Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

  Coloring, Smith went on. "Winston was never told the truth. Only that his parents had died and that I had been appointed his guardian in their absence. If anything were to happen to Remo, the organization would have an operative after Winston's SEAL training was complete."

  "Why was he not given to me?" Chiun complained.

  "I assumed Remo would object to allowing his son to undergo Sinanju training. And frankly, after all that has transpired over the years, I was looking for an agent who was more . . . er . . . controllable."

  "You got that right," said Remo. "You already ruined my life. I wouldn't have let you ruin his." Remo caught himself. "Not that this squid is any son of mine."

  "You do not know that."

  "For one thing," Remo said, "no son of mine would wear an earring."

  "Goat-fuck," Winston Smith said. "Owww. Why does he do that?" Winston asked nobody in particular.

  "Chiun enjoys inflicting pain," said Remo.

  "What do you mean by agent?" Winston asked. He was ignored.

  "A Navy SEAL seemed the next-best thing," finished Smith.

  "You insult Sinanju," Chiun said coldly.

  "And you insult the Navy," Winston retorted. "SEAL Team Six is the best there is."

  "You have a lot to learn, sonny," said Remo.

  "You have a lot to learn, sonny," a new voice said.

  "Is there an echo in here?" Remo wondered.

  "Who said that?" Smith demanded.

  "My gun," said Winston Smith in a strange voice.

  "Your gun talks?" said Remo skeptically.

  "It's configured to my voice," Winston blurted. "It only repeats what I say. How come it recognizes your voice pattern?"

  "There is your proof, Remo," Chiun cried.

  "Since when is a talking gun proof of paternity?"

  "Why did you return in defiance of my express wishes, Winston?" asked Smith.

  "To pay you back, you cold mother."

  "How have I wronged you? I raised you, supported you, saw that you had opportunities in life."

  "And you dumped me in military schools as soon as you could get rid of me," Winston Smith said hotly. "I thought you were my uncle. I thought you were proud of me. Now I come to find out I'm some kind of fucking guinea pig. My whole life is a lie."

  "Join the club," said Remo. "You should see what he did to me."

  "What?"

  "I've been dead for twenty years."

  Winston looked as blank as his camo face would allow.

  Smith cleared his throat. "Winston, the circumstances that forced me to write you off have turned out to be temporary. I regret the cold tone of my letter, but it was in your best interests. You were a loose end that needed tying."

  "Thanks a heap."

  "The crisis has passed," Smith continued. "It is in my power to return you to your unit with minimum disciplinary repercussions."

  "Who made you admiral of the fucking fleet?"

  Smith winced. "More than that I cannot say."

  "Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather bail."

  "So bail," said Remo, opening the door for him. "No one's stopping you."

  "What about this guy?"

  Chiun withdrew his fingernails from Winston Smith's earlobe. Smith got up, recovering his pistol.

  Remo looked Winston Smith in the eye for a long time. "No way he's related to me," he said flatly.

  "That goes double for me," Winston said.

  "I'm sorry that both of you have had to come to the truth so abruptly and without preparation," said Harold Smith. "But the facts remain. Remo, I am your father, and Winston, you are my grandson, Remo's son."

  "Prove it," said Remo, folding his arms.

  "Yeah," said Winston, copying Remo's posture. "Prove it."

  Chiun grasped the puffs of hair over both ears in frustration. "They are both blind."

  "We can begin where we left off before we were interrupted," said Smith. "I will call my wife at her sister's home."

  Smith sat down and began dialing.

  "This is Harold. How are you? Is my wife staying there? Thank you. Put her on."

  Smith engaged the speakerphone function.

  Mrs. Smith sounded shocked. "Harold! Where are you?"

  "Folcroft. All is well again. The IRS have gone. It was a simple misunderstanding. We should be able to go home tomorrow, if not tonight."

  "Harold, it was horrible. They threw me out into the street!"

  "I know, dear. But it is over. Maude, I would like to go over our discussion of last night."

  "Discussion?"

  "Yes, you remember. You came to Folcroft last night."

  "Harold, I was here all last night, frantic with worry. I tried calling the hospital, but no one would give me any satisfaction."

  "Excuse me?" said Smith, gray eyes blinking rapidly.

  "Harold, what are you talking about? Are you well?"

  Flustered, Harold Smith said, "It is nothing. It must have been a dream. I will be home as soon as I can."

  Smith abruptly hung up. "Er," he began, "it appears there has been a slight misunderstanding."

  "Hah!" said Remo. "I knew it!"

  "But Maude came to me last night," he said dully.

  "Yeah," Remo said. "And we all saw pink bunny rabbits and purple pterodactyls. None of them were real, either."

  Smith made long faces as he sat thinking.

  "We did have a conversation about the search for your parentage within hearing of the Dutchman's room," Smith went on. "It is possible that he could have created the illusion of a visit from my wife, to sow confusion and dissension among us."

  "Who's the Dutchman?" asked Winston Smith.

  No one bothered to reply.

  Smith continued. "Then it was all concoction." His face was almost comical with realization.

