Maria found herself floating in a pool of warm golden light and it was like being back in the womb, which for some reason she could suddenly recall with perfect clarity. She could see in all directions at once and it was wonderful. It was not like seeing with eyes but more like seeing in the visions she had experienced while she lived. Maria could not understand how she could see without eyes, without a body, but she could. And in every direction, the golden light stretched forever and ever. Far away, tiny specks shone. Somewhere, far beyond the golden light, she knew there were stars.
But Maria did not care about the stars. She just floated at peace in the warm amniotic light, waiting. Waiting to be born again. . . .
At Wildwood Cemetery, the man in the gabardine coat knelt and watched the light go out of Maria's syrup-brown eyes. Stripping off a glove, he closed her eyes with gentle fingers. A tear fell from his face to her forehead as a parting benediction.
He stood up. And then he noticed the bouquet of flowers-peonies mixed with the white pips of baby's breath-that Maria as her last act in life had dropped at the foot of the grave where she fell. It was a simple grave, a small stone of granite incised with a plain cross.
And two words. The name of a dead man. REMO WILLIAMS.
The scar-faced man left the flowers where they lay.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he was patiently explaining to his fellow passenger that he actually wasn't dead at all. "Oh, really?" the other man said in an exaggeratedly bored voice while he stared out the jetliner window and wondered how long they'd be stacked up over Los Angeles International Airport.
"Really," Remo said earnestly. "Everybody thinks I'm dead. I've even got a grave. Legally dead, yes. But actually dead, no."
"Is that so?" the other man said absently.
"But sometimes people ignore me as if I were actually dead. Like right now. And it bothers me. It really does. It's a form of discrimination. I mean, if I weren't legally dead, would people like you stare off into space when I'm taking to them?"
"I'm sure I don't know or care."
"Deathism. That's what it is. Some people are sexist and some people are racist. But you, you're a deathist. You figure that just because there's a headstone back in New Jersey with my name on it, you don't have to talk to me. Well, you're wrong. Dead people have rights too."
"Absolutely," said the other man, whose name was Leon Hyskos Junior. He was a casual young man in a Versace linen jacket and no tie, with mild blue eyes and blown-dry sandy hair. He had been sitting in the smoking section in the rear of the 727 by himself, minding his own business, when this skinny guy with thick wrists suddenly plopped into the empty seat beside him. The skinny guy had said his name was Remo Williams but not to repeat it to anybody because he was legally dead. Hyskos had given this Remo, who was dressed like a bum in a black T-shirt and chinos, a single appraising glance and decided he was squirrel food. He had turned away but the man had not stopped talking since then. He was still talking.
"You're just humoring me," Remo said. "Admit it."
"Get lost."
"See? Just what I said. You know, I don't tell this story to just anybody. You ought to be flattered. It all started back when I was a beat cop in New Jersey. . . ."
"You're a cop?" Leon Hyskos Junior asked suddenly, his head snapping around. He noticed Remo's eyes for the first time. They were dark, deep-set, and flat. They looked dead.
"I was a cop," Remo said. "Until they executed me."
"Oh," Hyskos said vaguely. He looked relieved. "They found a drug pusher beaten to death in an alley and my badge was lying next to him. But I didn't touch him. I was framed. Before I figured out that it wasn't a show trial put on for the benefit of community relations or something, they were strapping me in the electric chair. But the chair was rigged. When I woke up, they told me that from now on, I didn't exist."
Maybe talking to him would make him go away, Hyskos thought. He said, "That must have been hard on your family."
"Not really. I was an orphan. That was one reason they picked me for the job," Remo said.
"Job?" said Hyskos. He had to admit, it was an interesting story. Maybe it was those dead dark eyes.
"Yeah, job. This is where it gets complicated. See, back awhile one of the Presidents decided that the country was going down the tubes. The government was losing the war on crime. Too many crooks were twisting the Constitution to get away with raping the nation. It was only a matter of time before organized crime put one of their own into the White House and then, good-bye America. Well, what could this President do? He couldn't repeal the Constitution. So instead, he created this supersecret agency called CURE and hired a guy named Smith to run it."
