Last Drop td-54

by Warren Murphy

  "What's the matter? There's nothing but noise on this line."

  "Er..." Smith tried to stall for time, in case the poor connection delayed the intercept function on the computers. "This is a lineman," he improvised, holding a handkerchief over the mouthpiece so that his words, coming from within the United States, would not sound unnaturally clear in the connection from Peruvina. "Several of the telephones in your area have been malfunctioning, and—"

  The connection was broken in a sea of static.

  "The wires in Peruvina must have burned through," Smith said to Chiun while he busied himself at the computer controls. "There's been some kind of fire in Peruvina. I hope the computers were able to trace the call. Otherwise, I'll have no choice..."

  He didn't finish the sentence.

  They waited. The computers sorted and sifted, clicked and hummed. At last three lines of green lettering appeared on the screen.

  DONNELLY, HUGO

  322 W. LINDEN DRIVE

  WASH., D.C. (RES.)

  Smith blinked as the words appeared, unable for a moment to believe the information. Then his forehead smoothed, and he exhaled in relief.

  "How stupid of me," he said, keying in his next question. There had to be more than one Hugo Donnelly in Washington. He had simply assumed, foolishly, from the name that the man connected with the heroin-laced coffee from Peruvina was the same man who held an official position with the government of the United States.

  "EXPAND HUGO DONNELLY," he asked the computers. They answered instantly:

  DONNELLY, HUGO, B. 1927, PORTLAND, ORE.

  MARRIED, ARLENE NASH PALMER

  (DECEASED)

  1931–1957... ESMERALDA VALASQUEZ

  DONNELLY, B. 1950, CURRENT RESIDENCE

  PERUVINA, COLOMBIA... CHILDREN, 1

  (MALE)

  ARNOLD LANCE DONNELLY, B. 1961...

  EMPLOYED, U.S. GOVERNMENT, ASST. TO

  UNDERSEC. OF INTERIOR...

  Smith felt himself trembling. He remembered a name that Remo had given him, the name of the man who had given the Peruvinian coffee beans to the Miami warehouse.

  "CONNECTION, DONNELLY, HUGO, WITH

  BROWN, GEORGE, SAXONBURG, INDIANA,

  OR NORTH AMERICAN COFFEE COMPANY."

  DOES NOT COMPUTE.

  ?Chapter Seventeen

  Remo lowered himself out of the trees gingerly, taking care not to use his injured hand except to extricate-Arnold's headless corpse from the tangle of branches that suspended it.

  Well, it was all over now. He should at least have gotten to know the name of his father. But maybe Smith had taken care of that end. He'd find out when he got back. Still, he hated to close a case without being sure. The last thing Remo would have suspected Arnold of doing was committing suicide.

  Wrapping his hand with a strip of cloth torn from Arnold's shirt, he dragged the two parts of the body further into the trees. The kid had looked so scared at the end. Kept mentioning the woman, as if he were afraid that Esmeralda would somehow rise from the dead. There must have been more of an attachment between Arnold and his stepmother than either of them let on. He'd never know now.

  He looked around. The setting was familiar. If he could find Thompson, the pilot of the plane, he'd bury the two bodies together. Not much tribute to Thompson, being laid to rest next to a headless maniac, but the dead didn't care.

  The pilot's body, still mottled with the blood-soaked leaves Remo had staunched his wounds with, sat propped against a tree. Poor devil, Remo thought. He must have regained consciousness before he died. At least he had had his hour.

  He picked up the body gently. It was still warm. And the eyes were closed. Remo checked his pulse. Dead men didn't close their own eyes.

  "Thompson?" he asked tentatively. He couldn't be alive, not after all this time.

  The eyelids fluttered open. "You look as bad as I feel," the pilot said, pausing for breath after each word.

  "You're some kind of ox," Remo said, smiling. "Is there pain?"

  The pilot managed a low laugh that made him cough up blood.

  "I can stop that," Remo said. He set the man down and pinched a cluster of nerves on the man's spine.

  Thompson almost gasped with relief. "I can't feel a thing," he said, astonished. "I'm good as new."

