Long ago.
The last time Remo had seen the Master of Sinanju alive, Chiun had been arguing with him in the California desert near Palm Springs. They had located the stolen neutron bomb. It had been armed, with no way to disarm it. The digital timer was counting off the final minutes of life for the only person Remo had ever thought of as family.
With the real-estate crazy named Connors Swindell and the bomb's inventor, they had barreled out into the desert, racing against that silently screaming timer display, trying to put Palm Springs behind them and out of the kill zone-even as they carried the kill zone along with them.
It was a doomed effort. Chiun had pointed this out, with his usual uncompromising wisdom. One of them would have to bear the bomb out into the desert alone. Or all would perish.
"I'll do it," Remo had volunteered.
"No. You are the future of Sinanju, Remo," Chiun had said stiffly. "I am only its past. The line must continue. So I must do this."
They had been feuding in the days before the end came. Remo didn't even know the reason, until Chiun had reluctantly explained that he was approaching his one hundredth birthday-something Remo had no inkling of. Tired of arguing, concerned for Chiun's advancing years, Remo had cut short the argument to get possession of the bomb in a cruel way. He had ridiculed the Master of Sinanju.
"Cut the martyr act, Chiun," Remo had said. "It's old. You're good, sure, but you're not as fast as me. I'm younger, stronger, and I can get further faster. So stuff your silly Korean pride and face reality. I'm the only one for this job, and we both know it."
The memory of Chiun's stung face was one that seemed to burn behind the stars above.
His soft, "So, that is how you feel about me," still echoed in Remo's ears.
Remo remembered reaching for the neutron bomb. Then the world went black. Chiun. Getting in the last word.
He woke up in the speeding car. It was careening back toward Palm Springs, away from the kill zone. He realized what must have happened. He had only time to look back.
The neutron bomb ignited with a heart-stopping vomiting-up of boiling black smoke and hellish red fire.
Remo had raced back into the rising hell. But the spreading zone of deadly radiation forced him back.
Months later, when it was safe, he had returned to the desert, finding only a capped-off underground condo site and a fused glass crater. Not even the Master of Sinanju's body had survived the blast.
But out there in the remorseless desert, the spirit of the Master of Sinanju had appeared to Remo. Wordlessly it had attempted to indicate what could not be communicated otherwise. By pointing at Remo's feet. Then it simply vanished.
Remo's existence had become an aimless one since then. What Chiun had commanded him to do was to confront the choice he knew he would one day face. He was now the inheritor of the line. It was as Chiun had said. The line had to continue. The House of Sinanju had to go on. The village had to be fed. And the village had always been fed by the work of the Masters of Sinanju.
Now Remo wasn't so sure. Could he continue the tradition? He was an American. The people of Sinanju were a bunch of ungrateful parasites. They knew nothing of the hardships Chiun had endured to feed them. They would care nothing if they had known.
Remo had put off returning to Sinanju to break the terrible news. It was not long after that that Chiun had reappeared to him, spectrally pointing a ghostly finger, commanding him to obey.
"I'll get to it," Remo had said that second time.
But weeks later, when Chiun reappeared, Remo had reverted to the old days of their bickering relationship.
"Get off my back, will you?" he had said heatedly. "I said I'd get around to it!"
Chiun had raised his drawn, stricken face to the ceiling and faded like so much unscented smoke, leaving Remo feeling bitter and ashamed.
After that, he had closed up the house and hit the road. He felt torn between two worlds. He had outgrown America. Yet he was not of the blood of Sinanju. The line that stretched back five thousand years had nothing to do with him. He was a latecomer, a mere pale piece of pig's ear, as Chiun had so often said.
That left only CURE. But to Harold Smith, Remo was a tool. If compromised, he would be abandoned, disavowed-even terminated. Chiun had loved Remo, and Remo had grown to love the Master of Sinanju as a son loves his father. But between Remo and Harold Smith there was only a cool working relationship. Grudging respect. Sometimes, annoyance. Often anger. Who knew, but with Chiun out of the way, Smith might have some prearranged plan to reclaim Remo for the organization. Smith was no fool. He had long ago come to understand that Remo belonged equally to the village of Sinanju.
