Last Drop td-54

by Warren Murphy

  "Terrific," Remo said. "Fine time for a semantics lesson."

  "He'll kill you."

  "Probably." Remo staggered out of the library and down the hall.

  In the foyer stood a hairy ape of a man with fists like steam rollers and hatred in his eyes. He reminded Remo of a Latin version of the Incredible Hulk. One that wasn't going to turn into a skinny movie actor before his eyes.

  "What do you do with Mrs.?" he bellowed.

  "Nothing," Remo said mildly. "She's just fine, Mr.—"

  "Why you spy on our beans?"

  "Actually, I'd like to talk with you about that. You see—"

  "You talk sheet, meester."

  "About those beans—"

  "I keel for beans!" he roared as he lunged at Remo.

  "And less," Remo said. He dodged a blow that sent a Ming vase crashing to the floor.

  Remo stalled for time, ducking, sliding out of the big man's way for two reasons. One, he hadn't known that Esmeralda had a husband. If the lunk smashing a path toward Remo was the real master of Peruvina, he was the one Remo had to talk to. And second, coitus interruptus didn't make for great fighting spirit. At the very least, his uncomfortable condition would affect his balance. Or his breathing. Or his timing. A mistake in any of those areas could be lethal.

  It was. The big man came for him again, and Remo deflected the blow. Too hard. He knew it as soon as his arm began its first downward thrust in the spiral designed to repel the attacker. No control. He didn't know whether it had been his balance or his breathing or his timing that had been off, but as soon as he saw the bulky body of the man jerk from the floor, Remo knew it was all over. The man's head struck the wall too fast, too hard. He heard the crack of bone, the harsh rattle in the man's throat, saw the red stripe of blood slide down the wall behind the man's crushed skull.

  "So much for not killing," Remo mumbled as he stared, disgusted, at the body. Smith was going to love this. On top of everybody else who'd been dropping dead since this godforsaken assignment began, he'd just silenced the perpetrator of the biggest drug scam in history without finding out how it had been done. Wonderful.

  Behind him Esmeralda shrieked in a torrent of Spanish.

  "I'm sorry," Remo said flatly. "I didn't mean to kill your husband, but no hysterics, all right? I can't handle it just now."

  She burst into laughter. He turned toward her, incredulous. "But... but this is not my husband," she said between fits of hilarity. "It is only Manuel, the head field boss. He must have seen you coming and followed you here."

  He stared hard at her. "He's still dead," Remo observed. "You've got a hell of a sense of humor."

  "I know it is not good to laugh at the dead," she said, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. "But I am so relieved it was not my husband. You see, he is much more dangerous than Manuel. He has weapons, special weapons—"

  "Hello, Mater."

  In an arched doorway at the far end of the living room stood a young man in his early twenties. He was a homely sort of youth, short and thin, with sallow skin punctuated freely with acne. He wore the kind of Coke-bottle glasses that enlarged his eyes to the size of saucers.

  "Oh," Esmeralda exclaimed softly, her smiling features momentarily dropping. For an instant, the heady perfume she was wearing was camouflaged by another odor, acrid and wild. Remo had smelled fear often enough to recognize it.

  "Your manners, Mater," the young man insisted quietly, not moving from his position in the doorway. He spoke without a trace of Esmeralda's accent.

  The youth emanated an eerie calm. Remo had the impression that he could have stood in that doorway all day without so much as shifting a foot if he wanted to. His shirt was tightly buttoned to his neck.

  "Yes, excuse me. Arnold, this is a friend—"

  "Your name?" the young man snapped.

  "Remo," Remo said, a little disconcerted.

  Arnold nodded.

  Esmeralda continued, her smile now markedly different from the easy, sensual turning of her lips he had seen earlier. It was too bright, too wooden. Clearly the woman was scared to death of the young man in the doorway.

  "This is Arnold, my son," she said, appealing to the boy with her eyes.

  Remo looked from the pimply creature in the doorway to the woman beside him.

  "Stepson," Arnold corrected. A smile, practiced, cold came to his lips. "But we're still a family, aren't we, Mater? We have our affairs to ourselves."

