Blood Ties td-69

by Warren Murphy

  Then, Chiun knew, this matter would be resolved. Forever.

  The taxi arrived at the Dynacar Industries plant forty minutes later.

  "That'll be $49.25," said the driver. The fare was three times what it would have been if he had been permitted to drive on the interstate.

  "That is a reasonable fare," said Chiun. He reached into the folds of his kimono and brought forth one of the new United States gold pieces in the fifty-dollar denomination.

  The driver looked at it and said, "What's this?"

  "What it appears to be. Coin of the realm. Fifty dollars gold. American."

  "Where's my tip and don't give me any of that 'don't-have-children' routine. I already got nine of them. That's why I need a tip."

  "Yesterday's gold fixing on the London market was $446.25," Chiun said. "Surely, $397 is enough of a tip for following directions."

  "How do I know this is real?" said the driver.

  "Because when you die in five seconds because of your insolent tongue, I am going to take another just like it and place them over your eyelids to smooth your journey into the other world. I would not use counterfeit coins to do this."

  "You mean, it's real?"

  "Isn't that what I've been saying?"

  "And it's really worth $440?"

  Chiun corrected him. "$446.25."

  "Want me to wait to bring you back to the hotel?" the driver asked.

  "No," said Chiun.

  The guard at the gate to the large empty Dynacar parking lot wanted to know what Chiun's business was.

  "It is my business and not yours. Let me pass."

  "You're not an employee, not dressed like that. I can't let you in without a visitor's pass. You got a visitor's pass, old-timer?"

  "Yes," said Chiun, raising his open palm for the guard to see. "Here it is."

  The guard looked, expecting to find an ID card in the old man's hand, but he saw nothing. He saw nothing twice. First he saw nothing because the Oriental's hand was empty. Then he saw nothing again when Chiun took his nose between thumb and forefinger and squeezed until the man's sight clouded and he fell back on the seat inside his small guardhouse.

  As he slipped from consciousness, the guard had a half-second realization of what was happening. He had heard of nerves in the human body that were so sensitive, they triggered unconsciousness when pressed in a certain way. But he had never heard of any such nerve in the tip of the nose.

  When he woke up three hours later, he was still thinking that thought.

  Lyle Lavallette was sitting behind the wheel of the Dynacar in the big empty plant, making "vroom, vroom" noises with his mouth. The first inkling he had that he was not alone was the slight tipping of the vehicle on the passenger side.

  He looked over to see an elderly man with Asian features, dressed in a flower-emblazoned red brocade robe, sitting beside him.

  "I am Chiun," the Oriental said. "I am here to guard your worthless life."

  Lavallette recognized the man. It was the same Oriental who had used his own body to shield James Revell from the gunman's bullets at the Dynacar demonstration the previous day.

  "What are you doing here?" Lavallette said.

  "I have just told you. Have you wax in your ears? I am here to guard your worthless life."

  "I'm worth over ten million dollars. I don't call that worthless."

  "Ten million dollars. Ten million rocks. It is the same thing. Worthless."

  "Savage!" Lavallette yelled through the open car window. Colonel Brock Savage, sitting with his men in a small room off the main garage floor, heard the shout. He slipped the safety off his Armalite rifle and gave his men the hand signal to follow him as he trotted up to the driver's side of the Dynacar.

  Lavallette, a panicked expression on his face, mouthed the word "him" and pointed toward Chiun.

  "Surround the car," Savage ordered his men. "You! Out," he barked at Chiun, pointing his Armalite through the window so that, if he had to fire, he would riddle the unarmed Oriental.

  Lavallette realized Savage would riddle him too because he was directly in the line of fire and shouted, "Get over the other side, you maniac. Don't shoot me."

  Savage ran around the car and Chiun pointed a finger at him. "Do not point that weapon at me," he said.

  "Get out, gook."

  "And do not give me orders. I do not take orders from whites who dress like trees," Chiun said.

  "I'm a private merc, idiot. The highest-paid merc in the world. And I'm trained to kill."

