Misfortune Teller td-115

  Misfortune Teller

  ( The Destroyer - 115 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Eastern Propaganda

  When Chiun an infomercial produced by Man Hyung Sun and his cult of Loonies, he revels in the leader's sales pitch about the Sun Source and upcoming conversion of all humanity into Koreans. After all, what could be more divine. Chiun knows he has found a true holy man. Remo knows he has found a true nut.

  When the CURE pair thwart assassins at a Loonie mass wedding, Chiun is elevated to hero and close personal friend of Sun - and Remo's just fed up. Especially as CURE ships him to North Korea, where brainwashed American Loonies are dancing to their leader's tune in a gambit to all-out war.

  But Korea isn't the only split faction at war. Chiun's had about enough of his pupil's disrespect for the Seer Sun, and the former happy couple is headed for the mother of all battles...

  Destroyer 115: Misfortune Teller

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  When a political insider told Michael Princippi that after losing the 1988 presidential race he had as much chance as Mickey Mouse of getting himself renominated to the same lofty post, he sneered condescendingly and boasted a superior knowledge of politics.

  When a newspaper columnist pointed out to Michael Princippi that after finally being passed over as a "never-ran" in both 1992 and 1996 he had about as much of a chance of staging a comeback in the year 2000 as Halley's Comet, silent movies and the dodo, he told the man to eat his political dust.

  And when, on the day that would begin the strongest push for unification of North and South Korea since 1946 and would also spark a near meltdown between the U.S. and both Korean governments, someone told him that he would soon achieve a power he could never understand and release a force so deadly that it could quite literally mean the destruction of civilization, he would have said that it was about damned time. But what he truly needed to get the ball rolling was for someone to sign his nomination papers.

  "It's a bit premature, wouldn't you say, Governor?" his lawyer asked him guardedly on that fateful afternoon.

  "What are you talking about?" Princippi demanded. He was a slight man who stood five foot two in his stocking feet and had the personality of a clogged shower drain.

  "Well, people still remember you," the lawyer said, uncomfortable with having to broach the subject. "Maybe we should wait a few more decades. I hear they're doing some amazing things with cryonics these days," he suggested amiably.

  Princippi's fish-belly face soured. "Where did you go to law school?" he asked.

  The lawyer stiffened. "Is that really relevant?" he asked. It was a sensitive subject. The attorney knew that Princippi had at one time had access to the best legal minds in Massachusetts. The former governor had found his current attorney in a booth at the local Sears.

  Princippi shook his head. "Look, my mind is made up. The stage is set for the comeback of the century. Of the next century," he added.

  "Maybe," the lawyer said. He did not sound convinced.

  As he appraised the attorney, Princippi's eyes suddenly narrowed. The lawyer was sitting on a wobbly old chair in the ex-governor's Brookline, Massachusetts, kitchen.

  "Is it raining out?" asked the man once known as "the Prince" by his constituents.

  Princippi had just noticed that the lawyer's cheaply tailored, off-the-rack suit appeared to be soaked right through. A few roundish patches glistened under the dirty white sunlight that poured through the filthy kitchen window. The attorney shifted. His shoes squished.

  "Not really," he hedged. He carried his arms away from his sides, deliberately keeping his hands away from the slick-appearing wetness of his suit.

  "Why are you soaking wet? Jesus, you're getting water all over my floor!"

  The lawyer sighed. "It's saliva, sir," he said. In deference to his client, he lifted his shoes so that only the tips touched the ancient, cracked linoleum.

  Princippi's bushy black eyebrows bullied their way up onto his forehead. "What?" he asked.

  The lawyer decided not to sugarcoat his reply. "Those nomination papers you gave me for people to sign? I told pedestrians they were for you, just as you instructed." He paused, suddenly unsure whether or not he should go on.

  "And?" Princippi stressed.

  "They spit on me," the lawyer blurted out. "A lot. I think some people circled the block just to take a second run." He glanced down at his oozing wet suit.

