Father to Son td-129

by Warren Murphy

  Mrs. Mikulka was gone for the day.

  When the clocks were changed weeks before and the days grew short, Smith's secretary had started switching on a single fluorescent bulb above an old filing cabinet. This so her employer didn't stumble coming out of his office in the dark. After all, none of them was getting any younger, and a spill at their age could mean worse than a bump or bruise. This was just one of the many small ways Eileen Mikulka proved her thoughtfulness on a daily basis.

  Snapping off the light, Smith made a mental note to tell his secretary to stop wasting electricity.

  Out in the hallway the lights were mostly off. The only illumination came from a few dim emergency lights along the walls and the glowing exit sign above the stairwell doors at the end of the hall. Smith headed for the stairs.

  Folcroft at night operated on a skeleton crew.

  Smith encountered not a soul in the administrative wing. Like a comfortable gray spirit haunting familiar halls, Harold Smith descended the stairs to street level.

  Instead of ducking out the door to the parking lot, he continued down to the basement.

  There was no one in the long, empty downstairs hall. He rounded the corner to the security corridor. A new door replaced the one that had been damaged the year before during Jeremiah Purcell's escape. Entering the new security code on the wall keypad, Smith slipped inside.

  There were now only two regular CURE patients in the special wing, a comatose man and a catatonic young woman. A faint sulfur smell emanated from the girl's room.

  The third room in the hallway had been Purcell's for ten years. Smith glanced in the empty room as he passed.

  The damage to the room had been repaired, the bodies long carted away and the blood washed clean. A new mattress was rolled up at the foot of the bed and wrapped in plastic.

  Smith's face was grim as he looked in that room. Rather than eliminate the Dutchman while he had the chance, he had allowed Remo and Chiun to talk him into keeping the dangerous man a prisoner down here. Some metaphysical claptrap about Remo's soul-and thus Remo's fate-somehow being intertwined with Purcell's. Chiun had insisted that were Purcell to die, Remo would die, as well.

  Smith didn't believe it, of course. But the Master of Sinanju was insistent and Purcell seemed harmless enough at the time. One of Smith's rare mistakes.

  Frowning self-recriminations, the CURE director continued along the hall, entering the room at the far end.

  Mark Howard was asleep in the bed.

  It was strange, but Smith felt uncomfortable leaving his assistant alone down here. The young man seemed so lost.

  Only two physicians on the regular Folcroft staff were allowed into the room, and even then only while under Smith's supervision. For security's sake the night staff had not been told the condition of Folcroft's assistant director. No one would have a reason to come to this out-of-the-way room during the night. As he had the previous night, Smith would work from Howard's bedside until midnight, go home for a few hours' sleep and then return before dawn.

  There were no monitors or intravenous drips hooked up to Smith's young assistant. At the moment nothing seemed necessary. Mark was simply asleep.

  It had not yet been twenty-four hours since the onset of this mysterious unconsciousness. In another day Smith would consider hooking up an IV.

  As he looked down on the youthful face of Mark Howard, Smith noted darkly that there were other, more serious options to consider if the young man remained in this state.

  For now Smith put aside such uncomfortable thoughts.

  The CURE director pulled a chair up to the bed, hung his coat and scarf over the back and set his briefcase onto his knees. Popping the hasps, he took out his laptop, placing it on the closed briefcase lid.

  Within moments Smith was once more engrossed in his work.

  He didn't know how many hours he worked at Howard's bedside when he heard the rustling fabric. Glancing up from his computer, he found Mark Howard shifting under the sheets. Arms and legs moved like a man in light sleep. As Smith watched, Howard's youthful face-which had remained almost lifeless since Florida-began to twitch. Eyes rolled beneath closed lids.

  Smith quickly exited the CURE computer system and put away his laptop. With one hand he drew his chair closer to the bedside.

  "Mark?" he questioned quietly.

  It seemed as if Howard responded to the sound of Smith's voice. The young man's head rolled over on the pillow, eyes still closed. He began speaking, softly at first. Smith strained but couldn't hear the words. But as he listened, his assistant's voice grew stronger.

