The End of the Game td-60

by Warren Murphy

  "You are already rich, Master, in the things that count."

  "And you are always kind, Emperor. But there is an old saying in Sinanju. Kindness can warm a soul but it cannot fill an empty belly."

  Smith decided to drop the subject of Chiun's novel because he felt a con job coming on to raise Chiun's fees for training Remo. And besides, Chiun was always writing and never publishing, and there was no reason to think this book's fate would be any different.

  And maybe none of it would matter anyway. Why worry about it today when it was possible that tomorrow, or just a few tomorrows away, none of them might be alive to worry about anything.

  "I understand," Smith said simply. "Master, I come to speak to you about a matter of great importance."

  "As important as my novel?" Chiun asked.

  "Yes."

  "Name your request, sire. It will be done," Chiun said.

  "I'm glad you feel that way, Chiun. May I sit down?"

  Chiun waved a hand airily toward the sofa. "Please. Be comfortable." He liked the gesture with his hand and repeated it. It would be the gesture he used when he was being interviewed by Time magazine for a cover story. Chiun, Great New Author. He would wave the reporter to a seat with just that gesture, elegant and imperious, but also inviting. He would serve tea to reporters. And read them Ung poetry to show them that his was the soul of a true artist. And he would keep Remo away from them because Remo was impossible, incapable of even the simplest civility, and he would certainly alienate the press. Or, at the very least, he would wind up insinuating himself into the story. Chiun had had enough of people thinking that Remo was important when anyone with any sense should know that Chiun was the important one.

  Quietly, to himself, he wondered what Smith was upset about now. His face was so long, his chin seemed to be searching for his shoes. What was it about white men, Americans particularly, that they always thought everything was the end of the world? When the world had gone on and would go on for ages beyond counting? He told himself to humor Smith, as usual, and get rid of him as soon as he could so he could get back to his rewriting.

  "What weighs so heavily on your spirit?" Chiun asked.

  "You remember when you first came to provide services to us?" Smith asked.

  "Indeed I do," Chiun said. "You have never missed a payment, small though they may be."

  "Your primary mission was to train Remo as our enforcement arm."

  "Assassin. I was to make him your assassin," Chiun corrected.

  "Yes," Smith said.

  "You should not give a wonderful thing an awful name. Enforcement arm is a terrible name," Chiun said. He realized he was being very helpful to Smith, much more so than the man deserved. When he tried to advertise in the future for someone to replace Remo, what kind of people would he be likely to get if he advertised for "an enforcement arm"? But advertising for an assassin would bring the best minds, the highest and most noble thinkers of the world to Smith's court. So Chiun felt good about offering Smith this advice without any charge. Occasionally, it was good policy to do a favor for your emperor, just to remind him how much he truly relied on your wisdom and judgment.

  "You have lived up to your end of the contract nobly," Smith said. "Your training of Remo has exceeded even what we hoped for from you."

  "He is white. I have done the best I could, to overcome that handicap," Chiun said graciously.

  "There was another part to the contract," Smith said in a low flat voice.

  "Yes?"

  "It was your promise that should the day ever come when Remo could not be used anymore by us, that you would-- you would remove him for us."

  Chiun sat silently. Smith saw consternation on the old man's face.

  Finally, Chiun said, "Go on."

  "The time has come. Remo must be removed."

  "What is your reason for this, Emperor?" Chiun asked slowly.

  "It is complicated," Smith said. "But if Remo is allowed to live, the world may face a nuclear war."

  "Oh, that," said Chiun, dismissing it with the raising of his eyebrows.

  "Hundreds of millions will die," Smith intoned solemnly.

  "Don't worry, Emperor. Remo and I will let nothing happen to you."

  "Chiun, it's not me. It's the whole world. The whole world may explode. Remo must die."

  "And I? I am supposed to kill him?" Chiun asked.

  "Yes. It is your obligation under your contract."

  "And this is so that we can save the lives of some millions of people?" Chiun said.

  "Yes."

  "Do you know anything about these millions of people?" Chiun asked.

  "I--"

  "No, you do not," Chiun said. "Well, I will tell you about them. Many of them are old and ready to die anyway. Most of them are ugly. Especially if they are white. Even more of them are stupid. Why sacrifice Remo for all these people we do not know? He is not much, but he is something. All those others, they are nothing."

  "Chiun, I know how you feel, but--"

  "You know nothing of how I feel," Chiun said. "I took Remo from nothing and now I have made of him something. In only ten more years of training, we could both be very proud of him. And now you are saying, Chiun, all the time you have spent on him is wasted and to be thrown away because somebody is going to blow up a lot of fat people. I understand the ways of emperors but this is rudeness beyond measure."

  "We are talking about the end of the world," Smith huffed.

  "It seems as if we are always talking about the end of the world," Chiun said. "Who is this person who threatens this? Is it one person? Remo and I will go to dispatch this person. He will never be seen again. He will have no descendants and those that now live will die. Friends too shall perish. All in the greater glory of the Emperor Smith and the Constitution."

  "Master of Sinanju, I call upon you to honor your contract."

  There was a long silence, broken only by Smith's breathing. Finally, Chiun asked, "There is no other way?"