  "No," said Chiun. "You have been trained to die." To Lavallette's eyes, it looked as if the old man had simply walked through the closed car door, but in fact Chiun had opened the door so quickly that Lavallette's slow eyes still held the afterimage of the closed door simultaneously with registering the Oriental's leap from the car.

  Brock Savage squeezed the Armalite's trigger. Chiun squeezed Savage's trigger finger and the weapon dropped from the big man's hands. Chiun picked it up and snapped the barrel in half.

  Savage reached for his combat knife, a ninja butterfly knife that opened like a folding rule. He flashed his hands around and the blade snapped from concealment. Then it too was on the floor next to the gun barrel.

  Savage looked at the broken blade and dove for Chiun's throat, hands extended in front of him.

  "Ki-ai," he shouted, but he quieted as he hit the floor with Chiun pressing a finger against an artery in his temple. Then he was unconscious.

  Chiun turned to the other mercenaries.

  "He is not seriously hurt," he said. "I do not wish to hurt any of you. Please take him and leave."

  Two mercenaries ran forward, grabbed Brock Savage's unconscious form, and pulled him away.

  Chiun led Lavallette through a door that led to the office wing of the Dynacar plant and told the automaker to take him to his office.

  Inside the office, Chiun said, "You are fortunate to have me here. You were not safe surrounded by those private jerks."

  "Mercs," corrected Lavallette.

  "Only one of us is correct," Chiun sniffed. "And I do not think it is you."

  Chapter 27

  The gunman had fallen asleep on the sofa, watching television, and when he awoke, he glanced at his watch, picked up his briefcase, and walked quietly from the hotel room.

  Let Remo sleep. The kid, with his eternal questions, would just be a drag if he came along. He was already a large-size headache with his rice-eating, no drinking, "I can't-explain-to-you-how-I-do-what-I-do" routine.

  When this hit was over, the gunman was leaving, and to hell with Remo Williams. Who needed that grief? Let him go back to his Chinaman friend.

  The guard outside the parking lot at the Dynacar plant appeared to be asleep in his booth. The gunman had planned to park nearby and sneak into the property, but he had learned early on never to look a gift horse in the mouth. A sleeping guard was a gift from heaven, so he drove into the lot and parked his car near the main building.

  He took his Beretta Olympic from his briefcase and slipped it into his spring-clip shoulder holster. He left the rifle add-ons in the briefcase. They would not be necessary. This, he thought, was a television hit: "up close and personal."

  He walked through a large warehouse-type building where the Dynacar was sitting alone in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. His body was tensed, all his senses focused on what was in front of him. Were there guards? Could this be a trap?

  But he saw nothing and he never realized that behind him, Remo had slipped out of the backseat of the car where he had been hidden and was now following him into the plant.

  The gunman, if asked, would have admitted to some confusion. Until this minute, he had been certain that he had been hired by one of the company presidents who had been on his target list. But he had killed Mangan and he would have killed Revell if it hadn't been for that crazy old Oriental. That left Millis and Lavallette as his possible employer. Now, with Millis dead, there was only Lavallette. It would have been si
mple except his employer had called and told him to kill Lavallette today.

  So who was he working for?

  He decided that when he collected his last payment, he was going to pull open the door of that Dynacar and find out who was sitting behind the wheel.

  But that was later. For now, he had to be wary of a trap. He saw no one in the warehouse, and in the tall office structure attached to the rear of the work area, there was no one in the lobby.

  The gunman paused to light a cigarette and for some reason, Maria's face floated into his mind. He had not thought of her since that Remo had started to pester him.

  He took a puff off the cigarette, stubbed it out in an ashtray on an empty desk, and got into the elevator to ride upstairs. Maybe it was a trap, but if it was, he was prepared.

  Chiun was prepared too. He sat on a small rug outside Lavallette's office. He had told the automaker to stay inside and Lavallette had disobeyed only once, when he came out to say that he had received an anonymous tip that the killer was on his way to murder Lavallette.

  "Is he coming alone?" Chiun asked.

  "I wouldn't know. My informant didn't say," Lavallette replied.

