Judgment Day td-14 Page 12

  Remo went down the stairs, out into the bright sunlight and headed straight for the wall. The hell with the gate, the guards and Corbish. The hell with everything.

  Corbish returned to his desk.

  "Sorry for the interruption, Holly. Now what was it?"

  "Who is he?" Holly Broon asked.

  "Just a hired hand. He goes with the place," said Corbish, trying a smile on for size.

  "Does he always come through a window?"

  "He's rather eccentric. We're not going to have him around for too long."

  No, Holly thought, just until he finishes any more killings you have lying around. All she said was, "I think that's a good idea. He looks unstable to me and he acts unbalanced. What'd you say his name was?"

  "Remo. But I'm sure you didn't come here to talk about him."

  "No, I didn't, as a matter of fact. I came to talk about the board of directors meeting. I think it should be postponed."

  Corbish's face dropped open. "Postponed? Why?"

  "Well, my father's being buried tomorrow. I've given it some thought and it would seem like rushing it a little to elect a new president the next day. I think we ought to wait a little while."

  "But…"

  "Oh, I don't mean for long. Just two weeks or so," she said.

  Corbish picked up the old straight pen on his desk. He began to twirl it between the fingertips of both hands, as if it were a piece of clay he was trying to soften.

  He looked at Holly, who was smiling at him, blandly and openly.

  "Well, if you think it's best," he said. "What do the board members say?"

  "I haven't spoken to them about this," she said. "But they'll follow my lead in the matter. You know them. A pack of jellyfish."

  Corbish nodded. "Well, as you say. Let's fix a date, though, for the meeting."

  "No hurry," Holly Broon said. She stood up abruptly. "We'll do it after the funeral."

  "Bye now," she added brightly, turned and walked away from the almost president of IDC, whose gloom hung like a heavy drape over his face.

  "Well, that's it, Chiun," said Remo. "I've been told to get Smith."

  "What will you do?" Chiun asked.

  "What would Smith do if he had the assignment?"

  "If he were sane, he would go after you."

  "Well?"

  Chiun broke into a burst of Korean expletives, then hissed at Remo in English: "But he is only an emperor and they have never been honored for their sense or wisdom. However, you are a student of Sinanju and should know better. You are even more than that. You are almost a member of the House. Turning on your emperor is unthinkable."

  "Chiun, you just don't understand. Smith isn't my emperor. My emperor is the government, and right now, Corbish is giving orders for the government."

  "Then let us all pity this government of yours. Go! Go kill Smith."

  "I didn't say that."

  "Tell me whenever it is you say what you are going to say." Chiun turned away in disgust.

  "All right. This is what I want to say. I've been given an assignment. Eliminate Smith. So I'm going to eliminate Smith. That's it. Case closed."

  "Where will you find him?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do not worry about it."

  "No?"

  "No," insisted Chiun. "Smith will let you know where he is."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because he is only a madman, but you are a fool. And I am the Master of Sinanju."

  And then Chiun would say no more, but returned to writing on his heavy parchment with the goose quill pen.

  At the moment, Smith was the problem furthest from Blake Corbish's mind.

  Holly Broon's announcement that she would not call the executive board meeting had shocked him. And he wondered if she had learned or guessed that he had somehow been involved in her father's death. If she had, she might be trying to block his appointment for good, and if that were the case, he had problems. He needed her name and support to get the presidency of IDC.

  Unless…

  Corbish fiddled with the pen on his desk for a while, then grabbed a pencil and began to work out a computer program. For the first time since Remo had left, he thought of Smith and he hoped that Smith and his CURE computer system were as thorough as he believed they were.

  They were.

  An hour later, rolling out in printouts under the glass panel on Corbish's desk were reports on the nine old men who made up IDG's executive board.

  He smiled when he saw the first one. He broke into a grin on the second, and on the third he was hissing under his breath to himself. By the ninth he was laughing aloud, almost uncontrollably.

  A string of facts and evidence. Tax-dodging, illegal corporate structures, daughters with abortions, sons with criminal records, wives with habits like shoplifting. Smith's computers had noted everything.

  Corbish let out a gleeful whoop. With the information the computer had just given him, he could guarantee, absolutely guarantee, the votes of every man on the executive board.

  So much for Holly Broon. Let her think she had stopped him. When the executive board did meet, it would be Blake Corbish who would be chosen. She had been a fool to think she could put him down so easily, as if he were someone who was careless.

  Corbish ripped off the computer printouts sheets and put them in his top desk drawer. No need to leave them around; no time to be careless.

  But Blake Corbish had already been careless.

  He had failed to notice that each man written up on the printouts had had an item added as of that day. This would have been hard to determine, because the date of the information was in a string of Code numbers at the end of each individual item. One had to look carefully for the date to find it.

  There was a simple explanation for the late items. They had been put there that very day by Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  After talking to Holly Broon, Smith had realized that Corbish's first move would be to take over IDC. If Holly Broon believed Smith about the death of her father, she would try to stop Corbish and he would have to go after the executive board to get the job.

