The End of the Game td-60

by Warren Murphy

  And the rest of the world would live.

  So be it, Smith thought.

  The sun was high and bright when Remo strode out into the open field to meet the diminutive figure dressed in white robes and standing as still as a statue. When he approached, Chiun bowed to him.

  Remo did not return the bow. Instead, he stood like a man who had walked a thousand miles with a pack of stones upon his back. His shoulders were stooped and a deep furrow ran between his red-rimmed eyes.

  "I didn't think it would ever come to this," Remo said quietly.

  Chiun's face was impassive. "And what is 'this'?"

  "Don't play word games with me, Little Fa--" Remo stopped himself. His mouth twisted with bitterness. "Little Father," he finished and spat on the ground.

  Chiun's eyelids fluttered but he said nothing.

  "You've come to kill me," Remo said. There was no accusation in his voice, only the sorrowful sound of resignation.

  "I have been so commanded," Chiun said.

  "Ah, the contract," Remo said. "That's right. Money for Sinanju. Don't forget the money, Chiun. I hope you got paid in advance. Your ancestors will never forgive you if you get stiffed on this job. The great Sinanju god. Money."

  "You are cruel," the old Oriental said softly.

  Remo laughed, a harsh sound in the thin noon air. "Right, Chiun. You go on telling yourself that. While you're killing me, just keep thinking how cruel I am."

  "I might not be able to kill you," Chiun said.

  "Oh, yes, you will. But I'm not going to make it easy for you," Remo said. "I'm not fighting back."

  "Like a sheep, you will stand there?" asked Chiun.

  "Sheep if you want. But that's the way I want it. You're going to have to kill me where I stand."

  "You are permitted to fight," Chiun said.

  "And I'm also permitted not to fight. Sorry, Chiun. I'm the one who's dying. I'll pick the way."

  "It is not the way of an assassin," Chiun said.

  "You're the assassin, remember? Chiun, the great assassin." Remo's eyes welled with tears. "Well, I'm going to give you something to remember me by. A parting gift from your son. When you kill me, Chiun, you won't be any assassin. You'll be a butcher. That's my gift. Take it to the grave with you."

  He ripped open the collar of his shirt and lifted his chin, baring his throat. "Go ahead," he said, his moist eyes fixed on the old man. "Do it now and get it over with."

  "You could have lain in wait for me here," Chiun said. "You could have killed me when I arrived."

  "Well, I didn't," Remo said.

  "Why will you not fight me?"

  "Because," Remo said.

  "A typical stupid answer from a pale piece of pig's ear," Chiun snapped. "What does that mean, that 'because'?"

  "Just because," Remo said stubbornly.

  "Because you could not stand the thought of perhaps hurting me," the old man said.

  "Not that at all," Remo said.

  "It is true. You knew my mission. You could have attacked first."

  Remo only looked away.

  "My son," Chiun said brokenly. "Can you see there is no other way?"

  "I love you, Little Father," Remo said.

  "Yes," said Chiun. "And that is why you will fight me. We must not disappoint our audience."

  He pulled himself up to his full height, then bowed once more to his opponent.

  This time, Remo bowed back.

  They were talking and Abner Buell was growing annoyed. Stop talking and fight, he mentally commanded them. He tossed his lawn chair away and sat on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling over the side.

  The old Oriental, he thought, certainly looked nothing like a Dr. Smith. But Remo, that was the Remo he had seen on his television monitors, haunting him day after day. Until today. When Remo died.

  Buell saw the old Oriental bow and the bow was returned by Remo. Buell wondered if Remo knew what was going to happen to him. Probably not. Remo was just too cocky and Buell was going to enjoy seeing him go down.

  The Oriental struck first. He was small, but as fast as a squirrel. He seemed to levitate from the ground, hesitate in midair for a moment, and then slash down with enough ferocity to lop off a horse's head.

