummed his fingers on the side of the console while he waited. In less than a minute, the computer responded. It gave Buell's own Malibu address.

  Buell smiled. Maybe, he thought. Maybe. He typed onto the monitor: "What home is largest private user of electricity in Carmel?"

  The machine again begged for time, and then listed the address of Buell's Carmel home.

  He snapped his fingers and whooped. He had found it. Remo had found his addresses by checking the electrical usage in both communities. It was a fair assumption that Buell, with his computers and cameras and cybernetic equipment and design studios, would have been high on that list.

  It was a trail that this Remo, whoever he was, had been able to follow.

  But trails led in both directions.

  Buell knew that Remo was no free-lance. He was working for someone, some agency which was disturbed at Buell's activities over the last several months.

  The trail that led from that agency to Buell could also lead back, if Buell could only follow it, if he could only read the signs. But how to do it?

  He sat silently at the console for a long time, thinking. The computer, never bored, never impatient, waited for his instructions.

  Finally Buell moved. He directed the computer to go back into the utility company and find out who, besides himself, had dug into its computers to get the addresses of large electricity users.

  The computer gave a listing of all such queries for the Malibu area. A few minutes later, it gave the similar listing for Carmel.

  Buell typed into the computer: "List all duplicates." The computer instantly responded that only one name had appeared on both lists. It was a small computer laboratory in Colorado.

  Buell instructed the computer to slip into the Colorado lab's equipment and find out if the queries had been generated from there or had been merely passed through there.

  While he waited for a response, Marcia reentered the room but he did not see her. The computer's ready light flashed and gave him the name of a printing supply house in Chicago as the originator of the queries. Buell smiled. He knew he was on the right track now. What reason could a printing-supply house in the Midwest have to want to know the electrical bills at two California coastal towns? None at all. The Chicago company was a cover.

  Again he instructed the machine to tap into the Chicago computers and follow the query back.

  It took two hours. The trail led from the Chicago company to an auto-parts firm in Secaucus, New Jersey. Then back to an Oriental food company in Seneca Falls, New York, and then to a restaurant on West Twenty-sixth Street in New York.

  From there, the computers traced the query to a distributor of used tractor parts in Rye, New York.

  And there it stopped.

  "Continue trace," Buell ordered the computer.

  "No further lead," the computer flashed back. "Query on electrical usage originated in Rye, New York, computer."

  Buell again stared at the monitor. Unseen and forgotten by him was Marcia, who sat in a corner of the room quietly watching. She was wearing her houri outfit and while she was proud of her body, she knew it would bring no sign of interest from him. Not now. Not while he was working. And above all, she wanted him to keep working.

  She heard Buell giggle and somehow knew it was a dirty trick he had planned.

  "Find greatest privacy electricity consumption in Rye, New York," he said.

  The computer worked silently for only fifteen seconds before reporting the name and address of a Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  "Information on Smith," Buell demanded.

  Short minutes later, the computer reported: "Director of Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New York."

  "Nature of Folcroft Sanitarium?" Buell typed.

  "Private nursing home for elderly mental patients," the computer responded.

  "Is monthly utility bill of Folcroft Sanitarium consistent with utility bills of similar private nursing homes?" Buell asked.

  It took the machine fifteen minutes to issue a reply. Finally, it printed out: "No. Electrical usage exces
sive."

  "Consistent with heavy computer operation?" Buell asked.

  "Yes," the machine responded almost instantly.

  Buell turned off the computer, satisfied that he had tracked down the truth. It took a massive computer operation to track down his two homes at Malibu and Carmel, and that computer operation was centered in Rye, New York. It stood to reason that the man in charge of it would have heavy-duty terminals in his home: thus, the excessive use of electricity at the home of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  And the Folcroft Sanitarium that Smith headed. That too used too much electricity for just a simple nursing home. Again, a computer operation.

  This Remo had been sent by this Smith. And this Smith whoever he was, ran something important in the United States. Something important and dangerous to Abner Buell.

  It was late at night and Harold Smith was preparing to leave his darkened office at Folcroft. His secretary had gone hours before and he knew that dinner would be waiting for him when he arrived home, some kind of meat smothered in some kind of red catsuppy goo.