Suppose Smith decided to reprogram Remo? The cold bastard had tried it once before. Only Chiun had rescued Remo's sorry ass that time.
"What the hell do I do with the rest of my life?" he asked the stars. "Where do I belong? Who do I turn to?"
The stars poured down cold twinkling light that had no answer.
Remo sat up. Draining the last of his water, he tossed the empty bottle straight up. It ascended seventy feet, poised as if frozen by a snapshot, then began its tumbling return to earth.
Remo leapt up and snapped out with the heel of his foot. Pop! The glass shattered into a thousand gritlike pieces that sprinkled the roof with no more sound than hail falling.
Remo walked to the roof's edge, thinking how he always seemed to be drawn back to his old neighborhood in times like these. There was nothing for him here anymore. St. Theresa's Orphanage had been razed long ago. The neighborhood had fallen victim to the junkies and the pushers and the inexorable eroding of the American inner city. It was a lawless wasteland-the very thing Remo Williams had been erased from all records to prevent.
Now, lower Broad Street looked like Inner City Nowhere. A tight-skirted hooker lounged against a dirty brick wall. The needle tracks on her arms were like a connect-the-dots Amazon River. Two men passed sandwich-bag packets between them. Drugs. A battered pickup drew up to a red light. A man came out of an alley carrying a VCR still in its cardboard box. He dropped it into the bed of the truck and accepted a roll of bills from the driver. The transaction was accomplished without a word spoken.
"Ah, the hell with it," Remo growled.
He had made his decision. He stepped off the parapet edge.
Using the bricks for steps, Remo walked down the side of the building. His heels stepped from brick to brick, taking tiny jerking steps. Upright, his balance perfect, his bleak dark eyes looking out over the Newark skyline, he might have been descending a steep art-deco staircase.
No one noticed his impossible descent. And no one accosted him as he stepped onto the sidewalk and made his way out of the place he had sprung from and which was now as alien to him as the mud flats and fishing shacks of Sinanju, half a planet away.
Harold Smith picked up the dialless red desk telephone on the first ring.
"Yes, Mr. President?" he said crisply, no trace of fear in his voice. In fact, he was quite scared.
"The FBI aren't cutting it," the President said in a careworn voice that muted his vaguely New England twang. "I am turning to you."
"I presume you are referring to the missing Iraiti ambassador?" Harold Smith asked.
"Abominadad is claiming we've taken him hostage," the President snapped, "and we can't prove otherwise. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the smug son of a gun were found floating facedown in the Potomac, but I'm trying to avoid a war here. This kind of escalation could trigger it. I know you've lost the old one-what was his name?"
"Chiun," Smith said stiffly. "His name was Chiun."
"Right. But you still have your special guy, the Causcasian. Can he cut it alone?"
Harold Smith cleared his throat noisily as he mentally framed the news he had been keeping from the chief executive.
"Mr. President-" he began.
Then another phone rang. The blue one. It was the line through which Remo reported.
"One mo
ment," Smith said quickly, cupping the mouthpiece to his gray vest. He grabbed the other phone like a life preserver. He spoke into it.
"Remo," Smith said harshly. "The President has a critical assignment for you. Will you take it? I must have your answer. Now."
"Assignment?" Remo asked in a taken-aback voice. "What kind?"
"The Iraiti ambassador is missing."
"Why should we care?" Remo demanded.
"Because the President does. Will you accept this assignment?"
The line was silent for nearly a minute.
"Why not?" Remo said breezily. "It should kill an afternoon."
"Hold, please," Smith said, no trace of the relief he felt sweetening his lemony voice. He switched phones, hugging the blue receiver to his chest.
"Mr. President," he said firmly, "I have our enforcement arm on the other line. He is prepared to enter the picture."
"Fast work, Smith," the President returned. "I'm pleased with your efficiency. Damn pleased. Go to it."
