"Why must you refer to yourself in the third person?" asked Anwar Anwar-Sadat.
"Because the Extinguisher is greater than one man in combat black. He's a symbol, a force of nature. He is good personified against evil incarnate, the irresistible force all immovable objects fear and a wild-haired warrior for our time."
"Yes. Like Zorro."
"No, damn it! Like the Extinguisher. Stop dragging those other guys into the conversation. They're not real. I am. There is only one Extinguisher, and his true name will never be known."
"But you have told me that your name is Blaize Fury."
"Another alias for the hero with a thousand faces."
Suddenly the man in black strode to the balcony window.
"Where are you going?"
"To Mexico."
"No, I mean at this moment. We are twenty floors up from the ground."
The lower part of the black balaclava shifted as if the mouth behind it smiled.
"Yeah, but only three from the roof."
Reaching out, the Extinguisher grasped a dangling black nylon line with his gloved hands. He cast a final glance in the secretary general's direction.
"Look for me in the newspapers or wherever men sing of blood."
And he was gone.
Anwar Anwar-Sadat walked out to the balcony and looked for the Extinguisher on the pavement below. When he saw no mangled body or stopped traffic, he decided the fool had survived his foolhardy exit.
How very much like Batman, he thought approvingly.
Well, if the fool succeeded, that would be good. If not, there was no political downside. He had given no explicit instructions to kill anybody, and that was all that mattered.
That, and the deniability of the sphinx.
Chapter 6
Dr. Harold W Smith had problems.
For Smith's entire life, he had been dogged by problems. Problems were as much a part of living as breathing, eating, sleeping and work. Problems came with the territory. Problems were his life.
Every responsible adult human being had problems. It was part of the human condition. And among human beings, Harold W Smith of the Vermont Smiths was one of the most responsible.
A U.S. president had long ago recognized Harold Smith's unswerving rectitude and responsibility. Smith was then an obscure CIA bureaucrat who toiled in the then-new field of computer science. Data interpretation and analysis was Smith's specialty. He analyzed shipments of raw materials, changes in the military hierarchies of other governments, food-distribution patterns, and out of these disparate data, forecast coups and brushfire wars with uncanny accuracy.
And he was noticed.
The President in those days was young and idealistic and took up the responsibilities of being chief executive and leader of the free world with great vigor and enthusiasm. Those were the coldest days of the Cold War, but the young President, upon assuming high office, discovered that communism wasn't the direst threat he faced. The real enemy lay within its borders. And America was already all but lost.
A period of lawlessness had brought the nation to the brink of anarchy. In other countries, martial law would have been declared. But this was the United States of America. States could declare martial law. As could cities and towns. Governors and mayors had that power.
The President of the United States could not declare a state of emergency short of civil war or foreign invasion. Not without admitting the unadmittable-that the experiment called democracy, which had flowered briefly among the ancient Greeks and was revived by tavern revolutionaries in a tiny colony of Great Britian, had failed.
In fact, his legal options were virtually nonexistent.
Suspending the Constitution was ruled out.
So the President had conceived an alternative. He called it CURE. It was not an acronym, but a prescription for a society poisoned by corruption, moral decay and organized crime.
That President had plucked Harold Smith out of the CIA, entrusting him with the ultimate responsibilty: save his country through any means, legal or illegal.
"Any means?" Smith had asked.
"As long as the means are secret. Nothing must reach back to this office. Officially the organization does not exist. You will have funding. You may recruit agents and informants so long as they do not know they are working for the organization. Only you and I must know. Save your country, Mr. Smith, and God willing, we can abolish CURE by the time we put that first man on the moon."
But by that time the President who had laid the burden of the ultimate responsibility on Harold Smith's shoulders had been cut down by the very lawlessness he had sought to defeat. By that time there were American footprints on the moon, but the greatest nation on the face of the earth was no closer to internal stability than before.
Smith had decided in those days that he would have to take the ultimate sanction. Assassination. Prior to that fateful decision, he had worked through the system, exposing crooked union organizers, corrupt judges, organized-crime figures in ways that dragged them into the remorseless grindstone of the judicial system.
It was not enough. After less than a decade, Smith understood it would never be enough.
So he reached out to New Jersey for an ordinary-seeming beat cop who had been tested in the jungles of Vietnam, and code-named him the Destroyer.
America's supersecret agency that didn't exist now had an enforcement arm who also didn't exist.
Only then did the hand of CURE truly begin to exert its awesome power against America's enemies.
The tide was turned back. True, it constantly threatened to swamp the ship of state, but America now had an edge. More importantly the Constitution survived intact. Smith bent, folded and spindled it on a daily basis. But only the successor Presidents had any inkling of that.
America struggled on.
The problems came and the problems went. Smith disposed of them with a ruthless efficiency that control of the greatest assassins in human history gave them. Invariably the problems always went away. And just as quickly new ones reared their heads.
Lately Harold had his eye on two particular problems. They existed on separate computer files designated Amtrak and Mexico.
Smith was pulling up the Amtrak file as the sun began to set on another day.