  "I did this," Mark Howard whispered. "I shouldn't have- Should have left him. I have to tell... warn..."

  Standing now, Smith pressed his hand to Howard's shoulder. "Mark," he repeated, giving a gentle push. With great slowness the young man's eyes fluttered open. There was confusion at first as they focused on the gray face hovering above.

  "Dr. Smith?" Mark asked weakly.

  He was disoriented. Trying to soak in his surroundings.

  "I'm at Folcroft," Howard said, confused.

  "Something happened in Florida," Smith said, a hint of relief in his lemony voice. "You lost consciousness at Benson Dilkes's apartment. Do you remember what went wrong?"

  The memories flooded back. The corkboard maps.

  The two red pins. The blond-haired man hovering in the corner, hiding in the cobwebs of consciousness. Howard sat upright in bed. He grabbed Smith's wrist so hard, the older man winced.

  "Where's Remo and Chiun?" Howard demanded.

  "Remo was supposed to be on his way back here from Russia," the CURE director replied. "However, he never made his flight. Chiun is in Sinanju."

  "We have to call him," Howard insisted.

  "We can't," Smith said. "Unless the phone is working again. It was out of commission earlier." Howard released Smith's wrist. His eyes darted to the corners of the room, searching for answers. "What's wrong, Mark?" Smith pressed.

  When Howard glanced back up at his employer, there was a deadly earnestness in his greenish-brown eyes.

  "He's back," the assistant CURE director pleaded. "And it's all my fault."

  Chapter 30

  Remo ignored the whine of the lowering landing gear. Across from him on the jet, Rebecca Dalton chatted away on her cell phone in yet another foreign language. On her lips and tongue, even Arabic sounded sexy. The young woman seemed to know every dusty dialect of every country they had been to in the past two days.

  Two days. It seemed like a month.

  Remo had spent the past forty-eight hours bouncing around the Middle East like water on a griddle. True to her word, Rebecca Dalton had streamlined the Sinanju Time of Succession to move with assembly-line efficiency.

  Turkey-which was still listed in Sinanju's out-of-date guidebook as the seat of the Ottoman Empire-had been a breeze. Rebecca handled all the details. Remo merely had to show up. A quick meeting with the prime minister, a trapdoor assassination pit in the belly of an ancient citadel, finally another dead assassin to satisfy the Master of Sinanju and back on the plane by breakfast.

  Then the real trial began. Mostly it was a challenge to Remo's patience. So far he was holding up okay. But it had been a steady drumbeat for two days now. Before they returned to the airport in Damascus after meeting with the Syrian president, Remo was shot at by that country's top assassin. He'd also been assaulted by lancers on horseback in the Jordanian desert, fed poison fruit in Lebanon and had a basket of asps thrown into his cab in Israel. Aside from Remo, the only living things to get out alive in all those attacks were the snakes. Any Arab he could find in the West Bank who grinned when Remo mentioned the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers got a snake down the pants, a cracked kneecap and an eye poked out with a sharp stick. Remo kept the stick as a happy souvenir.

  He was tapping his stick against his ankle as he stared out the small window of the jet.

  Thanks to Rebecca, Remo had left in his wake a whol
e passel of dead would-be assassins in rapid succession.

  On several occasions he asked her what her real interest was in all this. She continued to insist that she was a unique public-relations expert who had been hired by a collection of governments working in their own self-interest. Their only concern was streamlining the Time of Succession process.

  Remo knew that was a crock. Even Madison Avenue PR firms weren't cutthroat enough to deal with assassination. And it wasn't as if he didn't notice Rebecca's conspicuous absences. She was constantly disappearing to talk on her cell phone. Still, she was better at getting him where he was supposed to be than Smith had been. So what if she turned out to be a killer, as well? He was making great time.

  Remo was starting to think that he might not shame himself in front of Chiun's ancestors after all. In fact, he might have actually felt good about the way everything was suddenly going if not for his current destination.

  As the jet flew low over the latest Mideast country, Remo looked out the window with undisguised disgust.