  There was a hushed moment. The silence weighed a metric ton.

  "Don't we?" the boy repeated, never raising his voice.

  "Of... course," Esmeralda faltered.

  "Good." The boy turned and left.

  Remo followed him. In the corridor behind the archway where Arnold had stood was a closed door beside a telephone set in the wall. Next to the phone was a large red button. Remo opened the door. A skeleton hung inside. With a shudder he slammed it.

  "Very funny," he said. He pressed the red button beside the phone, but nothing happened. There was no noise, no signal of any kind. He lifted the telephone. It was an ordinary instrument that gave off only a dial tone.

  Arnold had vanished.

  "Where'd he go?" Remo asked.

  Esmeralda avoided his eyes. "Oh, Arnold makes his own passageways," she said evasively. "He is a genius, you know."

  "At what, designing funhouses?" He didn't like the kid. He didn't even like the memory of him. In the archway, Remo could still smell him, a sickly sweet odor. Probably all the starch in his shirt, Remo said to himself.

  "The skeleton in the closet— a genius's idea of fun, I suppose."

  "I— I will explain," Esmeralda whispered. Her eyes scanned the corners of the house as she took his arm. "Let us go back to the library."

  "He didn't even mention the dead man in the entrance," Remo said, settling into an overstuffed chair where Esmeralda placed him.

  "He is a strange boy. That is why he is here, away from his home."

  "Where is his home?"

  "Shhh," Esmeralda said, settling on Remo's lap. "There is time to talk of Arnold later. Let us finish what we have started."

  "What? Are you kidding?"

  She placed her lips on his. Almost immediately the fire inside him rekindled.

  "I suppose we've got a few minutes," Remo said, hating himself.

  He stripped her slowly, enjoying every part of her. The rosy hot glow returned, the private music. Only there was a discordant note in the music. It was a tiny metallic ping that sounded somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind.

  Remo hesitated. No, not his mind. It was some kind of switch, a mechanical device, and it was deep in the recesses of the chair.

  He sprang up, dropping Esmeralda in a heap on the floor, just as a sparkling steel blade shot out of the tufted back of the chair at the exact place where Remo's neck had been.

  "What was the idea of that?" Remo yelled.

  Esmeralda was abject. "Oh, I am so sorrowful. It is one of Arnold's devices. His hobby."

  "Murder? Nice hobby. Releases tension, I understand. Very creative."

  "Oh, Remo." She backed him toward the bookcase, her lips quivering.

  It was there again. The little click. "Move aside, lady," he said as a barrage of bullets blasted out of a gilt-bound volume of the Collected Works of Mario Vareas Llosa.

  "What else is there in this arsenal?" Remo moved quickly around the room, banging on surfaces and listening for the release clicks.

  A net of fine nylon spiked with razor-sharp diamond slivers ballooned out of the ceiling. A thin wire sprang from behind a Louis XV chair and looped into a rapid coil in front of it.

  "Nothing like a little strangulation with the evening brandy," Remo said.

  Standing back he opened a cigar humidor on the big mahogany desk. A white shaft of laser light streamed out of it and burned a smoking hole in the ceiling.

  "Nice," Remo said, closing the lid.

  "Oh, let us get out of here," Esmeralda cried.r />
  "What for? You're the one who set me up here."

  "No, it's not true. Just let me—"

  "They said she, you know. The guys on the plane. A woman set them up, too. Guess which woman?"

  "Plane? I know nothing of a plane."

  "And little Arnie there. Probably some nut you pulled out of the looney bin to keep you in ideas in case somebody got past Manuel the Iron Man. Very neat, Esmeralda."

  "Please," she pleaded. Her voice was hoarse, and the fear shone in her eyes. She gestured with her head toward the doorway. Once in the corridor, she led Remo into a short cul-de-sac in which a single door stood. Placing her finger over her lips, she opened the door and led him inside. There was a large bed, a bar, and some canvases by Miró.

  "This is my bedroom," she said.

  "Another chamber of horrors, I presume?"

  "No. It is safe here. We can talk. You see, I had to take you into the library. Arnold would have known if I hadn't. He would have killed me."

  "It was you or me, huh?"

