Prophet Of Doom td-111

by Warren Murphy

  "She must remain the FBI's problem for the time being," he said instead. "Right now we must put all our efforts into identifying the drug you inhaled. You described a sulphur smell?"

  "The place stunk of rotten eggs, if that's what you mean."

  Smith nodded. "Typical of sulphur. It is quite pungent. Perhaps there's something to learn from the Forrester girl."

  Smith led Remo out of the examining room and down the corridor to a windowless room at the end of the security wing.

  On the room's only bed a young girl, not quite in her teens, lay motionless beneath a thin cotton sheet.

  "She was discovered by some campers in a forest near Ranch Ragnarok," Smith explained as they entered the room.

  "One of the missing girls?" Remo asked.

  Smith nodded. "The fourth," he said. "And the last to disappear before Senator Cole's daughter. They must have released her when they went to collect the next girl."

  Remo watched the young child in the bed breathing rhythmically, oblivious to all external stimuli. Remo himself had a daughter, and even though he rarely saw her, he knew how he would react if he found out she had been treated like Allison Forrester. He vowed to make Mark Kaspar and Esther Clear-Seer pay dearly for what they had done to the innocent young girls of Thermopolis.

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  A strong smell of sulphur exuded from her unconscious body. Smith pulled a pearl gray handkerchief from an inner coat pocket. He placed the bunched cloth over mouth and nose in a vain attempt to block out the offensive odor.

  "Since her arrival, I have had a battery of tests run," Smith said, gazing down at the prone figure. "CAT scans. An MRI. All results point to near dormant synaptic activity. It is as though her brain has been completely wiped clean."

  "The smoke?" Remo asked softly. He had slid a folding chair close to the bed and sat down beside it, his forearms resting on the retractable metal restraining bar. He breathed in long sips through his mouth so the stink wouldn't affect his olfactory receptors.

  Smith nodded. "All children are born with some level of cognition. Even in utero a fetus is conscious of its surroundings—but all of our tests have shown that this girl has. regressed beyond that limited level of awareness. Her responses to external stimuli are back beyond prenatal. We even had to close her eyes for her. She didn't seem to know how to do it without help."

  Allison Forrester was a pretty young girl, and while Remo watched her sleep on that strange bed so far away from her home, he thought she looked like some long-forgotten princess from a fairy tale, waiting for a knight in shining armor to revive her with a kiss.

  Remo gently pushed a lock of auburn hair from her forehead. The girl stirred, as if awakening from a long slumber. She smiled as she stretched her arms beneath the sheets.

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  Smith took a step forward, lowering his handkerchief in surprise. "What's happening?" he asked.

  Remo looked baffled. "I'm not sure," he said.

  He put his arm above the girl once more. She stretched again, rotating her shoulders as if she was about to awaken.

  This time Remo detected a faint movement from over his own bare forearm. He peered closer and saw something that looked like steam rising from his skin. A ghostly phosphorescence. And it was yellow.

  All at once the eyelids of the Forrester girl snapped open. Her mouth opened, making rubbery shapes in a desperate attempt to speak. But no sound came out.

  The yellow exhalation from Remo's arm gathered and coalesced, hovering like an early-morning fog over the girl's bed. With deep, gasping breaths the girl began to breathe in the yellow mist, like a smoker craving airborne nicotine.

  She fell back to the bed, her vacant eyes suddenly content.

  Smith was about to say something when the girl spoke.

  "Sin-an-juuu..." The voice was that of a long dead soul crying out from beyond the grave. Smith shuddered at the eerie sound. "Sinanju," she wailed. "East has met West. Your destiny will be fulfilled."

  Somewhere in the back of Remo's mind, the malevolent presence resurfaced. It had been there all along, flitting at the edges of his thoughts. But as the girl spoke, he could feel the other consciousness grow in strength.

  As he stared through the yellow haze, an image

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  suddenly appeared in Remo's mind—the same one he had seen in the motel room in Wyoming.

  It was as if he were seeing something projected on the wall of the small hospital room. He saw a limitless black expanse at the center of which two figures stood. He did not know how, but he knew that one of the figures was purely malevolent. The other figure stood immobile in his mind, paralyzed perhaps by fear. As the bizarre tableau played on in silence, Remo saw the figure of evil move toward the second, docile creature, the villain's hands raised as if to do battle.

