Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

  So Remo had never paid his respects to his old self.

  Arriving at sunset, Remo now stood looking down at his own grave for a very long time. His strong, angular face with its high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes might have been a death mask for all the emotion it revealed. Remo stood perfectly still. For nearly an hour he stood without moving a muscle.

  The headstone had been bought on the cheap. There was his name, an incised cross, but no dates of birth or death. No one knew his birthday anyway. Not even Remo. Wildwood Cemetery was not exactly Potter's Field, but it wasn't much of a step above it.

  A nameless hobo lay buried in the dirt under his feet. But Remo wasn't thinking of him. He was looking at all that was left of his old life. A name on a granite stone, a cross and nothing more. The leaves of autumn lay scattered about the ground, and from time to time the wind sent them chasing one another like frisky squirrels. For most of his life he had lived like one of those leaves, rootless and disconnected.

  After a while Remo crossed his legs at the ankles and scissored down into a lotus position before his own grave. His body compressed the dry, dead leaves of the season, and they crumpled silently under him because he had perfect control over his body and was trained to make no sounds he didn't want heard.

  Resting his unusually thick wrists, one on each knee, he let his loose fingers dangle. Remo closed his eyes.

  The one who had trained him told him many years ago that all the answers he sought in life lay within him. It was true. He had learned to breathe correctly, not to put the processed poisons civilization called food into his body and to use all five of his senses fully and without succumbing to illusion. And once those things had been mastered, Remo Williams truly began to master his mind and body.

  One day, when he was whole in mind and spirit and flesh, Remo had sat before his Master and asked, "I know how to breathe."

  "Because of me."

  "I know how to kill."

  "Because I have taught you the blows."

  "I know myself fully."

  "Except in one way."

  "Yes," Remo had replied, and was surprised. He was always surprised by his Master. "I don't know who I am."

  "You are my pupil. You are next in line after me. You are of Sinanju. Nothing else matters."

  "Knowing where I came from matters."

  "Not to my ancestors who have adopted you in spirit."

  "I am honored, Little Father. But I must know who I am if I am to go forward."

  "You must go forward because to do otherwise is to wither and die. If on the path before you, you discover the answers to these unimportant questions, this will be good."

  "Knowing who my parents were is not unimportant."

  "If your parents did not deem you important enough to keep, why do you wish to honor their neglect?"

  "I want to see my parents' faces."

  "Look into a mirror, then, for no adult can do so and not see the familiar ghosts of those who came before him."

  Remo had tried looking into a mirror and saw only disappointment written on his strong features.

  Returning to the Master of Sinanju, he'd said, "The mirror told me squat."

  "Then you do not wish to see the truth it holds for you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "In your face is reflected the face of your father. In it also is reflected that of your mother. But they blend in you, so that you may have the eyes of one and the nose of the other. It is necessary to separate the elements to determine the truth. For often a child takes more after one parent than another."

  Remo had felt his face. "I never thought about it that way. Is there any way to figure out who I look more like-my mother or my father?"

  The Master of Sinanju had shrugged helplessly. "With a Korean, yes. In your case, no."

  "Why not?"

  "One baboon looks much like any other. Heh heh. One baboon looks much like any other."

  Remo had frowned but pressed on over the Master of Sinanju's self-satisfied cackling at his own joke.

  "I still want to find my parents."

  "Then look into the mirror of memory-your own mind. For no child is born into this world without seeing the faces of at least one of his parents. And while one's first memory may be buried deep, it is never buried forever."

  "I don't remember my parents at all."

  "But your mind does. You have only to unlock the memory."

  Remo had gone away and meditated for five days, eating only cold rice and drinking only purified water. But no faces appeared in his mind's eye.

  When he complained to the Master of Sinanju later, Chiun had dismissed his complaint with a curt "Then you are not ready."

  "When will I be ready?"

  "When your memory allows itself to be unfolded like chrysanthemum petals."

  For years after that, Remo had shoved the question of his parents into the furthest recesses of his mind. He told himself that they must have died in a car accident, that he had not been abandoned, that there was a good reason someone had set him, an infant, in a wicker basket on an orphanage doorstep. To think otherwise was too painful.

  Now, so many years later, Remo felt he was ready.

  So he sat before his own grave and closed his brown eyes. If necessary, he would meditate all night until he had his answers.

  The leaves swirled about him, and the rising moon was caught in the creaking copper beech branches that lay against the night sky like dead nerve endings. An owl hooted. He hooted again, and again and again until his calls became part of the lonesome night.

  Remo looked deep into himself. Images came and went. The first face he remembered belonged to Sister Mary Margaret, her smooth face framed by the wimple of her habit. She, more than any of the other nuns, had raised him. She was quick with a ruler on the knuckles, but even quicker with a kind word.

  The day he had left the orphanage to make his way in the world, the kindly light in her eyes was replaced by the glow of pride. But that was all the warmth she would give Remo Williams that day.

  "God go with you, Remo Williams," she had said, shaking his hand with a firm detachment that said,

  "We have done our best with you. Visit if you like, but this is no longer your home."

