Funny Money td-18

by Warren Murphy

  Driving to the house overlooking Magen's Bay, the three did not take the experimental roads Alstein had tried. They knew the best way, because they had watched him wander all night over the little TV set. As the now hot morning made breathing difficult in the car, Sergeant Pitulski wondered why Mr. Gordons wanted to accompany him.

  "Because you drink. There is nothing more unreliable than a human being with alcohol in his bloodstream."

  "I fight better drunk than sober," said Pitulski.

  "A chemical illusion," said Mr. Gordons as he drove up winding Mafoli Avenue; down behind them they could see Charlotte Amalie at the foot of the rising hill, and the fine white cruise ships docked in the bay.

  "May I ask why we want to kill those two?" said Jellicoe. "I mean if you want to tell us."

  "I have no desire not to tell you. The one without the beard, which would indicate he was younger, has extraordinary strength. He damaged my left side. Now if he could do this, then either he or the bearded one, or both together, could destroy me. Correct?"

  "Correct," said Jellicoe. "But the Oriental said he didn't want to. That was the one thing he made clear. That he didn't want to tangle with you."

  "'Tangle,' I take it, means battle," said Gordons. "That is one thing he said. Just because a person says something does not mean he will act upon it."

  "But we had to go find them, didn't we?" asked Jellicoe.

  "You are correct. That only indicates, however, that they are not coming after me now," said Mr. Gordons.

  "And from what I gathered, they don't want to come after you. At least not the old one who seems to get his way; he doesn't want to come after you at all, ever," said Jellicoe.

  "Who gives a shit?" said Sergeant Pitulski.

  "Will you shut up, you dummy?" said Jellicoe.

  Mr. Gordons continued driving smoothly, apparently ignoring Pitulski.

  "I too tend sixty-four percent positive, plus or minus eight percent, that the bearded one would avoid me. At least for now. And I too could avoid them."

  "Then why are you, we, us, all of us trying to kill them?"

  "Because it is optimum," said Mr. Gordons.

  "I don't understand."

  "If they are dead, my chances of survival improve. Therefore, I will kill them. In killing them, I will also become effective against anyone like them."

  "All right, can I ask why? I mean, why do you want to become effective against them and people like them?"

  "To maximize my survival."

  "But there's got to be more of a reason. There's such a small chance you would ever meet people like them again. I mean, do you spend all your time just surviving?"

  "Exactly," said Mr. Gordons.

  "Doing nothing but surviving?"

  "Surviving requires all my effort."

  "How about love?" asked Jellicoe, desperately hoping to strike some emotion other than this computer-like insistence on only survival.

  "Love has as many meanings as there are people." said Mr. Gordons. "It is not capable of programming," he added, and he turned up a narrow road that rose above Magen's Bay.

  "There it is, Sergeant Pitulski," said Mr. Gordons as they stopped at a driveway which was cut into a clearing. In the center of the small clearing was a wooden house with a large hole in the front door where a doorknob might have been.

  "Now this is how I want you to do it," said Mr. Gordons, as he strapped the flamethrower unit to Sergeant Pitulski's back and checked the nozzle end of the tube which fitted under his arm. "I don't want a direct spray that can be evaded. I want you to first set the far side of the house aflame, then move the flame around left in a circle that comes almost to your feet, and then keep going onward toward your right until the circle is closed. With the fire, you will make the flames fatter toward the house until we have a funeral fire."

  Sergeant Pitulski said it wasn't the Marine way; Mr. Gordons said it was the way it would be done.

  The first line of flame shot in an arch over the dry wooden house and the droplets caught and flared wherever they landed. In a surprisingly even circle, Sergeant Pitulski set the brush aflame and brought the circle to a close, but, as he did so, he lost the exact sighting of the house in the rising flame. He stepped back to higher ground and haphazardly filled in the center of the circle, but such was the dryness of the brush and wood of the house that the whole area went roaring up under the infusion of liquid flame. Sergeant Pitulski backed away from the roaring heat.

  "Well, that's it," said Jellicoe, watching from the front seat as Mr. Gordons got back into the car.

