Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

  Return Engagement

  ( The Destroyer - 71 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  What was Nazism doing in America in the l980s? A lot.

  Jack-booted stormtroopers. Mobs howling for racial purity. And on the podium a man ranting and raving and holding his followers spellbound as swastika flags waved above them.

  Out of what hellish depth of the past had the hideously scarred man who called himself Herr Fuhrer Blutsturz emerged..with his artificial limbs that gave him superhuman strength..with his voluptuous blonde assistant Ilsa who seduced what he couldn't destroy..and with his burning desire to kill Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of the top-secret U.S. Agency CURE, even if he had to rip America into bloody shreds to do it?

  Remo and Chiun had to find the answer to this monstrous mystery and the antidote to this irresistible evil. But first they had to find a way to stop battling each other and stay alive long enough to do it...

  Destroyer 71: Return Engagement

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  He had waited almost forty years for this moment. Forty years. And now the waiting would end here, on this winter day, with dirty snow clotting the road and the sun high and remote and cheerless in the bleak New Hampshire sky.

  He touched the lever, and the wheelchair shifted closer to the darkened window. The smell of old oil filled the interior of the van. Down the road, a car neared, weaving slightly from wheels that were out of alignment.

  "Is it him?" he called, his voice cracking. Was it just his age that made it crack? Once, it had been a strong voice, a powerful voice. He had been a powerful man with a strong physique that caused the young women to throw themselves at him. But now that magnificent physique was no more, and there was only one woman left.

  "Hold on," Ilsa called. She ran out into the road, her body bouncing attractively. Ilsa tossed her long blond hair back from her soft oval face and trained Zeiss binoculars on the approaching car.

  "The color is right," she called breathlessly. "Light blue. No, wait. The plates are wrong. Out-of-state plates. No good."

  He slammed his left fist down, metal striking metal. "Damn!"

  "Don't worry," Ilsa said through the tinted glass as she waved the passing car through. "He'll be along. He always comes to work by this road."

  "Never mind that. I banged my hand. It stings!"

  "Oh, poor baby. You really should get a grip on yourself."

  Ilsa talked at the window. She couldn't see his face behind its smoky opacity. It didn't matter.

  "Forty years," he said bitterly. "Actually thirty-eight years, seven months, and five days," Ilsa offered brightly.

  He grunted. She hadn't been born then: Then, he had been as young as she was now. Had he known her then, he would have taken her. By force, if necessary. He would take her now-if he had anything left to take her with. Perhaps when this was over, he would find a way to take this foolish girl who had adopted the lost cause of a past generation as her own.

  "Another car coming," she said, dashing out into the road again. He watched her. Her black pants were snug, hugging, her shapely girlish figure. Her white blouse was uniform crisp. She wore her armband inside out, so that only the red cloth showed. Even so, it reminded him of the old days.

  "Is it him? Is it Smith?"

  "Yes," Ilsa said excitedly. "It's him. It's Harold Smith."

  "At last."

  Harold D. Smith saw the girl first. She stood in the middle of the road, waving her arms.

  She was attractive. Perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, with a beautiful face that needed no makeup. A glimpse of a black lace brassiere showed between two straining blouse buttons. Smith noted these things absently. He had stopped looking at young women as sexual creatures about the time his white hair had started to recede, more than ten years before.

  Smith braked his car. Then he noticed the van. It was one of those custorn jobs, painted bronze and decorated with airbrushed designs. It had pulled onto the slushy shoulder of the road. The plastic cover was off the rear-mounted spare tire.

  The blond bounced to his side of the car and Smith let the window down. She gave him a sunny smile. He did not smile back.

  "Can you help me, sir?"

  "What seems to be the trouble?" Harold Smith asked.

  The trouble was obvious-a flat tire but Smith asked anyway.

  "I can't get the spare tire down."

  "Just a moment," Harold Smith said. He pulled off the road, slightly annoyed that he would be late for work. He did not feel up to the exertion of changing a tire, not with what felt like three pounds of his wife's infamous five-alarm oatmeal congealing in his stomach.

