The End of the Game td-60

by Warren Murphy

  "Get rid of her. I told you before."

  "All right, all right, I will," Remo said.

  "You can't have her go with you. That's final."

  "I said I'd take care of it, all right? Now where and when?"

  Smith gave him the directions that he had received from Abner Buell. "Noon tomorrow," he said. "Chiun will meet you there," he added casually.

  "Hold on," Remo said. "Chiun will meet me there? I thought you said I shouldn't have anybody with me."

  "Chiun hardly qualifies as a pesky bystander," Smith said.

  "He can be," Remo said. "And he's ticked at me anyway."

  Smith sighed. Remo could visualize him at this moment, pressing the steel rings of his eyeglasses to his face with an index finger. "I thought-- this is important enough-- I thought it would be best if the two of you were there."

  Pamela had started screaming again and there were no more lamps to throw.

  "All right," Remo said. "I'll look for Chiun there. If he's there, we'll work it together. If not, I'll work it alone."

  "At noon sharp," Smith said. "Chiun will be there."

  Remo thought his voice sounded cracked and hoarse but the telephone clicked dead in his ear before he could make sure.

  Smith sat at his desk for a few minutes afterward, the dead telephone cradled in his hand. Then, feeling very old and very tired, he walked to a locked cabinet and removed a Dutch Barsgod fragmenting shell pistol. The next fifteen hours were going to be the saddest of his life, but no one had ever said that saving the world would be a barrel of laughs.

  The guard at Folcroft's front gate said, "Finally going home, Dr. Smith?" and Smith almost said, "No. To save the world," but he didn't.

  As had always been the case in his life, the bodies would tell where he had been and what he had been doing.

  "It's about time," Pamela said after Remo freed the bathroom door and let her out. "Who was that? The President?"

  "Wrong number," Remo muttered. "When I finish working the obscene-calls patrol, I'm going to get transferred to wrong numbers."

  "A wrong number that you talked to for ten minutes?"

  "All right It was my Aunt Millie. She likes to talk."

  "Really?" Pamela said archly. "What did you talk about?"

  "She said the weather is good in Butler, Pennsylvania."

  "It took her ten minutes to tell you that?"

  "Yes," Remo said. "In Butler, that's big news. It's worth talking about."

  "I don't believe it was your Aunt Tillie," she said. She wound a strand of Remo's jet-black hair around her finger.

  "Millie," he corrected.

  "Or Aunt Millie." She nuzzled his neck. "I'll bet I can make you tell me who you were really talking to," she purred.

  "Not a chance," Remo said. "I'm beyond tempting."

  "We'll see about that," she said. She eased him back on the bed and fiddled with the zipper of his pants.

  Remo let her undress him and as her hands strayed over his body, he said, "Seduce away. It'll do you no good."

  Long ago, in the early stages of his training, Chiun had taught Remo the thirty-seven steps for pleasuring a woman. They began with the inside of the left wrist and ended with the woman shrieking in ecstasy, although very few women were not shrieking in ecstasy by step seven or eight; it was a male fantasy come true, but it had also made sex boring, mechanical, and routine for Remo, and he rarely thought about it anymore.

  "You like being controlled by a woman?" Pamela said as she straddled his body.

  "Beats a sharp stick in the eye," he said.

  She toyed with his body, with finger and tongue, then stopped. "Are you ready to tell me yet?"

  "Not if you're going to stop," Remo said.

  "I'll stop if you don't tell me," she threatened.

  "Don't stop," Remo said.

  "I will. I swear I will."

  "Will you?" Remo said. He turned and touched the inside of her left wrist. He forgot the steps in order but he followed with her elbow, a spot on her right thigh, and then a cluster of nerves in the small of her back.

  She moaned louder with each successive step. Her breasts were arched forward, her body twitched and convulsed with need. Remo satisfied that need, holding her down by the hands as the rest of her body bucked in a feverish, wanton frenzy.