  He had reached the door of his office when one of his private telephone lines rang. Remo. It must be Remo, he thought, and he strode quickly across the antistatic carpet to the telephone.

  But the voice that answered his "hello" was not Remo's.

  "Dr. Smith?" the voice said.

  "Yes."

  "This is Abner Buell. I think you've been looking for me?"

  sChapter Twelve

  Smith looked toward the icy waters of Long Island Sound, two hundred yards away, lapping at the rocky shoreline where the manicured lawns of Folcroft fell away before finally surrendering to the salt-laced air.

  The remnants of a rickety old dock stuck out into the water, bent at strange angles like an arthritic finger. God, so long ago. It was to that very dock that Smith and another ex-CIA man, now long dead, had tied up their small boat when they came to Folcroft to set up CURE. So many years ago.

  And so many disappointments.

  They had been filled with high hopes for the secret organization's success and it had failed. It had won some little fights, some small skirmishes, but the big criminals, the overlords and chieftains, all kept getting away with crime because the justice system was weighted in favor of the rich and powerful. A successful prosecution was a chain of many links and it was always possible to corrupt and weaken one of those links and break the chain.

  Smith had been prepared to write CURE off, call it a failure, and go back to New Hampshire and life as a college professor. But then he and CURE were given permission to recruit an enforcement arm-- one man-- to mete out the punishment that the legal system couldn't and wouldn't mete out.

  Remo Williams had been the man. Smith had framed the orphan policeman for a killing he didn't commit, had seen him sentenced to die in an electric chair that didn't work, and had brought him to Folcroft for training. Ten years ago. And for that decade, it had often been only Remo, trained by Chiun and supported by Smith, to stand up for America against all its enemies.

  And it had all started with that small power boat tying up to that rickety old dock.

  So many years ago.

  So many deaths ago.

  Conrad MacCleary, the other CIA agent, was dead many years now, and Smith ruefully reflected that he too was dead in a way. Certainly the Smith who had come to this place to start CURE, filled with optimism and high hopes, no longer existed. That Smith had been replaced by a man who ate tension as his daily diet, who hoped finally not to wipe out crime and criminals, but merely to try to stay even with them. The young Harold Smith was dead, as dead as if he lay in a grave.

  And now, it was Remo's turn.

  Remo or America. That was the price Abner Buell had set, and Smith knew that it was a price he would pay.

  At first, Smith had thought he was talking to a madman, because Buell kept talking about Remo's point value continuing to go up as he got tougher and tougher to destroy.

  He was mad, but he was also crafty and intelligent and dangerous. He had told Smith about the aborted U.S. missile firing which was a whistle away from beginning World War III and he told Smith about a similar Russian event, about which Smith was only now starting to get information. Buell stated proudly that he was behind both moves. He had too much solid information for Smith to disbelieve him and Smith's stomach sank when Buell said he could do it all again if he chose.

  And he would so choose. Unless Remo was removed from the board.

  "Think about it, Dr. Smith," Buell had said. "You get rid of that Remo. Or I'll start a nuclear war."

  "Why would you do that?" Smith asked placantly. "You'd probably die too in an all-out nuclear war."

  Buell had cackled, a madman's laugh. "Maybe and maybe not. But it'd be my war. I'd be the winner because I started it and that was what I set out to do. Five million extra points for starting a nuclear war. It's this Remo or that. Make up your mind."

  "I have to think about it," Smith said, stalling for time as his Folcroft computers raced through switching procedures to try to trace the phone call.

  "I'll call you tomorrow then," Buell said. "Oh, by the way. Your computers won't be able to trace this call."

  "Why not?" Smith asked.

  "They haven't had time yet. All they'll know is I'm someplace west of the Mississippi, and that's right. Good-bye."

  That had been an hour ago and still Smith sat looking through the smoky windows at the sound. The United States or Remo. Maybe the world or Remo.

  When it was that simple, was there any question what his response would be? Sighing, he picked up the telephone to call Chiun.

  Marcia tried to make him eat dinner, but Buell curtly told her he was too busy.

  World War Ill-- five million points.

  Remo-- a half-million points.

