King's Curse td-24 Read online

  Remo reached down and with his left hand dislocated the beast's right front leg. The dog yelped and hit the ground. Remo walked away.

  The dog got up on three feet, and dragging its dislocated leg, ran toward Remo again. Remo heard the injured limb scudding through the white gravel. He turned as the dog growled and reared up on its two hind legs, trying to bite him.

  He slapped the big dog's wettish nose with his left hand and dislocated the other front leg with his right hand. This time, when the dog hit the ground, it stayed there, whining and whimpering.

  In the window high above Remo, deJuin moved back from the curtain. He felt the feathers of the two men on his sides brush his face. "Marvelous," he said softly.

  Below, as if he had heard the Frenchman, Remo turned, remembering the men who had been watching from the window, and he pointed an index finger as if to say "you're next."

  Then he darted up one of the paths leading away from the central courtyard to the house.

  Forty yards away from Remo, but separated by many twists and turns, Chiun had heard the dogs' frenzied barking and yelping and then the screeches and then the silence.

  "It is well," he said, continuing to shuffle forward with the two women.

  He stopped suddenly short and spread his arms to prevent the two women from lurching forward. The women bumped into his thin arms, extended outward from his sides. Each let out an "oof" as if they had walked stomach first into an iron guardrail.

  Valerie got her breath back first. "Why are we stopped? Let's get out of here." She looked to Bobbi for agreement, but the buxom blonde stood silent, still apparently shaken from her near miss cardiectomy on the marble slab.

  "We will wait for Remo," Chiun said.

  From the window, Jean Louis deJuin saw the old Korean stop. He saw Remo now, atop the hedges, racing along them as if they were a paved road, coming toward the house, and he shouted, "Withdraw." He and Uncle Carl and the two men in feathered robes fled from the window.

  Ten seconds later Remo came through the open window in a rolling vault from the top of the tightly packed hedges.

  The room was empty.

  Remo went out into the hall and searched each room.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are," he called.

  But all the rooms were empty. Back in the room he had first entered, Remo found a yellow feather on the floor and consoled himself with the thought that even if he didn't find the men, the mange might yet carry them off.

  He stuck the long feather into the hair over his right ear, like a plume, then dove through the window with a cry of "Excelsior!"

  He turned a slow loop in the air, landed on his feet atop the hedge, and ran across the interstices of it toward where he saw Chiun and the two women up ahead.

  DeJuin waited a few moments, then pressed the button which opened the wall panel in the room where they had been sitting. He and the other men stepped out from the secret room, and deJuin motioned to them for silence as they moved toward the window, standing alongside it, peering through the side of the curtain.

  He saw Remo stop atop the hedges twelve feet above where Chiun and the two women still stood.

  "Hey, Little Father," said Remo.

  "What are you doing up there?" Chiun asked. "Why are you wearing that feather?"

  "I thought it was kind of dashing," Remo said. "Why aren't you at the car?"

  "There is a boomer down here," Chiun said.

  Remo looked down. "Where is it? I don't see it."

  "It is here. A wire buried under the stones. I saw the thin upraised line of rocks. I would not expect you to see it, particularly when your feathers get in your eyes. How fortunate that it was me leading these young people and not you."

  "Yeah? Who took care of the dogs?" Remo asked. "Who always does all the dirty work?"

  "Who is better qualified for dirty work?" Chiun asked. He liked that so he repeated it with a little chuckle. "Who is better qualified? Heh, heh."

  "Where's the bomb?" said Remo, pulling the yellow feather from his hair and dropping it into the hedge.

  "Right here," Chiun said. He pointed to a spot on the ground. "Heh, heh. Who is better qualified? Heh, heh."

  "I ought to leave you there," Remo said.

  As deJuin watched from the window, he saw Remo drop lightly from the top of the hedge to the outside of the tall iron fence that bordered one side of it. He could not see it, but he heard metal screeching as Remo separated the bars of the fence. A moment later he saw Remo stand up and he heard his voice.