"Smith? Nice name," Hyskos said with a smirk.
"Nice fella too," Remo said. "Dr. Harold W. Smith. It was his job to fight crime outside the Constitution. Violate the laws in order to protect the rule of law. That was the theory. Anyway, Smith tried it but after a few years he realized that CURE would have to do some of its own enforcement. You couldn't count on the courts to send anybody to jail. That's where I came in."
"You do enforcement?" Hyskos said.
Remo nodded. "That's right. One man. You don't think they run my tail off?"
"Too big a job for one man," Hyskos said.
"One ordinary man anyway," Remo said. "But see, I'm not ordinary."
"Not normal either," Hyskos said.
"There you go again. More deathism," Remo said. "See, CURE hired the head of a Korean house of assassins to train me. His name is Chiun and he's the last Master of Sinanju."
"What's Sinanju?"
"Sinanju is the name of the fishing village in North Korea where this house of assassins began thousands of years ago. The land there is so poor that a lot of times they didn't even have food for their babies and they used to have to throw them in the West Korea Bay. They called it 'sending the babies home to the sea.' So they started hiring themselves out to emperors as assassins. They've been doing that for centuries. They even worked for Alexander the Great. As time went on, they developed the techniques of what they called the art of Sinanju."
"I thought you said the village was Sinanju," Hyskos said. The story was getting boring again.
"It is. But it's also the name of the killing art they originated. "
"I guess those Koreans don't like to waste a good word, do they?" Hyskos said.
Remo shrugged. "Guess not. But let me finish. We'll be landing soon. You've heard of karate and kung-fu and ninja stuff. Well, they're all stolen from Sinanju. Sinanju is the original, the sun source, the real thing, and if you survive the training, a person can realize his full physical and mental potential. His senses are heightened. His strength is increased. With Sinanju, you can do things that seem impossible to normal people. It's sort of like being Superman, except you don't have to dress up. That's what happened to me because of Sinanju."
"Aren't you the lucky one? To be so perfect and all," Hyskos said.
"Yeah, well, don't think it's all peaches and cream. I can't eat processed food. I eat rice. I can't have a drink. Do you know what I'd give to be able to have a beer? And all the time, yap, yap, yap, Chiun's complaining that I'm an incompetent white who can't do anything right."
"He doesn't like you?" Hyskos said.
"No, it's not that. He just expects perfection all the time. Chiun thinks I'm the fulfillment of some freaking Sinanju legend about some dead white man who's really the incarnation of Shiva, some kind of silly-ass Hindu god, and after Chiun dies, I'm going to be the next Master of Sinanju. Dealing with him's not easy. Do you know he wants me to get Willie Nelson to run a benefit concert for him? And Chiun's already one of the richest men in the world. Can you believe that?"
"Not that, I'm afraid, or anything else," Leon Hyskos Junior said.
"Too bad, because it's all true."
"Why tell me?" Hyskos said.
"Well, Chiun couldn't come on this mission with me because he's getting r
eady to renegotiate his contract, so I had to do this job alone and I guess I just felt like talking to someone. And you seemed like the logical person, Leon. "
Hyskos noticed that his arms had started trembling when Remo unexpectedly called him by name. He hadn't mentioned his name. He was sure of it. He took hold of both armrests to steady them. It helped. Now only his biceps shook.
"You're on a mission now?" Hyskos asked in a thin voice.
"That's right. And for once, it's an assignment that's close to my heart. I'm representing dead people. I think that's appropriate, a dead man representing other dead people. Would you like to see pictures of my constituents?"
"No thanks," Hyskos said, tightening his seat belt. "I think we're about to land."
"Here. Let me help you with that," Remo said, taking the short end of the seat belt and pulling it tight with such force that the fabric smoked and Leon Hyskos Junior felt the contents of his bowels back up into his esophagus.