  The buildings were low. Probably because they were built out of desert sand and held together by camel spit. More than two stories and the sand would give out. Here and there onion domes had been stuck on the columns of mosques. From the air it looked as if someone had dumped a box of Christmas ornaments into a backyard sandbox.

  "This is dumb," Remo grunted as he watched the ground grow larger. "I am never going to work for goddamn Iraq."

  Rebecca had finished her conversation and was clicking her phone shut. "Patriotism?" she asked. Her face was open, guileless. She seemed genuinely interested in what Remo had to say.

  Remo stopped tapping his eye-poking stick. "What?" he asked.

  "The way you said it. 'Goddamn Iraq.' It sounded more American patriot than Sinanju assassin."

  "Sure," he replied. "Why not? It's on the approved list of countries we Americans are still allowed to hate."

  ''Hmm."

  "What 'hmm'?"

  "I probably am wrong and I don't want to insult, but you don't seem to like anyone."

  Remo frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "It's just an observation. But judging from your comments about the countries we've been to in the last couple of days-the way you've acted when we've been there-you don't really seem to be very happy with, well, anyone."

  Remo shrugged. "Arab countries are like giant cat boxes, except it's people shit, it's everywhere and the people doing the shitting haven't bothered to bury it or scoop it up for the last six thousand years."

  "And with a statement like that, I'd say you were bigoted against Arabs."

  "Just telling it like it is."

  Rebecca didn't condemn. She smiled. "But from what you've said, you don't like any of the places you went to before we met. And they were all white European countries."

  "White shmite," Remo grunted. "Paint them plaid, they're still living in inbred squalor."

  "And it's statements like that that make me think you don't really like anyone. I'm not judging you," she added quickly. "Actually I find it refreshing. It's not really bigoted when you think about it. I don't think you can really be bigoted if you don't like anyone at all."

  "I'm not the bigot in my family," Remo said. "Guy who taught me? Now, he's a bigot."

  Rebecca wasn't listening. The stewardess appeared in the plane's lounge to whisper something to Rebecca.

  "They have a ride waiting for us at the airport," Rebecca said to Remo, opening up her cell phone once more.

  "I like plenty of people," Remo insisted. "I've saved the world a bunch of times. I didn't do it for spotted owls or kangaroo rats. I did it for people."

  "I'm sure you did," Rebecca said, patting his knee. They landed at a small airport in northern Iraq.

  In the years following the Gulf War, Iraq's leader had built dozens of opulent palaces around the country. A five-minute limo drive from the airport deposited Rebecca and Remo on the steps of one of the dictator's lavish new homes.

  Rebecca wore sunglasses against the desert sun and windblown sand. Remo's eyes were wide open and filled with disgust as they climbed the palace steps.

  "Isn't this just peachy?" he complained. "You know, back in the States we've got this stupid Sunday-night TV show that pretends to be news and it's got this ditzy old fart who likes to talk about things like elevator doors that don't open fast enough and the black stuff under ketchup caps. Nobody pays any attention to him 'cause he's just a crazy old fool who ought to be at the dog track. But now all of a sudden he's a big political expert. They all get to be big political experts, all these morons ...the cartoonists, their talk-show wives, all of them. Well, anyway, this guy, like all the big political experts, suddenly he knows what's wrong with the world. You know what's wrong with the world? America's what's wrong with the world. Every time some kid in some Cairo slum gets a sniffle or the Managua Y runs out of Band-Aids, it's somehow Uncle Sam's fault. But over here we've got Iraq, where this tinpot caterpillar-puss has built himself a hundred Taj-freaking-Mahals while his people are allegedly going hungry and not one of those blowhards can get their sucking mouths off of Castro's craphole long enough to say one bad word about the rape of Iraq."

  "You care about Iraq now?" Rebecca asked.

  "I told you," Remo said. "I care about people."

  "Mm-hmm," Rebecca said, clearly not buying.

  Remo shook his head angrily. "Forget about the wedding," he grumbled. "I don't think I love you anymore."

  This time when Rebecca laughed her heavenly laugh, there was something else behind it.