  From a thick blue book in a public library, Smith had gotten the names of the executive board members. Then, armed with his change maker, he had gone to a row of telephone booths in a sleepy shopping center and begun to make phone calls.

  One went to a newspaperman in Des Moines. Another went to a police captain in Jersey City. Another went to the plant manager of a federal installation outside Philadelphia and another to a postal inspector in California. Call after call, across the country, to different types of people in different walks of life, all joined by one common denominator: without knowing it, they worked for CURE.

  They were all professional gossips, and for their gossip they often received cash stipends. They were all part of Smith's informal but effective nationwide information-gathering system.

  Except in this case there was a difference. The information Smith gave them, under the guise of being an anonymous tipster, was false. Smith had dreamed up a string of lies about the nine men on the IDC board. He did not know what steps Corbish might take, but if he had the sense to use CURE's information against the men, Smith had decided to complicate the process by putting in some false information. Perhaps Corbish might overplay his hand.

  Those phone calls took a big part of Smith's day. When he was done, there was one more piece of business to perform. He put a dime into the telephone, dialed the number and waited for the operator to cut in. "That will be $1.60 for three minutes," she said.

  "Right here, operator," said Smith, clicking off six quarters and using the initial dime which she had returned.

  He was running low on quarters and would have to restock, he noted idly.

  "Thank you," the operator said.

  "You're welcome."

  A moment later, Smith heard the buzz of a ringing phone. It rang for twenty seconds before it was picked up by a female voice.

  "Hello?"

/>   "Hello, dear, this is Harold."

  "Harold, where have you been?"

  "Away on business, dear," Smith said. "But I'm all right. How are you?"

  "I'm fine, dear. And so is Vickie. When are you coming home?"

  "Soon, dear. Very soon. Listen dear, this is important. Do you have a pencil?"

  "Yes. Right here."

  "All right. A man will call on you, seeking information about me. When he comes, tell him this. He should go to Washington, D.C., and rent a room in the Lafayette Hotel under the name of J. Walker. I will contact him there. Do you have that?"

  "I think so. Washington, D.C. Lafayette Hotel. Room in name of J. Walker. You'll contact him."

  "Very good, dear."

  "By the way, Harold. What is the name of this man who'll be calling?"

  "His name is Remo."

  "Why, Harold, what a funny name."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "Is this Remo?" asked the woman's voice.

  "Yes. Who are you?"

  "This is Holly Broon. We met today in Corbish's office?"

  "Sure," said Remo. "Where'd you get my number?"

  "I called the switchboard at Folcroft. They told me where to find you."

  "Oh, good," said Remo. "That's swell. For a minute there, I thought somebody might be giving my number out indiscriminately. But as long as the switchboard is only giving it out to everyone who calls, well that's okay."

  "I'd like to see you tonight. Could I?"

  "Sure. Time and place?"

  "My house. Forty minutes. I'm in Darien," she said, and gave him an address and directions.

  "I'll be there," said Remo. He turned to Chiun.

  "Do you know how she got our phone number?" he asked.

  "Mr. Garbage advertised it in the small print in one of your newspapers?" suggested Chiun, without looking up from the parchment on which he was still writing.

  "No, but he might just as well have."

  "Give him time. He will. If you live that long."

  "Or if he does," Remo said. "I've got to go out for a while."

  "Go," said Chiun. "I am reaching a critical point in my history of the mad emperor Smith."

  When Remo drove his rented car up in front of title Broon estate in Darien, a butler was waiting at the front door.

  "Mr. Remo?" he said.

  Remo nodded.

  "Right this way sir," the butler said.

  It was great, Remo thought, being a celebrity. Another two weeks of working for Corbish and everyone in the country would know him. His face would be more famous than Howard Cosell's; his name more well known than Johnny Carson's; and Remo himself would be more dead than Kealey's nuts.

  The butler led him up a broad center stairway to a second-floor suite of rooms. He pushed open the door, stepped aside, let Remo enter and closed the door behind him.

  Remo went in, looked around, and realized with some amusement that it might just be the first living room he had entered by invitation in ten years. He had gotten used to skulking in through a window or forcing a door. But Remo was there as a guest, not as a killer stalking someone. It was an eerie feeling, rejoining the human race.

  He sat back in a chair, savoring the moment, waiting for Holly Broon. How nice to be in a living room, waiting for someone who expected you, secure in the knowledge that when that person greeted you it would not be with gun in hand.

  A door to a connecting room opened and Holly Broon, tall and full-figured in a violet silk wrap, stood there. She held a gun in her hand.

  Remo noticed it, but noticed even more the long line of thigh which jutted out from the opening of her wrap. It was doubly sensuous in the heavy shadows cast by the old-fashioned lighting in the room.

  "Mr. Remo," she said.

  Remo stood. "You always greet your guests this way?"

  "Only the ones I'm going to kill."

  "Kill me with kindness. It's my weak spot."

  "The only one?"

  Remo nodded.

  Holly Broon pushed the door shut behind her and came into the room. She was a woman, and experience had made Remo cautious of women with guns.