It was forty-three items long, he saw with a frown. For some two years now, train derailments had been piling up at an alarmirng rate. Some were passenger-rail mishaps, others freight accidents. Major and minor, they made the papers so often that late-night comedians joked that the nation's aging rail system was itself one gigantic train wreck.
The latest had occurred near La Plata, Missouri. A Santa Fe freight train had gone off its tracks while rounding a bend. A shifting cargo car overloaded with scrap metal was the official cause. Smith's frown deepened.
It was possible, he supposed. Virtually every derailment had its reasonable cause. A split rail. A vandal switching tracks. Poor track conditions. The numbers of people who annually attempted to beat fast-moving trains to crossings and paid for their folly with their lives continually amazed him. These incidents Smith dumped from the Amtrak file as nonaberrations attributable to human error.
Individually there was nothing to be suspicious of. Collectively they suggested a pattern. But no common cause seemed to percolate up from the mass of news-wire extracts and National Transportation Safety Board accident reports.
Smith stared at the slowly scrolling reports, his tired gray eyes behind the glass shields of his rimless eyeglasses skimming mechanically, as if they could perceive what long hours of study could not: a common link.
His old CIA-analyst skills were as sharp as they had been in the long-ago days when he was known in the Agency's corridors as "the Gray Ghost," as much for his colorless demeanor as for his unflagging habit of wearing banker's gray.
But today they failed him.
Smith hit the scroll-lock key and turned in his cracked leather chair.
Through the picture window o
f one-way glass that protected the most secure office outside of the Pentagon from prying eyes, Smith let his tired eyes fall on the restful waters of Long Island Sound.
Perhaps, he thought, it was time to send Remo and Chiun into the field on this one. If no force or agency was responsible for this unprecedented string of accidents, it suggested America's rail system was either overburdened or so shoddily run it presented a menace to the nation's vital transportation lines.
If so, exposing the dangerous condition technically fell within CURE operating parameters.
Smith turned in his seat, his pinched patrician face grim with resolve. He reached across the black glass of his desktop for the blue contact telephone he employed to reach his Destroyer. It was a secure line, scrambled and completely insulated from wiretapping. It was second only to the dialless red telephone he kept under lock and key in a lower desk drawer until such time as he needed to reach the current President.
This was not a situation that called for Presidential consultation. The President did not control CURE, any more than he controlled Congress these days. The CURE mandate allowed for Presidential suggestions, but not orders. The only order the President was allowed to give was the one that would close down CURE forever.
Smith's age-gnarled hand briefly touched the slick plastic of the pale blue receiver when his computer beeped once.
Withdrawing his hand, Smith addressed the screen. It was buried beneath the desktop's tinted glass surface and angled so it faced him.
The monitor itself was invisible under the black glass. Only the amber letters floating on the screen showed.
The red light in one corner winked insistently. A message beside it said, "Mexico!"
That meant one of Smith's automatic net-trolling programs had picked up something important. Probably an AP story moving across the wires that contained the keyword Mexico.
Smith tapped the silent pads of the keyless capacity-keyboard and brought it up.
It was an Associated Press bulletin:
MEXICO-QUAKE
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (AP)
A severe earthquake struck the Valley of Mexico at approximately 2:00 p.m. EST this afternoon. Initial reports say that damage to Mexico City is substantial, and there is significant loss of life. Eyewitness reports add that Mount Popo-catepetl is giving indications a major eruption is near. It is not yet known whether the volcano triggered the quake or if the quake brought the volcano-which had been showing renewed signs of activity in the past several months-to life again.
Smith frowned. This was not good news. Mexico was his other chief concern these days. The uprising in Chiapas, combined with political and economic instability, had turned America's sleepy southern neighbor into a smoldering political volcano.
Only a few months before, Mexican army tanks had taken up threatening positions on the Texas border, but were quickly pulled back. It had been an ominous move, but relations between the two nations had officially returned to normalcy.
But the strains were still there. Illegal immigration, the devaluation of the peso and fallout from the ill-fated NAFTA agreement had produced a growing animosity between the peoples of the U.S. and Mexico. That their respective leaders were outwardly cordial meant little. In the age of electronic news media, public opinion, not political will, drove policy.
As Smith reflected on this problem, a second bulletin popped onto the screen.
CHIAPAS REBEL MEXICO CITY, MEXICO (AP) Subcomandante Verapaz, leader of the insurgent Benito Juarez National Liberation Front, has in the past hour declared that the violent convulsion in Mexico City is a sign from the gods that they have turned away from the beleaguered leadership of Mexico and that the time has come to take the struggle into the capital.
Verapaz, whose true name and identity is unknown, is calling for all indigenous Mexicans to rise up and overwhelm the Federal Army of Mexico.
That decided Harold Smith. The Amtrak matter could wait.
Remo and Chiun were going into the field, all right. But they were going to Mexico.
Subcomandante Verapaz was no longer an internal Mexican problem. He was out to overthrow the lawful government in Mexico City. And a revolution on America's southern border constituted a direct threat to the United States of America.
Harold Smith's gray hand reached out to the blue contact telephone.
Chapter 7
Remo Williams was watching the Master of Sinanju fillet a fish when the telephone rang.