  "Go back into your office."

  "He'll get me," Lavallette said. "Colonel Savage and his people are gone. I'm dead meat."

  "To get to you, he will have to pass me," Chiun said. "Get back inside."

  He had pushed Lavallette inside, closed the door, and then taken up his station on the rug outside the man's office, watching the elevator door, waiting.

  The moment of reckoning was coming.

  Remo did not know why he had stowed away in the back of his father's car, to follow the gunman. When he saw the man with the scar start to ride up on the elevator, he slipped into a stairwell and started to walk upstairs, driven by some urge he did not understand.

  When the elevator doors slid open, the gunman had dropped into a marksman's crouch, his Beretta pointed ahead in a double-handed grip. He felt prepared for anything, but he was not prepared to see the old Oriental sitting calmly on a carpet in the middle of the floor.

  "You again," he said.

  Chiun's face was stern. "Where is my son?"

  The gunman laughed. "Don't you mean my son? He's sure of it, you know."

  "And what are you sure of?" Chiun asked.

  "I'm sure that he's a chump."

  Chiun rose from his position without any apparent shifting of limbs under his kimono. He seemed to grow like a sunflower from the floor.

  "Whatever Remo is, he is Sinanju. You have insulted Sinanju too many times already. Prepare to die."

  The gunman fired two shots coming out of the elevator. One of them buried itself in the door directly behind Chiun, but Chiun was no longer there. He was three feet to the left somehow. And was it the gunman's imagination, or was he standing closer now?

  The gunman fired again.

  And again, Chiun was suddenly in another place. He had not seemed to move. It was like magic; the old Oriental popped up in another place, grim and purposeful.

  Now only twelve feet separated them and the gunman fired four shots in a fanning arc. He had gotten the old Oriental before with a ricochet; why was it so difficult this time?

  In the brief microsecond in which the gunman reacted to the noise and flash of the pistol shots, he blinked, and in that same blink of a second, the Master of Sinanju moved again. The gunman's eyes opened and he seemed to be alone in the spacious reception area.

  From behind the door marked "LYLE LAVALLETTE. PRESIDENT" a muffled voice called out.

  "Hello? Is anyone dead out there? Is it all right to come out now? Hello?"

  It was too much for the gunman. There was no possible place where the old Oriental could be hiding. Maybe he had the powers of invisibility or something. He started to back into the still-open elevator, and stopped.

  His gun hand seemed to catch fire. He screamed. His pistol clattered to the floor. Something was wrong with his arm, something terrible.

  He dropped to his knees, clutching his arm. From the corner of one tearing eye, he saw the Master of Sinanju step out of the elevator.

  "How?" he groaned.

  "You may spend eternity pondering it," Chiun said coldly. His eyes were wrathful. "Now you will answer my questions."

  Chiun knelt beside the squirming man and gently touched his inner left wrist.

  "Arrrgh," the man screamed.

  "That is just a touch," Chiun said. "I can make the pain much worse. Or I can make it disappear. Have you a preference?"

  "Make it go away."

  "Where is Remo?" Chiun said.

  "I left him back at the hotel."

  "Good. You answered truthfully."

  "Make it stop. Make the pain go away. Please."

  "Who hired you?" Chiun said implacably.

  "I don't know. I never saw his face."

  "That is not a good answer."

  "It's the only answer. I thought it was Lavallette but now I don't know. It might be anyone. Help me. I'm dying here."

  "That will come later. Why would the carriagemaker hire you to kill himself?"

  "Ask him, ask him. Just give me a break."

  Chiun touched the man's arm and the gunman's contorted joints loosened and relaxed. He lay on the floor, still as death.

  Chiun was at Lavallette's office door when the door to the stairwell opened. He did not have to turn to know it was Remo stepping out. The first soft footfall told him that, for no other human stepped with such feline ease. Except for Chiun himself.

  "Little Father," Remo said. And then he saw the gunman's still body.

  "No!" he screamed.

  "He is not dead, Remo," Chiun said softly.

  "Oh."