  Remo tried to focus closely, attempting to see the combatants more clearly, but the vision started to disintegrate.

  All at once the blackness drained from his sight, and he was again in the Folcroft room. The Forrester girl lay before him, eyes open, breathing softly.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  "What is it, Remo?" Smith asked in a hushed voice.

  Remo closed his dark eyes once, squeezing hard. Perspiration oozed from every pore. He leaned on the hospital bed. "I don't know," he admitted. His breathing became labored and he panted, trying to catch his breath. His throat felt raw and swollen.

  "Is this like the last fainting spell?" Smith asked.

  "Fainting spell?" Remo turned on Smith as if the director were out of his mind. The room was dimming. He realized that the yellow sulphur smoke had somehow expanded. It was as if he were looking at everything through a veneer of yellow gauze. The rotten-egg stench filled the room, clogging his nostrils. He had forgotten to breathe through his mouth.

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  "You were out for more than five minutes," Smith said.

  "What are you talking about, Smitty?" Remo said.

  The smoke in the room was heavy and its sheer thereness crawled with subtle menace. He felt as if there were just enough good oxygen in the room to keep him alive. No more.

  "After the girl spoke, you seemed to fade off. The smoke you see was produced somehow by your own body during that interval. Perhaps you absorbed it through your skin at the Truth Church ranch."

  Remo began to protest. The words died in his throat.

  Both men watched in wonder as the faint yellow haze began to pulsate with the regularity of a steady beating heart. The room gradually brightened as the incandescent fog grew with each passing second.

  Remo felt the sensitive hairs on his arm lift and tingle. The strange force within his mind stirred, stretching as one awakened from an ancient slumber.

  The yellow smoke rose slowly toward the center of the ceiling as if it were being drawn into a black hole. Smith's blinking gaze followed it. In a matter of seconds, it had formed an odious, swirling mass that completely obscured the dingy acoustical tiles above.

  The glowing cloud throbbed with a regularity that was at once familiar and frightening to Remo, for he knew that the pulsing of the living cloud matched the beating of his own heart.

  It hovered there, like an octopus of mist drawing its tentacles tightly about it.

  Without warning, the swirling cloud gushed down

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  from the ceiling. The thick mass of smoke surged into the gently rising chest of Allison Forrester.

  At its touch the girl twisted unnaturally. Her head arched back into the hospital pillow, and her mouth shot open, her cracked and swollen tongue darting forward in pain. The force within the yellow cloud passed through her thin hospital nightgown to vanish within the girl's straining bosom.

  Mouth agape, Smith looked from the girl to Remo and back to the girl again, trying to comprehend what had just transpired.

  Allison Forrester sat bolt upright in bed. She turned to look at Remo. But the eyes that gazed upon him were not the eyes of Allison Forrester. They w
ere as black as beads of liquid tar.

  "Why do you resist?" The voice was old and very reasonable. The eyes remained malevolent, and Remo knew that they belonged to the demon force within his mind. "You have only to ask the one you call 'father,' and all will be made clear to you. East has met West, young Sinanju. It is no use resisting. The sun god will have what is his."

  The girl's hand snaked out, gripping Remo's forearm. He felt the yellow smoke pass back through his skin like a slow jolt of electricity. Remo broke free.

  The girl dropped lifelessly back to the bed. The violence of the motion tore the intravenous tube from her arm, and the end slapped hollowly against the metal support pipe. A small puff of yellow mist curled from her nostrils to vanish in the fetid air.

  Remo stepped back, horror distorting his features. The presence had reasserted itself within his mind,

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  stronger than before. He could feel the power of the Delphic oracle swelling like a tumor within him.

  Smith was shaking his head in disbelief. "What does all this mean?" he asked breathlessly, unable to reconcile all he had just witnessed with anything he knew to be real.

  "I don't know," Remo said tensely. "But I think I know who will."