  Pamela Thrushwell-- fifty thousand points by now.

  And now this Dr. Smith? How many points to give him?

  He turned on the television monitor's game board and watched the point totals appear on the screen. Smith was a bureaucrat probably, and probably dumb. Arbitrarily, he decided to give Harold W. Smith a mere ten thousand points.

  Until further calculation.

  In the middle of the hotel-room floor, surrounded by piles of bond paper, Chiun sat.

  Smith waited, silent, until Chiun acknowledged his presence but the old Oriental was preoccupied. As Smith watched, Chiun was busy crossing out typewritten lines and writing in other lines, using a quill pen and an old-fashioned inkwell which he had on the floor before him. His tongue stuck slightly out of one corner of his mouth, showing his concentration. His hands flew so rapidly over the paper that to Smith they seemed almost a blur in the dimly lit room. Finally, Chiun sighed and placed the quill pen down, next to the inkwell. The motion was casual but graceful and when he was done, inkwell and pen looked as if they had been sculpted from one piece of black stone.

  Without looking up, Chiun said, "Greetings, O Emperor. Your servant apologizes for his ill manners. Had I but known you were here, all else would have been relegated to unimportance. How may I serve you?"

  Smith, who knew Chiun's excuse was nonsense since the Oriental would have recognized him a corridor away by the sound of his feet scuffing on a thick carpet, looked at the stacks of paper on the floor.

  "Are you writing something?" he asked.

  "A poor thing but an honest effort. One in which you may well take pride, Emperor."

  "This isn't one of those petitions you got up to Stop Amateur Assassins, is it?" Smith asked warily.

  Chiun shook his head. "No. I have decided that the time is not yet right for a national movement dedicated to obliterating inferior work. Someday but not now." He waved a long-nailed hand over the papers. "This is a novel. I am writing a novel."

  "Why?"

  "Why? Because the world needs beauty. And it is a good way for a man to spend his days, telling what he has learned so he can lighten the burden of those who are yet to come."

&nb
sp; "This isn't about you, is it? About us?"

  Chiun chuckled and shook his head. "No, Emperor. I understand full well your lust for secrecy. This has nothing to do with any of us."

  "What's it about then?" Smith asked.

  "It is about a noble old Oriental assassin, the last of his line, and the white ingrate he tries to teach and the secret agency that employs them. A mere trifle."

  Suddenly, Smith remembered the bizarre call he had gotten earlier from some publisher who had thought that Folcroft was a training area for assassins. "I thought you said it wasn't about us," Smith said.

  "And it is not," Chiun said innocently.

  "But a noble old Oriental assassin. His white student A secret agency. Master of Sinanju, that is us," Smith said.

  "No, no. Not even superficial similarities," Chiun said. "For instance, this Oriental assassin about whom I write is honored by the country which he has adopted and for which he works. Totally unlike my situation. And the white trainee, well, in my novel, he is not always ungrateful. And he is capable of learning something. Clearly that has nothing to do with Remo."

  "The secret agency though," said Smith.

  "Never once do I mention the Constitution and how we all work outside the Constitution so that everybody else can live inside it. How we break it so we can fix it." He gave Smith a sly grin. "Although I must confess that once I thought I might use that in my novel, but I realized no one would believe it. It is just too ridiculous to be believable."

  "It still sounds a great deal like us," Smith said. "At least on a superficial level."

  "You need not worry yourself about that, Emperor. The publisher has recommended certain changes which will dispel your fears. That is what I occupy myself with while Remo is away."

  "What kind of changes?" Smith asked.

  "Just a few. Everybody loves my manuscript. I just have to make a few changes for Bipsey Boopenberg in Binding and Dudley Sturdley in Accounting."

  "What kind of changes?" Smith persisted.

  "They assure me if I make these changes that I will become a big star and my book a best-seller. The Needle's Eye by Chiun. I have to change the Oriental assassin into a Nazi spy. The white trainee has to go. In place of the secret organization in America, I have to have Nazi spies in England. And set it in World War II. And I have to have a woman who will save the world from destruction at the hands of that lunatic with the funny mustache. This is all they wanted changed. And then I will be rich."