  He stepped out of his car as the blond came bouncing up like a happy puppy.

  "I'm Ilsa Gmos," she said, putting out her hand. Uncertainly, he took it. Her grip was strong-stronger than he expected-and with her other hand she reached behind her back and removed a cocked pistol. She pointed it at him.

  "Be nice," she warned.

  Harold Smith tried to let go, but she squeezed his hand harder and spun him around. Her knee slammed into the small of his back and he fell against the car hood.

  "I must warn you, young lady. If this is robbery-" But then the muzzle of the gun was at his back. He wondered if she was going to shoot him then and there.

  "Hold still," she said. Her voice was a bar of metal. She undid her red armband, and, carefully turning it right-side-out, blindfolded Harold Smith. She marched him to the disabled van.

  Had Smith been able to see himself just then, he would have recognized the black symbol in a white circle that burned the front of the red blindfold that had been securely knotted around his head. He might have understood then. But then again, he might not have.

  "Harold Smith?" His mouth was dry. He took a drink. Why should he be nervous? It was Smith who should be nervous.

  "Yes?" Harold Smith said uncertainly. He could not see, but Smith knew he was inside the bronze-hued van. The floor was carpeted, and his bald head had brushed the plush roof as he was forced in through the sliding side door. Cool hands pushed him down into a seat. It swiveled.

  "Harold D. Smith?"

  "Yes?" Smith's voice was calm.

  The man had poise, if not courage. He wondered if that would make it easier. "The first ten years were the worst."

  "I don't understand," Smith said.

  "The walls were green. Light green above, and dark green below. I could do nothing but stare at them: I thought of you often in those days, Harold Smith."

  "Do I know you?"

  "I'm getting to that, Smith." He spat the name out. His nervousness was leaving him. Good. Ilsa smiled at him. She was kneeling on the rug, looking like a dutiful daughter, except for the pistol she kept trained on the hated Harold D. Smith.

  "We didn't have television then," he continued in a calmer voice. "Television was new. In America, people had television. But not where I had been consigned. No one had television there. So I stared at the green walls. They burned my retinas, they were so green. To this day, I cannot bear to look at grass. Or American paper money."

  Harold Smith tried to see past his blindfold. He kept his hands carefully placed one on each knee. He dared not make a move. He knew the blond-girl had the pistol-it had looked like a Luger-pointed at him.

  "Eventually," the dry voice continued. "we had television. I think that was what saved my sanity. Television fed my mind. It was my window, for the green room had no windows, you see. I think without television I would have let myself die. Even hate can sustain a person just so long."

  "Hate? I don't know you."

  "You can't see me, Harold S
mith."

  "Your voice is not familiar."

  "My voice? You last heard it in 1949. Do you remember?"

  "No," Harold Smith said slowly.

  "No! Not even a stirring memory, Smith? Not even that?"

  "I'm sorry, what is this about?"

  "Death, Smith. It is about death. My death... and yours."

  Smith gripped his knees tighter.

  "Do you remember where you were on June 7, 1949?"

  "Of course not. No one could."

  "I remember. I remember it well. It was the day I died. "

  Smith said nothing. This man was obviously deranged. His mind raced. Would another car came along? Would it stop? But this was not a well-traveled road.

  "It was the day I died," the voice continued. "It was the day you killed me. Now tell me, Harold Smith, that you do not remember that day."

  "I don't," Smith answered slowly. "I think you have the wrong man."

  "Liar!"

  "I said I don't remember," Harold Smith said evenly. He knew that when you dealt with unbalanced minds, it was better to speak in a calm voice. He also knew that you shouldn't contradict them, but Smith was stubborn. He wasn't about to go along with a madman's ravings just to humor him.

  Smith heard the whirring sounds of a small motor and the dry voice came closer. Smith suddenly understood that the wan was in a wheelchair. He remembered the handicapped decal on the back of the van.