  "Okay, Little Father, it's disconnected."

  "That means that it is safe?"

  "Safe. I guarantee it."

  "Say your final prayers," Chiun told the two women. "The white one guarantees your safety." But he led the two women past the wire imbedded under the gravel and toward the gate at the end of the pathway.

  Remo walked along on the outside of the hedge.

  "I have been thinking," Chiun said through the hedge to Remo.

  "It's about time," Remo said. "Heh, heh. It's about time. Heh, heh."

  "Listen to him," Chiun told the two women. "A child. Amused by a child's joke."

  Which took all the fun out of it for Remo, and he said to Chiun: "What were you thinking about?"

  "About the Master that I told you about, who went to far off places and new worlds and was not fully believed."

  "What about him?" Remo asked.

  "I am still thinking," Chiun said and would say no more.

  DeJuin watched as the old Oriental led the two women through the open gate. Remo had trotted along outside the fence, and then vaulted the twelve-foot-high fence with no more effort than if it had been the low right field handrail in Yankee Stadium.

  They started to get into the car, but then the old man turned around, looked at the house, and began to speak words that gave deJuin an unexplained chill.

  "May your ears burn as fire," Chiun called toward the house in a voice suddenly strong.

  "May they feel the tingle of cold and then snap as glass. The House of Sinanju tells you that you will tear off your eyelids to feed your eyes to the eagles of the sky. And then you will shrink until you are eaten by the mice of the fields.

  "All this, I, Master of Sinanju, tell you. Be fearful."

  And then the old man stared at the window, and deJuin, even concealed by the curtain, felt as if those hazel eyes were burning into his. Then the old man entered the blue Ford and the American drove off.

  DeJuin turned to the other men in the room, whose faces had turned white.

  "What Is it?" he said to Uncle Carl.

  "It is an ancient curse, from the people of the plumed serpent in our land. It is very strong magic."

  "Nonsense," said deJuin, who did not really feel such confidence. He had begun to speak again when the phone tingled softly at his feet.

  He picked up the instrument and listened. Slowly his features relaxed and he smiled. "Merci," he finally said and hung up.

  "You have learned something?" asked Uncle Carl.

  "Yes," said deJuin. "We will leave these two alone. We no longer need them to bring us to their leader. The computers never fail."

  "The computers?" asked Carl.

  "Yes. The name our kinsmen learned in the hotel room. Harold Smith. Well, Dr. Harold Smith is head of a sanitarium near here called Folcroft. And it has a computer system with access to most of the major computers in this country."

  "And that means?" asked Uncle Carl.

  "That means that this Dr. Smith is the head of the organization which employs these two assassins. And now that we know that, we will leave these two alone. We do not need them to attain our goals of power for the Actatl."

  "But that leaves us always vulnerable," Carl protested.

  DeJuin shook his head and let a slow smile take over his face.

  "No. These two men are the arms. Strong and mighty arms, but only arms nevertheless. We will cut off the head of this secret organization. And without the
head, the arms are useless. So our trap did not work, but we have won anyway."

  He kept his smile, and it spread infectiously to the other three men. DeJuin looked out into the maze at the central court, where two dogs lay dead and the third Doberman lay whimpering with two dislocated front legs.

  Behind him, he heard the men say in unison: "You are king. You are king."

  He turned. "That is true." And to one of the feather-wearing men, he said: "Go out and kill that dog."

  In the car leaving the Edgemont Estate, Remo asked Chiun: "What was that all about? Eagles and mice and eyeballs of glass?"

  "I thought of what that long-ago Master wrote in the histories. He said it was a powerful curse among the people he had visited."

  "You don't even know, though, if these are the same people," Remo said.

  Chiun formed his fingers into a delicate steeple. "Ah," he said. "But if it is, they will have sleepless nights."

  Remo shrugged. When he glanced in the rear-view mirror, Valerie was sitting sullenly against the door on the right side, but Bobbi Delpheen's face was white and drawn. She had really been frightened, Remo realized.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The police found Joey 172 that night under a railroad bridge in the Bronx.