  Done, she lay exhausted on the bed, spent, glowing with perspiration. Remo touched a small nerve in her throat, toyed with it, and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  He touched her face gently. "Maybe I'll see you again," he said softly before he left. But somehow, and he didn't know why or how, he didn't really think he would.

  He was on the road to Hernandez when he understood, and so shocking was the revelation that he had to pull off to the side of the road to consider it.

  Smith had been lying about Chiun's presence. Remo was sure of it, but he hadn't been able to figure out why. Now he had.

  Remo was going to die.

  It was part of Chiun's contract with Smith, he knew. Gold in perpetuity went to the village of Sinanju, but there was one large string attached: Chiun would have to kill Remo when Smith gave the order.

  But why? He had done nothing to endanger the organization or the country. Why? He had no answer, but he knew, deep inside his mind, that Smith had given the order. And somewhere, even deeper than that, he knew that Chiun would obey it.

  He felt his breath coming hot through his nostrils and looked down at his hands. His knuckles were white where they clenched the steering wheel. He was afraid.

  How long had it been since he had felt fear? He couldn't remember. But it was not the fear which clawed at his stomach and tore at his throat and brought moisture to his eyes. It was sadness and the sadness was pure and terrifying.

  Remo had never had a family. He had been raised by nuns in an orphanage. As a child, he'd tried to think about his parents, to imagine their faces, but there was nothing inside him. No memories, no images. Whoever had spawned and borne him had made no impression on his mind whatever.

  And so he did not have a father until he was a fully grown man and Chiun had first come into his life. Chiun had taught him how to trust, how to obey, how to believe, how to love. And now, Remo knew in the depths of his heart that the trust and obedience and belief and love had been no more real or lasting than a shower on a sunny day.

  He squeezed the wheel harder. All right, he said to himself. Let him try. Remo had been a good student. He was a Master of Sinanju too and he could do most things as well as Chiun. He would fight the old man. Chiun was a great Master, but more than eight decades of his life had come and gone. Remo could win. If he attacked first, he could--.

  He covered his face with his hands. He could never attack Chiun. Not on anyone's orders. Not for any reason.

  But he could run. The thought flashed through his mind like a rocket. He could tromp on the gas pedal of this car and speed off, keep going until he reached the Atlantic Ocean, and then hop a steamer and hide out in the mountains of some obscure country. He could run and hide and run some more, run until there was no place left to go.

  The rocket of an idea dulled and fizzled. Remo was not trained to be a fugitive. He had spent ten years with the Master of Sinanju so that he would also be a Master, and a Master did not run.

  There was no alternative. Chiun would have to kill him, as he was bound to do.

  And in the end, Remo thought, it didn't matter anyway. The most important part of him had already died.

  He turned the engine back on and pressed the pedal to the floor and headed toward Hernandez.

  sChapter Fifteen

  In the pitch dark of a cloudless night, just before the first hint of dawn lightened the sky, Harold Smith raised his infrared binoculars to his face. The area outside Hernandez was flat and barren except for scrub grass and a few mangy bushes.

  Buell would be there to see the fight; Smith knew that. And the only place to be sure to see it was from the top of the extrusion of rock that jutt
ed up from the floor of the field. Up there, Buell would have safety and a vantage point. Smith put the night glasses away and walked toward the rock. It would be his job to make sure that Buell had no such safety.

  He walked slowly around the large rock. When he was finished the first finger of dawn was tickling the sky. He could climb it. With a lot of effort, he could climb it and get to Buell.

  But he wouldn't be able to climb it fast enough to save Remo.

  Smith went back to his room and checked the Barsgod again. The shells were the size of shotgun shells, designed for guerrilla warfare. One strike anywhere near Buell would send enough shrapnel flying to take him out. It was all the edge Smith would need.

  He tucked the gun and shells beneath his pillow and tried to sleep. He could use the few hours of rest, he knew. He was not a young man and whatever edge the Barsgod gave him could be evened out by the disadvantage of his slowed reflexes.

  But after an hour of tossing and turning, he knew it would be useless. He would not sleep. Maybe he would never sleep soundly again. What he was about to do to Remo Williams would forever deny him the sleep of the innocent.