  Like a man under sentence of death, he trudged resolutely to the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Master of Sinanju sat morosely in his Folcroft quarters, the skirts of his white mourning robes pulled tightly around his bony knees and tucked neatly away beneath his sandaled feet.

  Chiun had not stirred from his simple reed mat for hours. A great sadness filled his heart as he awaited Remo's dreaded return.

  Around the room the light from more than two dozen squat white beeswax tapers played among the dusty pleats of the heavy woolen drapes.

  The Master of Sinanju had prayed to the souls of his ancestors for guidance in this terrible time, but no inspiration touched his receptive essence. The thoughts crowding his mind were too deep and troubling.

  He didn't know if he could face what had once been Remo.

  Chiun had spent this final hour of solitude berating himself for this, his ultimate failure. He had failed himself and his son, along with the tiny fishing village that relied on them both.

  Chiun was to blame for not forcing Remo to listen to reason. If he had related the legend of Tang, Remo might have saved himself. Remo would have

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  understood. Then they could have shaken the dust of this barbarian nation from their sandals, and gone off to ply their trade in other, more fortunate lands.

  But the curse of Tang prevented all of that. The inevitability of what had been foretold, at a time when this so-called Western civilization was in its infancy, had overtaken all.

  East had met West.

  And another, darker part of his soul knew that if Remo had now become as he suspected him to be, then the Master of Sinanju could not allow his adopted son to live. It was, above all, this knowledge that weighed so heavily on Chiun's frail shoulders.

  A shallow copper bowl of incense sat on the floor before him, and when the Master of Sinanju heard the unmistakable sound of Remo's feet gliding up the hallway, he spun a long taper between his fingers and touched the burning wick to the incense. The contents of the bowl flashed to life.

  Chiun pressed his fingers together at the taper's tip, extinguishing the yellowish flame. Thus prepared, he stared stonily at the heavy metal door. And waited. For all had been foretold.

  Remo tapped lightly.

  "Little Father?" he called softly.

  "Come in, my son," Chiun said, voice as thin as a reed.

  Remo pushed the door into the room. The flickering candlelight on his bony face gave him the gaunt aspect of a houseless specter.

  Chiun beckoned with a skeletal finger. "Seat yourself before me, my son."

  A second mat had been spread out on the carpet

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  before the Master of Sinanju. Remo sank weightlessly to the floor.

  Remo raised his nose at the smell of the incense. "Sheesh, what are you doing—burning alley cats?"

  Chiun ignored the remark. "You are not well," he observed.

  Remo gave a halfhearted shrug. "I've been better," he admitted.

  Chiun nodded in understanding and stared at the incandescent center of the incense pot. "The sulphur smell is quite strong," he said.

  A great sadness clung to his teacher, and it deepened Remo's anguish to know that it was he who had placed this burden upon Chiun's thin shoulders.

  A silence existed between them for a time. Neither man spoke. Finally Remo cleared his throat.

  "What is happening to me, Little Father?" he asked quietly.

  "What do you feel, my son?" Chiun countered.

  "There's something inside me. Inside my brain," Remo said with difficulty. "It feels like it's taking over my mind. Every time it forces its will upon me, it gets stronger." He rotated his thick wrists in ab-sentminded agitation. "Chiun, I don't know if I can keep fighting it off."

  Eyes slitting, Chiun nodded. "The prophecy is fulfilled," he intoned. His voice was hollow and distant.

  "The legend of Master Tang?"

  Chiun looked up from the incense bowl. "It grieves me, Remo, that I did not sooner impart this tale to you." His mouth grew grim. "But we who are one with Sinanju understand that it is not possible to avoid destiny."

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  "Tell me about Tang," said Remo. It was the first time in his life he could remember asking to be told a Sinanju legend.

  Chiun stroked his wispy beard. "It is quite an interesting tale, Remo," he said. "It is not terribly old, either—a trifle over two thousand years by Western dating." As Chiun settled back to retell the ancient legend, a profound sadness marked his web-wrinkled countenance.

  ' 'Master Tang was possessed of a quality most rare to Sinanju Masters, Remo," Chiun began. "A quality, in truth, rare in members of our ancestral village."

  Remo leaned closer, very interested of face.