  "Not really." The man's face was a sickly white. He'd lost too much blood. The wound in his back was deep. Punctured lung, probably. "Pain tells you that things aren't right with your body. I've only taken away the pain. Things still aren't right."

  "That's good enough for me," Thompson said, rising and spitting a blob of red onto the grass.

  "We've got a helicopter," Remo said. "Think you can show me how to fly it? Maybe I could get us to a hospital."

  Thompson scanned the area. "What helicopter?"

  Remo pointed up to the trees.

  "How in hell—"

  "I'll get you up there."

  In the chopper, Thompson looked over the controls. "I'm not checked out on this type," he said with a grimace. "I think I might be able to fly it myself, but I don't know enough to talk you through it. Besides, that hand of yours is in rotten shape."

  "Hell," Remo said. "You can't—"

  "Get in. I won't let us crash." He started the engine. "Where are you going?"

  "Bogota," Remo said. "To a hospital."

  "For you?"

  "I'm okay," Remo said. "You're not."

  Thompson smiled as they lifted off. "You're some kind of Fed, right?"

  Remo winced. "Don't ask so many questions."

  "You're a Fed, all right. You on a job?" No answer. "I want to know where you're going, so I can take you there, that's all."

  "We're going to a hospital, I told you. I can't get where I'm going fast enough in this thing, anyway."

  "You got connections?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's a new Air Force base on Malagua Island, off the coast of Puerto Rico. They've got F-16s there, and God knows how many experimentals, all supersonic. If you've got the connections."

  "How far?"

  "I can make it."

  Remo thought. "Do they have a hospital?"

  Thompson laughed. "For a base full of test pilots? Are you kidding?" He looked at Remo, waiting.

  "Yeah, I've got the connections."

  Thompson whistled. "A big Fed," he said. "But then you did tear off the DC-3's door with your bare hands. Not to mention crushing Belloc's gun into a lead golf ball and jumping out of the plane without a parachute. I didn't think you worked as a clerk in the New Rochelle courthouse."

  Remo felt a wave of panic rising in him. Not him, he said inwardly. After all the crumbums I've spared, don't let Thompson be the one I have to kill. Not the only decent man in this whole foul, dirty can of worms. "They won't believe you," he said quietly.

  The pilot smiled. "Yeah, I know. I'm not planning to talk."

  Some time passed. "Why'd you get into this lousy business, anyway?" Remo asked.

  "You here to save my soul or something?"

  "No. Just curious."

  "Ah," Thompson said. "Curious." He was quiet for a long time. "I guess it was the flying," he said at last. "For a while, after I got fired from the airline, I had this crazy idea that I'd borrow some money and buy myself a used bird. Rent it out for charters in the Caribbean, that sort of thing.

  "What happened?"

  "No guts. My wife left. The drinking," he explained. "They'll do that once they find out you've pissed your pants in the arms of a fifty-year old hooker." He laughed, then his smile disappeared. "Took the kids with her. The house got sold. Lost my car. But I wouldn't stop drinking, no sir. Bills everywhere, no job-think I gave a shit? Stuck on the ground like some kind of slug, crawling on my belly for a drink. God. Sometimes I'd look up at the sky, and I'd want so bad..." His voice trailed off.

  "Bad enough to quit drinking," Remo said.

  "Enough to do anything," Thompson reflected quietly. "Just to fly again... Oh, bal
ls." He smiled, embarrassed. "What a pile of sentimental horseshit. I did it for the money."

  "I don't think it was the money," Remo said.

  "Well, you're wrong. The law's going to see that I never fly again after this stint, and I don't really give a good goddamn, because I'm no better than Belloc when it comes right down to it, otherwise I wouldn't be here, would I? Now, do you want to go to Malagua or don't you?"

  "I think you just wanted to fly again."

  "Christ," Thompson said. "You're an even bigger horseshitter than I am. We're going to Malagua."

  They radioed an emergency before they landed, and a stretcher, along with a greeting party of interrogators, was waiting for the chopper from Colombia.

  Thompson cast a glance at Remo as they descended. "Hey, quit worrying. The plane crashed, we both survived it, and then I passed out. When I came to, you were there with the chopper. That's all I know. Can you cover your end?"