  She hung her head. "I am shamed. I was so afraid. But Arnold will think you are dead by now."

  "Oh, I see. He doesn't check on these minor occurrences, naturally."

  "No. He is busy with— other things. He will leave you to me."

  Remo felt his heart sinking. "You mean you've done this before?"

  "Once," she said softly. "Or twice. Unless you count—"

  "Oh, glory," Remo said.

  "They were only field hands," she explained earnestly. "Just nosy workers who found out about the coffee and wanted to blackmail us."

  Remo sighed. "I don't know why I should be surprised," he said, more to himself than to her. "There are over a dozen people in Miami whose heads you've ventilated."

  "I have never been in Miami. And—"

  "Right, right. You've never sabotaged a plane, either."

  "I know nothing of this plane you keep mentioning. I wish you would explain."

  "Drop it," Remo said. "It's time you explained some things to me." He waved his arms in despair. "Start anywhere."

  She smiled. "Hokay." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him onto the blue satin bed.

  "Not that."

  "Just once."

  "First we talk."

  She kissed him. "We talk, we kiss. We make love. We do everything the same time. It is economical, sí? Like smorgasbord."

  "We talk. Period," Remo said.

  Esmeralda undressed.

  "Beginning with the coffee."

  She straddled him. "The coffee is made with heroin. Arnold makes it. It grows here."

  Coffee wasn't the only thing that was growing, Remo noticed. He tried to force the demon urges from him, but Esmeralda was running her lips on him, and her hands were taking off his clothes again, and her hips were moving round and slow and hot, so hot he was going to burst.

  He turned her over so that she was looking up at him, and he groaned once, pushing deeply inside her. She panted and cried out as she came, once, twice, again, without stopping, the momentum building, the fire licking him with its heat until it consumed him and they lay together, spent. It was a hell of a way to conduct yourself with someone you ought to be saving democracy from, Remo thought.

  He got dressed and sat back down beside her. "That— that doesn't change anything," he said guiltily.

  "But it was still wonderful, jes?" she answered. "You will take me home with you, to America, jes?"

  "You'd go to jail."

  "That is all right. It will be better than this place. I am so afraid here, always so afraid. Only in this room am I safe. My husband has made Arnold promise. He cannot touch my room with his tricks."

  Remo lifted his head. "Your husband? You really have a husband?"

  "But what do you think?" she asked indignantly. "Do you imagine that a woman in South America with the beauty of Esmeralda would be an old maid? Of course I have a husband." She bounced off the bed proudly. "I will make us the drinks. What do you wish?"

  "Water," Remo said. He sat up on the bed. "Who is he?"

  "Who?"

  "Your husband. A Colombian?"

  "No, no. He is Arnold's father. An American, like you." She stepped from behind the bar, carrying the glasses. "He is a very important man in Amer—" She screamed.

  There was no click this time. The floor beneath the bed just opened up and swallowed Remo whole.

  As he fell, he heard two glasses thump above him as they hit the carpeted floor.

  "You promised you would not touch my room!" Esmeralda shrieked. "You promised!"

  The bed hit a surface that felt like rock, splintering the wooden frame of the bed in a crackle of noise. Remo bounced high on the mattress, extending himself as far as he could, but he wasn't able to reach high enough to grasp the broken floorboards several stories above him, where Esmeralda's face gazed down at him in horror.

  "Oh, Dio, what have we done?" she cried. Her words echoed down the narrow stone-paved column where Remo was trapped.

  And then a metallic whirr sounded above him, and a flat sheet of metal moved slowly to cover the opening at the top of the column.

  Esmeralda's face disappeared as the opening between them was sealed. There was no more light after that, no more sound.

  ?Chapter Twelve

  Smith opened his eyes with difficulty. He was in another hospital room, all antiseptic white. Chiun stood beside him.

  "Where are we?" Smith croaked, motioning toward a water glass. Chiun gave him a drink.

  "We are at Folcroft Sanitarium, Emperor, as you requested."

  "Not as a patient!" Smith coughed.