  The first blow missed as Remo spun away, moving so fast himself that he was almost a blur. Then he catapulted upward in a double spiral and came down with both legs drawn in. They shot out at the last moment, hitting the old man square in the stomach. A spray of bright blood shot from the Oriental's mouth. Dr. Smith staggered backward a few steps and while he was trying to get his footing, Remo came after him.

  "Come on, Dr. Smith," Buell said softly. But for a moment, it looked at as if Remo had won. The old man staggered backward, ready to fall. But at the last moment, instead of going down, he sprang suddenly upward, his arms moving in front of him like blades. Remo's head snapped backward. He was trying to get away but the Oriental's hand snaked out again and before Remo could so much as turn his head, the old man had him by the throat and then yanked back hard. There was a sound like the beginning of a cry but it was choked off suddenly. Then Remo sank to his knees. At the same moment, the old man raised his arm high. In his hand was the bubbly, bloody interior of Remo's throat.

  Buell gave a whoop of triumph and leapt to his feet. "I won," he shouted. It did not bother him at all when his champion, the old Oriental, weaved on his feet, dropped the dripping mess in his hand to the ground, and collapsed in a heap. The sunlight glinted off a trickle of slick blood pouring from his mouth.

  "Kee-rist," Buell said between his teeth. "That Dr. Smith is some fighter."

  "His name's not Smith," said a soft voice behind him. Buell whirled around. On the opposite side of the rock shelf was a gray-haired middle-aged man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a three-piece suit. In his right hand was a pistol that seemed the size of an electric drill.

  "What'd you say?" Buell asked.

  "I said his name's not Smith. Mine is."

  A confused smile came to Buell's face but when the barrel of the oversized gun did not waver, the smile faded. The man with the gun was not joking and behind his steel-rimmed spectacles, his eyes held the kind of desperation that made killers of ordinary men.

  "What's this about?" Buell asked, swallowing hard.

  Smith's eyes wandered for a fraction of a second to the two bodies lying motionless on the field below. "It's about sanity," he rasped.

  "Come on," Buell began but Smith cut him short.

  "I know sanity isn't a big part of your life," Smith said. "Not somebody who's willing to blow up the world because it's some kind of game. Some of us don't think the world's safety is a game. So some of us are willing to kill for it." He glanced down again. "Even to die for it."

  "If you're Smith, who are those two?"

  "They worked for me," Smith said. "Enough explanations."

  He started to tighten his finger on the trigger but before he could, a strong arm was clamped around his throat. A gun was pressed against his temple.

  "Not just yet," said a woman's voice. "Drop it."

  Smith heard the gun against his head cock. There was more than just one of them. He could still get Buell, but this one would get him and the end of the world might just proceed on schedule. He had to wait. Try to get them both.

  He lowered the Barsgod and tossed it away, toward Buell.

  "You have all sorts of talents, Marcia," Buell said, as the woman released her hold on Smith's neck. "Hey, I said the cavegirl costume."

  Smith turned and saw a woman in slacks and a white blouse. She said to Buell, "We can stow all that sex-kitten crap now, Buell."

  Smith backed away from the woman. Buell looked surprised, then shrugged and walked over to pick up the Barsgod. The Russian-made Tokarev.38 in the woman's hand fired and took a crease out of the surface of the rock near Smith's weapon.

  "Leave it alone, Abner," she said. She aimed the Tokarev squarely at Buell's chest. "I want the code that activates the mi
ssiles," she said. Smith thought her eyes were as dark and deadly as a shark's.

  "What is this?" Buell said in bewilderment. "Are you with him?"

  The woman named Marcia smiled. "I am with the Committee for State Security of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," she said proudly.

  "You're a Russian? KGB?" Buell said.

  "Why else would I have spent so much time with the likes of you?" she spat. "May I remind you, Abner, that time is of the essence? And I do have this gun. The code numbers, please."

  "But the missiles are set to blow up Moscow too," Buell said.