  Remo nodded distractedly. He wasn't worried about covering his end. "Those guys down there are going to want you to talk. About what you were doing in Colombia."

  "Don't be sappy," Thompson said. "What happens, happens."

  "You'll go to jail."

  "So what." He landed the helicopter. "Hey, do that thing with my back again, will you? The pain's getting bad."

  Remo touched the pilot's spine.

  They got out. "This man's been hurt, and I need to make a phone call," Remo said by way of greeting.

  Fifteen minutes later, Thompson was being prepared for surgery. Tubes of whole blood were being pumped into his drained body. Remo made his way past a battery of protesting nurses to Thompson's bed. "You'll be all right now," he said.

  "That noise outside. It's an F-16. That for you?"

  Remo nodded.

  "Big Fed," Thompson said, smiling.

  Remo turned to go. "Hey," Thompson called. "Thanks. Thanks for coming back for me."

  Remo didn't respond. If it hadn't been for Thompson's body between the flying piece of metal and himself, Remo would probably be dead somewhere in Colombia by now. If it hadn't been for Thompson's insistence on flying to an Air Force base instead of a quiet little hospital in Bogota, Remo would be trying to figure out a way to get out of South America instead of taking off in a supersonic plane. And now Thompson was going under the knife, and after that, Thompson was going to go to jail for something he didn't even know anything about. And Thompson was thanking him.

  That was fate, Remo thought, not without some bitterness. The way the world went. That was the biz. And Thompson understood that, because he was one of those creatures who kept on going while fate was throwing sucker punches to his insides. He was a man.

  "I'll remember you," Remo said.

  ?Chapter Eighteen

  Smith stood by the large tinted one-way windows of Folcroft Sanitarium that looked out over the beach of Long Island Sound. He was alone. He had never been so alone.

  The first streaks of dawn were just beginning to lighten the sky, causing the ocean waves below to sparkle pink and purple. The pain in Smith's side still throbbed, but only dimly now. Chiun's ministrations had been better than any doctor's. The old man had even offered to remove the pain entirely, but Smith hadn't permitted that. He didn't hold with any system of medicine in which there was no pain. There was something vaguely immoral in the concept. Besides, the pain helped him think.

  Back to the beginning.

  Coffee. Someone had put heroin into every brand of coffee used in the United States. From what Remo had gathered, that someone wasn't a regular drug dealer.

  The closest they had come was a name on a business card: George Brown of Saxonburg, Indiana. George Brown, who had virtually given the drugged coffee beans to every warehouse in the country, according to Smith's investigations.

  The Folcroft computers had ascertained that there were four George Browns in the five-square-mile around Saxonburg, Indiana. The FBI claimed that none of them had been out of town in the past six months. That meant that the George Brown, the one who didn't compute in the Folcroft information banks, was an alias. Back to square one. Unless George Brown was Hugo Donnelly, government employee.

  But Remo would have to find that out. Before it was too late. Or was it already too late?

  And then the murders. Fourteen that Smith knew of for certain, and probably a fifteenth. Remo had mentioned the name "Pappy" in his last phone call before leaving the country, and a Paul "Pappy" Eisenstein, a known drug dealer, had cropped up on the homicide lists that same day. Fifteen victims, all of them in contact with Remo.

  Somebody knew about Remo.

  And somebody knew about Smith, knew enough to shoot him at point-blank range and take his attaché case, which contained enough incriminating evidence to destroy the Constitution of the United States forever.

  He had been waiting ever since Remo had called from Malagua. It was a strange phone call, to say the least. For one thing, Remo had spoken entirely in code.

  It was as if he knew that CURE was on the verge of destruction. Smith had desperately wanted to know the extent of Remo's information in the matter, but he had to keep the call as short as possible. The fewer the words, the more difficulty the thieves would have in decoding the transmission.

  Remo told, in the language the Folcroft computers had devised, about Arnold and the woman. He gave his location and requested transport to Rye.

  "Done," Smith responded in the same language. "But don't come here. Get to the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel in Washington. Chiun will meet you there with further instructions."

  The connection was terminated. It had taken less than one minute. Then he walked to a pay phone, made several calls, arranged for the F-16 to take Remo to Washington with no questions asked, and returned to the office.