  "Invalid," said Mr. Gordons and started the car with a roar and spun it around and down the road. As Jellicoe looked back, he saw two figures, one in a barely smoking kimono and the other with what appeared to be a bandaged arm, flip Sergeant Pitulski into his own pyre. The fatty body made nary a pop on its way to crispness.

  Mr. Gordons's driving amazed Jellicoe. He took corners at just the maximum possible speed, and soon he was on the open highway, but looking behind, Jellicoe could see that the young man with the damaged shoulder was not only keeping up with them, but was gaining on them, driving at a speed so incredible that he seemed to churn above the concrete road itself.

  "On with your water gear, On with it. It's in the back seat," said Mr. Gordons. "It's your one chance for survival. Quickly." Jellicoe struggled with the suit as they speeded along the bumpy mountain road, but gave up and settled for the tanks and the mask and fins. Into the small gate at Magen's Bay Beach, Mr. Gordons spun the car, skidding to avoid a large beach house. There were shrieks from bathers. To avoid a tree, Mr. Gordons ran over a little toddler. Down the beach, he braked the car to a skidding, sandy stop.

  "Out. The water is your only chance. Quickly, into it."

  With his flippers on, Jellicoe could only penguin walk toward the water, but once in it, his flippers began to work, and he got his rubber mouthpiece set in his teeth and turned on the tank and blessedly moved along the sandy bottom.

  Magen's Bay was not deep near the shore so Jellicoe swam directly out to sea. He was at home here in these clear waters, at home because what he feared was on land. And he thought that perhaps when man first left the sea, crawled up in that primitive state onto land, he had done so to escape what might be in the sea.

  At forty feet deep, his back flipper caught in something and he turned to dislodge it. When he did, he saw the young man with the injured shoulder. His face was very calm.

  In the water, Jellicoe worked on one chance, holding the man down without air. Surprisingly, the man did not resist. Jellicoe put his arms around the neck and the man was motionless, this man whose only name Jellicoe knew was Remo.

  Jellicoe saw no bubbles and the man did not resist. So Jellicoe held for ten minutes, then released, and rose toward the glittering surface, having earned, he thought, his hundred thousand dollars.

  But he stopped short of the light above him. Something was tugging at his flippers. It was Remo. And he tugged downward and when his face was level with Jellicoe's face mask, he smiled and removed the mouthpiece connected to the air from the tanks behind the diver. And as water flooded Jellicoe's lungs, he had a strange thought: he had never had a chance to get rid of the metal spur. And then there was something even more strange. Under water, he thought he heard this Remo say something, something that sounded like:

  "That's the biz, sweetheart."

  On a cliff over Magen's Bay, Mr. Gordons had stopped to watch the combat beneath clear water.

  "That makes negative for water as well as fire as well as metal," he said softly to himself. "If only I were more creative. This new program I acquired at O'Hare Airport, it can be improved. But how?"

  He heard something move in the brush fifty yards away and although he could not see it, he could track its direction. It moved faster than men could run and when it emerged from the bushes it stopped. In robes singed dark at the edges was the Oriental.

  "Mr. Gordons, why do you persist?" asked Chiun.
"What endeavors do we, my son and I, endanger of yours? Tell us so we may avoid them."

  "Your existence is what endangers me."

  "How? We seek not to assault you."

  "So you say."

  "So I show. I keep my distance. Without your lackeys near you, I still keep my distance."

  "Would you move against me? Attack," said Mr. Gordons.

  "No," said the Master of Sinanju. "You attack me, if you dare."

  "I have already. With those lackeys."

  "Attack me with your person," defied Chiun.

  "Are you a person?" asked Mr. Gordons.

  "Yes. The most skilled of persons," said Chiun.

  "I wondered. I wondered how you knew that he who attacks with himself first, gives away his patterns of attack and becomes the more vulnerable," said Mr. Gordons.

  "The question is how do you know, white man," said Chiun.

  "It is my nature. By nature, I react."

  "The gun and the fire were not reactions," said Chiun.

  "A bit of my new creativity," said Mr. Gordons. "It is something I need more of."