  "Do not be troubled. The sanitarium staff does not recognize you. I have made inquiries. They know that the name of their director is Smith, but none has ever seen him. They feel the elusive Dr. Harold Smith has little to do with the operation of this worthy institution."

  "They're right," Smith said. "They wouldn't know my face."

  "Exactly. It was for that reason that I signed you in under a false name."

  "What name?"

  Chiun smiled. "A common name. A name so ordinary that it will arouse no suspicion whatever. The most widespread of names."

  "What is it?"

  "Wang."

  "I see," Smith said. "Well, be that as it may, I have to get to the office." He strained to pull himself up, but Chiun stopped him.

  "No, Emperor. You are wounded, and you must rest. You are no longer young, and unlike me, your body is in a state of degeneration, o most understanding and enlightened being." He bowed formally in apology.

  "No one knows that better than I do, Chiun, but I must return to my office at once. There are procedures you don't understand—"

  Chiun interrupted. "While it is possible to live as many years as I have and still be ignorant of all around one, it is difficult."

  Smith passed a long moment looking into the expressionless hazel eyes. "Then you know?"

  Chiun spoke softly. "I know that you are not the emperor of this land, but of a society within this land whose secrecy is so necessary that, rather than risk its discovery, it would be destroyed."

  Smith remained silent, listening.

  "I know that you are part of this society, and that my pupil, Remo, is also part. I believe that you carry evidence of this society with you in the case that is ever in your hands. When I found you, you were without the case. Therefore, I believe you wish to return to your office in order to destroy yourself."

  Smith rubbed his eyes tiredly. "It has to be done," he said. "You understood when I first hired you to train Remo that... that certain steps were to be performed if necessary."

  Chiun remembered. The one command he was obliged to obey was the order to kill Remo. If CURE was destroyed, then everything associated with it would have to be eliminated. Smith would obliterate all the tangible evidence of the organization himself. The computers would burn to the ground in the special asbestos-lined executive offices at Folcroft. And a coffin
in the basement of the sanitarium had been waiting, prepared with a poison capsule, for years. Waiting for Harold W. Smith.

  But Chiun had created Remo, transformed him from a normal man into the exceptional being he was, and it was Chiun's duty to destroy his creation. Of the three, only Chiun was to live. He was to return to the village of Sinanju in Korea and live out the rest of his days in peace. By then, the massacre would be over.

  "I understand," Chiun said. "But you must wait for Remo. He may have information. Perhaps we can retrieve your case."

  "Remo may not be alive," Smith said. "Someone's been following him, trying to kill everyone he's come in contact with, including me. The killer knows about Remo."

  "I also know about Remo," Chiun said cryptically. "He is alive."

  Smith puzzled the statement over in his mind briefly, then gave up. "How?"

  "In the discipline of Sinanju, the development of the body is but a small part. The art of my village is different from the other so-called martial arts because in it, one's strength rises from within. The body, the mind, the spirit— all are one."

  Smith stared at him blankly. "Yes?"

  "I would know if Remo died, just as I would know if one of my limbs dropped off, or if one of my organs ceased to function."

  Smith nodded dubiously. "We can't wait until it's too late," he said. "CURE can't risk any exposure. Any whatever."

  "How late is too late?"

  Smith reached for his spectacles at his bedside. Adjusting them, he studied the clock whirring quietly beside the table lamp.

  9:42 P.M. It annoyed Smith to know that the clock was probably inaccurate, but he had left his watch in the hospital room in Washington.

  "It's between nine and ten o'clock," he grumbled. "It may already be too late, if Remo has tried to call me here. And unless the thieves are complete cretins, by tomorrow they'll know that the portable phone is hooked up to the president's office."

  "Midnight, then. We will wait until midnight for Remo."

  "In my office. Not here."

  "Very well." Chiun stretched his long fingers toward Smith's neck.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Rest, Emperor. Your command will be obeyed."

  Smith didn't want to sleep. But the old Oriental's fingers seemed to trigger something in Smith's nervous system that sent waves of euphoria through his brain. Suddenly, there was no more need for conversation. All that mattered had already been spoken. He felt himself drifting off, the thoughts beginning to jumble in his mind. The case. The gloved hand. The terrible destruction that was to come.