  Princippi shook his head firmly. "No, no, no," he insisted, his eyes beginning to glaze over. "No. That simply cannot be true. Did you tell them that the papers were for their Prince?"

  "I did everything you told me."

  "You did something wrong." Princippi appeared to have dropped into a daydream. He stared blankly into space as his attorney spoke.

  "Yes," the lawyer sniffed tartly. "I allowed you to draw me away from my practice. My booth at Sears wasn't much, but at least I didn't have people hocking loogies on me all day. This is revolting." He picked up his faux-leather plastic briefcase from the Formica tabletop and tipped it to one side. Viscous liquid slopped out of a hole in one corner, puddling into the musty, dirt-encrusted linoleum cracks in the floor. "These people hate you," the lawyer added. With a loud slap, he dropped the briefcase back to the table's surface.

  Princippi did not appear to notice his lawyer's outburst. He was lost in thought.

  In times of intense personal strife, he had a habit of winking out of reality for long moments. He considered it to be a psychological defense mechanism. It shielded him from the vicissitudes of a painful world. A psychiatrist might have better described it as a grand delusion.

  He was having "the Dream."

  Princippi was in the Oval Office. Standing at the window in silhouette. JFK, circa 1961 and 1962-Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis. Very statesmanlike.

  The brightness of the sun streaming through the window exploded around his image, enveloping it, obliterating it. Nothing remained. Just a sheet of blinding whiteness.

  All gone. Snatched away in a heartbeat. He had nearly had it all. Now he had nothing. Just a crumbling house and a two-bit mall lawyer.

  The trance was broken. Michael Princippi was back in his grimy kitchen. He was staring at the filthy floor. His eyes were focused on a pair of soaking-wet shoes.

  Princippi did not even raise his head as he spoke.

  "You are discharged from my service," he informed the lawyer, his face a somber mask. "Please type up a letter of resignation."

  The lawyer snorted derisively. "Yeah, I'll get right on it," he mocked. "First, there's the matter of my fee."

  "Yes, yes, yes," Princippi said, waving his hand dismissively. "Take it up with Doris."

  "Doris quit last week. You hadn't paid her in three months."

  "My wife, then."

  "She's still in rehab, Governor. Remember the paint incident?"

  Princippi looked up. His eyes betrayed his concern that the latest episode involving his substance abusing wife might become public. "Get it out of the slush fund," he said.

  "The slush fund melted," the lawyer said. "And before you take the Doris route with me, I'm sure the Boston Messenger would be interested in some of the dirt I've seen around here. Especially concerning your lovely wife."

  "Y-you're a lawyer," Princippi stammered. "You can't betray a confidence like that."

  "You hired me as a campaign staffer after you hired me as a lawyer," the attorney pointed out. "Campaign staffers aren't bound by confidentiality."

  "I'll sue."

  "Great. Who's going to represent you?" The lawyer crossed his arms across his wet chest and wait
ed smugly.

  Princippi sat gasping for a few long moments, lost for an appropriate response.

  Finally, he simply got up. He left the aluminum folding lawn chair with the clumps of frayed nylon that hung from beneath in cobweblike clumps and walked silently up to his bedroom. His feet were lead.

  He found a few hundred dollars in an old envelope stashed between his ratty mattress and creaking box spring. He was downstairs with the cash a few moments later.

  "Viper," the ex-governor spit morosely as he turned over the wad of crumpled bills.

  "Pleasure doing business with you," the lawyer said. He stuffed the money in his soggy pocket. Quickly, he gathered up his briefcase and left.

  After he was gone, Princippi sunk to his cheap aluminum kitchen chair. He stared dejectedly at the floor, images of abject poverty battling the Dream for control of his thoughts. Poverty won out.

  As he sat in gloomy depression, a few nylon straps snapped beneath his bottom. He barely noticed.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Michael Princippi was tinkering under the hood of his rusting 1968 Volkswagen Beetle. He had no idea what was wrong with the car, but there was no way he was going to take it to a mechanic. After his stint as governor, working types seemed to hate him more than most. Besides, it was cheaper this way. And Princippi was nothing if not cheap. At least when it came to his own finances.