"Uuuuuumppp," Hyskos said, his face turning guppygray.
"That's better," Remo said. "We wouldn't want you to faw down, go boom." He pulled out his wallet, and a chain of photos in clear plastic holders tumbled out. Remo held the chain up to Hyskos' sweating face and began counting them off like a proud parent.
"This is Jacqui Sanders when she was sixteen. Pretty, huh? Unfortunately, she never reached seventeen. They found her body in a ravine outside of Quincy, Illinois. She'd been raped and strangled."
Leon Hyskos Junior tried to say something but only a series of foul-smelling burps came out.
"And this girl used to be Kathy Walters. I say used to be because she was dead when this picture was taken. She was found in a ravine too. Same deal, but a different ravine. The same thing happened to this next young lady too. Beth Andrews. Her body turned up in a Little Rock sand pit. I guess they don't have ravines in Little Rock."
Remo tapped two more pictures in quick succession. "And these were the Tilley twins. You can see the resemblance. But there wasn't much of a resemblance when their bodies were found in an Arkansas ravine. The guy who did a job on them smashed in their heads with a flat rock. But maybe you recognize the faces. They were in all the papers last week. Or maybe you recognize them for a different reason."
Remo looked away from the pictures and his eyes met those of Leon Hyskos Junior. And there was death in Remo's eyes.
Hyskos slipped a hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a small automatic. He pointed it at Remo's stomach. "Hey, you're not supposed to have those on airplanes," Remo said. "Put it away before the stewardess catches you. "
Hyskos let out a loud belch and some of the color returned to his face. "How did you know?" he asked.
"That you're the Ravine Rapist?" Remo said. "Well, remember I told you about CURE? All these killings you did made you a priority item. So the computers were fed all the facts about the killings and worked out your trail path and then, don't you know, your name kept turning up on a gas credit card all along that path. Then you did a really dumb thing. You booked this flight out of New Orleans and Smith sent me to intercept you and-ta-dah-here I am."
Remo smiled.
"You're supposed to kill me. Is that what you're saying?" Hyskos said.
"Exactly. So what do you say? Should I strangle you or what? Normally, I don't do strangulations but this is a special case."
"You're not going to do anything except what I tell you. Don't forget, I'm holding the gun."
"Oh, the gun. I meant to ask. How'd you get it past the metal detector?"
"New kind of gun. Plastic alloy."
"No fooling? Let me see," Remo said. He dropped the wallet, and before Hyskos could react, Remo's right hand snapped out and Hyskos felt his gun hand go numb. There was no pain, just a sensation as if the tissues of his hand were filling with novocaine. And suddenly, Remo had the flat pistol in his hands. He examined it closely. Remo jacked back the slide, but it caught. Remo pulled it anyway and the safety catch snapped. Then the ejector mechanism came off in his hands.
"Shoddy workmanship," he muttered.
"It's supposed to be stronger than steel," Hyskos said. Remo grunted. He tried cocking the weapon with his thumb but managed to break off the hammer. "I'm not so good with guns," he said, handing it back. "I think I broke it. Sorry."
The Ravine Rapist took the pistol and pulled the trigger three times. It didn't even click. He dropped it.
"I surrender," he said, throwing up his hands.
"I don't take prisoners," Remo said.
Hyskos looked around wildly for a stewardess. He opened his mouth to call for help but found he could make no sound because his mouth was suddenly filled with the pieces of the new non-metallic-alloy pistol that was stronger than steel.
"You look kind of faint," Remo said. "I know just what to, do for that. Just stick your head between your knees until your head clears. Like this."
And Remo took Leon Hyskos Junior by the back of the neck and slowly pushed his head downward, slowly, inexorably, and Hyskos felt his spinal column slowly, gradually begin to separate. He heard a pop. Then another. Then a third. It felt as if his head was exploding.
"If we weren't landing," Remo whispered, "I could make the pain last longer. And in your case I'd like to. But we're all slaves of the clock."