  The coolness had stung. But in later years Remo had understood. He was responsible for himself now.

  Other faces came. He saw his police-academy instructor, his Marine D.I., Kathy Gilhooly, whom he planned to marry before his old life had ended. The judge who sentenced him appeared. So did his lawyer. They had been bought off-although Remo hadn't known it then. The bitter lemony features of Harold W Smith, the man who had engineered the frame, swam into view. Remo made him go away. He skipped over the wrinkled countenance of the Master of Sinanju. He would be of no help now.

  A laughing little girl's face came after a while. Freya, his daughter by Jilda of Lakluun, the blond Viking warrior woman he had encountered during one of his trips to Korea. They were far from him now, safe from the dangerous life Remo led. Remo's face softened as he looked upon his daughter again. He hardly knew her, really. And in his mind's eye, Remo thought he could see a little of his own face in hers.

  There was something about Freya's face that struck a deep, half-forgotten chord. Remo held the little girl's features before his mind's eye, turning the image sideways, trying to pin the inkling down.

  It was there. Something was there. But it was elusive.

  Remo refused to let it go.

  In the gray hours before dawn, he thought he saw a new face. A woman's face. He had never seen the face before. Not as an adult. But it was familiar to him somehow.

  Her face was an oval, and her hair hung down long and straight and black. It was a good face, with warm, loving eyes and a high, intelligent forehead. It reminded him of Freya's face. They had the same eyes.

  His own eyes still closed, Remo reached out as if to touch her.

  The image faded. He tried to summon it again. But it wouldn't come.
r />   Then a voice spoke. "If I could stand up..."

  It was a woman's voice. But it wasn't in his mind. It was here. It was near him. His heart rate picking up, Remo opened his eyes.

  There was only the grave with the name on it that might or might not be his true one.

  Remo started to close his eyes again when the voice came again.

  "If I could stand up where I lie..."

  The voice was behind him. His ears told him that. But his other senses, the ones that had been raised to the pinnacle of human ability, told Remo there was no living thing behind him. His ears detected no beating heart, no crackle of rib cartilege from expanding lungs, no subtle friction of blood coursing through arteries and lesser veins. The bare back of his neck and arms detected no warning of human body heat.

  But the voice sounded real. His sensitive eardrums still reverberated from its echoes.

  Remo came to his feet like an unfolding telescope, whirling, alert and ready for anything.

  The woman looked at him with infinitely sad yet warm eyes. Her hair was pulled tight off her high, smooth brow, but it was as black as the hair of the woman in his mind's eye. Her eyes were the same deep brown.

  "Who-"

  The woman continued, as if reciting a tone poem.

  "If I could stand up where I lie, I would see mountains in all directions. There is a stream called Laughing Brook. If you find my resting place, you will find me."

  "Huh?"

  "If you find me, you will find him."

  "You must find him, my son"

  "Son?" Remo felt his heart jump like a salmon. "Moth-" The word caught in his throat. He had never called a woman that.

  "It is too late for me, but your father lives."

  "Who is he?"

  "He is known to you, my son." The woman lifted a hand and reached out toward him.

  Remo started forward, his right hand up and trembling.

  Just before his fingers could touch hers, she faded from sight. Remo swept the empty air with his hands, but caught up only dead leaves.

  The owl that had been silent for the past hour resumed its eerie call.

  "Hoo. . . hoo.. . hoo."

  Remo Williams stood at the foot of his own grave and trembled from head to toe. He had not trembled from fear since Vietnam. He had not trembled with anticipation since the last time he had known true love very long ago. And he had not trembled with any longing since he had come to Sinanju.

  Now he trembled with all those emotions and more. He had seen his mother. She had spoken to him. He knew this with a certainty that rested not in his brain, but burned hot in the pit of his stomach.

  He had not been forsaken after all.

  Remo sank to his knees and wept tears of relief into the cool loam of the grave that was not truly his and slept until the rising sun sent its rays through the pink of his eyelids, snapping him to instant wakefulness.

  He walked without a backward glance to his waiting car.

  He had looked into the mirror of memory and saw true.

  It was time to find himself.

  Chapter 3

  Jack Koldstad hated jeopardy seizures.

  They were the worst, nastiest, most dangerous operational responsibilites in his capacity as special agent for the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Citizens were ordinarily touchy about being dunned for unpaid taxes or having liens put on their homes and bank accounts. Touchy wasn't the right word, actually. They often went bug-nuts, throwing insane screaming fits, threatening murder if they didn't get their way and promising suicide if that didn't work. The whole psychotic nine yards.

  But at least they had some warning. The thirty-day letter. Then if they ignored that, the ninety-day letter. Followed by no-nonsense telephone calls. A series of firm, escalating steps designed to wear down the deadbeats and promote compliance with the tax code. Usually people came across. It was hard to stay mad at someone for months at a time-especially a faceless arm of Uncle Sam like the IRS.

  But where a high risk of asset flight was indicated, the IRS was allowed by law to set aside its rules concerning seizure of assets and swoop down without warning. Jeopardy seizures, as the official terminology put it. The question was: jeopardy for whom?