  "Not anymore. The American missiles have been redirected. Each of their missiles will strike an American city."

  "Then think about yourself," Buell said desperately. "If they all go off in this country, you'll go too. You'll be incinerated."

  "And Russia will rule the world," she said. "It is a small price to pay, to die for so glorious a cause."

  "Then pay it now," came another voice. Smith wheeled as another figure hopped up onto the small plateau. It was a blond-haired woman with a British accent, and she moved quickly into a marksman's position and fired without hesitation at the Russian woman.

  Even before Pamela Thrushwell's gun sounded, Marcia had fired. Both women careened backward as if two giant hands had slapped them off their feet. Pamela's abdomen was torn open in a red burst of blood and entrails; the Russian woman's once-spectacular face was an unrecognizable blob. Her legs twitched weakly, reflexively, once; then she lay still.

  Smith started toward Buell, but the thin young man was holding the Barsgod.

  "These women need help," Smith said.

  "They'll get help in heaven," Buell said. "We all will, and we'll all be there soon."

  "You're crazy," Smith said.

  "Just bored," Buell said. A smile crossed his unlined face. "You know, I don't think I'll kill you after all. I think I'll just have you wait here with me for the big fireball in the sky. Would you like that?"

  "You don't have a chance," Smith said.

  "Why not?"

  Smith started walking slowly toward Marcia. Her gun lay alongside her dead body.

  "Because you can't stop me from doing what I want to do," Smith said. "That gun isn't loaded."

  "We'll see about that," Buell said. He pointed the gun at the ground. Smith stopped and watched. Buell squeezed the trigger. The gun fired, the bullet hit the rocky plateau, and Smith dove behind Marcia's body. The plateau exploded with a rush of sound and the shell shattered, sending jagged pieces of metal scattering everywhere, twinkling in the reflecting sunshine like a shower of stars. The body shielding Smith thunked as shell fragments tore into it.

  One of the pieces kicked back and embedded in Abner Buell's brain. He dropped the Barsgod and sank slowly to his knees. His body twitched, and then there was another muffled explosion, as the fragment itself exploded again, this time inside Buell's brain. He pitched forward, his face hitting the rock. He did not move.

  Smith raised himself slowly from the ground, stunned that he himself was unharmed, that all the shrapnel had missed him. Buell's head looked like a macabre Halloween mask. The eyes had been exploded from their sockets. His teeth lay like charred kernels of corn on the ground beside him. His slicked hair was now matted red and flecked with bits of soft gray tissue, spilled over from his brain through the gaping hole in the top of his skull.

  Shaking violently, Smith stood up to full height. Don't lose it now, he told himself. He had been prepared for death, but death had passed him by. Now he had to force his thoughts to other things. Like dismantling Buell's computer. Like ending the sequence that would result in Russia and America both firing their missiles into America's heartland. That had to be done first.

  He owed it. To a lot of people. To Remo and to Chiun.

  He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked over the cliff's edge down toward the field. The two bodies appeared to have vanished.

  Who could have taken them?

  He scanned the horizon, feeling a rising tide of anxiety well up inside him. For some reason, losing their bodies seemed as tragic as losing the men themselves. Remo and Chiun had been sacrificed for the most worthy of causes; even in Smith's last day in hell, he would be able to say that much in defense of himself. But to lose their bodies--

  He was filled with shame and he could do nothing else but sink to the ground, surrounded by the three grotesquely mutilated corpses, and cry like a lost child.

  He sobbed for Remo, the innocent he had betrayed so easily; for Chiun, whom he had forced, in his old age, to kill his own son; and he wept for himself, a tired, bitter old man, who no longer dreamed dreams but only lived nightmares.

  He never heard the footsteps approaching. But then, no one ever heard them.

  "Ever wish you had a camera?" It was Remo's voice.

  Smith looked up as Chiun clucked disdainfully. They both stood in front of Smith.

  "You're alive," he said.