  Chiun was still waiting silently in the corner he had appropriated. Smith wrote a long message on a piece of paper and folded it.

  "There's a private plane waiting for you at the local airport," he said.

  Chiun beamed. "For me? Alone? I may sit wherever I wish?"

  "Anywhere," Smith said. "You'll be met at the end of your journey by a driver who will escort you to a hotel. Wait in the lobby for Remo, and give him this." He handed him the message. "No one else may see this," he warned.

  "You shall be obeyed," Chiun said solemnly, bowing low. "Your humble servant does not forget the kindness of his illustrious Emperor. In the twilight of my years—"

  "Er... that's fine, Chiun," Smith said distractedly. Chiun slipped the note into his sleeve and left, exhibiting all the dignity of his station.

  Smith walked over to the window. The waiting had begun.

  That had been hours ago. Dawn coming, and the attaché case was still missing. CURE was still operating, exposing the country to irreparable damage with each passing minute. Had he been right in not destroying the organization at midnight? Remo had provided some information, but not enough. Had Smith risked the future of America just to save his own skin? He didn't know. He went over the questions again and again. He just didn't know. There was so much to think about, and he was so tired of thinking.

  George Brown. Hugo Donnelly. Saxonburg, Indiana. Does not compute. Does not compute.

  It was 6:14.

  "Tomorrow will be too late," he remembered saying. The waves outside his window were dappled with morning light. It was tomorrow.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  A gray-gloved hand ...

  Suddenly he started to attention, so fast that he choked and coughed. Holding his side, he made his way back to the computer console, keyed in "SAXONBURG, INDIANA," and followed a new line of questioning.

  By 7:02 he knew the answer.

  He took his extra suit from the closet in his office, got dressed slowly and painfully, and called a taxi.

  Before he left, he set the self-destruct mechanism on the Folcroft computers to go off automatically at noon. He arranged it so that the destruction of CURE could only be aborted by his own voice p
rint, issuing directly from the telephone inside his attaché case.

  Because if he was right, he would be in possession of the case by noon.

  And if he was wrong, noon would be well past his appointed hour to die.

  ?Chapter Nineteen

  Chiun's gold brocade robe looked even more splendid than usual, surrounded as it was by the threadbare furniture of the Excelsior Hotel lobby.

  "Hi, Little Father," Remo said.

  "Look at you," Chiun whispered, casting embarrassed looks all around. "A disgrace. Your shirt is torn. There is blood all over your face, dried like paint. I have arrived here in a private airplane. Do you know what it will do to my image to be seen associating with such a person as you? And what is that rag on your hand?"

  "A bandage. I was shot."

  "You, too? Has no one in this oafish country a decent sense of balance?"

  "Smith?" Remo said, his voice rising. "You were supposed to watch him. How bad was it?"

  "I do not have to explain myself to you," Chiun snapped. "The Emperor is well, and most grateful to me. He knows how to show gratitude, which is more than I can say for some persons who cannot even arrive in time for dinner."

  "I can't believe it. I asked you to do one thing....And here I am shot, for God's sake," he sputtered. "Well, we can argue later. Give me Smitty's message."

  "You have no manners at all." Chiun's eyes glared as he shot the piece of paper into Remo's hand. "This I do for the Emperor alone, because I have promised him," he decreed. "Not for ill-mannered beings who do not know how to ask for a thing politely."

  Remo read the note, frowning.

  "What does it say?"

  "He wants me to get a suit," Remo said.

  "A man of excellent discernment," Chiun said, fingering the torn back of Remo's T-shirt.

  "And then he wants me to withdraw a hundred thousand dollars from the bank across the street."

  "In gold?" Chiun asked excitedly.

  Remo shook his head.

  "Then it does not count."

  Donnelly's secretary, busily filing her nails, rose like a zephyr from behind a two-foot-high stack of papers.

  "We have an appointment," Remo said.

  The girl's face looked blank for a moment while her nail file slowed in concentration. "Oh, yeah," she said, a smile dawning. "I knew I remembered somebody calling. I even wrote it down. You're..." She rummaged through the papers on the desk, creating a small blizzard.