The line went dead. Smith hung up the red telephone and lifted the blue one from his vest.
"Remo, there is no time for details. Fly to Washington. Contact me once you get there. I hope to have operational details for you by then."
"On my way," Remo said. "Maybe Mad Ass had him assassinated," he added hopefully.
"I doubt that."
"I'd give anything for a crack at that Arabian nightmare."
"Official policy is hands-off. Now, please, go to Washington."
"Keep the line free. The next voice you hear will be yours truly."
Chapter 7
Turqi Abaatira listened with attentive straining ears as the gorgeous blond vixen he knew only as Kimberly sat on the edge of the bed and lectured him on the causes and pathological symptoms of gangrene.
"When blood flow is cut off," she explained in a breathy voice like a schoolgirl reciting from a book, "oxygen is also restricted. Without oxygen, the tissue becomes starved for nourishment. It begins to decay, to become corrupt."
Kimberly reached over and gave the bulging tip of his male organ a friendly pat. It quivered. Abaatira couldn't feel a thing. This alarmed him.
It fascinated Kimberly enough to deviate from her lecture.
"Do they always act rubbery like that? When they're not gangreny, I mean."
She removed the gag from his mouth.
"You do not know?" Abaatira gasped. "You, a professional call girl?"
"I'm new at this stuff," Kimberly said, gazing into her high-polished yellow fingernails. "Actually, you're my first customer."
"I refuse to pay you until you release me," Abaatira said hotly. The gag was replaced.
"Tissue death usually signals itself by a slow change in color," Kimberly went on absently. "Healthy pink skin turns green, then black. When it is completely black, it's dead. Amputation is usually the only remedial procedure." She paused. "I think this black goes very well with yellow, don't you?" she added, adjusting the yellow silk scarf that had strangled the blood flow from Abaatira's upright penis.
Ambassador Abaatira gave his head a violent shake. He tried to give vent to his anger, his rage, most of all to his fear, but an identical yellow silk scarf stuffed into his mouth prevented this. A third one held it in place.
Kimberly had stuffed the one into his mouth after he had first started to cry out, carefully tying the other at the back of his head.
"It's been two days," she went on pleasantly. "I would say that another, oh, twelve to fourteen hours from now, it's gotta go. Bye-bye, Black Peter. Of course, the surgeons might not have to cut it all off. Every last inch, I mean. Perhaps they can save some of it. The tip would definitely go. It's pretty black right now. But you might end up with a kind of stump."
"Mumph-mumph!" Abaatira squealed through the silk gag.
"It wouldn't come in very useful during an orgy," Kimberly went on, "but you could tinkle with it. Maybe enough could be salvaged that you could still point the stream where you wanted it to go. Otherwise, you'd have to sit down like us girls."
Abaatira shook his head violently. He strained at the yellow bonds.
"What's that?" Kimberly asked, leaning closer. "You say you don't want to sit like a girl when you tinkle?"
Ambassador Turqi Abaatira changed the direction of his madly shaking head. Up and down instead of side to side. He poured a great deal of enthusiasm into it. He wanted no ambiguity. None at all.
"I might be persuaded to help you out," Kimberly offered.
The up-and-down shaking became even more manic. The entire bed shook.
Kimberly brought her pretty face up to Abaatira's sweatsoaked one. She smiled invitingly as she whispered, "You're in touch with Abominadad every day?"
Oh, no, Abaatira thought to himself. A spy. She is a CIA spy. I will be executed for allowing myself to fall into her brazen toils.
But since his overriding concern was to leave this room with all his body parts a healthy pink, he kept nodding yes.
"If you tell me everything I want to know," Kimberly said, rolling her shoulders against the digging weight of her bra straps, "I might be willing to untie that pretty silk scarf." She ran a yellow nail down his cheek. "You would like that, would you not?"
Abaatira hesitated. His English was impeccable-he was a Harvard man-but this was a critical point. His mind raced. Should he answer the "You would like that?" Or the "Would you not" part. Or were they the same thing? The wrong reply could have grave consequences.
