Next Of Kin td-46 Read online

  "Listen, Alberto," Battiato rumbled in Italian. "You got to tell me how you got burned. Somebody very important wants to know." The nurses had him by both arms.

  "Grmpph," said the patient, a line of drool cascading down his chin.

  "Wake up, asshole. God is calling for you."

  "Oh, no," Vittorelli whimpered. "I am dead."

  "No, you're not dead!" Battiato yelled.

  "Get his neck. I'm going to pin him into a hammerlock," said one of the sturdy Dutch nurses.

  "Quick. Where did you get the shock?"

  Vittorelli's watery eyes rolled and fluttered. "The shock? Yes, the electricity."

  "That's it," the radio man cheered. "Where did you find the electricity?"

  The patient's eyes closed again.

  "Mamma mia, Alberto, wake up! Aiii!"

  "Got him," said the nurse. "Over this way, young man." She steered him toward the door.

  "Where, Alberto, where?" the radio man shrieked as he was dragged off.

  Vittorelli's voice was soft and faraway sounding. "A shipyard. There was a man... Yellow hair and terrible blue eyes..."

  The door slammed in Battiato's face.

  He reeled back to the radio room, stunned, and slipped the earphones over his head. "God?" he said meekly.

  "I read you, Battiato. What did you find out?"

  "It was at the shipyard, sir. The Soubise shipyard."

  "I see."

  "Sir, I have been on this island many times, and— and I know the legends and—"

  "Yes?"

  "Vittorelli says he met a man there, a man with golden hair and eyes of blue..."

  There was a pause. Then the voice at the other end answered resolutely, "The Dutchman."

  "Dio," the operator screamed, falling to his knees. "You know!"

  "Yes, I am aware of a few facts," the voice said flatly. "Thank you for your help, Mr. Battiato."

  "Father, bless me!"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Bless me, Father, for I am your instrument."

  "Er... very well. Consider it done. Over and out."

  A blast of static once again filled the transmission, followed by silence. Giuseppe Battiato remained on his knees, tears of ecstasy flowing down his face.

  ?Sixteen

  Ten miles inland, in a shack high on a hill overlooking the Dutch lowlands, Harold W. Smith switched off his radio and removed his earphones. He jotted down a note to send Giuseppe Battiato ten dollars. That was ample reward for the information gathered. Sometimes the simplest operations got to be complicated, he thought with a sigh.

  According to his Timex Quartz, it was 5:18:43. Smith loved accuracy.

  There were other things he loved: his wife, his stamp collection from his childhood; he loved Vermont, his country, and CURE, of course. But above all he loved accuracy. The idea of life as an ordered, finite course where right and wrong were as different from one another as black and white gave him an indestructible sword with which to fend off the parries of inconsistency. Men were either good or they were disposable; that was just the way things were. It was for this reason that Smith permitted himself a small sigh of relief as he turned to the suitcase-sized computer hookup at his right and keyed in Giuseppe Battiato's information.

  Remo was still good. He had suspected from the beginning that Remo didn't commit the murders in the truck body, but words like suspect, guess, hope, and hunch had no meaning in his vocabulary. His suspicion, when stacked against a dozen murders performed in precisely Remo's style, carried as much weight as a chicken's whistle. Facts were what mattered, and the facts had been against Remo.

  But now the facts were shifting their direction. Some quiet probing into the Soubise shipyard had unearthed more information. One, the Soubise yard was by far the most likely source for the truck body found in the ocean. It was the nearest and largest. Not enough to stand up in a court of law, but a fact. Two, the executives of the Soubise enterprise had turned out to be an unorthodox lot, to say the least. They were all drawing fortunes from the shipyard, as were a host of lawyers and brokers around the world. Everyone connected with the business was rich— except for the owner, one Jeremiah Purcell, known locally as the Dutchman, who drew $5,000 a month and whose signature was not affixed to any legal document concerning the shipyard. Moreover, the $5,000 was a cash payment, disbursed at an unknown location.

  Three, the only record of Jeremiah Purcell known to mankind— or to Harold W. Smith, who was infinitely more accurate— was a duplicate of a student's registry from a private school in Switzerland. The school had been destroyed in an unexplained explosion in the early '70s. Whoever Purcell was, he kept his comings and goings to himself.