Hyskos felt his teeth break as, in his pain, he bit down hard on the gun in his mouth. And then he heard another pop, this one louder than the rest, and then he heard or felt nothing more.
Remo put the wallet of photos into the man's jacket pocket, and fastened his own seat belt as the airliner's tires barked as they touched the runway.
"My goodness, what's wrong with him?" a stewardess asked Remo when she saw Hyskos hunched over in his seat.
Remo gave her a reassuring smile. "That's just one of my constituents. Don't worry about him. He's just decomposing after his long flight."
The stewardess smiled back. "You mean decompressing, sir."
"If you say so," Remo said and left the aircraft. He went into the terminal and grabbed the handiest flight, not caring where it was going so long as it was in the air within five minutes.
No, Remo didn't want a drink. He still wasn't hungry either. He thought he had made that clear the last three times the stewardess had come to his seat to ask.
"Yes, sir," the stewardess said. "I just like to make sure. My job is to look after the needs of my passengers." She was a willowy blonde in a tight blue uniform set off by a bright yellow scarf. Her eyes were such an intense blue that it almost hurt to look at them. Under other circumstances, Remo thought he might have become interested in her---other circumstances being when she wasn't practically shoving her perfumed breasts in his face every five minutes to ask the same question.
"Why don't you check the other passengers?" Remo suggested.
"They're fine," she said, batting her sparkling blue eyes.
"No, we're not," several people chorused at once.
"What?" the stewardess asked. Her nametag said Lorna.
"We're thirsty. Some of us are hungry. When are you going to stop messing around with that guy and take care of us?" This from a matronly woman in the third row.
Lorna looked up. Most of the forward rows of the aircraft were filled with unhappy faces. They were all pointed in her direction. The drink-serving cart was blocking the aisle, preventing anyone from getting to the rest room.
"Oh," she said. Her pouting face flushed with color. "I'm sorry. Please be patient."
She looked back down at Remo and immediately forgot her embarrassment. A pleasured smile swept her face. "Where were we?" she asked Remo.
"I was telling you that I was fine and you were having trouble with your ears," said Remo, who didn't like all the attention coming his way. It wasn't the stewardess's fault. All women reacted to him like that. It was one of the side effects of Sinanju training. Chiun had once explained that when a pupil reached a certain level in the art of Sinanju, all aspects of his being began to harmonize with themse
lves and others could sense it. Men reacted with fear; women with sexual appetite.
But as women's appetite for him increased, Remo found he was less and less interested in them. Part of it was the Sinanju sexual techniques Chiun had taught him. They reduced sex to a rigid but monotonous series of steps that sent women into frenzies but sent Remo reaching for a book. The other part was psychology: when you could have any woman you wanted, anytime, anywhere, you didn't want any woman.
That had always bothered Remo. When he had reached that level, he had asked Chiun, "What good is being so desirable if you lose interest in sex?"
Chiun had sat him down. "A master of Sinanju has two purposes: to support his village and to train the next Master. "
"Yeah?"
"It is obvious, Remo."
"Not to me, Chiun. What does that have to do with sex?"
Chiun had thrown up his hands. "To train a new Master, you must have the raw material. A pupil. In your case, that is the rawest material of all, but I hope when it is time for you to train a new master, you have better material. A member of my village, preferably one belonging to the bloodline of my family."
"I still don't get it."
"You are very dense, Remo," Chiun had said. "When it is time for you to train your successor, you must take a Sinanju maiden for your wife. You will have a son and you will train him."
"What has that got to do with anything?"
Chiun sighed and folded his hands in his lap. Finally, he said, "I will try to make this simple enough for even you to follow. When it is time for you to select a maiden from my village to produce your successor, nothing must stand in the way of that selection. Therefore you have learned the ways to make a woman want to breed with you. Do you understand now?"
"Oh, I get it. The all-important next Master comes first. It doesn't matter what the girl thinks about it, does it?"
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