  "You don't remember." The voice was bitter, almost sad.

  "That's correct," Smith said stiffly.

  Smith heard a new sound then. It was a softer whirring, more like the muted sound of a dentist's highspeed drill. The sound made him shiver. He hated visiting the dentist. Always had.

  The blindfold was swept from his eyes. Smith blinked stupidly.

  The man in the wheelchair had a face as dry as his voice. It resembled a bleached walnut shell, corrugated with lines and wrinkles. The eyes were black and sharp, the lips a thin desiccated line. The rest of the face was dead, long dead. The teeth were stained almost brown, with the roots exposed by receding gums.

  "I don't recognize your face," Smith said in a voice calmer than his thoughts. He could feel his heart racing and his throat tightening with fear. The man's features grew furious.

  "My own mother wouldn't recognize me!" the man in the wheelchair thundered. He pounded a dead dry fist on the wheelchair's arm. Then Smith saw the blindfold hanging in the man's other hand.

  But it was not a hand. Not a human hand. It was a three-fingered claw of stainless steel. It clamped, the blindfold that the girl had worn as an armband. Smith saw a black-and-white insignia distorted in the red folds. The steel claw opened with that tiny dentist's-drill whirring. The blindfold dropped on Smith's lap and he recognized the Nazi swastika symbol. He swallowed uncomfortably. He had been in the war. It was a long time ago.

  "You have changed too, Harold Smith," the old man said in a quieter voice. "I can scarcely recognize you, either."

  The steel claw closed noisily. Its three jointed fingers made a deformed fist.

  "Modern science," the old man said. "I got this in 1983. Electrodes implanted in my upper arm control it. It is almost like having a natural hand. Before this, I had a hook, and before the hook, my wrist ended in a black plastic cap."

  Smith's face was so close to the man he could smell the other's breath. It smelled like raw clams, as if the man's insides were dead.

  "Fire did this to me. Fire took my mobility. It took my speech for many years. It nearly took my sight. It took other things too. But I will not speak of my bitterness any longer. I have searched for you, Harold Smith, and now I have found you."

  "I think you have the wrong man," Harold Smith said softly.

  "You were in the war? World War Two?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "He was in the war, Ilsa."

  "He admits it then?" Ilsa said, She rose, clutching the Luger tightly.

  "Not quite. He is stubborn."

  "But he is the one?" Ilsa demanded.

  "Yes, this is the day. I told you I felt it in my bones."

  "We could tie him up and throw him in a ditch," Ilsa offered. "Then cover him with gasoline. Whoosh!"

  "Fire would be appropriate," the man in the wheelchair said. "But I do not think I could bear watching the flames consume him. Memories, Ilsa. No, not fire. I must witness his death."

  Harold Smith knew then that he would have to fight. He would risk a bullet, but he would not let himself be executed. Not without a struggle.

  Smith came to his feet abruptly. He pushed the wheelchair back and narrowly ducked a vicious swipe of the old man's claw.

  "Should I shoot him? Should I?" Ilsa screamed, waving her pistol.

  "No. Brain him."

  Ilsa swung at Smith's balding head with the heavy barrel of the Luger. But there wasn't enough force behind the blow and the gun sight merely scraped skin off Smith's head.

  Smith grabbed for the gun. Ilsa kicked one leg out from under him and leaned into him. Smith fell against the swivel chair with Ilsa on top of him.

  "Hold him there," the man in the wheelchair said. Smith, his head hanging back, saw the upside-down image of the old man advancing on him with the chilly whirring of machinery.

  The steel claw took him by the throat and the dentist's drill sound filled his ears, louder and louder, reminding him of past pain, even as he felt the choking sensation that told him his windpipe was being crushed. His face swelled as his blood was forced up through the arteries in his neck. His ears popped, shutting out the drumming sound of his feet against the floor.