  "Most perceptive, Emperor," said Chiun fawningly, bowing low.

  "I mean--" He stopped and stood up and swiped quickly at his eyes with his sleeve. "I had something in my eye. I couldn't get it out." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to the blood on Chiun's hands. "I saw it," he said. "The fight."

  Chiun gasped when he saw the blood and quickly tucked his hands into the sleeves of his kimono. "Forgive me, Most Observant One," he said. "In my haste, I forgot to remove the chicken-liver juice." He turned his back to Smith, spat on his hands and rubbed them energetically together.

  Smith looked to Remo, but Remo had gone.

  Stifling a small cry, Remo had run across the face of the rock to where Pamela lay and knelt alongside her body. Smith saw him feel for a pulse and then Chiun came beside him and tore off part of his robe. He made a pad to soak up the young British woman's blood, but within seconds the pad itself was sopped wet. Chiun shook his head to Remo.

  "Why'd you come, you pain in the ass?" Remo said chokingly to Pamela.

  Her face strained. With an effort, she forced her eyes open.

  "Don't talk," Remo said.

  "Must," she said. Blood bubbled from a corner of her mouth. "Did we get him?" she asked.

  "We got him," Remo said. "You didn't have to come for me," he said.

  "Not for you. For England. It was my job. Did we save the world?"

  "Yeah, Pamela," Remo said. "We done good. How'd you find me?"

  "Bribed clerk at motel. Listened in on your phone call. Told me where." She tried to smile and her mouth leaked blood. "Always knew you were a liar."

  Remo clenched his jaw. The skin over her eyelids was starting to discolor. She would be gone soon.

  "Saved your friend's life," she said.

  Remo thought: I wish I could save yours. But he only nodded.

  "We got it done," Pamela said. Her voice was growing inaudible. Remo leaned closer and she said, "Remo."

  "What?"

  "Do it again, will you?"

  "Do what?"

  Slowly, with hands as weak as a baby's, she guided his hand toward her left wrist. It barely grazed her skin when the life went out of her eyes.

  Remo stood, his own eyes moist. As he looked down at the body, Smith heard him mumble, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

  Remo and Chiun went into Buell's underground fortress with Smith to make sure there were no other people hiding in there.

  The subterranean apartment was empty and Smith marveled at the computers.

  "Good God," he said. "These have every detail of the Russian and American defense systems inside them."

  He jiggled and prodded the console keyboard, and occasionally emitted a soft exclamation of wonder.

  Finally he picked up a telephone.

  "Calling for help?" Remo said.

  Smith gazed at him blandly. "Calling Folcroft. I've set these up so that my computers can strip them and absorb everything they've got."

  "You don't need us anymore?" Remo said.

  "N
o. I can handle this alone. You can go."

  "All right," Remo said. At the doorway that led up to the rock plateau, he turned and said, "Smitty. Why were you crying before?"

  Smith said, "I told you. I had something in my eye," and he turned back to the console.

  * * *

  "Would you have killed me?" Remo asked Chiun as they walked across the grassy field below the small mountain.

  "Would the robin pluck the worm from the ground?"

  "What does that mean?" Remo said.

  "It means would the tide betray the moon who leads it to land?"

  "Huh?"

  "You are uneducable," Chiun said.

  They passed a rise overlooking the nearby highway.

  "So would you have killed me?"

  "Keep flapping your big mouth and find out," Chiun said.

  They got into Remo's car.

  "I don't think you would have," Remo said as he started the engine.

  Chiun grunted.

  "Because you love me," Remo said.

  Chiun grunted.

  "You do love me."

  The old man rolled his eyes heavenward.

  "Don't you?" Remo demanded.

  "Yak, yak, yak," Chiun shrieked, bouncing up and down on his seat. "You are the noisiest white thing who ever lived. Love you? It takes all one's will merely to tolerate you."

  Remo smiled and drove onto the highway.

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