  You went in armed with a warrant, breaking down doors if necessary, and confiscated the disputed assets while the tax violator typically screamed for his lawyer. No polite notice. No warning. No nothing.

  Usually the noncompliant taxpayer had the living shit scared out of him, and that was more than enough to cut the bull.

  Sometimes it was the other way around.

  Jack Koldstad had seized the private homes of Mafia dons, corporate criminals and other high-risk tax cheats many times during the course of a long career. Only rarely did he have to negotiate a standoff or swap fire.

  Over the past dozen years, that had changed for the worse. It changed with the coming of cocaine and its derivatives, crack, crank and all that evil stuff. It changed with the rise of the drug kingpin with his unlimited financial power and his ruthless willingness to use that power to preserve his empire of white powder. The drug lords were the only group that never learned to fear the cold arm of the IRS.

  Once the service began going after the drug barons, the rules of the game changed. Bulletproof vests became standard IRS issue. So did 9mm side arms, shotguns and-this was an IRS first-casualties. Agents began dying in the line of duty. Some were targeted for assassination. The IRS had instituted a policy of allowing agents to interface with the public under sanctioned on-file aliases to protect them from retribution. It was a whole new ball game.

  Which was why Jack Koldstad had come to hate jeopardy seizures. Who the hell wants to take a bullet for the tax code?

  So there were precautions he had learned to take. Go in in overwhelming numbers, cut off all escape routes and make damn sure the phone lines are down. Otherwise, you could knock on a door, and while your troops are spreading out, the cheat is calling for reinforcements-or worse, the cops. More than once Koldstad had had police officers draw down on his men, thinking they were black hats or some damn thing.

  Folcroft Sanitarium offered a model scenario. One route in and one out. Off the beaten track. And the phone lines were up on poles, not buried in underground pipe.

  It should have been a textbook seizure. Go in hard and loud, and flash the warrant. Shout down any resistance. Get the job done.

  Folcroft was a private hospital, for Christ's sake. It should have gone by the book.

  It started going wrong the second they raced through the open gates, Koldstad's burgundy Taurus in the lead.

  They had surveyed the area by helicopter the day before. The fact that the hospital fronted Long Island Sound had been worrisome, but no escape boat was tied up at the dock. Hell, the dock was so decrepit, it looked all set to fall into the water.

  A water escape was ruled highly improbable.

  But when they came through the gates, Koldstad was shocked to see boats converging on the same rickety dock. Sleek white Cigarette boats, the kind popular with your basic drug runner.

  It was Koldstad's absolute worst-case scenario. They had sailed into the middle of a drug drop.

  "What do we do?" asked the train, Greenwood. "We're outnumbered."

  "Too late to worry about that," Koldstad bit out. Into his walkie-talkie, he shouted, "It's a damn drop! We gotta take them down before we can secure the site. Everybody out-now!"

  The vehicles screamed, stewing to a crowded stop. Doors popped. Agents piled out, weapons coming up. They crouched behind their vehicles, pistols steady in two-handed marksman's grips. Koldstad took up a kneeling position with his arms stretched out, the butt of his 9mm Taurus resting on the hood of his car, the engine block protecting his body. Beside him Greenwood copied the stance. He licked his dewy upper lip nervously.

  The boats didn't bother with the dock. They ran aground on the shelf of mud below the grass, and men jumped out in blacksuits and crad
ling Uzis and shotguns. Their faces were masked-black pullover hoods that covered the entire head except for a filly oblong around the eyes.

  From behind the shelter of his Taurus, Koldstad called out, "Drop your weapons!" He didn't say IRS. The manual called for it, but hard experience had taught him those three letters usually incited a noncompliant taxpayer to greater violence.

  The men from the boats dropped to their bellies and out of the line of fire before a single warning shot could be squeezed off.

  "Damn!" Koldstad said. He got down and tried to see under the car. There was no sign of them. They were good.

  Greenwood leaned down, his voice excited. "I think I can reconnoiter over to their position by crawling on my belly, sir."

  "Quiet!" Koldstad snapped.

  Then the first perforated gun barrel poked over the slope of the grass. It angled around like a questing snout.

  Greenwood got down on his hands and knees, trying to peer around the right front tire.

  Koldstad opened his mouth to warn him. Too late.

  The questing perforated snout popped once.

  A bullet came and shredded the tread before it mushroomed into Greenwood's brain. It exited, carrying away a piece of skull and scalp the size of a human palm. Greenwood rocked back as if kicked, splaying onto the ground like a beached starfish.

  "Open fire!" Koldstead screamed.

  After that it was bedlam. The air shivered and shook with screaming rounds. Hot shell casings rolled smoking on the ground. The grassy clods at the edge of the lawn jumped like stung frogs. The return fire was murderous. Punch holes began appearing on the other side of the official IRS vehicles.

  The IRS with their handguns and small arms were no match for the superior fire being directed at them. Their only advantage was in having the high ground. Koldstad ordered his men to lay down a sustained fire so the enemy didn't dare poke their heads up to aim.