Abaatira shook his head yes, and the treacherous, diabolical call girl leaned over to untie the encircling yellow ribbon. She then plucked the yellow wad of silk from his mouth.
Ambassador Abaatira tasted the dryness of his own mouth.
"Water?" he said thickly.
"Answers first."
"You promise?"
"Yes."
"You swear to Allah?"
"Sure, why not?"
"What do you wish to know?" he croaked, his eyes going from the fresh pink face hovering near him to the ugly greenish-black mushroom that he could barely recognize as a cherished part of his anatomy.
"The intentions of your government."
"President Hinsein will never relinquish Kuran. It is our long-lost sister state."
"Whose army you crushed and whose property you carried back to Irait, including the streetlights and cars, and even a giant roller coaster. Not to mention all the rapes."
"You are not a Kurani, by any chance?" Ambassador Abaatira asked with a sudden flare of fear deep in his naked belly.
"No. I serve She who loves blood."
"I love blood too," Abaatira pointed out. "I would love it to circulate more freely through my body. To every needy part."
Kimberly patted his damp hair. "In time, in time. Now, tell me about the plans your government has for war."
"What about them?"
"Everything. I wish to know everything about them. Under what circumstances you would go to war. The provocations necessary. The thoughts of your brave leader, who must love blood, for he spills so much of it. Tell me about his personal life. I want to know everything. About his family, his peccadilloes, his mistress. Everything."
Ambassador Turqi Abaatira closed his eyes. The words came tumbling out. He told everything. And when he ran out of secrets to reveal, he repeated himself.
Finally, dry of mouth and spent of spirit, he put his head back on the pillow and gasped for breath.
"That is everything you know?" asked Kimberly, the Mata Hari of barbaric Washington, where not even a diplomatic media star was safe from torturers.
Abaatira's gasp could only mean yes.
"Then it is time for me to fulfill my part of our little bargain," Kimberly said brightly.
This brought Abaatira's sweat-sheathed head back up. Eyes widening, he watched as those hateful tapered yellow fingers reached for the deadly yellow silk scarf that seemed so loosely tied, but which had brought him such terror.
He steeled himself, for he
knew that the restored blood flow would bring with it horrible pain as the starved nerve endings came back to life.
The fingers tugged and plucked, and with tantalizing slowness they pulled the silk away. A trailing end caressed Abaatira's naked body as it retreated.
With a sudden wicked flick, it was gone.
Childish laughter, mad and mocking, seared his ears.
Ambassador Abaatira's eyes bulged stupidly. He threw his head back and screamed.
For he had seen half-buried in the greenish-black root of his manhood the slick gleam of copper wire-and knew that he had betrayed his country for nothing.
The yellow scarf went around his throat, and his scream became an explosion of choking that trailed off in a frenzy of gagging.
Chapter 8
Marvin Meskin, manager of Washington's Potomac Hotel, thought he was having union problems.
"Where the hell is that maid?" he roared, slamming down the front desk phone. "That was another guest on the tenth floor, wondering if we charge extra for changing the sheets and towels."
"Let me check," said the bellboy helpfully.
"Yeah, you do that," Meskin muttered, wondering if the entire hotel wasn't going to hell. For two days, maids had been disappearing in the middle of their shifts. They just walked off the job, leaving their service carts behind. The first one had quit on the ninth floor. Her replacement had quit two hours later. Her cart was found on the seventh floor.
But that was not the odd part. The odd part was that the carts were always found on floors that had been completely serviced.
Somehow, the maids never seemed to quite finish the tenth floor.
Meskin had complained to the Hotelworkers' Union, but they claimed it wasn't a job action. The union sent over another replacement, a Filipina named Esmerelda. She spoke even less English than the last one.
The desk phone rang. It was the bellboy.
"I'm on the ninth floor," he said. "I found her cart. No sign of . . . what was her name-Griselda?"
"I thought it was Esmerelda," Meskin said bitterly. "And who the hell cares what her name is? They come and go faster than the damn guests. I think this is a union plot or something."
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