Skin Deep td-49

by Warren Murphy

  "The mission," he said aloud, reminding himself. The films. The doctor. Heil Hitler.

  "Don't forget, Richard. Never forget. Never..." His grandmother rocking, saying the words, again and again. Never forget. Nevernevernever. The wrinkled mouth opening as she rocked, talking soundlessly, the unknown words forming, talking, talking

  "What are you saying?" He screamed, so loud that his voice cracked. Then he gunned the throttle and he was airborne, leaving the hateful old windbag in the dust behind him.

  Remo reached the plane in time to take hold of its landing gear. The sudden burst of speed as the bomber climbed into the sky nearly threw him off into space, but he managed to hold on until the gear retracted. As it moved into the plane's body, he swung himself to get a foothold on the left wing, then propelled his weight in an aerial arc to land upright.

  The wind was monstrous. At takeoff speed, even the aerodynamically perfect wings of the F-24 shimmied with the pressure. Remo felt the flesh of his face pulled backward with the thrust.

  Slowly he crawled along the wing, his hands flat against the metal. It would be just like walking down a wall, he told himself, one hand after the other, supported by the toeholds of his feet, using his shifting weight and the vacuum created in his palms to keep himself attached to the surface.

  But he knew it wouldn't be the same. It wasn't a wall, it was the wing of a jet roaring toward the speed of sound. And, too, the burns on his hands from the electric mesh of the cave prison hadn't healed. Fluid seeped from the raw flesh.

  The pain shot through him as he reached the window beside the pilot's seat. Caan's face was comical in it s undisguised astonishment, but he was a good pilot. The plane never wavered. Instead, in the middle of its climb, Caan rolled it over in an aerobatic somersault and then dove.

  Remo saw the earth turn upside down, its horizon curved in an upturned smile beneath him. The muscles in his arms were straining to their limit now, and his hands felt as though they were on fire. He wouldn't be able to stop the plane, he knew. There was only one chance open for him, and it was a million-to-one chance at that.

  Wilhelm Wolfe had disclosed a crack in Caan's perfect indoctrination. "It only happens in his sleep," he had said. That was enough. It would have to be. With the last of his strength, he loosened one hand and pounded on the window. Caan looked over, his face frozen in surprise, as his plane continued its dive, trying to shake Remo loose.

  "Nie wieder." Remo mouthed the words carefully. "Never again."

  He watched the pilot's eyes flare in panic, his gaze darting around the cockpit as if seeking an escape. Then he turned away from Remo to face front. His hands shook like dry leaves, as he pulled the plane out of its plunge.

  There was nothing more Remo could do. Releasing his one remaining handhold, he dropped the scant fifty feet into the sea.

  * * *

  She was back. Rocking, smelling of flour and sachet, the Star of David sending white light dancing on her face as she talked.

  "Never forget, Richard..."

  "Get out!" he cried, pounding at the controls in front of him. The plane dipped and veered, but the vision remained, speaking, the mouth opening soundlessly to utter the words that remained locked in the past, never to surface...

  But the words did come. This time, when she spoke, he understood. He heard the words as clearly as he had on that night beside the gaslit fireplace when he was twelve years old.

  She said, "Nie wieder." Never again.

  The mission.

  The president. The premier. New York City. The stealth bomber. The mission, the mission...

  "Never again," he said aloud.

  The plane swerved in a great circle in the blue coastal sky, its contrails billowing behind it like a ribbon of clouds. It whistled as it descended, sparks flying off its silver wings.

  In the village far below, Chiun helped Smith limp into the clearing. "Behold," he said.

  In the ocean, Remo turned onto his back to watch the spectacle of the pilot returning to the island. " 'Attaboy, Caan," he cheered. "Bring it in, kid."

  But Caan had no intention of landing. His ears were filled with the music of an old lady's words as she sat rocking in the gaslight.

  "Never again," he whispered as he flew the jet at full airspeed into Zoran's secret cave.

  It exploded with a force that shook the entire island, sending down a rain of rock and earth and fire.

  "Jesus," Remo said, averting his face.

  Within minutes the cave was gone, the plane was gone, and Caan's remains were scattered to the winds.

  The Valley of the Damned lay in stillness once again.