  Former governor Princippi was not mechanically inclined. Nonetheless, he was in the process of tugging furiously with a pair of pliers at some filthy black thing with other longer things sticking out of it when he became aware of someone standing near him. He glanced up suddenly, banging his head on the underside of the hood. Sheets of rust dropped into the sunlight like startled bats.

  "Who the hell are you?" Princippi demanded of the man standing in his driveway. He blinked rust from his eyes.

  "Hi!" said the earnest, chirpy young man. "Would you like to change your life for the better?"

  Princippi sized up the intruder.

  Early twenties. Pale. A little above average height and weight. Bizarre clothing.

  The kid wore a flowing white gown with an open pink rote draped over it. A long braided ponytail stuck like a handle from the back of his otherwise bald head.

  The governor tipped his head. "Are you a registered voter?" he asked.

  "No, sir," replied the young man.

  "Then get lost," Princippi suggested. He went back to work beneath the hood.

  Maybe the thing he had been working on didn't actually have anything to do with the way the car ran. He yanked at it again, more furiously this time. One of the strange twisty things on one side snapped in half.

  "Damn," Princippi complained.

  "Everyone wants to know how to change his life for the better." The voice was closer now and more insistent. Near his ear.

  Princippi continued working. "My life is going to change," he grunted. "And when it does, the Secret Service won't let nut jobs like you within a country mile of me."

  He yanked harder at the little metal thing hanging off of the larger thing. It snapped off. As it did so, there was a rumble of an engine.

  For an instant, Michael Princippi thought he had fixed his car. He realized momentarily, however, that the sound was coming from farther down his driveway.

  The ponytail kid was standing next to Princippi. He was looking around the hood. "Ah, our ride," he enthused.

  Princippi glanced around the other side of the hood. A dark blue, windowless van was backing up the driveway. One rear door was open. Princippi could see a pale forearm holding the door ajar.

  This was ridiculous. The Brookline in which Michael Princippi had lived when he was governor had not allowed this kind of riffraff to drive around willy-nilly. Sure, on his watch other nearby towns might have had more nightly gunplay than a spaghetti Western, and convicted murderers had been given the keys to their own cells, but, dammit, Brookline had always been safe.

  Princippi ducked back beneath his hood. "Look, I am in the middle of planning my triumphant return to politics, so if you don't intend to vote for me, get out of here before I call the cops."

  The young man didn't leave. Instead, he said something strangely enigmatic.

  "I'm sorry, Governor, but I'm about to change your life. Whether you want me to or not."

  Princippi was almost going to lift his head from the grimy engine to ask what the kid was talking about when he noticed something odd. Through a gap beneath the engine, he suddenly saw a pair of sandals as the white robe rose a few inches around the man's ankles. The kid was standing on his toes for some reason.

  All at once, Princippi heard a familiar creaking sound. It spurred him to action.

  He tried hastily to climb up from the engine well. Too late. The back of his head slammed solidly against his rapidly closing hood.

  Princippi saw stars. He saw bright light. As he lay, stunned, on the driveway, he saw figures in pink-and-white robes swoop from the rear of the van and gather him.

  Then he blacked out.

  IT SEEMED LIKE only a moment later when he came to.

  He was lying on his back in the rear of the blue van. The vehicle was bouncing along a street somewhere. There were no windows.

  Blandly smiling faces sat on benches on either side of him. They stared down at the former governor.

  He took a good, long look at the shaved heads, the flowing robes, the dim expressions. The tambourines.

  Tambourines?

  "Oh, my God," Michael Princippi wheezed. The air spun crazily around him. "I've been kidnapped by Loonies."

  And as the world swirled a midnight dance of fear, darkness took hold of him once more.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he was leaving Germany for what he hoped would be the last time in a long, long time.