  "If there were, I would take it," Smith said. "But there is none. I know that contracts are sacred to Masters of Sinanju and those were the terms of our contract. Upon request from me, you would remove Remo. I now make that request."

  "You will leave me," Chiun said in a cold low voice that seemed to chill the skin on Smith's face.

  At the doorway, the CURE director paused.

  "What is your decision?"

  "What you think important is my mission," Chiun said. "Contracts are made to be honored. It has been the way of my people for scores of centuries."

  "You will do your duty," Smith said.

  Chiun nodded once, slowly, then let his head sink to his chest. Smith left, quietly closing the door behind him.

  And Chiun thought: White fool. Do you think that Remo is some piece of machinery to be discarded upon a whim?

  He had trained Remo to be an assassin but Remo had become more than that. His body and his mind had accepted the trainings of Sinanju more thoroughly than anyone since Chiun. Remo now was a Master of Sinanju himself, and one day, upon Chiun's death, Remo would be reigning Master.

  And by attaining that rank, Remo would fulfill a prophecy that had existed for ages in the House of Sinanju. That someday there would be as Master a white man who was dead but had come back to life and he would be the greatest Master of all, and of him it would be said that he was the avatar of the great god Shiva. Shiva the Destroyer. Remo.

  And now Smith wanted him to throw all that away because some fools planned to blow up some other fools.

  But yet, the contract was sacred. It was the cornerstone upon which the House of Sinanju had been built. Its word-- once given by the Master in contract-- was inviolate. No Master had ever failed to carry out the terms of a contract and Chiun, through thousands of years of tradition, could not allow himself to be the first.

  He sat on the floor and slowly touched his fingertips to the temples of his bowed head.

  The room grew dark with night and yet he did not mo
ve, but the air in the room vibrated with the long keening sounds of anguish that came from his lips.

  sChapter Thirteen

  "Why are we getting a motel room?" Pamela asked.

  "Because I have to wait for a telephone call," Remo said. "You don't want to stay with me? Catch the next flight back and join the rest of the Lilliputians."

  "Lilliputians?"

  "From Liverpool. That's what people in Liverpool are called. Lilliputians," Remo patiently explained.

  "No, they're not."

  "Are too. I read it. The Beatles were Lilliputians."

  "That's Liverpudlians," Pamela Thrushwell said.

  "Is not."

  "Is too," she said.

  "I'm not going to stay here and try to educate you in speaking English correctly," Remo said. "Go home. Who needs you?"

  That more than anything else convinced her to stay even though she looked with undisguised disgust at the dismal room, just like so many others in which Remo had spent so many nights. The furniture might have been called Utilitarian if it had not had a greater claim on being called Ugly. The walls, once white, were yellowed with the exhalations of countless smokers. The carpeting was indoor-outdoor rug, but looked as if it had not only been used outdoors but on the roadbed of the Lincoln Tunnel for the last twenty years. Threads showed through, masked only by dirt and embedded grime.

  The toilet bowl had a dark ring around it at water level, the hot-water faucet in the sink didn't work, and the room's only luxury, an electric coffeepot in the bathroom, didn't work either. The place reeked with a faint smell of ammonia, as if from a cleaning solution, but the room resolutely refused to give up any clue as to where cleaning solution had ever been used in it.

  "What are you here for anyway? What phone call are you waiting for?"

  "I'm waiting to find out where Buell is," Remo said.

  "I'd be better off trying to find him myself," Pamela said.

  "Why don't you try?" Remo said hopefully.

  "Because you're so hopeless that without me, you're liable to get hurt and then I'd feel guilty for causing it. For not staying around to take care of you."

  "I promise not to come back and haunt your dreams," Remo said.

  "You're pretty tenacious for somebody who's just supposed to be tracking down an obscene phone caller," she said.

  "You too for somebody with just a tweaked titty," Remo said.

  "That's gross. I'm staying."

  "Do what you want," Remo said. He thought he'd rather have her tagging along for a while than argue with her. But he still didn't know why she wanted to stay.

  Abner Buell did.

  Outside the small central California town of Hernandez is a strange elevation of volcanic rock, rising fifty feet above the surrounding scrub grass. Abner Buell had bought the property and fifty surrounding acres three years earlier, and when he had seen the small mountain, he had hollowed it out and built inside it-- separated from the outside world by fifteen-foot-thick walls of rock-- a private apartment and laboratory.

  He sat there now facing another of the computer consoles which he had in every home and apartment he occupied anywhere in the world.

  It would be hours before he was to call Dr. Smith again, and he whiled away the time by reconfirming that he was able to tap into the Russian military-command computers.

  Using satellite transmissions, he tapped into the Soviet system and amused himself by finding out actual troop strength in Afghanistan. He called up the number of spies in the Russian mission to the United Nations. The listing of names went on so long that Buell gave his computer simpler instructions:

  "How many members of the Russian UN mission are not spies?"

  The computer listed three names-- the chief ambassador, a chauffeur second-grade, and a pastry chef named Pierre.

  Pamela Thrushwell came into his mind and on a whim, he tapped the Russian KGB computer network and asked how many spies the Soviet Union had inside Great Britain. "Five-minute reading limit on lists," he wrote.