  Four, a new batch of disappearances had been reported to the police in Marigot that morning. All of the missing men had been unemployed, all known drunks. There were only five missing-person reports, but the police suspected more than five missing persons. They had spoken of it among themselves at the precinct station Smith had bugged. And Remo wasn't abducting the men. Chiun was watching, waiting for the right moment to kill his pupil. If he'd found Remo killing, the moment would have been at hand.

  Two feet of paper filled with printed matter streamed out the top of the computer. At 5:21:04 two more lines responded to Smith's inquiry:

  PROBABILITY HIGH CONNECTION VITTORELLI/SOUBISE YARD PROBABILITY HIGH CONNECTION DISAPPEARANCES/PURCELL

  He read the lines, tore off the sheet of paper, rolled it into a tube, and burned it. He replaced the computer in one suitcase and the radio in the other and slid them both beneath the floorboards.

  He put on his hat. He was not going to waste Remo if he could help it.

  * * *

  Remo's villa was in ruins. Machine gun fire had gutted the rooms, and fire had scorched the walls. A television set, oddly, was packed into the plaster. Except for that detail, the place had obviously been set up for execution. Someone was after Remo, or Chiun, or both.

  Smith made a quick tour of the house. Chiun's trunks were still intact. A black T-shirt lay neatly folded in a bedroom dresser, and a pair of gray chinos hung in the closet. Near the bed, a woman's nightgown lay crumpled on the floor. There was no blood, except for a few stains, which Smith judged to be more than a day old, on the living room carpet.

  It occurred to Smith that the two of them might already be long dead.

  But if they weren't, he knew where they'd be.

  "I need a helicopter," he told the ground crew chief at Juliana airport.

  "This is a restricted area, sir," the man barked over his shoulder.

  Smith took out his old C.I.A. identification. "This is an emergency. I'll return the vehicle."

  The chief spoke rapidly into his headset, and the crewman on the airstrip guided in a KLM 747. "I'd like to help you guys out, mister, but I haven't got an extra pilot."

  "That's all right. I'll fly it myself."

  The man with the headset took a long look at the middle-aged fellow whose I.D. claimed he was Dr. Harold W. Smith, computer information specialist. He was wearing a three-piece gray suit, a straw hat, and glasses. All in all, he wasn't the chief's idea of an ace pilot.

  "How many hours you got logged?" he asked.

  "Seven thousand. I'll bring it back within a half-hour. You can keep my card."

  The ground control chief flipped the card over in his hand. "Well, okay, if it's an emergency. But if that machine isn't back here in time, I'm going to put out an area search for you, including airspace."

  "That's fine. Thank you very much."

  "In the west hangar." He watched Smith trot off. They sure aren't very fussy about their agents down in Langley these days, he thought.

  Then, just as Smith got the chopper off the ground, the air to the northwest lit up in a soaring explosion of flame.

  Smith knew his suspicions had been right.

  ?Seventeen

  Chiun's blue ceremonial robe lay folded near a cluster of bouganvillea. The Dutchman's white ja
cket was strewn carelessly over the balcony railing, where he had tossed it. He wouldn't need it after today. He wouldn't need anything.

  It was as it should be, he thought. His life was scheduled to begin after his twenty-fifth year; he would never see it. The Dutchman would instead be claimed by the sea, his freakish spirit drowned for all eternity. There would be no more death urged on by the hungry, senseless thing inside him, no more pain. A long swim out, one struggling gasp, and done. After Chiun's death, his own would come easily. An hour had passed since the two men first faced each other in their fighting gis. Although their movements were constant and spectacular, no blow had been struck. Each was aware of the other's lethalness: one blow was all it would take. The slowness of the battle was agonizing. The Dutchman's body was bathed in sweat.

  He jumped high in the air, twisting into a perfect triple spiral that jolted his downward spin to incredible speed. The air behind him sparked. He landed less than an inch away from Chiun. His arm was ready, rocketing in the direction of the old man, but Chiun was already fifty feet away, transported as if by sheer magic.