  "Right," said Remo. "I'm not related to you and you are not related to me. End of freaking story."

  "There is still this one," said Chiun, indicating Winston Smith.

  "Forget him. "

  "He wears your face, Remo," Chiun pointed out.

  "I don't believe it."

  "Neither do I," said Winston Smith. "I'm bailing."

  Smith spoke up. "I am afraid we cannot allow this. You know too much, Winston."

  Winston Smith started backing out of the room. "I don't know jack shit. Except that you're a fraud."

  "If you will not return to your unit, some provision must be made for you. Chiun, render him unconscious, please."

  Chiun shook his aged head. "He is not my son. He is Remo's responsibility."

  "I offer him to you for training," Smith said quickly. "Since Remo has made his intentions of leaving the organization clear, we have need of a new Destroyer. I put him in your hands."

  "Don't I get any say in this?" Remo and Winston said in unison. Their heads snapped around, and their gazes locked.

  After a beat Remo suddenly advanced on Winston Smith. Smith drew a combat knife from a boot sheath. Remo stopped. Suddenly he tossed Winston a set of car keys. He caught them.

  "What's this?"

  "There's a blue Buick parked down the road. Take it. Change your name. And don't look back."

  Winston Smith's camouflage tiger stripes gathered up in confusion. "You're giving me your car?"

  "Once Smith gets his hooks into you, he'll never let go. You have a chance for your own life." Remo gave Harold Smith a hard look. "Which is more than I ever got. Take it and go."

  Winston Smith smiled cockily. "Thanks, jarhead."

  "Don't mention it, swabbie."

  And he was gone.

  Smith rose from his desk. "Remo! We cannot-"

  Remo kicked the door shut. "Forget it, Smitty. Your story may be true or not. Either way, the kid deserves a decent break after the raw deal you handed him."

  "Here! Here!" said Chiun.

  Smith settled back into his chair, features haggard.

  "And what kind of a name is Winston?" Remo demanded.

  "I told yo
u before. A family name. It happens to be my middle name."

  "You ought to be shot just for naming an innocent kid after a cigarette," said Remo.

  Smith made a lemony mouth and said nothing.

  The Master of Sinanju floated up to the glasstopped desk and plucked something out of one voluminous sleeve. He laid it on the black glass.

  Smith squinted.

  "If it is still your wish to end your life," Chiun intoned, "there is the means."

  Smith took up the white coffin-shaped pill, regarded it with an impassive expression and without a word slipped it into the watch pocket of his vest.

  "The crisis has passed."

  No one said anything for a long awkward moment.

  Then Smith said, "I have many loose ends to clean up. Staff to rehire. Patients to calm down. Strings to pull with the IRS and DEA."

  "What about the Dutchman?" asked Remo.

  "His medications will have to be changed. His mind is clearing and the danger is growing. At the moment I am more concerned with Uncle Sam Beasley."

  Smith pulled closer the worn attache case that Big Dick Brull left on the desk. He worked the combination that disarmed the explosive latch charges, exposing a portable computer and telephone handset. He booted it up.

  "The basement computers are inoperative but may be salvageable, even if the data stored on them is not. In the meantime, I will undertake a search for Beasley."

  "Don't forget my mother," Remo reminded. "I'll make you a copy of the drawing."

  "I will do my best as promised," said Smith absently.

  "Do better," warned Remo. "You have a lot of sins to make up for."

  Harold Smith said nothing to that. He was already lost in cyberspace.

  "Come on, Little Father. Let's go panning for gold."

  Hazel eyes widening, the Master of Sinanju followed Remo out of the office.

  Chapter 35

  Remo Williams led the Master of Sinanju down to the Folcroft basement. They walked in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

  There Remo raised the corrugated loading door.

  "Remember when the DEA stormed ashore that second time and you tore into them?" he asked Chiun.

  "They were fools and died fools."

  "You made a lot of noise."

  "Striking terror into one's enemies is never wasted," sniffed Chiun.

  They were standing on the rust-stained concrete loading dock.

  "It covered the whizzing very nicely," said Remo.

  "What whizzing?"

  Remo had picked up a crowbar along the way. He drew back, letting fly.

  It seemed a casual gesture. But the crowbar whizzed once it left his fingers. It kept on whizzing as it arced high out over the sound. The noise it made splashing was too far away to make much impression on their eardrums. But their sharp eyes easily detected the eruption a mile out on the sound where it struck.

  "You threw my gold out to sea!" Chiun cried in horror.

  "No," said Remo. "I threw everyone's gold out to sea. I threw high and far so no one noticed. Not even you. Of course, I had to work really fast and one ingot spun out of control and sank a DEA boat. But I figured they had it coming."

  "What if my gold rusts?" demanded Chiun.

  "You know that gold doesn't rust. Like I kept telling you, it's safe as soap."

  Chiun puffed out his cheeks while his wrinkled face smoldered. "You will recover every dram of gold or you will never hear the end of it," Chiun said in a flinty voice.

  "Done," said Remo unconcernedly.

  "Any gold missing from my share will come out of your share."

  "Fair enough."