"I'll get it," he said, starting from his seat in the kitchen. It was a cane chair. Chairs were allowed in the downstairs kitchen. Tables, too, although most of the time they ate at a low taboret, seated cross-legged on tatami mats.
"You will not," snapped the Master of Sinanju.
"It might be Smith."
"It might be a czar or a bey or an emir. But it is none of them. We are about to dine. If Emperor Smith wishes to speak to me, let him call at an appropriate hour."
"It might be for me, you know."
"Smith only calls you in order to reach me."
"Not always."
"You will watch me prepare this excellent fish."
Remo sighed. He returned to his seat and placed his chin in the cup of his hands. He wasn't sure what was so important about this particular fish, but Chiun seemed to think it was.
"Observe the specimen in question. Is it not enticing to behold?"
"If you like sea bass," said Remo. "Me, I'm in the mood for pike."
"Pike is not yet in season."
"That's probably why I'm in the mood for it."
Chiun made a face. His wrinkles puckered into gullies.
In the background the telephone continued to ring.
"That's gotta be Smith," Remo said. "Who else would refuse to give up after twenty-six rings?"
"He will hang up after the forty-second ring."
"Yeah, and start all over again, figuring he might have misdialed."
"We are stronger than he is stubborn. Now, pay close attention. This is the correct way to fillet a fish."
As Remo watched, Chiun held the sea bass by its tail with one hand. The fish hung with its mouth agape, its eyes glassy. It didn't bother Remo. Chiun often served the fish with the head still on. He had long ago gotten used to having his dinner stare back at him.
As Remo watched, Chiun said, "Sea bass makes excellent stir fry. So we must dismember this excellent specimen first."
"This is starting to sound like 'Wok with Wing.'"
"Do not insult me by comparing me to a Chinese television chef. I spit upon Chinese."
"That's the rumor in the neighborhood," Remo said dryly.
The Master of Sinanju's eyes went thin with menace. He blew out his cheeks like an annoyed puffer fish. An eagle's talon, his free hand curled in, then out, ivory fingernails revealing themselves with a slow menace.
Abruptly they flashed, weaving a silvery pattern about the fish. Skin fell away in long strips to land on the newspaper under the head.
The head fell amid the shed skin with a plop.
As if coming back to life, the bass leaped from Chiun's hand and, swapping ends, suddenly hung tail downward. A fingernail went whisk, and the tail was sheared off cleanly. The fins fluttered after it.
Then, working in midair, Chiun began to fillet the fish with nothing more that his wickedly sharp and slightly curved index fingernail.
"Hope you washed recently," Remo said as the telephone finally fell silent.
Chiun made no rely. The phone started its discordant ringing anew. Remo switched hands, cupping his chin in the other hard and simultaneously stifling a yawn.
Chiun worked so swiftly the ordinary eye could never hope to follow it. It seemed as if the fish were caught in some troubled ivory web that peeled off long sheets of pale flesh as it thrashed to escape the invisible strands.
When it was over-and it was over in a twinkling-the sea bass lay in two separate piles, discarded internal matter and perfectly boneless fillets of fish.
<
br /> Remo wondered if he should applaud.
"Why do you not applaud?" asked Chiun.
"I wasn't sure if that was what you wanted."
"And you are correct. Perfection does not require applause."
"Good. I made the right decision."
"Sincerity is the most flattering form of imitation, however."
"I think you have that filleted up."
"Perhaps. But I do not demonstrate the ancient Korean art of filleting fish with no tools other than the natural ones of the body without reason."
"Okay, I'll bite. Why the demonstration?"
"To instruct you in the error of your ways."
"Which are?"
"I am Reigning Master. You are next Reigning Master, currently Apprentice Reigning Master."
"Yep."
"You will follow in my sandals, taking up my kimono after I am gone or retired, whichever comes first."
"I'll have to think about the kimono."
"Kimonos are traditional."
"Kimonos are Eastern. I gotta operate in the West."
"Perhaps in the next century, by Western reckoning, you will operate in the East. Especially if the West falls into the ocean."
"That's not going to happen, Little Father."
"Wherever you operate, you must do so with sublime grace, skill and a perfection that approaches that of your teacher."
"Perfection is perfection. If I am perfect, I will be as perfect as you," said Remo.
"You cannot be as perfect as me, being but half-Korean. It is impossible. Unless you mend your ways, of course."
"Assuming I want to mend my ways, what are you driving at?"
And Chiun lifted his long-nailed fingers, admiring them. "Observe these, the ultimate tools of a Sinanju Master. Are they not graceful? Are they not perfection? No blade of steel or bone or wood can approach their deadliness. It is for this reason that Sinanju has long celebrated them as the Knives of Eternity, for even if broken they will unfailingly grow back to strike terror into the hearts of all enemies of Sinanju."
"They're striking terror into mine right now."
"Now look at your own pitiful nails."
Remo did. They were cut short Western style. The index nail of his right finger was slightly longer. Just enough to score glass or metal. It looked like an ordinary nail. But years of Sinanju diet, exercise and certain honing techniques had imbued it with a sharpness so fine it could slice open thick rhinoceros hide.
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