  "I was going to come for you when I was finished here," Chiun said stiffly.

  "Smith's orders?"

  "No. I already told the emperor that you were dead. A necessary untruth."

  "You both knew about him all along, didn't you?" Remo said, gesturing to the man on the floor.

  Chiun shook his aged head, making the wisps of hair over his ears flutter in the still air.

  "No, Remo. No one knows the truth. Least of all, you."

  "This man is my natural father. You kept that from me. You tried to kill him."

  "I kept that from you to spare you grief," Chiun said.

  "What kind of line is that? What grief?"

  "The grief you would have felt had Smith ordered you to eliminate this wretch. This is my assignment which I took upon my frail shoulders to spare you the burden."

  "Oh, Chiun, what do I do?" Remo said.

  "Whatever it is, you may have to do it quickly," said Chiun, pointing a long-nailed finger at the gunman, who was rising to his feet now, his pistol in hand.

  "Out of the way, kid," he rasped. "I'm going to kill that yellow bastard."

  "No," Remo said.

  "Get out of my way, kid. You hear me?"

  Remo glanced at Chiun, who quietly folded his arms and closed his eyes.

  "Don't just stand there, Chiun," Remo called.

  "Without a pupil, Sinanju has no future. Without a future, I have no past. I will be remembered as my ancestors have told me I would be remembered as the last Master of Sinanju, who gave Sinanju to an ungrateful white. So be it."

  "No, Chiun," Remo said. He turned to the gunman. "Put it down. Please. We can settle this some other way."

  "There is no other way," Chiun said.

  "For once the gook is right," the gunman said. "Get out of the way. Who the hell's side are you on anyway?"

  "Yes, Remo," said Chiun. "Whose side are you on?" The gunman lined up the shot. Chiun stood immobile, eyes closed. The gunman slowly depressed his finger on the trigger.

  Remo yelled something inarticulate, then surrendering to reflexes built into him by Chiun over the years, he moved toward the gunman.

  The man with the scar whirled and fired at Remo. The bullet missed.

  "You asked for this, kid," th
e gunman said. His finger lowered again.

  "Me, too?" Remo cried but it was too late. The killing stroke of his hand was already in motion.

  It struck the man called Remo Williams squarely on the breastbone, shattering that bone and turning the connective cartilage to mucus. That was just the beginning. The force of the stroke vibrated through the gunman's body, initiating a chain reaction of breaking bones and jellifying muscles and organs.

  The gunman with the scar stood poised for an infinite second, his contorted face seeming to soften as the hardness of his skull dissolved, and then he slipped to the floor like a pile of potatoes tumbling out of a ripped sack.

  His last sight was of Remo's empty hand coming at him and his final thought was not his own. He could hear Maria's last words and finally he understood:

  "A man will come to you. Dead, yet beyond death, he will carry death in his empty hands. He will know your name and you will know his. And that will be your death warrant. "

  He did not feel himself slip from his body. Instead, he felt his mind contract, tighter and tighter, until it was as small as a pea, then as small as the head of a pin, then smaller still until his entire consciousness was reduced to a point as infinitesimally tiny as an atom. When it seemed that it could compress no tighter, it kept shrinking and shrinking.

  But the gunman did not care because he no longer cared about anything. His very essence became part of a darkness greater and blacker than he could ever comprehend, and not knowing where he was and what was happening to him was much, much better than knowing.

  "I killed him," Remo said in a strangled voice. "I killed my own father. Because of you."

  "I am sorry, Remo. Truly sorry for your pain," Chiun said.

  But Remo did not seem to hear him. He just kept mumbling the same words over and over again in a lost little boy's voice:

  "I killed him."

  Chapter 28

  Remo sat down heavily and touched the limp body of the man he called his father. It felt as formless as a jellyfish. All that was now left of the man was a casing that surrounded broken bone and tissues.

  Lavallette's door opened slowly and he peered outside. He saw the dead man and then Chiun.

  "What happened to him?" he asked.

  "Sinanju happened to him," Chiun said.

  "Did he say who hired him?" Lavallette asked.