  "Excellent," the old man said. "A beautiful variation. But you waste too much energy in unecessary movement. Prepare your feet before you begin the upward thrust. It should help the angle of your landing."

  The Dutchman bristled, his concentration broken. "We are met here in mortal combat," he reminded Chiun with the consummate dignity of youth.

  Chiun smiled. "I cannot help it. I am too much the teacher."

  "I will kill you."

  He shrugged. "Perhaps. What will you do then, Jeremiah?"

  The Dutchman's jaw worked. "None of your business," he said finally.

  "You need not hate me to kill me, you know." The old man's eyes were smiling.

  "You murdered Nuihc!" he shouted.

  "He murdered himself through his evil. What will you do, my son?"

  "Don't call me that!"

  "What will you do when I am dead?"

  The words rushed out in a torrent of fury. "I will die! I will go to the sea and end the useless pain of my life. I will find rest." Tears streamed over his face.

  Chiun stammered. "You will die?"

  "That is all I wish."

  "But you are so young—"

  "I am an abnormality. A cancer. I set my own parents on fire!"

  "That is done, just as Nuihc's life is done. You cannot change that. But you can control your power. It need not be destructive."

  "I can't control it. It only gets worse with each year. Soon I will be killing children on the street. Don't you see? I cannot live. I am an evil thing, not a man. I must not live."

  Chiun was puzzled. "Then why do you bother to kill me?"

  He answered with downcast eyes. "I have made my pledge to Nuihc."

  Night was falling. Beyond the terraced lawns of the castle, the tide rushed inward. The tree frogs of twilight began their eerie song. Chiun walked toward the Dutchman slowly. He stopped in front of him.

  "Then kill me," Chiun said simply.

  "No!" The young man was enraged. "You are a legend. You will fight me. I will not butcher the Master of Sinanju like a defenseless cat." He stepped back. Chiun smiled. "Stop it!"

  "I see now," Chiun said. "You did not plan to kill me at all. You wished only that I would kill you."

  "That's not true! I promised Nuihc!"

  "You are not an evil man, Jeremiah."

  "Get away—"

  Both men froze in their tracks, their eyes riveted to the silhouette coming over the horizon. Remo stopped, too, looking in bewilderment at the two of them.

  "Now I will force you to fight me," the Dutchman said.

  The air crackled with electricity. The tree frogs abruptly stopped their song. All was silence.

  He raised his right arm slowly. Starting on his shoulder, a ball of light traveled down his arm, growing, glowing brighter, and shot off his finger like a bullet. It hit Remo in the stomach. Remo blinked, stunned, and doubled over with a gasp.

  "Halt!" Chiun shouted.

  Remo wobbled to his feet. "I think I've just about had it with you," he said.

  The Dutchman sent out a wall of air to knock Remo off his feet. At the same time he sent another, stronger one toward Chiun, The old man squinted against the gale, unable to move. The Dutchman closed in on Remo.

  Remo rolled out of the way of the first blow, a kick that left a deep pit in the ground. The dirt from the pit swirled and dissipated in the growing windstorm that the Dutchman had created. He struck again. Remo dodged it by instinct alone. The experience in the cave had taught him not to rely on his eyes.

  A long tongue of flame licked out of the turbulence. Without thinking, Remo lunged toward it, two fingers poised to strike. They hit. Out of the flying dirt and thick salt spray came a howl. Then the Dutchman's fingernails thrust past Remo's face, near enough to scrape four bloody lines across his skin.

  It was hard to breathe in the maelstrom of whirling leaves and earth. Two trees were uprooted nearby. Their gray trunks flew overhead, weightless. Remo lunged again and missed. An invisible foot caught him on the thigh, sending him sprawling through the mist. He kept going when he landed, sure the Dutchman would have heard his fall. The shape came— how fast could that guy move? Remo positioned himself for attack. When the Dutchman touched ground, Remo stepped forward with a thrust to the neck.

  He hit. Not the neck. A shoulder groaned in its socket, shattered, and fell away from his fist. Without a second's hesitation, the Dutchman's other arm lashed out and took Remo in the ribs. Two sharp snaps sent Remo back, reeling. An inch closer, and they would have pierced his heart.