  ?Chapter Twenty-Three

  Remo staggered into the hut exhausted and looking like a war casualty. Smith, his head and face patched with bandages, was sitting up, already penciling in notes on an old sheet of yellowed paper.

  "Where'd you get the paper?" Remo asked.

  "Ana. She left, by the way." He held the paper at arm's length and squinted to read his own writing without his glasses. "You'll have to find her."

  "What for?"

  Chiun, sitting quietly in the corner, motioned his head toward Smith and described a coil near his temple.

  "She'll be a danger, I think," Smith went on. "You'll have to eliminate her."

  His voice had the same lemony quality it had exhibited at Folcroft. His manner was crisp and businesslike. It was all too clear that his time spent in the valley had done nothing to soften him. "I'm arranging to have the villagers sent back to Molokai," he said. "I don't think any of them know enough about you or Chiun to make a case, and they'll be isolated in the colony. But the girl's healthy. With her brother gone, she's got no reason to stay with the lepers. Given what she knows, it will be too dangerous to have her walking around. She might go to the press, anything." He shook his head in a prim gesture, his pinched eyes never leaving the paper in his lap.

  Remo shook his head. "You'll never change, will you, Smitty?"

  The remark caught Smith off guard. Remo was right. He hadn't changed.

  His eardrum was damaged and perhaps punctured, his throat was scarred, and he had aged enough in one day for a lifetime. But inside, in his secret thoughts, he was the same terrified man who had thrown up his arms in a silent plea to the wiry stranger on the fire escape in Warsaw so many years before.

  He still had no answers.

  His mortal enemy, his monumental obsession, had turned out to be a cowardly lunatic, unworthy even of a bullet to die by. A frightened old man.

  So were they both, Smith thought, frightened old men.

  There were no heroics left to him. That was as it should be, Smith decided. Let Remo, with his strength and youth, try to fight the world with his hands. It was his destiny.

  But for Harold W. Smith, all that remained was a job to do, a job with no room for heroes and no answers for him.

  "Do as I say," he snapped in his brittle twang. "Somebody has to do it."

  He looked up. "Incidentally, it was reassuring to see you come out of the cave alive. Good... er, generally good work."

  "Rat droppings," Remo muttered as he left the hut.

  * * *

  Ana was at the waterfall, where Remo knew she would be. She was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her black hair swirling with the mist from the fall. In the half-light of the vanishing day, she looked like something out of a dream.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Hello." Remo sat down beside her.

  "I want this to be as easy for you as I can make it," she said, not looking at him.

  "What?"

  "Killing me," she said. She laughed at Remo's look of surprise. "I'm not an idiot. I know you're some kind of special agent. You're too expert a killer to be an ordinary spy, or anything like that. My guess is that you and the old Master are a well-kept government secret. And Smith is a bureaucrat if I ever saw one."

  "Close," Remo said uncomfortably.

  "So?"

  "So what
?"

  "Go ahead, Remo," she said gently. "I don't care what happens to me now. I'm not afraid." She looked out over the fall, waiting.

  "Well, what if I don't kill you?" Remo said defensively. "What would you do then?"

  She looked at him sadly. "Nothing. No plans. You wouldn't be sparing me for a life of glory." Then the sadness turned to anger. "Go on. Neither of us has anything to lose."

  "How about the villagers? They've got something to lose."

  She shrugged.

  Remo stroked her hair. "Look, I know this has all been a rotten experience for you—"

  "Don't analyze me!" she snapped. "Kill me, all right? Just do what you have to do, and go away."

  "You're worse than Smith," he mumbled. "Hey, you really want me to kill you, don't you?"

  "Yes!" she shouted. "I'm sick of death and disease and craziness." She buried her face in her arms. "Get it over with." Her shoulders trembled.

  Remo put his arms around her. "What say you get some sleep," he said. "And when you wake up, then maybe you can think of a few things to do with your life."

  "Like what," she said bitterly.

  "Like going back to med school. You could really give these people a hand if you did."

  Her eyes rimmed with tears. "They don't want me. I've brought them nothing but sadness and disgrace."

  "I think you're wrong," he said gently. "They've saved your life more than once. Maybe you ought to return the favor."