  They did not find his heart.

  There was almost a witness to the killing, who said that he was walking beneath the bridge when he heard a scuffle and a groan. He coughed and the sound stopped, and then he left. He came back fifteen minutes later and found Joey 172's body.

  Alongside his body was a small note on the pavement, apparently written in his own blood by Joey 172. It said "Maine next." Police believed that in the brief reprieve Joey 172 got by the presence of the passerby, he had written this message on the ground.

  This was all reported the next day by the Post, which Remo read.

  That the Post took the message "Maine next" to "mean that the killing was the work of a right wing lunatic fringe whose next mission was to go to Maine and make sure that the fascists won the Presidential election there was immaterial.

  That the Post first and alone promulgated this theory on page one, and by page twenty-four, the editorial page, had promoted it to the status of fact by referring to it in an editorial entitled "Heartless in America" did not impress Remo at all.

  What impressed him was the contents of the message. "Maine next."

  What else could it mean but Dr. Harold Smith?

  Throughout the Actatl tribe, the word had flashed on the death of Joey 172: The despoiler of the great stone Uctut is no more.

  Another message flashed through, too. Soon the Actatl would be hidden no more; their proud historical traditions would no longer be kept secret by fear of annihilation and reprisal.

  Soon the Actatl and their god Uctut, of the secret name, would stand high among the peoples of the world, proud and noble, for even now the leaders of the family were planning to humble a secret organization of the United States.

  DeJuin sat in his hotel suite and gathered to him the bravest of the Actatl. They planned their trip. And when Uncle Carl insisted upon going, deJuin made no argument. The old man, he felt, deserved to be in on the moment of glory.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Before Remo could pick up the telephone to call Dr. Harold Smith, the phone rang.

  It was uncanny, Remo thought, how Smith sometimes seemed to be able, across many miles, to read Remo's mind and call just when Remo wanted to speak to him. But Smith had a far stronger track record of calling when Remo did not wish to speak to him, which was most of the time.

  The phone rang again.

  "Answer the instrument," Chiun said, "or else remove it from the wall. I cannot stand all this interruption when I am trying to write a history for the people of Sinanju."

  Remo glanced at Chiun on the floor, surrounded by sheets of parchment, quill pens, and bottles of ink.

  He answered the phone.

  "Hello, Smitty." he said.

  "Remo, this is Bobbi."

  "What do you want? A fourth for doubles?"

  "Remo, I'm frightened. I've seen men around the front of my home and they look like the men who were at Edgemont."

  "Mmmmm," said Remo. He had sent Bobbi Delpheen home with orders to be careful, hoping he would never hear from her again. Happiness was never having to hear her Adidas tennis shoes scuffling along the rug in his room.

  "Can I come and stay with you, Remo? Please. I'm frightened."

  "All right," Remo said. "But be careful coming here. And wear something warm. We're going on a trip."

  "I'll be right there."

  Remo hung up with a grunt.

  When he had sent Bobbi home, Remo had told her to be careful. When he had sent Valerie home, he had told her to be quiet. He wondered now if she were being followed also.

  "Hey, Chiun, you writing anything good about me?"

  Chiun looked up. "I am writing only the truth."

  Remo was not going to stand there and be insulted, so he called Valerie. He found her at the desk in the museum.

  "It's about time you called, freak," she said. "When are you going to get rid of all that… all those… you know, in the special exhibit room? How long do you think this can go on? What do you think I am anyway?"

  "That's nice. Have you had any problems? People looking for Willingham?"

  "No. I put out a directive that he was going on vacation. But he can't stay on vacation forever. You've got to do something about it," she said.

  "And I will. You have my absolute guarantee that I will," Remo said sincerely. "Have you seen anybody? Has anybody been following you?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Have people been coming to see the exhibit?"

  "No. Not since I've been back. I've kept the sign on the door that it's closed, but no one comes."