  Chiun hung his head, as if relating a personal disgrace. "Master Tang was a dullard," he whispered.

  "That's a quality?" Remo asked.

  "Qualities are measured in extremes," explained Chiun. "To gauge the worth of something, it must first be set beside a thing of worthlessness. And so it was with the dullness of Tang, measured against the brilliance of all Masters who came before."

  Remo's brow puckered in puzzlement. Chiun went on.

  "Just as it is true that qualities are measured in extremes, it was -also true that Tang was a most extreme individual. Now, it is written that the Master who trained Tang was skillful and swift, and when it came time for him to choose a successor, many curried favor but none could perform to his satisfaction." Chiun closed his almond eyes. His voice became that of another. "Woe to Sinanju. Woe to the Master. None are worthy. So the line must end. The babies would have to be cast into the sea. For that is what the women of

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  Sinanju were forced to do when work and food were wanting. They threw the infants into the icy waters of the bay, pretending they were sending them home to be born in better times—but this was just a fable to console themselves. For what they were doing was the unthinkable. Woe to the Master, for it was his labors which sustained the village—and it was his failure that would end a tradition already three thousand years old. Oh, how sad a fate for Sinanju, and for the Master Paekjo, who was known as 'the Swan,' because he plied his art with the grace of a swan in flight."

  Remo wondered if swans were all that graceful but kept his mouth shut.

  "Master Paekjo toured the village, his head held high, for he was, after all, still Reigning Master of Sinanju. Everywhere his foot alighted, he was greeted with jeers and stones. The women of the village did spit upon his cloak and hurl abuses upon him. The children threw dirt and rocks at his back, shouting after him that he had failed the village of his ancestors and that he should send himself home to the sea, and other calumnies. The men
of the village, rightfully fearing the wrath of an angry Master, fled to a nearby village where drinks of fermented grains were dispensed and loose women from Pyongyang sold themselves."

  "Those people were scum," said Remo bitterly. "He should have wasted the whole ungrateful lot of them."

  "Ah, but waste them Paekjo could not," said Chiun, lifting an instructive finger ceilingward. "For it is written that the Master cannot raise his hand against a member of the village. And, alas, he was

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  both protector and provider, and understood that the

  people's anger stemmed from a fear of the future.

  "So this was to be his final tour of his beloved Sinanju, for while the coffers in the House of the Master were full, due to his tireless labors, with no heir they were fated to run empty. This is a sad fact of life, Remo. The best Paekjo could hope for would be to leave forever his beloved home and ply his trade in foreign lands until his bitter end days, and thus save the infants of his reign from the cold waters of the West Korea Bay, and so preserve his good name in the Book of Sinanju."

  Chiun's tight-squeezed eyes relaxed. His pupils, touched by candlelight, shrank to ebony points. "This, Remo, was the reason for his final tour." Remo nodded. A Master lived for his place in history—the only thing that survived his passing.

  "But on his way from the village," Chiun resumed, "Paekjo did notice something wallowing in the mud and ordure at the outskirts. A child, weak of limb and dull of senses. An idiot-youth, abandoned by a lesser family, who daily scrounged for scraps and rice hulls for sustenance. And the Master's heart filled with pity. For it was for this child, and others like him, that all Masters of Sinanju plied their deadly trade.

  "Seeing this foundling, Master Paekjo turned to those who dogged his footsteps, vilifying him. And his countenance grew wrathful. The women, taken aback, ceased their shouting, clasped their abusive children to them in fright. These slatterns did cry and beat their breasts, rending their garments. And the words they shouted were these—'O wise and

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  benevolent Master. Do not be angry with us, who did question thy perfection. For we are but women.'

  "And the Master fixed his steely gaze upon these ingrates and he spat, 'Women of Sinanju, begone! You who were not able to breed a cup worthy to receive the ocean that is Sinanju are as worthless as the children who cower at your hems. Your cowardly husbands hide from my sight and grow fat under the beneficence of my toil, yet their seed is like a mongrel's waste—plentiful and valueless. Hear me now. Though your lives are filled with shame and sloth, though the very sight of you is painful, the Master of Sinanju and his successor will continue to fill your unworthy bellies.'