  Remo sat behind the weirdly angled steering wheel of a rented truck. He fidgeted as he drove.

  From all outward appearances, Remo was an ordinary man. Lean and dark haired, Remo looked somewhere in his early thirties. Deep-set dark eyes lurked in a skull-like face that many had said was cruel, but nothing greatly beyond the norm. The only things visibly different about him were his freakishly thick wrists. These shifted now as he twisted in the uncomfortable truck seat.

  The seat seemed to have been designed specifically to make one's lower back ache.

  Remo was a Master of Sinanju. A man trained to the very height of physical and mental perfection. Most times, such a thing as an uncomfortable truck seat would not even remotely begin to bother him. But although Remo's perfectly attuned body did not experience the pains of ordinary men, he had ridden in this bouncing German truck so long that he was beginning to get a growing sense of prickling discomfort in his lumbar region.

  This was the last truck in a seemingly endless convoy he had single-handedly driven from Bonn to Berlin. He could not remember how many times he had traveled the six-hundred-mile round trip in the past few weeks. This last journey was made to seem all the longer by the passenger who had insisted on chaperoning him.

  "Cannot this carriage go faster?" the squeaky voice in the seat beside him demanded.

  "I'm going as fast as the speed limit," Remo said with a sigh.

  "The signs are configured in kilometers. You are used to miles. Perhaps you are improperly converting the speed in your mind."

  "I'm going the speed limit, Chiun," Remo insisted.

  "Humph."

  The sound of displeasure emanated from the inscrutable face of the Master of Sinanju, Remo's passenger and teacher.

  He was a delicate bird of a man. One hundred years old if he was a day, but possessed of piercing hazel eyes much younger than his wizened shell. Vaporous cotton-candy hair clung to a spot above each ear. His otherwise bald skull was enshrouded in an almost translucent film of walnut-hued paper flesh. A wisp of beard bobbed at his pointed chin.

  The old Korean clasped his bony wrists with the opposing hands and stared glumly out the window. He remained silent for
approximately ten seconds.

  "Are we there yet?" Chiun asked.

  "No!" Remo snapped. "Dammit, Chiun, why didn't you just wait for me in Berlin?"

  "I did not trust you," Chiun said simply.

  "You trusted me with the first gazillion dollars worth of booty," Remo replied.

  "It is not that I thought you would steal any of my treasure," Chiun told him. "You are disgustingly honest and ill concerned with money. I find both character traits more than a little appalling, by the way," he added.

  "Compliment taken," Remo said.

  Chiun continued, "I did not trust that you would be thorough in your final search. I wanted to be certain that you did not carelessly leave behind a stack of gold bars or a crate of diamond tiaras when we at last shake the dust of this benighted land from our sandals."

  "I'm not a six-year-old, for crying out loud," Remo complained. "Why do you think God gave me these?" As he drove he pointed at his eyes.

  Chiun shrugged. "I am not privy to the thoughts of deities. A joke, perhaps?" he suggested.

  "Har-de-har-har," Remo griped. "Make fun of the round eyes. I notice you weren't yucking it up when I was moving all your damned gold for you."

  "That was business," Chiun said. "This is pleasure."

  Smiling, he settled back into his seat.

  Remo was grateful for the silence. He had been stuck in Germany with the Master of Sinanju for far too long. They were getting on one another's nerves more and more lately. His drawn-out trips to a desolate storage facility in Bonn had been his only breaks from the aged Korean. And they weren't much for breaks.

  In Bonn, Remo had spent his time loading literally tons of gold and priceless jewels into his rented truck. He had to work at night to avoid prying eyes. Every once in a while, the owner of the facility would wander over and Remo would steer the man politely away. The steering had gotten less and less polite as time wore on.

  Driving, Remo thought of the storage facility's owner. He was a greasy little German with a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache and a pastry-fed backside. Surprisingly, Remo hadn't seen him before leaving on this last trip. It was surprising because the man usually made himself known.