  How did it happen? He asked himself again and again. Smith was not an assassin. He was an honorable man. Yet everything he had ever done to Remo had been a criminal act. He had chosen Remo for CURE because Remo had no one and nothing. And he had taken Remo's identity and his dreams and his life and had forced him into service, sending him into dangerous situations without a thought, all because Remo had been trained for the work. He had seen to it that almost every friend Remo had ever made was eliminated to protect the secrecy of CURE. And now he had ordered the final ignominy for Remo Williams. He had commanded the closest friend Remo had ever had to kill him.

  How did it happen? How? When had Remo ceased to be a man to Smith and become only a tool of the organization? When had Smith forgotten that Remo, others, were human beings, not just cattle to be prodded around?

  But he knew the answer to that. Human beings had ceased to matter on the day that Smith accepted his responsibility to the United States of America. In the long view, Remo's life was a small price to pay for the safety of the world.

  The predawn grayness blossomed into a California sun and Smith was still awake. He wondered briefly about Chiun, but Chiun was the same kind of man Smith himself was. Chiun knew his duty and he would perform it and then he would return to Sinanju to live out the rest of his life as the venerated old man of the village.

  He would also, no doubt, lie awake to the end of his days, thinking of Remo.

  Smith sighed and sat up, passing his bony hands over his face. Duty was a stupid word, a stupid concept. Smith had always hated ideologues and had never thought he would be called upon to sacrifice a friend for an idea, even so lofty an idea as world peace.

  How long would such a peace last anyway? he asked himself angrily. Just until the next maniac with the means to start global war came along? Until the next group of fanatics decided to sacrifice the human race for some obscure cause? What good was duty when it made a killer of you?

  He walked to the window, all his anguish as meaningless as dust in the wind. He didn't have to call it duty. You could call it sanity or patriotism or mercy or sacrifice or even murder. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that it had to be done and he was the one who had to do it.

  Smith felt comfortable with despair. He had lived his whole life doing the right thing and he would go on doing the right thing until the day he died. And that, he knew, was the reason his life was so bare and empty.

  Understanding that, he was finally able to sleep. His last thought was to wonder where Chiun was.

  * * *

  Unseen by Smith, Chiun had spent the night at the site of the coming battle. Wearing mourning white, the old man knelt on the bare ground in the dark and lit a candle.

  It was chilly, but he did not feel the cold. He lifted his eyes to the starless cobalt sky. He prayed for a sign. To all the gods of the east and west, he begged for a release from his obligation to kill his son. For Remo was no less than a son to the old man, no less than the heir to all the knowledge and love and power Chiun had accumulated over his long lifetime.

  "Help me, O gods," he said in a hoarse whisper.

  And he waited.

  He thought of Remo and of the legend that had brought them together, the tale written in the ancient archives of Sinanju that a Master of Sinanju would one day bring to life a dead night tiger who walked in the form of a white man but who was, in his true incarnation, Shiva the Destroyer. Remo, the man, was only the outer flesh of the sacred soul within. Chiun could kill the man, but what mortal-- even the Master of Sinanju-- could dare to kill Shiva?

  "Help me, O gods," he said again.

  The candle went out.

  Patiently he lit another. A Master's word in contract was as binding as an inscription in stone. He had given his word to Smith, in exchange for enough wealth to feed the entire village of Sinanju forever.

  But Smith did not know what he asked. He did not know the legend of Shiva. Men like Harold Smith did not believe such things. They only believed that the word of the Master of Sinanju was good.

  "Help me, O gods," Chiun said for the third time.

  A strong breeze blew out the candle again. There was no other sign.

  Chiun let the candle remain extinguished. He sat alone in the dark, alone, silent.

  He wept.

  sChapter Sixteen

  Marcia was looking at the outside world through a periscope from inside the hollow hill.

  "It looks like a beautiful day," she said and giggled. "A great day for the world to end."

  Buell nodded and slicked back his slicked-back hair.

