Last Drop td-54

by Warren Murphy

  He opened the closet door and removed the skeleton from it. He took it to the far end of the living room and arranged it beside the broken glass wall.

  "Curious?" He laughed. "Very well. On the off chance that you're still alive, I'll tell you what I'm doing. The great drawback of being a criminal genius is that one has so little opportunity to talk of one's achievements."

  He looked at the skeleton lovingly for a moment, then took a box of matches from one of the mahogany tables and set fire to the draperies.

  "This," he said, gesturing to the skeleton, "is myself. The dental work matches mine exactly. When the authorities come to investigate the fire, they will find three bodies: poor Esmeralda, who leaped to her death rather than subject herself to the flames, her grief-stricken stepson, who perished while contemplating the terrible fate of his beloved "Mater," and a stranger, perhaps a visitor to the house, perhaps the arsonist himself."

  The flames rose higher. The precious paintings on the walls curled and buckled. Arnold moved away from the heat, past Remo into the corridor.

  "No one will notice the flowers. They are an unknown species. They, with the beans, are far enough below to escape damage from the fire. And my underground laboratory, designed against every conceivable natural disaster, will remain hidden. Only Esmeralda's house and its three occupants will vanish from the earth." He smiled. "There's more. I've thought of everything."

  His eyes glowed as he told of his plans. "After a decent interval, there will be a buyer for the property. No, not me, but another whom I trust. Someone, if that is possible, nearly as intelligent as myself. This person will rebuild this house. The crops will be harvested as usual, business will continue, and I shall return, nameless and free."

  He loosened his tie. "Well, there's no point in telling you any more. I'm sure you've gone to your reward by now, and the heat, I must say, is becoming oppressive."

  He lifted the telephone to his ear and pressed the red button twice in succession. "Father, I'm coming," he said, and hung up. Then he walked into the closet where the skeleton had hung. There was a faint whirr, and then silence. Arnold was gone.

  Then the closet itself burst into flame. The passageway leading to the laboratory was obliterated.

  Remo had stopped breathing long before, and could remain in that state for hours, if necessary. But he did not have hours. There were flames on both sides of him, and even in the desensitized state of his body beneath the rock-hard glue that covered it, he was beginning to feel the searing heat.

  He stood, rooted, while an invisible thread inside him coiled and uncoiled in frenzied frustration. Something was calling to him, urging him to action. It was near to pain, the insistent thrumming of the deep string within him.

  Chiun. Chiun wanted him, needed him, and there was nothing he could do.

  A gust of air whooshed in through the broken glass wall and sent a tongue of flame curling around him. He closed his eyes. The inside of his eyelids felt cool against their dry surface.

  The inside of his eyelids, he thought. He had blinked.

  And then, throbbing with the heat, one finger moved.

  ?Chapter Fourteen

  The clock on Smith's desk read 12:01. He rubbed his hand over his face. The movement hurt his side. Then he pulled out his chair and painfully began to rise.

  "Halt." A small hand, strong as a vise, clasped his arm above the elbow. Chiun did not meet his eyes. Instead, the old Oriental was gazing straight ahead, his breathing even and silent, his posture relaxed, but with an intensity about him that frightened Smith.

  "A bargain is a bargain," Smith said.

  "He is coming."

  The grip on his arm was beginning to hurt, but Smith did not sit down. "We can't wait. There are too many things to... prepare."

  He couldn't bring himself to say the word, "destroy," not when those things he would be destroying were the four massive computers that were the working components of his life. For just as Chiun had created Remo, Smith had created the Folcroft computers.

  He had first designed them in the days before microcircuitry, when computers filled whole rooms. Little by little, as the technology of the 1960s and 1970s progressed, he refined the machines, replacing what parts he could with miniature components and redesigning the parts that did not exist on other computers— the circuits that could tap instantaneously into any other computer bank in the world, the parts that enabled the Folcroft Four to jam satellite transmissions— with his own hands.