  They were met by guards who led them to a grand audience chamber. The Iraqi leader was there, grinning tightly beneath his bushy mustache.

  Rebecca handled the introductions. When it came time to translate Remo's "screw you," Rebecca apparently sweetened it into something that made the Iraqi leader smile happily.

  The meeting was quickly concluded. Barely five minutes had passed before the two of them were back out in sunlight.

  "I don't think you translated me right," Remo groused as they climbed down the steps.

  "Right and accurately are two different things," Rebecca said absently as she glanced around the large courtyard. "I might not have been accurate, but for the impression Sinanju wants you to give, I was right."

  "How do you know so much about what Sinanju wants?" Remo asked. "I'm not even sure what Sinanju wants."

  As he spoke, he thought of the Masters who surrounded him even as they walked through the courtyard.

  "I know things, Remo," she said, squinting in the sun as she scanned the yard. "There it is."

  There was a Jeep parked over near a row of garage stalls. The Iraqi flag was painted across the hood. The keys were in the ignition. Rebecca climbed in behind the wheel. Remo felt the press of all the Masters of Sinanju surrounding him as he got in beside her.

  They didn't leave the palace grounds. Instead, Rebecca drove around the main buildings within the high walls.

  Although there were guards in towers and along the walls, they kept their distance.

  The palace had been built against some low mountains. In the shade of the rear towers, a wide shaft had been tunneled through the solid rock. A paved road led inside. Rebecca steered the Jeep through the opening.

  "I like humanity okay," Remo announced abruptly.

  Rebecca seemed distracted. "But you don't like people."

  "I did," Remo said. "I mean, I still do. I like people well enough as individuals. It's when they come at me in groups that I don't like them so much." Rebecca didn't answer. She drove on.

  The paved tunnel road had a single white stripe up the middle. The walls and ceiling were rough-hewn, as if formed by men with iron tools. The road angled downward. Remo could feel the change in pressure in his ears.

  "Whose turn is it to kill me now?" he asked, exhaling.

  She didn't have time to respond. Before Rebecca could answer, Remo suddenly latched on to the dashboard with one hand. The other ha
nd he slapped flat to his temple.

  "Whoa," he said, wincing.

  "What's wrong?"

  He looked at Rebecca. She was only a foot from him, but all of a sudden she seemed a million miles away. Her words echoed as if carrying across a great chasm. For a moment Remo couldn't speak. He felt dizzy, nauseous. And alone.

  The Masters' Tribunal was gone. Just like that. In this desolate cave in the middle of Iraq, the thing he had been awaiting for almost a year finally happened. The spirits of the deceased Masters of Sinanju had finally vanished. For the first time in ages Remo didn't feel the collective disapproving gaze of countless generations of Korean assassins. The Hour of Judgment had ended with a whimper.

  "Guess that's it," Remo said, his hand pressed firmly to his suddenly throbbing head. "I must have finally done something right." His own voice sounded far away.

  The pain was bearable. The disorientation was something he hadn't expected. He thought when the moment finally came it would be a relief. But the sudden departure of his silent companions seemed to have thrown his senses into diearray.

  In the driver's seat, Rebecca didn't quite know what to make of Remo's sudden strange behavior. "Do you want to stop?" she asked.

  "I'm fine," he insisted, waving her onward. Blinking seemed to help. The world was beginning to come back into focus. "What is this place anyway?"

  She tore her eyes from Remo, turning her full attention back to the underground road.

  "A poorly kept secret," she explained. "After the Gulf War, Iraq continued its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Everyone knew the labs were probably being hidden under these palaces. It was like a big shell game. This is where Iraq's assassin is going to finish you off."

  "Him and what Republican Guard?" Rerno grunted.

  They had come to the end of the road. Buried deep beneath the mountains was a complex of offices and labs. Metal catwalks surrounded the man-made cavern. It looked like a James Bond set on a Roger Corman budget.

  "This is it," Rebecca said, stopping the Jeep. They had gone through the same drill in a half-dozen countries. Rebecca would drop him off to be attacked by the latest assassin, then swing by to pick him up later.