  Ana didn't answer.

  "Smith's sending them back to Molokai, you know. You could go back to school in Hawaii."

  Her eyes flashed for an instant. "Is that true? How would we get there?"

  Remo cocked his head. "Darn," he said. "I'm supposed to kill you, remember?"

  "Oh."

  "But I don't think anyone'll notice if you're on the plane."

  She looked at him for a moment, then turned away. "I'm so confused," she said.

  Remo brought his face near hers. "Let me explain," he said, pressing his lips on her mouth.

  She pulled away from him. "Is this the easy way?"

  "Easy for what?"

  "The easy way to kill me." She touched her fingertips to his face. "I know this is too bold of me, but I've wanted to kiss you since I first saw you."

  "The thought crossed my mind, too."

  This time she searched him out with her lips. "Don't be afraid to do it if you have to," she said earnestly.

  Remo smiled. "With pleasure."

  ?Chapter Twenty-Four

  On the shore of the island, Chiun helped Smith struggle into a dugout canoe given by one of the lepers.

  His ear was still swathed in Chiun's silken bandage. He held it as he wobbled in the small craft. "I don't think this is leakproof," he said somberly.

  "I shall see to your safe return, Emperor," Chiun said with a patient smile. Remo turned his back to keep his grin from showing.

  "We have to travel over deep water in this, you know."

  "Do not fear," Chiun said.

  Smith wavered awkwardly in the canoe, then sat down with a crash. Chiun's robes billowed dramatically as he swayed on his toes to keep the vessel in balance.

  "That does it," Smith said, watching the water splash around the sides of the canoe. "I'm calling the Coast Guard."

  "How?" Remo asked. "Your portable phone's at the bottom of the ocean."

  "Oh. Yes," Smith said. "Still, well need a bigger boat. There's only room for two in this thing."

  Chiun looked the canoe over, appraising. "You are right," he said, folding his thin arms in front of him. Then, raising his index finger, he said, "Ah. There is a solution. Very easy. No problem whatever." He sat down in the canoe, a satisfied smile on his face.

  "What's the solution?" Remo asked suspiciously from the shore.

  "The only solution, O imperceptive one." He turned in an aside to Smith. "I am afraid, illustrious Emperor, that you will have to row, for I am an old man, and weary with the burden of my years."

  "What solution?" Remo demanded.

  Chiun looked up. "Why, you will have to swim back, of course," he said innocently.

  "What?"

  "You act as if I had asked you to swim the entire ocean. This is no more than an exercise."

  "I don't need the exercise, Chiun."

  "Did you stop the airplane?" Chiun shrieked.

  "Aw, come on. It was already taking off when I—"

  "You need the exercise," Chiun said. "Besides, you will enjoy the swim. There is a magnificent colony of tubeworms ten or twelve miles from here. Be sure not to miss it. Shall we go, Emperor?"

  With a grunt, Smith took up the oars. "I hope you're not expecting me to row the whole way," he grumbled.

  Chiun smiled benignly. "Just do your best, sire. I can ask for no more. To give you strength, I will recite some of the more beautiful verses of Ung, penned by the Master Wang himself. Good-bye, Remo."

  "Good-bye, Remo," Remo mimicked as Chiun's Korean singsong faded out to sea. "Ingrates!"

  Chiun sniffed. "Ingrates. He dares to call me an ingrate. Did I not point out to him where he might find the colony of tubeworms?"

  Smith grunted. He did not like Chiun's complaints. Sometimes the poems were all right. If only they weren't in Korean.

  Remo waited until the canoe with the two men was well out to sea. He could hear Chiun's voice across the clear water. He was declaiming an Ung poem, and Remo remembered it. It was about a bee who sees a flower open. It took four hours to recite, and if Chiun was interrupted during it, he insisted upon starting over from the beginning.

  High on a cliff, beside the crest of the waterfall, Reno saw Ana silhouetted against the twilight sky. She moved her arms over the back of her head, so that her long hair rose and fell in a sensuous cascade. Her breasts were high and firm, her legs slender and strong. She saw Remo and waved and smiled.

  To hell with the tubeworms, Remo thought as he headed up the hill leading to the cliffs.

  Tomorrow was another day.

  the end

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