  "Thank you," said the Master of Sinanju and disappeared back into the thick growth covering the hill rising above Magen's Bay. Neither he nor Remo would have to wait for a later generation of the Masters of Sinanju. Mr. Gordons had given himself away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "We attack," said Chiun, and Remo shrugged in confusion for he saw no enemy, as he had seen no enemy when they had left St. Thomas and Chiun had said "We attack," as he had seen no enemy in the NASA Space Center in Houston when Chiun had said "We attack," as he had seen no enemy when the office of public relations at NASA had said:

  "The research on the creativity component has pretty well been given up because of cutbacks in the program. It's now non-operative."

  "Aha," Chiun had said.

  "Does that mean it's closed down?" Remo asked.

  "Pretty much," said the public relations man.

  "We understood you the first time," Chiun said.

  "Horsefeathers," said Remo. According to a brochure on unmanned space flight that they got from the public relations man, the component they sought had been developed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and by the time their plane had landed, both Remo and Chiun were exhausted from the pressures of flight upon systems more finely tuned and more sensitive than the average person's.

  The Wilkins Laboratory, as it was called, was a three-story building, rising from a flat grassy plain, as though someone had stuck an isolated box on a bare floor. It was dusk when Remo and Chiun arrived: all three floors of the laboratory were lit.

  "Doesn't look like there's been any cutback here," said Remo.

  "We attack," said Chiun.

  "What the hell do we attack? First you want to run, then after Mr. Gordons comes after us, you want to attack and I don't see what we're attacking."

  "His weakness. He gave us his weakness."

  "I already saw his weakness. He moves funny. If I hadn't thought that was him in the water in Magen's Bay, I could have gotten him back in St. Thomas. He decoyed me."

  "Wrong," said Chiun. "He bracketed us. To find out what is, he found out what wasn't. Neither metal, nor fire, nor water worked against us. He found this out without risk to himself. But in his arrogance, he told us that he would not leave us alone, so we must attack."

  "But you said a future generation, and only when they knew Mr. Gordons's flaws."

  "We are that generation. He told me on the cliffs. He lacks creativity. Now this is a place that designs machines for creativity. Mr. Gordons knew about it. That is why he wanted that thingamajig you gave him at the airport in that dirty city. Now we are here. And we attack. You will, of course, take care of the details."

  "Well, how are we going to get an attack out of creativity?"

  "I do not know machines," said Chiun. "I am not Japanese or white. That's your job. All whites know machines."

  "All Orientals don't know Sinanju; why should all whites know machines? I don't know anything about machines."

  "Then ask someone. You will learn it quickly."

  "I can maybe change a sparkplug, Little Father."

  "See. I told you. You know machines. All whites know machines. You fixed the machine with the offensive drama."

  "That was just threading a movie projector reel."

  "And it will be just figuring out an attack that uses a machines that makes creativity."

  "These are space-age computers, Chiun. Not movie projectors."

  "We attack," said Chiun, advancing on the building.

  "How do we know we'll ever see Gordons again?" asked Remo.

  "Aha," said Chiun, clutching a lump of lead that he wore on a thong around his neck. "We know. Inside here is the secret," but he would say no more because while he knew Remo would be good with machines, because all whites were, he was still afraid that Remo might somehow find a way to break the metal spur by which Gordons could track them down. Chiun would keep it wrapped in lead until it was time to call Gordons to join them.

  When they reached the front door of the laboratory, a woman's voice, husky with too many cigarettes and dry martinis, asked, "Who's there?" Remo looked for the woman but did not see her.

  "I said who's there?" The voice did not sound as if it came over a speaker but when the voice repeated the question, Chiun spotted the source. It was a speaker, apparently of incredible fidelity, without the ring or vibration of normal speakers.

  "The Master of Sinanju and pupil," said Chiun.

  "Put your hands on the door."

  Chiun placed his long-nailed hands flat on the metal door. Remo followed, keeping alert to any possible attack from behind.

  "All right, you perspire. You can come in."

  The door slid to the right, revealing a lighted passageway. As they entered, Remo and Chiun cursorily checked above and alongside the door. No one.