  And there were functions of the Four that Smith had added through the years, functions that still required the bulky hardware of the old days, because new hardware for these functions did not exist. The computers' ability to trace worldwide telephone connections, for example, hadn't been added until two years ago, after seventeen years of work, at odd times, in Smith's office. Seventeen years, but it had been worth it. There were other projects that hadn't been. When, after nine years, Smith had finally perfected the computers' capability to reproduce photographs in dot concentrations on plain paper, Xerox came out with a machine for general public use that did the same thing.

  For Smith, developing the computers was an ongoing project, like raising a child. Parts of the process were frustrating and unpleasant, but for the most part, because the Folcroft Four were unique children, the business of testing them and creating them anew with each experiment was one that held for Smith the wonder of communication with a higher life form.

  Now they stood, awkward and bulky, looking like amusing relics of a primitive technology, giving no outward sign of their extraordinary sophistication, their awesome abilities. There were four more just like them on a Caribbean island. When all eight were gone, their millions of hours of information turned to ash, there would not be another series like them for a hundred years.

  "We can't wait," Smith repeated.

  The hand grew tighter. It pulled Smith down into his chair. "He is coming," Chiun said.

  "You're forcing me."

  "I am doing what I must."

  His breathing came faster.

  His nasal passages were open. He could blink. Experimentally, Remo contracted the muscles of his upper arm. His forearm raised slowly. He worked at his legs. After exerting enough effort, it seemed, to kick in the Great Wall of China, one foot finally lifted. Strings of goo adhered between the sole of his shoe and the floor.

  Another wave of flame swept near him. His neck bobbed forward.

  It was melting.

  Stiffly Remo pushed himself toward the closet, where the fire was streaking out in gusts.

  Remo did not like fire but it no longer frightened him. Fears were remnants of another life, before Chiun had taught him to overcome the obstacles of fire and water and shock. He had walked through fire; he had been on fire himself in the past. He knew it held no real danger for him, as long as he kept himself quick and balanced and aware. But still, he had once been afraid, and old fears die hard, and it was difficult for Remo to stand in front of the open closet and let the wild orange flame lick him like a hungry beast.

  He desensitized his skin to the heat. His hair was singeing; he could smell it. Pools of the goo, liquifying fast, gathered around his feet as the plastic sloughed off Remo's skin in syrupy sheets.

  In the closet, behind the gusts of flame, was an empty elevator shaft. From that shaft now issued a noise above the crackle and rush of the fire, something that sounded like an engine. And it was coming from above. From the roof.

  Of course, Remo thought. The elevator went up as well as down. The dome.

  Feeling his eyelashes burning off, he stretched out his hand and worked his fingers. They moved.

  There was another way to the roof. The stairway would be on fire by now, but he could run it. His legs were free enough.

  But inside him! The coil, the thread, wound so tight, vibrating so hard it was going to strangle him.

  "Chiun!" he called.

  And then he understood.

  He picked up the telep
hone, blistering and soft now, and dialed the international routing to Folcroft.

  It was answered on the first ring. "This is not a secure line," he said quickly. "What does Chiun want?"

  "For you to escape from there," Chiun's reedy voice piped.

  "Thanks for reminding me. That all?"

  "Get back here immediately," Smith interrupted.

  "And I repeat, this is not a secure line."

  "Look, secure or not, this place is on fire. Trace this next call. It's to somewhere in the States, I think, but I don't know where. And make it fast. The circuits are burning." He depressed the cradle, released it, dropped the phone, and pressed the red button twice. Then he ran for the stairwell.

  ?Chapter Fifteen

  The dome was open, its half-sphere tilted back like an oyster. Inside it was what Remo had expected from the sound of its engine: a combat-sized Grauman helicopter.

  Remo was running at full speed. The blaze in the stairwell had seared off what remained of the immobilizing plastic that once coated him. He saw Arnold in the pilot's seat, wearing a ludicrously large crash helmet, look down at him with alarm while he worked the controls frantically.