  The computer responded: "List too lengthy. Russian nationals who are spies? Or British who work as spies for USSR?"

  He thought for a moment and asked: "How many members of British Secret Service are on KGB payroll as double agents?"

  The machine instantly started to print out lines of names. Row after row of them. The names had filled up the screen twice and, in alphabetical order, they were still in the A's.

  Buell remembered he had forgotten to give the machine a limit on the number of names it could print. He voided the instructions and asked: "How many members of British Secret Service are not on KGB payroll?"

  Three names popped up on the screen instantly. One was the deputy director of the Secret Service, another was the agency's seventh-ranking man in Hong Kong. The third was Pamela Thrushwell, computer analyst.

  Buell sat back in surprise and stared at the name. So Thrushwell was a British agent. That explained why she had been hanging on to this Remo so persistently to try to track down Buell.

  She must have been trying to track him down since he had had that lark, messing around with Britain's government computers and almost moving the government into a friendship treaty with Russia. Thrushwell must have been assigned to find out how to plug that hole in the computer system.

  A spy. And he had thought of her as just a nice-looking blond with an interesting accent and wonderful breasts. That's what he got for underestimating women.

  Marcia came into the room with food on a tray for him. She was wearing a long diaphanous white gown of some thin gauze. She was naked beneath it and Buell felt an unaccustomed faint stirring of desire. He reached out and cupped a hand around her right buttocks. She smiled at him, tossed her red hair, and nodded toward the television monitor.

  "What's that list?" she asked.

  "It wouldn't interest you," he said.

  "Everything about you interests me," she said. "Really, what is it?"

  "It's a list of the three British secret agents who don't work for the Russians."

  Marcia smiled, her full lips pulling back to expose long pearly teeth. "Only three?" she said.

  He nodded. "Those are the three who don't work for the Russians. I don't know. They might be double agents for somebody else. For Argentina, for all I know." He kneaded her buttocks with his fingers. "I think I want you," he said.

  "I always want you," she said. "I am here to serve you."

  "I want you to go to the bedroom and put on a T-shirt and wait for me."

  "Just a T-shirt?"

  "Yes. A wet one. I want it wet and transparent."

  She nodded submissively and looked at the screen again.

  "That name. Pamela. Isn't she the woman who's following you?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "Isn't that dangerous? To have her looking for you along with the Americans?"

  "It doesn't matter. I'm going to get rid of all of them," he said.

  "Us too," Marcia said with a smile. "You promised. Us too."

  "I'll keep my promise," Buell said. "When the world goes, we go with it."

  "You're so wonderful," she said.

  "There's nothing left in life," he said. "I've played all the games. There's no one who can even challenge me."

  Marcia nodded. "I'll go put on that wet T-shirt," she said.

  "Quick. Before the mood passes," Buell said.

  It was well after dark when the telephone in Smith's office rang.

  "This is Buell. Have you decided?"

  "Yes," Smith said. "I accede to your demand."

  "That easily? No negotiations? No hard bargaining?" "Do I have anything to bargain with?"

  "No. And I'm glad you realize it. That's one of the nicer qualities of you bureaucratic types," Buell said. "You never try to fight the inevitable."

  Smith said nothing and the silence hung in his office like a small cloud of smoke.

  Buell finally said, "There are certain things I want."

  "Which are?"

 
"I want to see it done so I know it's not some kind of trick. After all, this Remo's been pestering me. I deserve to see him go."

  "Tell me what you want," Smith said.

  "There's a small town in California named Hernandez," Buell began and gave Smith directions to a clearing where he wanted Remo killed. "Tomorrow at high noon," he said.

  "All right," Smith said. He suppressed a small smile, even though he felt he deserved one. Buell had made a mistake.

  "How are you going to do it?" Buell asked.

  "By hand," Smith said.

  "I don't think you can do it," Buell said. "I've seen this guy Remo. He's hard to beat."

  "I can beat him," Smith said.

  "I'll believe it when I see it."

  "You'll see it tomorrow at noon," Smith said.

  "How will I know you? What do you look like?" Buell asked.

  "I'm old. I'll be wearing an ornamental Oriental robe."

  "You Oriental? With a name like Smith?"

  "Yes," Smith said. "Until tomorrow." And then he hung up.

  And now Smith smiled.

  Remo would die. There was no helping that. But so would Abner Buell. And the world would be saved.

  He told himself he would make the same deal every time.

  sChapter Fourteen

  On the first ring of the telephone, Remo shoved Pamela Thrushwell into the bathroom. On the second ring, he broke the lock so she could not open the door. He answered the phone on the third ring.

  "Did you find out where he is?" he said.

  "I've found out where he will be," Smith said laconically.

  "Okay. When and where?" Remo stuck a finger in his free ear to block out the thumping from the bathroom door.

  "There's a small town named Hernandez-- Remo, are you alone?"

  "Not really," Remo said.

  "Let me out," Pamela shrieked. "I'll call the police. I'll--" Remo threw a lamp at the door. She quieted for a moment.

  "The girl?" Smith asked.

  "Yes."