  "But I don't want you to just do it," she said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't want you just to do everything and then tell me it's all done. I want to see it. Step by step," she said. "I want to see and know everything you do."

  "All right," he said. "Starting now. Come on."

  He rose from the small table where he had been drinking herbal tea and walked to one of the computer consoles that lined the walls of the living quarters.

  He flipped on a power switch and then pressed a sequence of numbers that separated the screen into two lengthwise parts.

  "Now, on the left," he said. "That's number one." He pressed more numbers and a large "ready" appeared on that half-screen. "Those are the Russian missiles," he said. "I'm already into their network. And number two--"

  He busied himself pressing more keys on the console and finally the word "ready" appeared on the right-hand side of the screen also.

  "Number two is the United States. Now both sets of missiles are ready to fire."

  "How will you fire them?" she said.

  "To fire Russia's, I just type onto the keyboard 'One-Fire' and the code number. That's all it takes. For America's, I type 'Two-Fire' and the code. They're already programmed and ready to go."

  "How do you know where they'll go?" Marcia asked.

  "I didn't have to do anything with that. Russia's are programmed to hit the U.S. America's are set to hit Russia. I just left that alone."

  "Too difficult to figure out, I guess?" she said.

  "Don't you believe it," he snapped. "Of course I've got it figured out. If I wanted to change anywhere these missiles should be launched, if I wanted them to go hit South Africa for instance, I would just write on the screen 'One,' then insert the latitude and longitude for South Africa, and then write 'fire.' And the missiles would go there instead."

  "The same for the American missiles?" she asked.

  He nodded. "Just insert the target's longitude and latitude and that'll do it. They self-correct for direction once they've been launched. I already worked out the coordinates."

  "You're brilliant, Abner. Just brilliant."

  "You're right," Buell said.

  "You said you need the code number for firing. What's that?"
r />   "It's in my head somewhere," he said. "I'll remember it when I need it."

  "And the coordinates?" Marcia asked.

  Buell flapped his arm toward the top of the computer console where piles of papers were stacked precariously. "I've got them written down somewhere. Up there. I told you, we didn't need them."

  "No. Of course not," Marcia said. She stood back from Buell and as she did, she knocked over a stack of papers with her elbow.

  "Clumsy," Buell muttered.

  "I'm sorry." She stooped to gather the papers. When she found one with the names of cities with two simple rows of figures on it, she slipped it inside the sleeve of her blouse, then replaced the stack where it had been.

  Buell had not noticed; he was calling up other numbers on the computer screen. Finally, he restored the split screen with the two Ready signals on either side. "Everything's all set for the big bang," he said.

  "Good," Marcia said.

  "But first we've got our entertainment outside. Let's go up," Buell said.

  "I'll be up in a minute," she said. "I just want to put on a little makeup first."

  "Suit yourself. Wear something nice when you come up," he said. "Maybe your cavegirl costume."

  "I will," Marcia said.

  When she heard the upstairs door that led outside click shut, Marcia pulled the list of coordinates from her sleeve and sat at the computer. Working swiftly and efficiently, she reprogrammed all the missiles of the United States to strike, not at Moscow and Russia, but at New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago. She did not change the trajectories of the Russian missiles. They were still aimed at the United States.

  * * *

  Harold Smith was ready. Flattened behind a small rock, he waited, his binoculars focused on the plateau above the site where the battle was to take place.

  Almost at noon, a solitary figure appeared on the plateau, walked to the edge and seemed, like a military conqueror, to survey all the ground around him. Smith pressed himself close to the ground, then peered up and saw the man was sitting now in a folding lawn chair on the edge of the rock shelf. It was Abner Buell. Smith crawled silently through the grass toward the back of the hill.

  When he reached the bottom of the hill, he felt for the Barsgod in his pocket. Its weight gave him a perverse satisfaction. On this day Remo would die, and Chiun would prepare to return to Korea, and Harold Smith would go back to Folcroft Sanitarium, probably never to emerge from it alive, and CURE would probably be finished. But because of the Barsgod, Buell would also die.