  "And no one's been following you?"

  "Are you trying to make me nervous? That's it, isn't it? You're trying to make me nervous. Probably to get me up to your room so you can have your way with me. That's it, right?"

  "No, dear," Remo said. "That most certainly is not it."

  "Well, don't think that some shabby trick is going to frighten me into going there. No way. Your silly maneuvers are transparent, do you hear me, transparent, and you can forget it, if, for a moment, you think you can frighten me and get me to-"

  Remo hung up.

  Valerie arrived before Bobbi, even before Remo was hanging up the phone from his conversation with Smith.

  No, Smith had not heard anything about Joey 172. With the closing down of Folcroft, the flow of information to him had stopped, except for what he was able to glean from the newspapers. When he wasn't snowed in at his cabin.

  No, he had not seen anyone around his cabin, and yes, the skiing was fine, and if he stayed on vacation another month, his instructor told him, he would be ready to leave the children's slope, and he would be happy to see Chiun and Remo if they came to Maine, but they could not expect to stay in his cabin because a) it was small and b) Mrs. Smith after all these years still had no idea of what her husband did for a living, and it would be too complicated for her to meet Remo and Chiun. And there was no shortage of motel rooms nearby, and what was that awful yawking in the room?

  "That's Valerie," Remo said. '"She calls that speech. You be very careful."

  He hung up, just in time to wave down Chiun, who was turning threateningly on the rug toward Valerie, who had interrupted his concentration. Even now he was holding the writing quill poised on the tips of his fingers. In another split second, Remo knew, Valerie was going to have another appendage, a quill through her skull and into her brain.

  "No, Chiun. I'll shut her up."

  "It would be well if both of you were to shut up," Chiun said. "This is complicated work I do."

  "Valerie," Remo said, "come over here and sit down."

  "I'm going to the press," she said. "I'm tired of this. The New York Times would like to hear my story. Yes. The New York Times. W
ait until Wicker and Lewis get through with you. You'll think you were in a meat grinder. That's it. The Times."

  "A very fine newspaper." Remo said.

  "I got my job through The New York Times," Valerie said. "There were forty of us who answered the ad. But I had the highest qualifications. I knew it. I could tell when I first talked to Mr. Willingham." She paused. "Poor Mr. Willingham. Lying dead in that exhibit room and you, just leaving him there."

  "Sweet old Mr. Willingham wanted to cut your heart out with a rock," Remo reminded her.

  "Yes, but that wasn't the real Mr. Willingham. He was nice. Not like you."

  "Swell," said Remo. "He tries to kill you and I save you and he's nice, not like me. Go to the Times. They'll understand you."

  "Injustice," Chiun said. "You should understand it. You Americans invented it."

  "Stick to your fairytales," Remo said. "This doesn't concern you."

  The door to their suite pushed open and Bobbi came in. Her idea of cold weather garb was a full-length fur coat over a tennis costume.

  "Hello, hello, hello, everybody, I'm here."

  Chiun slammed a cork stopper into one of the bottles of ink.

  "That's it," he said. "One cannot work in this environment."

  "Were you followed?" Remo asked Bobbi.

  She shook her head. "I watched carefully. Nobody."

  She saw Valerie sitting on the chair in the corner and looked absolutely pleased to see her. "Hello, Valerie, how are you?"

  "Happy to see you dressed," Valerie said glumly.

  Chiun blew on the parchment, then rolled it up, and stashed it and the quills and the ink into the desk of the suite.

  "Fine, Little Father, you can finish that later."

  "Why?"

  "We are going to Maine."

  "Blaaah," said Chiun.

  "Good," said Bobbi.

  "I'm going to get fired," said Valerie.

  "Why me, God?" said Remo.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  From Europe they had come. From South America and Asia they had come.

  They had come from all over the world, the bravest of the Actatl. Their strengths had been wasted in misadventures before Jean Louis de-Juin had assumed leadership of the tribe, and this was what was left.