  The passageway smelled strangely like a bar.

  The door closed behind them.

  "All right. Talk. Who sent you?"

  "We're here about a creativity program," said Remo.

  "I thought so, you bastards. The rat doesn't dare come here himself. How much did he offer to pay you? I'll top it."

  "In gold?" asked Chiun.

  "Cash," said the voice.

  "If it were gold, the House of Sinanju is at this moment seeking employ."

  "Sinanju? That's a town in Korea, right. Just a second. Hold on. Okay, Sinanju, North Korea, House of. A secretive society of assassins, known for exceptional ruthlessness and willingness to hire itself out to any buyer. Said to be the sun source of the martial arts, but little is known of its existence. Nothing is known of its ways or even if it is not just some ancient tale used by the dynasties of China to frighten people into submission. You don't look that frightening, fella."

  "I am not. I am but a vessel of humility come to your great house, oh, beautiful maiden of the machines," said Chiun, who whispered to Remo, "She probably has no gold. Do not take paper money."

  "I heard that. Come on in. You look okay."

  A door slid open in the apparently seamless wall to their right. Sitting at a little cocktail table with shelves of liquor behind her was a blonde with a body that could make a priest burn his collar. Her breasts protruded in mammoth declaration of milk potential, reaching out to the limits of a stretching white smock. Her waist nosedived in and roared out at the hips again. A short light blue skirt revealed smooth white thighs.

  When Remo finally noticed her eyes, he saw they were blue. And bloodshot.

  "What can I offer you to drink?" she said. "Sit down."

  "Ah, sweet delicate flower," said Chiun. "What soaring heights your presence imparts to our humble hearts."

  "Glad to meet you," said Remo.

  "You're lying through your teeth," she said, pointing a martini glass at Remo. "You can't bullshit me. You like my boobs or my brains." Then she pointed to Chiun. "You, on the other hand, are on the level. You're real. T
ell your phony friend not to lay it on."

  "He is but ignorant of true sensitivity. True graciousness of which you are the embodiment, fair lady."

  "All right. But make sure he keeps his hands to himself," she said. "What'll you have to drink? Hey, Mr. Seagrams. Make it snappy with the booze."

  From behind the bar, a liquor cart rolled out, with glasses tinkling as it went.

  "Just water, thank you," said Chiun.

  "Same for me," said Remo.

  "Where'd you meet this wet blanket?" the woman asked Chiun.

  "I have my difficulties with him, as you see."

  "Difficulties. I can tell you about difficulties."

  Metal trays on metal arms moved and shuffled bottles and glasses and ice. To make the water, one tray melted ice cubes.

  "These machines are driving me to the brink of schizophrenia," she said. "You program them and program them and then they misfunction. If I programmed Mr. Seagrams once to offer drinks whenever someone enters, I programmed him a hundred times. You give a drink or an explanation why you can't. I don't know why it should be so difficult."

  "I know your problems," said Chiun, nodding to Remo. "But I thought machines never forget."

  "Well, it's not really the machines. It's that the programming has to be incredibly subtle. I'm Vanessa Carlton, Dr. Carlton. Maybe you've heard of me."

  "Ah, the famous Dr. Carlton," said Chiun.

  Remo looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Chiun not only hadn't heard of Dr. Carlton, he still hadn't heard of Newton, Edison, and Einstein.

  "Unmanned space flight. We do the computer components here which are the brains of it. A little freshening on the martini, Mr. Seagrams," she said, and the cart sent out a shiny arm that brought the martini glass to a large bottle of gin, filled it with two clear shots and then added a small spray of vermouth.

  "You want something to eat?"

  "Some brown rice would be nice," said Chiun.

  "Hey. Johnny Walker. Some brown rice. A hundred grams. And don't let it stick this time. Where was I?"

  "You being the brains of the unmanned space program," said Remo.

  "An unmanned space program is nothing without its compost," said Chiun.

  "Computer components. You're right. Well, if NASA were running Columbus's expedition, they would have withheld the rudder to save costs. I mean it. They don't spring for spit. Hey, this martini is good. You're getting better looking. What's your name?"