  With men there was a logical sequence of steps, an intensity that mounted steadily, until at the flash point of emotion they pulled the trigger. A carefully tuned-in man could read that sequence and act at just the right time. But with women it was different. They could pull the trigger at any moment, because their minds and emotions didn't follow any normal sequence of steps. They might fire because they thought it was going to rain, or because they thought it wasn't going to rain. They might shoot because they remembered the grease spot on the green tulle dress in the closet. Anything might do it, so Remo would watch her. He would act as if the gun wasn't in her hand. He would keep her calm at any cost. That was the safest thing to do.

  Holly Broon screamed, "You son of a bitch," and squeezed the trigger. Remo saw the telltale tensing of her knuckles just before her finger squeezed the trigger.

  Without bracing himself, and from a full stand, he flipped his body backwards over a large chair, landing on his neck and shoulders on the soft carpet behind the chair. The room was filled with the crack of the bullet from Holly Broon's pistol. Behind him, Remo heard the window crack as the bullet shattered the glass and went out into the rich Connecticut hills, where it would no doubt be stopped by nothing more important than a peasant.

  "Son of a bitch," Holly screamed again. "Why'd you kill my father?"

  Remo heard her feet pounding across the rug toward him. She would, of course, be holding the gun in front of her. He moved to his feet. When she reached him, she squeezed her right index finger again. Nothing happened. The gun was no longer there. Instead it was between Remo's fingers, plucked from her hand so fast she had not seen his hand move.

  Remo examined the gun as if it were a particularly interesting bug, then he tossed it over his shoulder. He put an arm around the woman's shoulders. "There, there," he said. "Tell me all about it." He would calm her down until he could find out how she had learned about him.

  Holly Broon balled her fist and punched him in the stomach.

  "Ooooph," Remo grunted. She wrenched loose from his protective arm and went diving across the floor for the revolver, her satin robe hiking its way up, around her lush thighs as she did. Her hand was near the revolver when Remo landed on the floor beside her.

  He slapped the gun away, this time under a large mahogany chest.

  "Now, now," he said. "What's this all about?"

  She sobbed in his arms on the floor. "You killed my father."'

  "Who told you that?"

  "Doctor Smith."

  "When'd you talk to him?"

  "This morning. He called me. Is it true?"

  "Now do I look like the killer type?"

  "Then Corbish did it, right?"

  Remo nodded, and then because he felt terrible about lying to the poor girl, he made love to her. As he did, he wondered why Smith had called. He really was demented, trying to cause trouble for the new head of CURE that way. Compromising Remo in the bargain. The more he thought of it, the more angry he became. When Remo saw him, he would give him a piece of his mind, he thought. Then he remembered with a chill that when he saw him, he would have to kill him. That took all the fun out of pleasuring Holly Broon although she did not seem to be able to tell the difference. She moved and moaned beneath him, even though he had trouble concentrating.

  "Oh, Remo," she said. 'I'm so glad it wasn't you."

  "Me, too," he said, since he could think of nothing else to say.

  He left her with her eyes closed on the plush carpet of her drawing room, a peaceful look on her face, a smile on her lips. He stood up, arranged his clothes, and looked down at her naked body. Women should always look so happy, he thought. There would be much less violence in the world.

  He turned and walked toward the door. Let her rest If she wanted to settle the score with Corbish later on, let her. That was Corbish's problem. And hers. But not R
emo's. Thank God, he was out of this one.

  As he reached the door and extended his hand toward the knob, the click of a pistol's hammer alerted his senses. He collapsed onto the floor. Right where his head had been, a bullet slammed into the door, ripping out a large chunk of the heavy oak. Remo pushed open the door and rolled through the opening.

  In the hall, he was on his feet and running.

  Nuts, he thought.

  Everybody in the whole world was nuts.

  He would hold this view for at least another thirty minutes, while he was driving back to his hotel and saw a large sign reading Folcroft Oaks Golf Course. The sign triggered a memory and Remo recalled that Smith told him once he lived on the edge of a fairway. Yes, he remembered, Smith had a family. A wife and a daughter, just like real people. Just like Remo would never have. And if anyone knew where Smith was, Mrs. Smith would.

  Driving along the golf course road, Remo suddenly understood the telegram Smith had sent him. "When are you going to hit a home run?"

  It meant Remo should look for Smith at his home. He had been tantalizing Remo all along. But why?

  Remo drove the darkened deserted grounds of the golf course until he saw an old English Tudor house with a small sign in front of it: Smith.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have sneaked into the house. But a taste for going in front doors had been reawakened in him. He parked his car in the driveway, walked to the front door and rang the bell.

  A chubby middle-aged woman in a light blue knee-length dress answered the bell on the third ring.

  "I'm looking for Dr. Smith," Remo said. "Is he in?"

  "Your name is?"

  "My name is Remo."

  "Oh, yes, I've been expecting you. Harold called and left a message for you. Now, let's see, what was it? Oh, yes. He said you should go to Washington and rent a room in the Lafayette Hotel under the name of J. Walker and he would contact you there."