  Preparing with a low coil, Remo sprang upward, grasping the runner toward the tail end of the machine with both hands. The helicopter swayed, tilting precariously with the imbalance.

  Arnold tried to level the vehicle, but without sufficient speed, all he could manage was to drift at low altitude, weaving like a dying insect with something black and mobile dangling from one side of it.

  In the growing distance, yellow flames tongued out of the house. From Remo's vantage point, Esmeralda's mansion was like a shimmering vision, its contours wavy behind the heat, its windows exploding, sending sparkling fragments of glass shooting into the black night like stars.

  He managed to get one leg up on the runner, then another. Then, scuttling upside down, he made his way forward toward the cockpit.

  The chopper righted itself. With Remo's weight away from the tail, Arnold could maneuver the helicopter with ease.

  Remo raised an arm to reach the door, when suddenly the helicopter flew into a deep dive. He had to retreat to his crouched position on the runner.

  They were descending fast. Ahead loomed a broad, black shape, only distinguishable from the rest of the night-darkened ground by its dense color. The helicopter approached it, picking up speed as it did.

  Remo hung on. He knew what the black shape was now. He was too close to miss it. It was an expanse of trees, the same copse where he had left the pilot Thompson to die. The trees were directly below him now, so close that their tops scraped Remo's back.

  At the end of the grove, the chopper gained elevation, turned around, and headed for it again.

  The kid's trying to scrape me off. Like mud from a boot. A sharp branch skimmed deep over Remo's back, ripping his shirt and gouging a deep groove into his flesh that made him suck in his breath.

  In the next instant, a loud report sounded and a sharp crack whistled past Remo's ear. He looked up. Arnold had a pistol in his hand.

  As he watched, Arnold squeezed off three more shots. There was limited space to move on the runner of the helicopter, but Remo managed to dodge each of the bullets as they came. The fifth shot grazed his forehead. It was a flesh wound, and a minor one at that, but he was bleeding like a pig. The blood streaming into his eyes blinded him for a moment with a thick curtain of red.

  In that moment, Arnold fired for the sixth time. The bullet took Remo in the side of the hand. He yelped. Involuntarily the hand sprang away, but the other held fast. He blinked away the blood from his eyes. Above him, Arnold was smiling.

  "You little bastard," Remo muttered.

  He gathered his strength. Breathe. Breathe, the way Chiun taught you. In and out, steady. Control the shock in your body, and your body will heal itself. Just hang on.

  The trees appeared again, their branches cutting deep. Remo concentrated on breathing. He breathed, and the pain subsided, and soon the trees were far below him again and the helicopter was circling for another round.

  "Okay," Remo said aloud. "You want to play games? You just got yourself a playmate, sonny."

  Arnold had the helicopter and the hardware, and that was good. Because as far as Remo was concerned, anyone inside a machine was at a disadvantage to a free man working under his own power. Machines didn't have will. Without will, a thing only operated until something went wrong. Without will, the smallest setback could stop the works.

  Men weren't like that. They slogged on with wooden legs and broken hearts and cancerous bellies and eyes that didn't see anymore. They kept going without any reason in the world except that they wanted to find out what was coming next.

  Remo was a man. No pimple factory with a gun and a helicopter was going to stop him.

  Slowly, hand over hand, his legs sliding, he made his way back toward the rear of the runner. When he'd gone as far as he could, he swung his legs and hooked them over the tail. Then he followed with the rest of his weight, taking care to stay on one side of the tail to keep it out of balance, and bounced.

  The chopper swerved. Arnold, close to the trees, tried to gain altitude, but Remo had changed his tactics. He was jumping from one side of the tail section to the other, landing in crazy angles that made the rudder veer wildly.

  The helicopter dipped. From time to time Remo caught a glimpse of Arnold's frantic face. He was trying to watch Remo, the controls, and the view in front of him at the same time. His shoulders worked. He was obviously reloading his gun.