  And all the time he could see the hideous old man's face staring at him, the black eyes tiny and bright in the middle of the red mist that seemed to be tilling the van's interior.

  When the red mist completely filled Harold Smith's vision, he lost all conscious thought.

  "Damn!"

  "What is it, Ilsa?"

  "I think he wet himself."

  "They do that sometimes."

  "But-not all over me!" She stood back from Smith's contorted corpse; looking like a woman who had heen splashed by a passing car. Her hands fluttered uselessly in the air.

  "You can change later. We must leave."

  "Okay. Let me lock you down."

  "First get rid of the body."

  "You don't want it?"

  "No!"

  "Not even for a souvenir? I thought we were going to skin him or something."

  "Not him. He is not the one."

  "He said his name was Harold Smith. I heard him."

  "He is not the right Harold Smith."

  "Oh no, not again. Are you sure?"

  "His eyes are blue. Smith's eyes were gray.'

  "Damn," said Ilsa, kicking Smith until his body rolled out the side door. She shoved the door closed on screeching rollers. "I thought you were sure."

  "It doesn't matter. What is one less Smith? I am sure this one was a nonentity whom no one will miss. Drive, Ilsa."

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he was building a house. Remo drove the last support into the hard earth. The post sank a quarter-inch at a time, driven down by the impact of his bare fist. He used no tools. He did not need tools. He worked alone, a lean young man in chinos and a black T-shirt with strangely thick wrists and an expression of utter peace on his high-cheekboned face.

  Standing up, Remo examined the four supports. A surveyor, using precision equipment, could have determined that the four posts formed a geometrically true rectangle, each post perfectly level with the others. Remo knew that without looking.

  Next would come the flooring. It was important that the floor of the house sit well above ground level, at least eight inches. Like all houses in Korea, Remo's home would sit on stilts to protect it against rainwater and snakes.

  Remo had always wanted a home of his own. He had dreamed of one back in the days when he lived in a walk-up flat in Newark, New jersey, and pulled down $257.60 a week as a roo
kie cop. Before his police days, Remo had been a ward of the state and bunked with the other boys at St. Theresa's Orphanage. After he was suspended from the force-after they killed him-there had been a succession of apartments and hotel rooms and temporary quarters.

  He had never dreamed that one day he would build his house with his strong bare hands here on the rocky soil of Sioanju.

  Two decades ago Remo had been sent to the electric chair on a false murder charge, but he did not die. Remo had been offered a choice: work for CURE, the supersecret American anticrime organization, or replace the anonymous corpse that lay in his own grave.

  It wasn't much of a choice and so Remo had agreed to become an agent of CURE. They turned him over to an elderly Korean named Chiun, the head of a fabled house of assassins, and Chiun had transformed Remo Williams into a Master of Sinauju, the sun source of the martial arts.

  Somewhere along the way, Remo had become more Sinanju than American. He did not know when it had happened. Looking back, he could not even pinpoint the year. He just knew that one day long, long ago he had stepped over that line.

  And now Remo had finally come home-to Sinanju on the West Korea Bay.

  An aged Oriental in a subdued blue kimono strolled up the shore path and watched at a slight distance Remo's attempt to lay hardwood planks on top of the floor frame. He was tiny, and the fresh sea breeze played with the tufts of hair over each ear and teased his wispy beard.

  At length, the Master of Sinanju approached. "What are you doing, my son?"

  Remo glanced back over his shoulder, then returned to his task.

  "I'm building a house, Little Father."

  "I can see that, Remo. Why are you building a house?"

  "It's for Mah-Li," Remo said.

  "Ah," said Chiun, current Master of Sinanju-the town as well as the discipline. "A wedding present, then?"

  "You got it. Hand me that plank, will you?"

  "Will I what?"

  "Will you hand me that plank?"

  "Will I hand you that plank what?"

  "Huh?"

  "It is customary to say 'please' when one requests a boon from the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said blandly.

  "Never mind," Remo said impatiently. "I'll get it myself."