  Then another shape loomed nearby. Instinctively, Remo charged for it before realizing it was Chiun. He stopped cold as Chiun spoke.

  "Move!" the old man said. But Remo moved too late. Chiun's tiny figure in the mist upended and seemed to blow away in the wind.

  "Chiun!" Remo called.

  Silence.

  "Chiun!"

  The hand came out of nowhere toward Remo's temple.

  "Chiun," he whispered as the walls of consciousness came crashing in blackness around him. It had been a glancing blow, but enough to stop Remo. Enough to weaken him. The next would kill him. He was beaten. It was over. He tasted the dirt on his lips.

  And then from the depths of his soul, his voice spoke. "I am created Shiva, the Destroyed; death, the shatterer of worlds. The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju."

  And he struggled to his feet.

  He moved, infinitely slowly, the blood of ages stirring within him. The Dutchman emerged from the storm. His mangled shoulder was dripping blood, and blood was pouring from his side. His face was twisted in pain and rage as he came for Remo.

  Silently, swiftly, Remo sprang from his back, his being focused in his powerful right arm. A look of terror flashed across the Dutchman's eyes as Remo struck, tearing his face to a pulpy mass.

  At the instant it was over, Remo felt a wave of pity rise in his throat.

  The Dutchman staggered off his feet and disappeared backward into the storm. In the mist a fluttering sigh began and died.

  Soon the soughing of the wind ebbed. The dead leaves that had been coloring the sky black settled to the ground, and twilight returned in its electric blueness. Far away, a tree frog began singing, and others took up the chant.

  "Chiun?" Remo called.

  The old man stood near a broken Ackee tree. Slowly he raised his arm to point toward the cliff side of Devil's Mountain. Across a jagged boulder was draped the broken body of the Dutchman. Remo and Chiun went toward him.

  The explosion happened before they reached him. The earth shook, and a double blast burst from the castle in a curtain of flame. Fire poured out of its narrow slit windows. Women screamed.

  A second explosion rocked the castle to its foundations. Huge slabs of stone tumbled to the ground as the white turrets crumbled, leaving clouds of dust and fire in their wake.

  Chiun
took hold of Remo's arm, his long fingernails digging into his skin. "Listen," he said, drawing Remo toward the Dutchman.

  The young man's eyes were open and weeping, tears mixed with blood dropping red onto the rock where he lay as Nuihc's castle disintegrated before him. "I have failed," he croaked. "Nuihc, this is your vengeance." Then his head dropped. He made no other movement. Thin streams of blood coursed from his wounds down the gray stone, forming small pools around him. On the peak, the fire raged unabated, washing the Dutchman's body in a bright glow.

  "How young he is," Chiun whispered. He picked up his robe and dabbed at the cuts on Remo's cheek. "Come. We must look after you now."

  Then, in the orange aura from the blaze in the castle, they saw a line of figures marching toward them, their outlines wavy and rippled in the heat. At the head of the line lumbered a wide female figure who shouted commands at the others.

  "Buge-toi, putain! Move it. You best be putting them buns to work getting you down this hill, else they gonna burn like de pork rind. Ha, ha," Sidonie cackled gleefully as she forced her charges down the hill.

  Chiun peered at the strange parade. All of the figures were women in various stages of undress. Some were draped in sheets or towels; others picked their way down the hill clad only in diaphanous nightgowns. One of them, a proud redheaded Amazon, strutted apart from the group wearing a black garter belt, opera hose, and spike heels.

  "That woman in front," Chiun began, pointing to the black drill sergeant in a ruffled skirt and bandana. "She looks like..."

  "Who else," Remo finished, watching Sidonie wield the iron pipe she had brought to Remo's rescue earlier. She circled it over her head, threatening the girls behind her as she commanded them downward.

  "Hey, Mr. Remo, Mr. Chiun," she bellowed. "Lookee what I got for you. Get going, girlie. You ain't laying around sucking up bonbons no more." Behind her, the girls grumbled and muttered in French. "Taisez-vous!" she shrieked, prodding one of the girls in the stomach with the pipe. "Soyez tranquille! Shut your mouth or I shut it good, hear?"