  "And any missing from Smith's share comes out of your share, as well. Unless, of course, Smith does not notice it-in which case, it goes into my share."

  Remo blinked. "How is that possible?"

  Chiun levered a quivering finger at the choppy waters of the sound. "Do not think. Swim. I will not endure the thought of the gold of the House of Sinanju lying wet and untended at the bottom of this barbarian bay."

  "Next time let's use a bank."

  "Pah! Banks are untrustworthy."

  "How is that?"

  "They accept your gold and money with smiles and promises of safekeeping. But when you demand it back, they are full of lies and excuses."

  Remo looked puzzled.

  "They never give you back your own money. It is always someone else's," sniffed Chiun.

  Laughing, Remo started down toward the water. Chiun followed, gesticulating in anger with every step.

  Once they reached the water, Chiun noticed the pleased cast of his pupil's face.

  "What are you thinking of?" he asked.

  Remo took the police sketch out of his pocket, carefully unfolding it. "I know what my mother looks like. She talked to me."

  "She was an illusion."

  "No. It was her. The Dutchman is good at projecting illusions, but he couldn't have cast one a whole state away. It was her. I don't know her name, but I know her face and her voice. It's a first step. And my father is out there, whoever he is." Remo stepped out of his shoes. "And I intend to find him."

  "Do not get your hopes too high," Chiun warned.

  Remo looked up from the drawing. "You seemed awfully eager to go along with that crap about Smith being my father. What was that all about?"

  Chiun shrugged. "A mistake. Like your sending that noisy youth away."

  "You think he's my kid?"

  "He wears your face."

  Remo shrugged. "Hard to tell under all that camo paint."

  "I notice you did not wipe it away, the better to see the truth."

  "Maybe I didn't want to know the truth."

  Chiun smiled. "You are a good father, Remo Williams. Even if you have been woefully negligent in the past."

  Remo handed Chiun the folded drawing for safekeeping and without another word slid into the water. It swallowed him without a ripple. After a moment there was no trace of his existence.

  Down the road a car started up.

  The Master of Sinanju stood looking at the regathering water, listening to the fading engine sound as his wizened features pulled tight and concerned.

  Behind him the purple pterodactyls flying low over Folcroft Sanitarium on tiring wings slowly faded against the cobalt sky until they were no more.

  Chapter 36

  Big Dick Brull showed up at the Lippincott Savings Bank unannounced later that day. That was the way IRS usually hit a bank. Without warning. That way no one could bury records, pretending to misplace them or stonewall in other ways.

  Striding through the staid lobby, his head swiveling like a radar dish, confident as only a man who worked for the federal government and had a fresh change of underwear could be, Big Dick Brull made a beeline for the director's office.

  "Richard Brull, IRS, to see Jeremy Lippincott."

  "Are you expected?" asked the secretary.

  "Not if we can help it," said Brull.

  "What shall I tell Mr. Lippincott this is in reference to?"

  "The Folcroft Sanitarium account and a matter of twelve million dollars."

  The secretary dutifully conveyed the information to Jeremy Lippincott by intercom.

  Lippincott's amplified voice was grating. "Confound it! I have already explained the mistake to the IRS. Twice. Why are they sending more people to annoy me?"

  "Because," barked Big Dick Brull into the speaker, "IRS takes no answers at face value, and no prisoners at all."

  "Sir! You can't go in there!" the secretary protested.

  Big Dick Brull barged in anyway. He crossed the threshold, and behind his desk, Jeremy Lippincott froze in midnibble, eyes startled, the raw carrot dropping from his poufy pink fingers.

  Both men froze for an eternity that lasted barely thirty seconds. Lippincott gulped guiltily.

  Big Dick Brull lost the contents of his bladder before he lost consciousness.

  THE NEXT THING he knew it was hours later and he was
in hospital being looked over by a team of doctors and his immediate IRS superior, who was looking very displeased.

  "You have a lot of explaining to do, Brull."

  Brull did his best to explain. "It was a big fuzzy bunny rabbit. It followed me from the hospital. It's been following me for days, beating its drum. I don't think it likes me."

  "I received a call from the Almighty. She is very upset at me. In turn, I am very upset with you. It seems you seized a private hospital without going by the book and managed to screw us up with DEA, FEMA and no one knows who else."

  Big Dick Brull looked at his naked toes peeping out from under the bed sheet. "A bunny wabbit stole my shoes," he said in a tiny voice. "Pterodactyls ate my paperwork."

  "There, there," he was told by one of the attending physicians. "No need to repeat it all. We heard enough while you were under. Why don't you rest?"

  "Dickie wants to go home," Brull said in a whiny voice.

  "That's not possible right now. In fact, we're thinking of moving you to a place where they know how to deal with people who see pink rabbits and purple pterodactyls."

  Big Dick Brull looked blank.

  "Yes. It's a marvelous facility. Not very far from here, in fact. Perhaps you've heard of it. Folcroft Sanitarium?"

  Big Dick Brull opened his mouth to scream. All that came out was a mousey squeak. Then they injected the needle into his forearm.

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