  When he'd finished, he aimed out the cockpit window, but it was easy for Remo to lose the bullet from his position on the tail. He jumped to the other side, sending the helicopter into a sharp curve. The bullet hit the rudder.

  The chopper dived. The engine sputtered. A stall. Inside the cockpit, Arnold hammered at the controls, but the trees kept coming closer, closer. If it crashed headfirst, the engine would catch fire, Remo knew, and with it would go his only chance to get out of Peruvina before daybreak.

  He waited. Then, just before the moment of impact, Remo leapt into the air, turned a fast double somersault to gain the weight and momentum he needed, and landed square on the tail's center.

  The helicopter landed flat in the trees, without an explosion.

  Arnold's arm extended out from the window, the gun in his hand firing in every direction.

  "Forget it, kid," Remo said, snatching the weapon away from him through the open window.

  Arnold stared at him. Remo was standing erect, balanced on the tops of the trees. Although he had used enough weight to move a helicopter, Remo now seemed to be weightless. Not a branch cracked beneath his feet. Not a leaf moved.

  "She was right," Arnold murmured from inside the cockpit. "You are something special."

  "She's dead," Remo said. "Now get out of there."

  "You're together, aren't you?" Arnold whispered dazedly. "You and the man named Smith."

  Remo felt the blood drain from his face. "What do you know about Smith?"

  "She was right. There is some kind of secret government organization. Smith runs it, and an old Oriental's got something to do with it, too." He spoke as if to himself, smiling strangely. "I really didn't believe her at first. It all sounded so bizarre. But she was right. I should have known. She's always right."

  "Get out of there," Remo said hoarsely.

  "Oh, I know you've got to kill me now. But you won't." Slowly he reached into his pocket. Out came an ordinary penknife.

  "What, no lasers, no jet-propelled gadgets?" Remo said.

  Arnold sat still in the pilot's seat, shifting the knife from one hand to the other. His cocky confidence, his urban veneer, had vanished. In his oversized helmet and glasses, Arnold looked more like a kid than ever. A rotten kid, Remo reminded himself.

  "She said you'd make me talk if you caught me," Arnold said in a small voice.

  "That's right," Remo affirmed. "Now just come out of there. I
'll see that you make it to the ground in one piece."

  But Arnold only stared, his eyes fixed and blank. "She said..." He trailed off. Then, with a broad, quick motion, he thrust the knife to his left side, plunged it into his own neck, and drew it across his throat.

  Aghast, Remo ripped open the door. Blood was gushing out of Arnold's neck in bubbling red fountains. The cut had been so deep that the inner workings of his throat were exposed. Arnold's eyes rolled back.

  The helicopter broke a branch and settled more deeply in the trees. Arnold's body, its head dangling behind it, swung around and toppled out the door. It bounced and tumbled through the trees like a rag doll, catching on broken pieces of wood, painting the leaves it touched with a coating of bright red, its bones cracking loudly in the stillness.

  His clothing stuck on a long, sharp branch. Arnold's body hung suspended like a carcass in a slaughterhouse, his head attached only by bloody strings. Finally, the head alone reached the ground, its glazed eyes staring sightlessly upward.

  ?Chapter Sixteen

  Smith watched the blank video printout screen as the computers whirred, sorting out information, seeking to locate one telephone out of millions.

  The connection had been fast and short. After Remo's message, there was a strange, loud noise on the Peruvina end. Smith worked with a speed he didn't know he possessed to program the Folcroft computers to the correct mode for intercepting the transmission.

  "This had better work," he muttered. The call from Remo had further jeopardized CURE's vulnerability, if that was possible at this point. If whoever had stolen Smith's attaché case were listening in at the time of the transmission, that person now knew that Remo and Smith were still alive. He would also know that CURE was capable of tracing international calls on command.

  The call was picked up on the first ring by a growly, sleepy male voice.

  "What now?" it said.

  The connection was crackling. Remo had said that the circuits were burning, whatever that meant. It was clear to Smith, listening in on the intercepting phone, that the Peruvina end was shorting out fast.